Lutes and Lobsters: Ophelia and Theatrical Cliché

The parodic mad scene for Tilburina in Sheridan’s The Critic derives both from Ophelia and from Belvidera, the heroine of Otway’s Venice Preserved. One of Belvidera’s lines (“Lutes, laurels, seas of milk, and ships of amber”) represented, for many writers (John Gay, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Horace Walpole, Charles Lamb, and, most famously, Coleridge), an example of disjointed clichés. In fact, these images sum up the tropes of female madness and its end; the sea and ships refer to the Ariadne legend and a repressed desire for vengeance, as seen in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Maid’s Tragedy and Chettle’s Hoffman. The transition between virgin (Ophelia) and wife (Belvidera), within the vaguely defined world of the contracted couple, leaves room for misinterpretation (the Jailer’s Daughter in The Two Noble Kinsmen, Constance in Brome’s The Northern Lass) and tragic obsession (Penthea in Ford’s The Broken Heart). Harriet Walter’s poem, “What Gertrude Couldn’t Say”, attacks the prettification not only of Ophelia’s death but of virginity itself. KEYWORDS: Ophelia; ships of amber; Ariadne; Thomas Otway; Tilburina; Penthea; S. T. Coleridge