“She is like the rest of us; we all have no more than the words that come to us in the play.
We go on with these words. We have to.”

In let me tell you, Paul Griffiths gives Ophelia what Hamlet scarcely allows: a childhood, a family, and a love whose end we already know. He makes this life from the 481 distinct words Shakespeare allotted her. Whereas Hamlet can ask whether to be, Ophelia is given “I shall obey” and must discover whether its “I” can survive the command. What sounds like literary engineering becomes the intimate difficulty of making a life in language inherited from others. A word first spoken in obedience returns as doubt. A flower that delights a child already carries an omen for the reader. Nothing is added to her vocabulary, yet a person takes shape within it.

Memory obeys no firmer rule. Rosemary is for remembrance, but to remember here is also to re-member, to gather a semblance of self from words that once belonged to other people. Ophelia cannot place her upbringing beside its telling and decide where one gives way to the other. She has only the events as they come to her now, through words spoken before and after them. Each return changes what those words can hold, and with them the person who speaks.

This New York Review Books edition pairs the novel with let me go on. Beyond the ending Shakespeare gave her, Ophelia enters a fantastical realm among figures from his other plays. An exit becomes an entrance, and death fails to settle the final scene. If the first book asks how much of a life a limited language can hold, the second asks what becomes of that life when even its ending gives way. Going on offers no simple freedom. She carries the voices that formed her into each encounter, where new voices may yet remake her.

The care and wit of these books deserve more than praise for an ingenious rule. To describe them while spending words Ophelia was never given would leave the wager untested. And so, let the register shift now…

The King rises. His play is brief; the words are not. His command would have the daughter dead and gone, but the lady hath more than an end. A home is made, and a lord and a brother have breath there. The play denied them this day, but what was meant as nothing becomes something. We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

A lord is here, and a brother. The daughter would have the lord with love in his heart. “Do you doubt that?” Indeed. Memory is no watchman of what was true. What the mind would keep as true may be false, but what it would call false hath a sweet fashion. The home was there, but no words will restore it as it was. The daughter cannot ask a day to tell what it meant.

A lady will sing, and then be still. The daughter will mark a tongue, a breath, a countenance, but what the lady would keep in the heart is not given to speech. Love is there. The lord hath a merry show for the brother and daughter, but the show hath more than a lesson in it. What the eye would mark is not all that the heart would know. The lady is gone, then here again. What is held without honour will not come again as it was.

There is a mountain with white snow, and flowers on the ground. Here beauty is given a day without an end. Rosemary for remembrance, pansies for thoughts, rue for grace. In the arm the flowers are sweet, but they have the cold ground in them. The daughter with flowers is not the daughter that will tell of them. No key will restore that day. Beauty hath better commerce with what is gone than with what is held. 

Madam hath words that make the daughter believe, then doubt what the heart did believe. Many have affection for the daughter. The lord hath no say in this. Is it love to make a heart believe what is false? Deceived then, it is deceived again in remembrance. The brother hath love for Madam. The daughter would have the lady gone. To him there is love. To the daughter, doubt. At home the two are not of a mind. What was denied is more than what Madam will tell.

Hamlet hath affection for the daughter, and love and fear are there for him. He goes, then is here again. His words are an oath and an affrighted show. The daughter would mark them and doubt what they meant. The lord, the brother, Hamlet: all would have the daughter obey. No lord could know what the daughter would think when the play is still. A command is given, but the heart does not obey it. Love is here. No vows will keep it as it was.

There is a wish to God. Where is the good lord when heaven hath no words? The pansies are gone, and memory cannot make them again. The daughter is gone. Hamlet does not come. The lord and brother weep. The King hath words for this: no remembrance. A heart still hath breath in words, but the play denied it length.

O is no more than O, and may be gone. But O is a wheel, and how the wheel becomes it! The King would have an end, and the play must obey. When it is here again, the dead lady hath breath. The mark is brief, but the lady made of it is not. The King will know a courtier’s countenance, not what the daughter is when words come without him.

But O goes on. There is almost a wish to know what they do without the lady, but no eye will mark that day. The brother is in the heart. A wish for him to be well is all love will have. Then white on white: no mountain, no snow, no ground for words. No play will tell what is here. The mind is two, and no right fashion will make it a mind again. The daughter is here and gone. Words have breath, barefaced and keen. Is this what was overthrown?

He is here. His eye is not where his countenance would have it. He will call, but no call will tell what he means. There is a holy wish in the call, and a hard day in him. The daughter will know him in words, but not all that the heart would keep. No eye will make his countenance still.

In a hamlet (ha!) a lady will have speech. The lady will tell of a “Master.” The daughter would have him as a lord, belike as God. But the lady will say love. What was lordship is affection, and no key is given for where he will be. Then “O.” The mark is brief, but it is the heart of the lady and of the daughter. The lady hath love, but the daughter hath doubt. To know the mark is not to command what it means.

The lady will tell of holy vows and the wish for all to be of a mind. The daughter would have that grace, but remembrance rises unbraced: was the heart true in the vows? Did the daughter choose? Did a lord command what the heart would believe? What was honesty then may be fear here.

The soldier’s mind would have a lesson with a good end. A lady will sing and tell; the lesson is brief, the speech long. It goes to the lord, to love, to the daughter. He would know what it means, but no words will tell him in the fashion he would choose. He would keep the show locked. Speech will not obey. Was it a play? Is this the play? No key will make doubt a lesson. A play with no end is better than a lesson with no doubt.

Two have words of a lord and a King. A lady would know Hamlet; a lady will have no speech of him. They do not think as the daughter would. No command will make them of a mind. A lord is a King at home. A King is no lord in love. Majesty will make a show, but cannot know a daughter by command. His words tell of a daughter. The words of the daughter tell of him. What do they know when the play is gone? No King will tell the heart what it is.

The brother is here. He would know the daughter, but his words cannot restore home. A wrist is held, and then he is gone. What he would keep and what the daughter would keep are true, but the two will not tell it as it was. Love is in what he would know and what he cannot know. A lady made of words is not held still. The brother cannot restore that day.

Do you know yourself? The King hath a daughter for a brief show. The heart hath more than a show. What was is here, and what is here is more than a mark. All have words, but no lord will tell all. The play is brief; what it means hath no end.