Must I Remember?

- The Curse of Remembering in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

“Must I remember?” (1.2.147) The idea of remembering is a core tenet of Shakespeare’s

Hamlet. The titular character is confronted with a conundrum: to kill or not to kill Claudius, his

father’s murderer. He questions his place in the world: to be or not to be, to escape into the vast

dreams of the other side. He also is confronted with a subtle choice early on: to remember or not

to remember. Hamlet chooses to remember. Throughout the play, the audience is shown the

results of this choice, this dedication to ghosts, not just in Hamlet but as well as in his

contemporaries, namely Ophelia.

“Must I remember?” (1.2.147) says Hamlet, describing the pain and inner turmoil

generated by his adherence to the memory of his father. Throughout the play, characters

comment on the results of Hamlet’s loyalty to memory. Moments before the prior line, Hamlet is

in audience with the new king, Claudius, who the audience later learns was the instrument of

King Hamlet’s demise, and his mother, the Queen. Here, the monarchs remark on the recent

nature of King Hamlet’s death- “Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death / The memory be

green,” (1.2.1-2) - but also follow that up with a guiding wisdom for the play. “That we with

wisest sorrow think on him / Together with remembrance of ourselves.” (1.2.6-7). Explicitly, the

explanation that is given for their lack of sorrow is self-preservation. They remember King

Hamlet, but with their health in mind. This comes in direct opposition to Hamlet’s stated

existence. When the Queen interrogates Hamlet over his depressing dress, she tells him “Do not

forever with thy vailèd lids / Seek for thy noble father in the dust.” (1.2.72-73). Here, at the very

beginning of the play, Hamlet’s family has repeatedly made the assertation that focusing on the
memory of the departed is unhealthy and damaging. Hamlet, himself, asks why he must

remember. Should he continue to remember?

“Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me.” (1.5.98) King Hamlet, The Ghost, appears to

Prince Hamlet- and begs him to remember. The Ghost, after revealing that he was killed by

Claudius, the new King, begs Hamlet to remember him- directly opposing Hamlet’s prior plea:

“Must I remember?” (1.2.147). Hamlet responds in kind: “But bear me stiffly up.Remember

thee? / Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat / In this distracted globe. Remember

thee?” “(1.5.102-104.), “It is ‘adieu, adieu, remember me.’ / I have sworn ’t.” (1.5.118-119).

Here, after seeing his father, he resolves to never forget. “Remember thee.” This marks the

beginning of Hamlet’s descent. Prior to this moment, this act of choosing to remember, Hamlet

was merely depressed. He was arriving, slowly, to a resolution. Now, The Ghost tells Hamlet to

“Taint not thy mind” (1.5.92) in his search for avenging the poisoning of his father. Hamlet

eventually does taint his mind - killing himself, Claudius, and Ophelia’s father in his search for

revenge at the end of the play. Here, a seed is planted on the idea of excessive remembrance as a

‘curse”.

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. / Pray you, love, remember. And there is

pansies, / that’s for thoughts.”(4.5.199-201). Ophelia is the second character to experience loss in

the play. Her father was killed by Hamlet in Act 3, Scene 4. Upon discovery of this death, she

goes mad - tainted her mind. She says that the death of her father has left her without violets

(4.5.208-209) - which represent modesty. Though Ophelia’s father died much closer in time to

her mania than Hamlet’s, the impact is much more pronounced. Towards the end of the play, the

audience watches as the family prepares to bury Ophelia after she drowns. There is discussion as
to whether or not she killed herself, as suicide bars one from heaven in their denomination. Here,

they decided to bury her as though she died in an accident - “Is she to be buried in Christian /

burial, when she willfully seeks her own salvation?” (5.1.1-2), “The crowner hath sat on her and

finds it / Christian burial.” (5.1.4-5). As Ophelia is lain to rest, Laertes remarks “And from her

fair and unpolluted flesh / May violets spring!” (5.1.249-250). The royalty decides the remember

Ophelia in an altered state- what they consider her “original”. Ophelia says she has no violets,

and yet Laertes says that they will grow from her. Laertes then becomes obsessed with avenging

Ophelia’s death - much like Hamlet himself - and ends up poisoned by the same blade that would

kill Hamlet. These two deaths, Ophelia’s and Laertes’s, display once more a curse of

remembering.

Ophelia, obsessed with her father’s death, bereft of violets (but not rosemary), dies by

some means. Suicide or not, she loses some of herself to the memory of her father - running out

of violets. Laertes does the same, remembering Ophelia as he chose to remember her, not as she

was in her final days. This leads directly to his confrontation with Hamlet, the source of this

“infection” of remembrance. In Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” speech, he ends it with a

plea to Ophelia: “The fair Ophelia.—Nymph, in thy orisons / Be all my sins remembered.”

(3.1.97-98). Ophelia answers in her flower speech: “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. /

Pray you, love, remember.” (4.5.199-200). Laertes responds as well: A”I am satisfied in nature, /

Whose motive in this case should stir me most / To my revenge” (5.2.259-261).

Hamlet is out to preserve the legacy of his father, to kill Claudius in remembrance of his

father; Ophelia dies due to her mania, taken from Hamlet’s lethal quest, robbing her of her father,

stuck with his memory but not her humility; and Laertes seeks revenge, same as Hamlet, to kill
in remembrance of his father and sister. There is a line traced from each character, a throughline

to those words uttered in finality from The Ghost: “Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me.”

(1.5.98). The man Hamlet remembers was not the man before him on that fateful night. Hamlet

describes his father in flowery terms, “So excellent a king, that was to this / Hyperion to a satyr;

so loving to my mother” (1.2.143-146). The Ghost, however, is terrifying to others and himself

says “I am thy father’s spirit, / Doomed for a certain term to walk the night / And for the day

confined to fast in fires” (1.5.14-16). The Ghost, King Hamlet, is explicitly described to be

facing torment for his life on Earth, something completely foreign to Hamlet’s description of his

father. Hamlet, like Laertes to Ophelia, has a perfect image in his mind of his father. A tainted

remembrance.

“Must I remember?” (1.2.147), asks Hamlet. No, one must watch themselves, as the

Monarchs said at the beginning of Scene 1, Act 2. Everyone dies at the end of Hamlet. Ophelia,

Laertes, Hamlet, among others. Hamlet and Laertes, alike in their quest, find themselves twins of

poisoned death, as well as in mind. Ophelia follows likewise, but drowns instead - an “infection”

neutered. “Must I remember?” (1.2.147), a small line in comparison to the rest of the play. And

yet, this line colors the actions of the death king, begging to be remembered; it infests Ophelia

until her untimely death; it wraps Laertes in the same angry, bloodstained cloth that drapes over

Hamlet. A line, from father to son, that brings about the end of an empire. Must Hamlet

remember? No, he shouldn’t in excess - “Ay, there’s the rub,” (3.1.73).

 Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet from The Folger Shakespeare. Ed. Barbara Mowat and Paul

Werstine. Folger Shakespeare Library, April 23, 2023.

https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/