Quoth she, Before you tumbled me
You promised me to wed.
– William Shakespeare
Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5. In Ophelia’s song, during her mad phase, a man promises to marry a woman and then leaves her after bedding her. Many believe she is speaking about herself and Hamlet. Her madness allows her to give voice to her feelings and to sing about men who exploit young women – like her. Literary critic Carol Thomas Neely sees Ophelia’s madness to be "her liberation from silence, obedience, and constraint or her absolute victimization by patriarchal oppression."