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Ophelia
Hamlet's beloved in Shakespeare's tragedy; here played by an actress in a stage parody, whispering a stagehand's aside about a co-star's broken mustache in the middle of Hamlet's declamation.
Reading notes
- Poetry and Prose §30 Ophelia
Hamlet's beloved in Shakespeare's tragedy; the line quoted here ("O nymph! remember my sins") is Hamlet's own address to her, from Act 3 Scene 1.
- The Cherry Orchard §471 Okhmelia, get thee to a nunnery
Lopakhin's teasing nickname for Varya fuses "Ophelia" (Охмелия in this deliberately garbled form, playing on "хмель," "drunkenness/hops") with Hamlet's line to Ophelia in Act 3, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" ("Get thee to a nunnery"), which Lopakhin half-quotes here and again at \S473 ("o nymph, remember me in thy prayers" -- Hamlet's continuation of the same line). The joke needles Varya's long, unconsummated engagement to Lopakhin himself and her own repeated wish, voiced elsewhere in the play (\S556), to retreat to a convent. See the allusions sidecar for the full note on this pun.