In Hamlet and many other Shakespeare plays, the themes of suicide, madness and the relationship between the two play a key role. As in the case of Hamlet, it is not a single character who faces these challenges. Both Hamlet and Ophelia are driven to madness due to the horrific circumstances they encounter throughout the play, and their suicidal thoughts and actions – albeit passive – are a bold statement about their mental state as well as their utter incapacity to continue living. Although both Ophelia and Hamlet want to die, neither actively seeks death. Hamlet talks about suicide, but never commits suicide because of his own fear of death. Ophélie never really talks about it, but easily puts herself in a situation where death is possible. A more modern equivalent would be the example of a man who, instead of standing on a train track intending to commit suicide, stands near the edge of the track, thinking that it would not be bad if someone 'one pushed him away. He will not take that last step toward death, but if death comes, he welcomes it with pleasure. This has a lot to do with the theology of the time in which Hamlet was written. Self-harm was a sin greater than any other, and the soul of one who committed such a heinous crime against God would be relegated to the deepest pits of Hell. In his madness, Hamlet wonders if it is worth killing himself, but his passive desire to die—the idea of ​​living until something or someone else takes his life—gives him a outcome of the moral indignation of self-mutilation. Ophélie also goes completely crazy. When her passive wish to die is realized – the opportunity to die in an “accident” – she does not try to save herself; she simply lets herself drift into the middle of paper......: argal, she drowned knowingly. DISCUSSION OF OFFENSE AND PERFUMES Works Cited Altick, Richard D. "Hamlet and the Odor of Mortality." Shakespeare Quarterly 5.2 (1954): 167-76. JSTOR. Internet. April 18, 2014.Brooke, Tucker. "Hamlet's Third Soliloquy." Studies in Philology 14.2 (1917): 117-22. JSTOR. Internet. April 18, 2014. Hanford, James Holly. “Suicide in the Plays of Shake-Speare.” PMLA 27.3 (1912): 380-97. Internet. April 18, 2014. Hassel, R. Chris. “Hamlet's flesh too much, too solid” The Journal of the Sixteenth Century 25.3 (1994): 609-22. JSTOR. Internet. April 18, 2014. Sanderson, Richard K. “Suicide as Message and Metadrama in English Renaissance Tragedy.” Comparative Drama 26.3 (1992): 199-217. JSTOR. Internet. April 18, 2014. Smith, Barbara. “Neither accident nor intention: contextualizing Ophélie’s suicide. » South Atlantic Review 73.2 (2008): 96-112. JSTOR. Internet. April 18. 2014.