The following sonnet was written with a picture in my mind of a distressed teenage girl running up the stairs and slamming her bedroom door, beating her hands on the floor, weeping and blaming herself for everything going wrong.

Ophelia

I did what I was told. I did! And look

what’s happened now. It wasn’t meant to be

like this. It’s all gone wrong. They told me he

would say he did love me or that I took

his friendship for much more than he had meant.

But this, this raging in his mind is more

than I can bear and all my fault, I’m sure

it is. My father’s never wrong. He’s spent

his life advising kings. He must be right.

What else could make the prince be so distressed

and change so suddenly, as if possessed

by some dark demon coming in the night?

And what was I supposed to do instead?

It’s hopeless. Oh I wish that I was dead!

But a theatre director suggested that it could be directed at her father, Polonius, in confrontation. Suddenly the tone changes and lines like 

                             it’s all my fault, I’m sure

it is. My father’s never wrong. He’s spent

his life advising kings. He must be right.

become not self-recrimination and self-imposed guilt, but vicious sarcasm. And instead of ending in teenage despair, it ends with some of the cruellest words a daughter could say to her father spat into his face.

Now tell me, how would any kind of neutral, measured and uninflected delivery have helped a listener to either ends of this spectrum or really anywhere in between?