Ophelia

John William Waterhouse's painting Ophelia (1894)

Ophelia is a fictional character in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. She is a young noblewoman of Denmark, Polonius' daughter, Laertes' sister, and Prince Hamlet's sweetheart.

Plot

In Ophelia's first speaking appearance in the play, we see her with her brother, Laertes, who is leaving for France. Laertes lectures Ophelia against getting involved with Hamlet. He warns her that Hamlet does not have his free will as he is the heir of Denmark so does not have freedom to marry whomever he wants. Ophelia's father, Polonius, enters while Laertes is leaving, and Polonius also admonishes Ophelia against Hamlet, because he fears Hamlet is not earnest about her. Polonius concludes by forbidding Ophelia to have any further communication with Hamlet. She agrees to obey her father and to avoid Hamlet entirely.

In Ophelia's next appearance, she tells Polonius that Hamlet rushed into her room with his clothing askew, and with a 'hellish' expression on his face, and only stared at her, without speaking to her. Based on what Ophelia tells him, about Hamlet acting in such a "mad" way, Polonius concludes that he was wrong to forbid Ophelia to see Hamlet, and that Hamlet must be mad because of lovesickness for Ophelia. Polonius immediately decides to go to Claudius about the situation, since Claudius is both the King and Hamlet's stepfather. We later see Polonius suggest to Claudius that they can hide behind an arras to overhear Hamlet speaking to Ophelia, when Hamlet thinks the conversation is private. Since Polonius is now sure Hamlet is lovesick for Ophelia, he thinks Hamlet will express love for Ophelia. Claudius agrees to try the eavesdropping plan later. The plan leads to what is commonly called the 'Nunnery Scene'.

In the 'Nunnery Scene' Polonius instructs Ophelia to stand by an arras, which he and Claudius hide behind. Hamlet enters the room, and recites his "To be, or not to be" soliloquy. Hamlet approaches Ophelia and talks to her. But instead of expressing love for Ophelia, as Polonius (and certainly Ophelia) had hoped, Hamlet claims he never loved Ophelia, and famously tells her "get thee to a nunnery." Hamlet becomes angry, madly says he totally forbids any future marriage, and exits. It leaves Ophelia bewildered and heartbroken, and sure that Hamlet is crazy. After Hamlet storms out, Ophelia makes her fine "O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown" soliloquy.

Ophelia by John Everett Millais (1852) is part of the Tate Gallery collection. His painting influenced the image in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet

The next time Ophelia appears is at the 'Mousetrap Play' which Hamlet has arranged to try to prove that Claudius killed King Hamlet. Hamlet sits with Ophelia, and is more pleasant to her. Ophelia tries some conversation with Hamlet, but he talks strangely and makes odd replies to what she says. He speaks of suits of sables, hobby horses, and puppets, and still appears to be mad. Hamlet doesn't speak any more of love or marriage with Ophelia, but he makes sexually suggestive remarks. Ophelia is the first one who notices when Claudius rises to leave the play.

Later that night, after the 'Mousetrap Play,' Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius, during a private meeting between Hamlet and his mother, Queen Gertrude, in Gertrude's "closet" (parlour). At Ophelia's next appearance, after her father's death, she has gone mad, due to what the other characters interpret as grief over her father. Ophelia sings some "mad" little songs, about death, and about a maiden losing her virginity on "Valentine's Day." She then says "good night" during the daytime, and exits.

Ophelia appears again later in the same scene, after Laertes storms the castle with a mob to challenge Claudius over the death of Polonius. Ophelia sings more "mad" songs, and hands out flowers which have universally been interpreted to have symbolic meanings, although interpretations of the meanings differ. Ophelia then blesses everyone, and exits for the last time.

Ophelia by Alexandre Cabanel

In Act 4 Scene 7, Queen Gertrude, in a famous monologue (There is a willow grows askant the brook), reports that Ophelia had climbed into a willow tree, and then a branch broke and dropped Ophelia into the brook, where she drowned. Gertrude says that Ophelia appeared "incapable of her own distress" like a mad person would be. Gertrude's announcement of Ophelia's death is one of the most poetic death announcements in literature.

We later see a sexton at the graveyard insisting Ophelia must have killed herself, however, although the sexton attempts to argue the point logically and legally, he never says how he would know it as a fact. The cleric who presides at Ophelia's funeral later asserts that she should have been buried in unsanctified ground as a suicide, but he doesn't say how he knows facts about it, either. Laertes is outraged by what the cleric says, and replies that Ophelia will be an angel in heaven when the cleric, himself, will "liest howling" (with the fiends in hell.) The remarks by the sexton and the cleric have naturally led to a great deal of discussion of whether Ophelia committed suicide. Between Gertrude's report of a "mad" accident, and the later talk of suicide, the suicide issue is left unclear in the play, so that even after four centuries since the play was written, the issue is still a topic of comment and discussion.

At Ophelia's funeral, Queen Gertrude sprinkles flowers on Ophelia's grave ("sweets to the sweet,") and says she wished Ophelia could have been Hamlet's wife. Laertes then jumps into Ophelia's grave excavation, and "madly" declaims about how much he loved her, and that he wants to be buried with her under a huge mountain of dirt. Hamlet, nearby, then challenges Laertes, and claims in the same "mad" way that he loved Ophelia more than "forty thousand" brothers could. After the scene with her funeral, only one more scene remains in the play, and it contains no explicit reference to Ophelia.

Critical analysis

Ophelia by Arthur Hughes

Many theories about Ophelia have been proposed, but often they have little or no support in the original Second Quarto or First Folio playtexts of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Some critics argue that Hamlet's angry behaviour toward Ophelia in the 'Nunnery Scene' is due to Hamlet's resentment of womankind, when Hamlet realises Ophelia is cooperating in her father's scheme to spy on him. This interpretation casts Ophelia as a scapegoat, a victim of Hamlet's anger with his mother and with women as a whole.

The 1996 Kenneth Branagh film makes Ophelia and Hamlet sexual lovers, but this is only implied in the original Shakespeare playtexts and is not clear. Various lines in the play do suggest sex between them, including Ophelia's "mad" Valentine song that includes the line, "before you tumbled (had sex with) me, you promised me to wed," however, Ophelia does say in the same song that it will be "tomorrow."

Portrayal

It's generally accepted that Richard Burbage played Hamlet in Shakespeare's time, but it is not known who played Ophelia (but, she would have been portrayed by a boy, because women did not appear on the public stage in Elizabethan England). Since that time, Ophelia has been a frequent subject in artwork, often in a Romantic or Classical style like the images on this page show. Many great actresses have played Ophelia on stage over the years. In the 19th century she was portrayed by Helen Faucit, Dora Jordan, Frances Abington, and Peg Woffington, who won her first real fame by playing the role.

Ophelia has been portrayed in movies since the days of early silent films. Dorothy Foster played Ophelia opposite Charles Raymond's Hamlet in 1912. Jean Simmons played Ophelia opposite Lawrence Olivier's oscar-winning Hamlet performance in 1948; Simmons was also nominated for an oscar as best supporting actress, but didn't win. More recently, Ophelia has been portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter (1990), Niketa Calame and Moira Kelly (1994) Kate Winslet (1996), and Julia Stiles (2000). Themes associated with Ophelia have led to movies such as Ophelia Learns to Swim (2000), and Dying Like Ophelia (2002).

See also

• References to Ophelia