Ophelia

 ( Characters In Hamlet ) 

Ophelia's drowning while making flower is possibly inspired by a real event: a 1569 coroner's report, discovered by historians in 2011, mentions the accidental drowning of -year-old Jane Shaxspere in Upton Warren, a village northwest of Stratford-upon-Avon. She fell into a Canal while picking corn marigolds, and her surname suggests she could have been a relative of Shakespeare (English names were not consistently spelled at the time, and the playwright's name appears as Shaxpere in documents). Shakespeare was 5 years old at the time of Jane's drowning.

In Ophelia's next appearance, Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 1 she tells Polonius that Hamlet rushed into her room with his clothing askew and a "hellish" expression on his face; he only stared at her, nodding three times without speaking to her. Based on what Ophelia told him, Polonius concludes that he was wrong to forbid Ophelia from seeing Hamlet, and that Hamlet must be mad with love for her. Polonius immediately decides to go to King Claudius, the new King of Denmark and also Hamlet's uncle and stepfather, about the situation. Polonius later suggests Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2 to Claudius that they hide behind an to overhear Hamlet speaking to Ophelia, when Hamlet thinks the conversation is private. Since Polonius is now sure that Hamlet is lovesick for Ophelia, he thinks Hamlet will express his love for her. Claudius agrees to try the eavesdropping plan later.

The plan leads to what is commonly called the "Nunnery Scene", Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1 from its use of the term nunnery which would generally refer to a convent, but at the time was also popular slang for a brothel. Polonius instructs Ophelia to stand in the lobby of the castle while he and Claudius hide. Hamlet approaches Ophelia and talks to her, saying "Get thee to a nunnery." Hamlet asks Ophelia where her father is; she lies to him, saying her father must be at home. Hamlet realises he is being spied upon. He exits after declaring, "I say we will have no more marriages." Ophelia is left bewildered and heartbroken, sure that Hamlet is insane. After Hamlet storms out, Ophelia makes her "O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown" soliloquy.

The next time Ophelia appears is at the Mousetrap Play, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2 which Hamlet has arranged to try to prove that Claudius killed King Hamlet. Hamlet sits with Ophelia and makes sexually suggestive remarks; he also says that woman's love is brief.

Later that night, after the play, Hamlet kills Polonius Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4 during a private meeting between Hamlet and his mother, Queen Gertrude. At Ophelia's next appearance, Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5 after her father's death, she has gone mad, due to what the other characters interpret as grief for her father. She talks in riddles and rhymes, and sings some "mad" and bawdy songs about death and a maiden losing her virginity. She exits after bidding everyone a "good night".

The last time Ophelia appears in the play is after Laertes comes to the castle to challenge Claudius over the death of his father, Polonius. Ophelia sings more songs and hands out flowers, citing their Plant symbolism, although interpretations of the meanings differ. The only herb that Ophelia gives to herself is rue: "...there's rue for you, and here's some for me; we may call it herb of grace o' Sundays; O, you must wear your rue with a difference". Rue is well known for its symbolic meaning of regret, but the herb is also used to treat pain, bruises and has long been known to Abortifacient.

In Act 4 Scene 7, Queen Gertrude reports that Ophelia had climbed into a willow tree ( There is a willow grows aslant the brook), and that the branch had broken and dropped Ophelia into the brook, where she drowned. Gertrude says that Ophelia appeared "incapable of her own distress". Gertrude's announcement of Ophelia's death has been praised as one of the most poetic death announcements in literature.For one example of praise, see "The Works of Shakespeare", in 11 volumes ( Hamlet in volume 10), edited by Henry N. Hudson, published by James Munroe and Company, 1856: "This exquisite passage is deservedly celebrated. Nothing could better illustrate the Poet's power to make the description of a thing better than the thing itself, by giving us his eyes to see it with."

Later, a sexton at the graveyard insists Ophelia must have killed herself. Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1 Laertes is outraged by what the cleric says, and replies that Ophelia will be an angel in heaven when the cleric "lies howling" in hell.

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 (contradicting Laertes' warnings to Ophelia in the first act). Laertes then jumps into the grave dug for Ophelia, asking for the burial to wait until he has held her in his arms one last time and proclaims how much he loved her. Hamlet, nearby, then challenges Laertes and claims that he loved Ophelia more than "forty thousand" brothers could. Claudius promises to have a monument constructed in her memory. Ophelia is not mentioned further after this scene.

The early modern stage in England had an established set of conventions for the representation of female madness: dishevelled hair worn down, dressed in white, bedecked with wild flowers, Ophelia's state of mind would have been immediately 'readable' to her first audiences. In Shakespeare's King John (1595/6), the action of act three, scene four turns on the semiotic values of hair worn up or down and dishevelled: Constance enters "distracted, with her hair about her ears" (17); "Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow", Pandolf rebukes her (43), yet she insists that "I am not mad; this hair I tear is mine" (45); she is repeatedly bid to "bind up your hairs"; she obeys, then subsequently unbinds it again, insisting "I will not keep this form upon my head / When there is such disorder in my wit" (101–102) "Colour was a major source of stage symbolism", Andrew Gurr says, so the contrast between Hamlet's "nighted colour" (1.2.68) and "customary suits of solemn black" (1.2.78) and Ophelia's "virginal and vacant white" would have conveyed specific and gendered associations. Her action of offering wild flowers to the court suggests, Showalter argues, a symbolic deflowering, while even the manner of her 'doubtful death', by drowning, carries associations with the feminine (Laertes refers to his tears on hearing the news as "the woman").

Gender-structured, too, was the early modern understanding of the distinction between Hamlet's madness and Ophelia's: Melancholia was understood as a male disease of the intellect, while Ophelia would have been understood as suffering from erotomania, a malady conceived in biological and emotional terms.