Ophelia

Play

Hamlet

Summary

Daughter of Polonius and Hamlet's beloved, Ophelia is a young noblewoman trapped between her father's commands and her love for Hamlet, with no agency of her own in a world entirely controlled by men. When Hamlet rejects her and then kills her father, she descends into genuine, shattering madness — distributing flowers with symbolic meanings, singing fragments of bawdy songs — and finally drowns in a brook, her death ambiguously situated between accident and suicide.

Notable Quotations

"O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! / The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword..." *(3.1)*

"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts." *(4.5)*

Cross-references

• Hamlet — the play
• Tragedies
• character_hamlet — her lover who rejects and unwittingly destroys her
• character_polonius — her father
• character_laertes — her brother
• character_gertrude — who narrates her drowning