| Ophelia | |
|---|---|
| Hamlet character | |
 John William Waterhouse's paintingOphelia (1894) | |
| Created by | William Shakespeare |
| In-universe information | |
| Family | Polonius (father) Laertes (brother) |
Ophelia (/oʊˈfiːliə/) is a character inWilliam Shakespeare's dramaHamlet (1599–1601). She is a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter ofPolonius, sister ofLaertes and potential wife ofPrince Hamlet. Due to Hamlet's actions, Ophelia ultimately becomes mad and drowns.
Ophelia, and Hamlet's mother,Queen Gertrude, are the only two female characters in the play.
Like most characters inHamlet, despite the plot taking place in Denmark, Ophelia's name is not of Danish origin. It first appeared inJacopo Sannazaro's 1504 poemArcadia (asOfelia),[1] probably derived fromAncient Greekὠφέλεια (ōphéleia, "benefit").[1][2]
Ophelia is obedient to her father and well-loved by many characters. When Polonius tells her to stop seeing Hamlet, she does so. When he tells her to set up a meeting so that he and Claudius could spy on him, she does so. Ophelia is afoil to Hamlet and Laertes, contrasting and inspiring their behaviour.[3]
%2c_Benjamin_West%2c_1792.jpg)
In Ophelia's first speaking appearance in the play,[4] she is seen with her brother, Laertes, who is leaving for France. Laertes warns her that Hamlet, the heir to the throne of Denmark, does not have the freedom to marry whomever he wants. Ophelia's father, Polonius, who enters while Laertes is leaving, also forbids Ophelia from pursuing Hamlet, as Polonius fears that Hamlet is not earnest about her.
In Ophelia's next appearance,[5] 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 toClaudius, the new King of Denmark and also Hamlet's uncle and stepfather, about the situation. Polonius later suggests[6] to Claudius that they hide behind anarras 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",[7] from its use of the termnunnery which would generally refer to aconvent, but at the time was also popular slang for abrothel.[a][8] 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 theMousetrap Play,[9] 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[10] during a private meeting between Hamlet and his mother,Queen Gertrude. At Ophelia's next appearance,[11] 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 hervirginity. 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 theirsymbolic meanings, although interpretations of the meanings differ. The only herb that Ophelia gives to herself isrue: "...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 toinduce abortion.[12][13]
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.[14]
Later, asexton at the graveyard insists Ophelia must have killed herself.[15] Laertes is outraged by what the cleric says, and replies that Ophelia will be an angel in heaven when the cleric "lie[s] 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.
While it is known thatRichard Burbage played Hamlet in Shakespeare's time, there is no evidence of who played Ophelia; since there were no professional actresses on the public stage inElizabethan England, it can be assumed that she wasplayed by a boy.[16] The actor appears to have had some musical training, as Ophelia is given lines from ballads such as "Walsingham" to sing, and, according to thefirst quarto edition, enters Act IV Scene 5 with a lute, singing.[17]
Theearly modern stage in England had an established set ofemblematicconventions 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.[18] In Shakespeare'sKing 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.[19][18] 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:melancholy was understood as a male disease of the intellect, while Ophelia would have been understood as suffering fromerotomania, a malady conceived in biological and emotional terms.[18][20] Thisdiscourse of female madness influenced Ophelia's representation on stage from the 1660s, when the appearance of actresses in the English theatres first began to introduce "new meanings and subversive tensions" into the role: "the most celebrated of the actresses who played Ophelia were those whom rumor credited with disappointments in love".[21] Showalter relates a theatrical anecdote that vividly captures this sense of overlap between a performer's identity and the role she plays:
The greatest triumph was reserved for Susan Mountfort, a former actress at Lincoln's Inn Fields who had gone mad after her lover's betrayal. One night in 1720 she escaped from her keeper, rushed to the theater, and just as the Ophelia of the evening was to enter for her mad scene, "sprang forward in her place ... with wild eyes and wavering motion." As a contemporary reported, "she was in truthOphelia herself, to the amazement of the performers as well as of the audience—nature having made this last effort, her vital powers failed her and she died soon after.[22]
During the 18th century, the conventions ofAugustan drama encouraged far less intense, more sentimentalised anddecorous depictions of Ophelia's madness and sexuality. From Mrs Lessingham in 1772 toMary Catherine Bolton, playing oppositeJohn Kemble in 1813, the familiar iconography of the role replaced its passionate embodiment.Sarah Siddons played Ophelia's madness with "stately and classical dignity" in 1785.[23]
In the 19th century, she was portrayed byHelen Faucit,Dora Jordan,Frances Abington andPeg Woffington, who won her first real fame by playing the role.[24] Theatre managerTate Wilkinson declared that next toSusannah Maria Cibber,Elizabeth Satchell (of the famousKemble family) was the best Ophelia he ever saw.[25]
Ophelia has been portrayed on screen since the days of early silent films.Dorothy Foster played her oppositeCharles Raymond's Hamlet in the 1912 filmHamlet.[26]Jean Simmons played Ophelia toLaurence Olivier's Oscar-winning Hamlet performance in1948 and was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Supporting Actress.[27] More recently, Ophelia has been portrayed byAnastasiya Vertinskaya (1964),[28]Marianne Faithfull (1969),[29]Helena Bonham Carter (1990),[30]Kate Winslet (1996),Julia Stiles (2000),Mariah Gale (2009),Daisy Ridley (2018) andMorfydd Clark (2025). Themes associated with Ophelia have led to movies such asOphelia Learns to Swim (2000)[31] andDying Like Ophelia (2002). InVishal Bhardwaj's adaptationHaider (2014), the character was portrayed by actressShraddha Kapoor.[32] InClaire McCarthy'sOphelia (2018), starring Ridley, theHamlet story is told from Ophelia's perspective.[33]
In many modern theatre and film adaptations, Ophelia is portrayedbarefoot in the mad scenes, includingKozintsev's1964 film,Zeffirelli's1990 film,Kenneth Branagh's1996 film, andMichael Almereyda'sHamlet 2000 (2000) versions.[citation needed]
_-_Ophelia_Weaving_Her_Garlands_(from_William_Shakespeare%2527s_%2527Hamlet%2527)_-_FA.171(O)_-_Victoria_and_Albert_Museum.jpg)
.JPG)
.JPG)
 | This articlemay containirrelevant references topopular culture. Please helpimprove it by removing such content and addingcitations toreliable,independent sources.(October 2025) |
Ophelia often appears in various cultural contexts,[34] including literature, music, film and television.A moon of Uranus is named after Ophelia.[35] Robert Schumann in 'Herzeleid' from 'Sechs Gesänge' (opus 107 nr 1; 1852) puts the poem of Titus Ullrich to music, which is dedicated to the figure of Ophelia, ending with her name sung twice. A foreboding image ofKirsten Dunst in the opening ofMelancholia (2011) suggests Ophelia.[36]Gregory Crewdson's untitled picture from 2001 whose unofficial reference title is Ophelia,[37] is a still photograph that was created with a life size set of a living room flooded with water built on a sound stage and lit with a cinematic lighting team.[38]
American singer-songwriterBob Dylan includes Ophelia as one of the characters residing on Desolation Row in thesong of the same title from the albumHighway 61 Revisited, recorded in 1965.[39]
Americanrock music bandGrateful Dead mentions Ophelia in their song "Althea" from the albumGo to Heaven.[40] The lyric is "You may meet the fate of Ophelia, sleeping and perchance to dream." This lyric references "To die, to sleep— / To sleep—perchance to dream." in Hamlet'ssoliloquy (Hamlet 3.1.64-65).
French singer-songwriterNolwenn Leroy was inspired by this character for her song "Ophélia", released on her 2012 albumÔ Filles de l'eau.[41]
American alternative folk bandthe Lumineers released the single "Ophelia" on 5 February 2016, which according to lead vocalist Wesley Shultz is a reference to Hamlet[42] as well as the consequences of fame.[43]
The first single from American singer-songwriterTaylor Swift's twelfth studio albumThe Life of a Showgirl (2025), titled "The Fate of Ophelia", references Ophelia's death by drowning.[44] The assumption that this was based on Heyser's painting has led to an increase in visitors to theMuseum Wiesbaden, where the painting is exhibited.[45]
Official lyrics page for the song "Althea" from the 1980 albumGo to Heaven (Arista Records)
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
