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.
Ophelia's final words are addressed to either Hamlet, or her father, or even herself and her lost innocence: “And will a not come again? / No, no, he is dead, / Go to thy death-bed, / He never will come again. / … / God a mercy on his soul. And of all Christian souls. God buy you.” Next, she drowns herself.
Rejected by Hamlet, Ophelia is now desolate at the loss of her father. She goes mad and drowns.
Ophelia cares deeply for Hamlet but struggles to balance her relationship with him and her loyalty to her father and brother who do not want them to be together. In the end, the pressure Ophelia experiences leads her to insanity and her death by drowning.
After realizing that her voice does not matter to those around her, Ophelia's suicide becomes her ultimate act of obedience to her oppressors by permanently silencing herself through drowning.
By this point, Ophelia would be well aware of her pregnancy, and well aware that she would soon begin to show outward signs of it.
Why is Hamlet so cruel to Ophelia? Hamlet is cruel to Ophelia because he has transferred his anger at Gertrude's marriage to Claudius onto Ophelia. In fact, Hamlet's words suggest that he transfers his rage and disgust for his mother onto all women.
It is Ophelia's betrayal that perhaps breaks Hamlet the most, she is often considered to be the purest and most innocent of the characters within the text, and her disloyalty to Hamlet does only arise out of higher loyalty to her father.
Hamlet, wondering who has died, notices that the funeral rites seem “maimed,” indicating that the dead man or woman took his or her own life (V.i.242). He and Horatio hide as the procession approaches the grave. As Ophelia is laid in the earth, Hamlet realizes it is she who has died.
Gertrude and Claudius marry very quickly after the king's death, and Claudius becomes the ruler. Hamlet is distraught and suspicious. He professes his undying love to Ophelia, and they are secretly married. Soon afterward, he tells Ophelia that he plans to murder Claudius.
Background: Ophelia's syndrome is the association of Hodgkin's Lymphoma and memory loss, coined by Dr. Carr in 1982, while it's most remembered for the eponym in reminiscence of Shakespeare's character, Dr.
Ophelia knows only that he is dead - and no-one will talk about it.
Even if Laertes fails to strike Hamlet, Claudius will offer Hamlet a drink from a poisoned goblet of wine. As the two are plotting, Gertrude enters the scene and relays the heart breaking news that Ophelia is dead.
Bidding his sister, Ophelia, farewell, he cautions her against falling in love with Hamlet, who is, according to Laertes, too far above her by birth to be able to love her honorably. Since Hamlet is responsible not only for his own feelings but for his position in the state, it may be impossible for him to marry her.
“Ophelia: There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts. . . . There's fennel for you, and columbines.
Ophelia's madness stems from her lack of identity and her feelings of helplessness regarding her own life. While the death of Hamlet's father made him angry enough to want revenge, Ophelia internalized the death of her father as a loss of personal identity.
He watches as Laertes leaps, sobbing, into his sister's grave. Hamlet steps forward, claiming his sorrow is deeper than Laertes's, and also jumps into Ophelia's grave.
A funeral procession approaches. Hamlet soon realizes that the corpse is Ophelia's. When Laertes in his grief leaps into her grave and curses Hamlet as the cause of Ophelia's death, Hamlet comes forward. He and Laertes struggle, with Hamlet protesting his own love and grief for Ophelia.
Enraged and grief-stricken, Gertrude grabs Hamlet's sword and kills Claudius, just as the Norwegians storm the castle, accompanied by Mechtild. She poisons herself with Claudius' venom and dies in her sister's arms. The film closes with Ophelia living peacefully in exile with her daughter, fathered by Hamlet.
Hamlet reconfirms his sincere love for Ophelia at her death bed. He calls her “Fair Ophelia” (Act 5, scene 1, 228), implying he sees her as pure and virtuous. A real madness replaces a fake one. Hamlet proclaims that “forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum.”
The man she loves appears to lose his grip on sanity, condemning her to “get thee to a nunnery” and later murdering her father. In retaliation, her brother swears revenge against Hamlet. By the end, Ophelia loses her family, the man she loves, her sanity, and the life she may have once imagined for herself as queen.
In Act 2, Scene 1, Ophelia describes Hamlet's disheveled appearance in her rooms to Polonius, who declares that Ophelia's rejection of Hamlet "hath made him mad" (l. 115).
The transformation in Hamlet is attested by Claudius, Ophelia (“what a noble mind is here o'erthrown”) and by Gertrude (“my too much changed son”). This is acute depressive illness, not chronic melancholy. Hamlet's self diagnosis is that he is “thinking too precisely on th'event”(IV. iv.
The Nunnery Scene
One moment he says 'I did love you once', the next 'I loved you not'. He goes on to insult Ophelia and tells her to go to a nunnery. He tells her that this will be the best place for her and, by being a nun, Ophelia won't have children and produce wicked men like his uncle.
He has recently died but visits Hamlet as a ghost during the play. Polonius is a counsellor to the new king and queen. He is Ophelia and Laertes' father. Laertes is the only son of Polonius and brother of Ophelia.