Ophelia's Death Perhaps the most tragic death in "Hamlet" is one the audience doesn't witness. Ophelia's death is reported by Gertrude: Hamlet's would-be bride falls from a tree and drowns in a brook. Whether or not her death was a suicide is the subject of much debate among Shakespearean scholars.
Unlike the other characters in the play, Ophelia died from loving too much, being too innocent, and too pure. She died because of her virtues, while others perished because of their faults. She did nothing wrong, but so many wrongs were dealt to her.
First I listed out all the deaths in the play, noting that 9 of the 11 central characters die (in order, King Hamlet, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Laertes, Gertrude, Claudius, and Prince Hamlet all die, while Horatio and Young Fortinbras do not).
Death is the pervading theme of the play. The tragedy of Hamlet delves into life, love, and tyranny. All the major protagonists and antagonists in the play die in the end. In the process, they all redeemed themselves by dying because, somehow, their deaths advanced the cause each of them stands for.
In addition to the play ending with the death of Hamlet and a host of others, Hamlet himself is a classic tragic protagonist. As the Prince of Denmark, Hamlet is a figure whose actions matter to an entire kingdom, which means the play's events reverberate through the entire world of the play.
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".
Hamlet intimidates Gertrude, and she cries out that he is trying to murder her. Polonius reacts from behind the curtain and yells for help. Hamlet draws his sword and thrusts it through the tapestry, killing Polonius.
Claudius and Laertes set Hamlet's ending in motion when they plan to kill Hamlet during a fencing match. Both Hamlet and Laertes are fatally poisoned during the match, and before he dies, Hamlet kills Claudius.
Hamlet wounds Laertes with his own poisoned blade, and Laertes then falls as well. Only then does he truly seem to feel guilty, for he tells Osric he has been "justly killed" with his own treachery.
1. King Hamlet: murdered prior to the start of the play by Claudius through the cunning use of poison in the ear. In real life (to the extent that the play is based in fact, after all), the brother stabbed King Hamlet and there were witnesses.
Although there is no definite guarantee that she committed suicide, the evidence is overwhelming that she knew that the wine was tainted. Prior to the opening of the drama, Gertrude was having an incestuous affair with her husbands brother, Claudius.
Because Hamlet no longer has to repress his desire, his strength returns, thus enabling him to kill Claudius not just once, but twice. Hamlet first cuts Claudius with his rapier, then forces him to drink from the poisoned cup. Each of Claudius' “deaths” represents different things to Hamlet.
In the context of the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare many possibilities can be identified that pertain to Ophelia's sudden death. Ophelia's death was triggered by her mental breakdown due to the loss of her father.
It would have been risky for Shakespeare directly to portray pre-marital sex between aristocratic characters, but Hamlet gives us reasons to suspect that at some point before the beginning of the play, Hamlet and Ophelia have had sex.
Their particular form of madness was more related to hysteria -- an affliction which was considered to be particularly feminine. Clinically speaking, Ophelia's behavior and appearance are characteristic of the malady the Elizabethans would have diagnosed as female love-melancholy, or erotomania.
Hamlet's central characters are Hamlet himself, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, Polonius, Laertes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Horatio. But only Horatio survives when the curtain falls at the end of Shakespeare's play.
Polonius - Stabbed from behind a curtain by Hamlet, believing him to be Claudius spying on him. Ophelia - Went insane because of Polonius's death, and drowned herself.
''The rest is silence'' are the last words of Hamlet in William Shakespeare's play by the same name. The poignant phrase has gained a life far beyond the play, often being used to comment on the conclusion of dramatic or tragic events. In context, they respond to Hamlet's--and the play's--preoccupation with death.
During their argument Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius, Ophelia's father. Hamlet will not tell anyone where Polonius' body is. Claudius sends him to England but he doesn't arrive. Ophelia's brother, Laertes, comes home and finds Ophelia has gone mad with grief.
Polonius's most famous lines are found in Act 1 Scene 3 ("Neither a borrower nor a lender be"; "To thine own self be true") and Act 2 Scene 2 ("Brevity is the soul of wit"; and "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't") while others have become paraphrased aphorisms ("Clothes make the man"; "Old friends are ...
Therefore, marrying Claudius was possibly the only way for Gertrude to keep the crown in the same family and give Hamlet a chance to be a king but also delay his ascension to the throne. This scheme works only with the assumption that Gertrude loves her son.
Laertes must have been clued in to Ophelia's pregnancy. Polonius inadvertently admits to such a claim. Polonius's knowledge is revealed when Hamlet discloses that he knows Ophelia, his lady love might be pregnant. Check out the words that Hamlet uses when he confronts Polonious.
The penultimate scene of the play begins with the two clowns digging a grave for the late Ophelia. They debate whether she should be allowed to have a Christian burial, because she committed suicide.
While she lives in the same patriarchal society that demands that she subjugate herself to her father and her brother until she is married, Ophelia has fallen in love with Prince Hamlet.