Hamlet

Analyse the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia?

foer a-level exams-Cambridge

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This is a great question. Apparently Hamlet did love Ophelia, "I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers, if you added all their love together, couldn't match mine" (Act 5). Now this is near the end of the play when Hamlet is getting all ready to be like a sparrow and die. For much of the play, Hamlet treats the fair Ophelia like a doormat. At various times he comes to her chambers with his trousers (more or less) down, calls her hoar, a fake, stupid.......To actually detail every scene in which he abuses her would take up too much of my computer memory. Ophelia probably did love Hamlet. If it were not for being under the joint ownership of her brother and father, she might have been able to influence Hamlet; the play would have been different. Unfortunately she only goes insane and drowns herself in a shallow creek. So, did Hamlet love Ophelia? Perhaps, but only in that "don't know what you have got until it's gone way". Before the play opens, Ophelia was accessible to Hamlet. That precludes him from treating her nicely. Shakespeare's leading men only worshiped unattained women or women they thought they didn't deserve. Unfortunately, Ophelia only becomes “worth I” when she is dead.