Does Hamlet Love Ophelia

At the beginning of the play Ophelia clearly seems in love with Hamlet and maybe even hopeful that Hamlet feels the same. She tells both her brother and father of the times that Hamlet had declared his love for her and made promises of marriage. Yet during their first encounter during the play Hamlet is cold and condescending towards her, even telling her "Get thee to a nunnery." implying that he will never marry her. The next time Hamlet and Ophelia are together is at the play, during which Hamlet makes obscene and insulting jokes directed at her.

Firstly, their love is clear from the very start of the play. Hamlet writes letters to Ophelia before he knows that Claudius killed his father, and in these letters, he discloses his love for her. In one letter that Ophelia shows to her father Hamlet claims, “Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.” (Shakespeare.II.II.124-127) In this poem, Hamlet is letting Ophelia know that whatever happens next he does still love her, and that is something she should never question. Hamlet could be foreshadowing that something will make him pretend he no longer loves her, which ends up being his madness and

This shows how complicated Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship is because Hamlet loved this girl just a couple of acts ago and now he is telling her that she needs to become a nun and he is asking her why she would want to have kids why she would want to bring more sinners into this world. Did Hamlet love Ophelia? Yes he really loved Ophelia, He shows that throughout the story. Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship was back and forth, it’s a love hate relationship, one minute they are all each other can talk about and then the next minute all they want to do is kill themselves. Their relationship is crazy.

“I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers/ could not with all their quantity of love/ make up my sum” (5.1.285-286). Hamlet tells Ophelia that he never did love her, but in all honesty he does still love her. Hamlet is truly insane. When he is talking with Ophelia he is truly mean to her and treats

In the beginning, the relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet is very real, they both love each other so much. After the death of King Hamlet, father of Hamlet, Hamlet is attracted by Ophelia’s beauty, and starts falling in love with her. However, since Ophelia is living in the 16th century, and is the daughter of Polonius, a respectful man who works for King Claudius as his chief advisor, her freedom is pretty much controlled by her father, including her relationship with Hamlet. So Polonius requires Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet, and tell her that “from this time forth have you so

In another scene, Polonius orders Ophelia to return the gifts that Hamlet gave her, and to make her rejection of him unmistakable and absolute. Polonius believes that if she is the cause of Hamlet’s madness, this would be the proof. “That Hamlet loses his mental stability is arguable from his behavior toward Ophelia…” (Foster, par.16) In Branagh’s version, we see how terribly this tears Ophelia’s heart. When Hamlet sees her, he walks up to her, telling her how much he loves her. After Hamlet kisses her, she returns the love letters that he wrote back to him. She sees how crushed he is, which makes her feel even worse; but she also believes she has to do this because her father ordered her to. Hamlet tells her “Get thee to a nunnery” (William

The death of this relationship can only be blamed on his mother and her actions which fuels Hamlet's hate. Hamlet toys with Ophelia's heart, and harshly tells her to go to a nunnery. Hamlet is rude to Ophelia at his play and also very explicit; "It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge." (3.2.255-256) Hamlet then chooses to go to the lengths to make Ophelia believe that he never had love for her: "You should not have believed me."

Throughout the entire play, Hamlet’s love for Ophelia is questioned. What Hamlet is really doing is trying to throw off the other characters and make it seem like he does not love Ophelia, even though he really does. Hamlet did not want Ophelia to become involved in case Claudius decided to get revenge on Hamlet. Hamlet shows his love for Ophelia when he confesses to her that he loves her, when he tells her to go to a nunnery to protect her, when he sends her the letter, and when he finds out that she has died. Although many could argue that Hamlet never loved Ophelia, he was just trying to throw everyone else off. There is a great deal of evidence proving that his love was

Ophelia is in love with Hamlet. She shares herself with him and is beginning a relationship, she wants to be with hamlet and believes he loves her "My lord, he hath importuned me with his love in honorable fashion"(pg 17 line 110). Polonius instructs Ophelia to stop seeing Hamlet. Polonius states that Hamlet doesn’t really love her and is only with her for one thing, and as soon as he gets enough he will want no more.

Hamlet loves Ophelia from the bottom of his heart, but the situation that Hamlet has been put into forces him to break this relationship. The fact that Hamlet is the heir to a kingdom and Ophelia is of a lower social class shows that this is not just a superficial relationship. Polonius questions the sincerity of Hamlet's love and argues with Ophelia over it. In response to Polonius, Ophelia explains that, “He hath importuned me with love/ In honorable fashion” (1.3.109-110). Ophelia tries to explain to Polonius that Hamlet is honourable and that the love that he expresses towards her is not fraudulent in any way. Ophelia and Hamlet have a very loving relationship, in which the two of them are happy. In Hamlet's pursuit of killing King Claudius, their relationship collapses. Hamlet knows that if he is to kill the king, then he must separate himself from Ophelia. When Hamlet encounters Ophelia he acts very impolite and insults Ophelia so that she will not associate with him anymore. Hamlet says, “To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell” (3.1.139-140). With this phrase, Hamlet is telling Ophelia to leave and to get away from him. Hamlet purposely pushes Ophelia away to save her; he wants to ensure that she will not be hurt emotionally when Hamlet finally goes ahead with his plan, and that she will not get in trouble for having a connection with a conspirator. When Ophelia passes away we see that Hamlet is struck with grief and sorrow. At

Although Hamlet often lies to the people around him in order to deceive them of his intentions, Shakespeare indicates when Hamlet is being sincere by the use of prose; in this passage, Hamlet is speaking in prose, so he is being honest about his feelings towards Ophelia. Hamlet’s feelings for Ophelia completely change after the contagion has taken over him and causes him to act rashly. Hamlet openly treats Ophelia poorly for the majority of the play; his treatment corrupts her, and causes her to go crazy, “[Sings.] Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day, / All in the morning betime, / And I a maid at your window, / To be your Valentine, / Then up he rose and donned his clothes / And dupped the chamber door, / Let in the maid, that out a maid / Never departed more” (IV.v. 53-60). After Polonius’s death, Ophelia bursts into the the palace singing many songs, but this song in particular is directed towards Hamlet. She is singing about her love with Hamlet, and how he stole her purity and left her alone during this horrible time of loss. In between Ophelia’s songs, Camden believes that Ophelia is depicting how she feels, “She is mad, cries ‘hem’ to clear her throat because of a feeling of choking or suffocation, beats her heart to relieve the sensation of oppression around it, weeps, prattles constantly, sings snatches of old songs, is distracted and has a depraved imagination, and ends her life by drowning” (Camden 254). Ophelia is oppressed because she is a woman living in

Throughout the entirety of Hamlet, Prince Hamlet shows a series of mood swings and outbursts directly relating back to his father's death. His love for Ophelia was a continuous focal point of Hamlet’s behavior. Throughout the play, a series of flashbacks showed Hamlet and Ophelia embracing and showing their love for each other. However, after King Hamlet’s death, Hamlet’s obvious love for Ophelia seemed to have disappeared judging by Hamlet’s attitude towards her. “Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once” (Shakespeare 3.1). With saying this, Hamlet admits to loving Ophelia in the past. Hamlet does not state what changed for him to say this but the message was simple: Hamlet claims he does not love Ophelia anymore. Due to his father’s passing and mother’s new marriage, it was as if nothing was important to Hamlet anymore except revenge. However, this idea continues to escalate and change throughout the next stages of the play.

In the second scene of the play, Ophelia enters with the other characters, but speaks no lines and is not mentioned by the other characters. She is entirely ignored. This would not appear strange to an Elizabethan audience, who believed that women were inferior to men and habitually mistreated the women of their society. At the time, it was culturally accepted that women in a position as ordinary as that of Ophelia ought not to speak. Regardless, Hamlet still treats her with what would have been considered an astonishing amount of disrespect. He writes to Ophelia, tells her “Get thee to a nunnery”, but also questions her virginity, asking “are you honest?”. While it may be argued that Hamlet believes he is protecting Ophelia by telling her to go, it is also possible that Hamlet is using nunnery as a euphemism for a

In William Shakespeare's play “Hamlet”, throughout the whole play Hamlet’s love for ophelia is completely confusing and is very much questioned. Even though there is evidence in the text that Hamlet did not ever love Ophelia and that he's just manipulating her, there is also more evidence that he does. By the way Hamlet acts around Ophelia when they are alone, it is evident that he loves her and he shows his true feelings. In the play, he does many things to would make the reader think that he really does Ophelia like writing a letter and professes his love for her at her grave sight when she about to be buried but her also does things that make us wonder if he is also being fake and the love he has for her is false.

Questions are raised if Hamlet is really in love with Ophelia. Although there is much evidence arguing that Hamlet never loved her and that he was just using her, there is even more evidence going against that argument. By the way he acts around Ophelia when he is alone with her, he shows that his feelings for her are true. Hamlet shows throughout the play that he is really in love with Ophelia.