Wikipedia says:
In Ophelia's first
speaking appearance in the play,[2]
we see her with her brother, Laertes, who is leaving for
France.
Laertes lectures Ophelia against getting involved with
Hamlet. He warns her that Hamlet does not have his free will
as he is the heir of
Denmark
so does not have freedom to marry whomever he wants.
Ophelia's father, Polonius, enters while Laertes is leaving,
and Polonius also admonishes Ophelia against Hamlet, because
he fears Hamlet is not earnest about her. Polonius concludes
by forbidding Ophelia to have any further communication with
Hamlet. She agrees to obey her father and to avoid Hamlet
entirely.
In Ophelia's next
appearance,[3]
she tells Polonius that Hamlet rushed into her room with his
clothing askew, and with a 'hellish' expression on his face,
and only stared at her, without speaking to her. Based on
what Ophelia tells him, about Hamlet acting in such a "mad"
way, Polonius concludes that he was wrong to forbid Ophelia
to see Hamlet, and that Hamlet must be mad because of
lovesickness for Ophelia. Polonius immediately decides to go
to Claudius (the new King of Denmark, and also Hamlet's
uncle and stepfather) about the situation. We later[4]
see Polonius suggest to Claudius that they can hide behind
an arras to overhear Hamlet speaking to Ophelia, when Hamlet
thinks the conversation is private. Since Polonius is now
sure Hamlet is lovesick for Ophelia, he thinks Hamlet will
express love for Ophelia. Claudius agrees to try the
eavesdropping plan later. The plan leads to what is commonly
called the 'Nunnery
Scene'.
[5]
In the 'Nunnery
Scene' Polonius instructs Ophelia to stand in the lobby of
the castle, while he and Claudius hide behind. Hamlet enters
the room, in a different world from the others, and recites
his "To
be, or not to be"
soliloquy. Hamlet approaches Ophelia and talks to her. He
famously tells her "get thee to a nunnery." Hamlet becomes
angry, realizes he's gone too far, and says "I say there
will be no more marriage", and exits. Ophelia is left
bewildered, scared, and heartbroken, sure that Hamlet is
crazy. After Hamlet storms out, Ophelia makes her "O, what a
noble mind is here o'erthrown" soliloquy.
The next time
Ophelia appears is at the 'Mousetrap Play'[6]
which Hamlet has arranged to try to prove that Claudius
killed King Hamlet. Hamlet sits with Ophelia and makes
sexually suggestive remarks, also saying that woman's love
is brief.
Later that night,
after the play, Hamlet kills Polonius
[7]
- thinking Polonius is Claudius ("Is it the King?")- during
a private meeting between Hamlet and his mother,
Queen Gertrude.
At Ophelia's next appearance,[8]
after her father's death, she has gone mad, due to what the
other characters interpret as grief over her father. She
talks in riddles and rhymes, sings some "mad" and bawdy
songs about death and a maiden losing her virginity. After
bidding everyone a "good night", she exits.
The final time
Ophelia 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 their
symbolic meanings
although interpretations of the meanings differ. Then she
blesses everyone and exits for the last time.
In Act 4 Scene 7,
Queen Gertrude, in a famous
monologue
(There is a willow grows aslant
the brook), reports that
Ophelia had climbed into a willow tree, and then a branch
broke and dropped Ophelia into the brook, where she drowned.
Gertrude says that Ophelia appeared "incapable of her own
distress" like a mad person would be. Gertrude's
announcement of Ophelia's death is one of the most poetic
death announcements in literature.[9]
We later see a
sexton
at the graveyard insisting Ophelia must have killed herself,[10]
however, although the sexton attempts to argue the point
logically and legally, he never says how he would know it as
a fact. The cleric who presides at Ophelia's funeral later
asserts that she should have been buried in unsanctified
ground as a suicide, but he doesn't say how he knows facts
about it, either. Laertes is outraged by what the cleric
says, and replies that Ophelia will be an angel in heaven
when the cleric "liest howling" (with the fiends in hell).
The remarks by the sexton and the cleric have naturally led
to a great deal of discussion of whether Ophelia committed
suicide. Between Gertrude's report of an accident, and the
later talk of suicide, the suicide issue is left unclear in
the play, so that even after four centuries since the play
was written, the issue is still a topic of debate.
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. Laertes then jumps into Ophelia's grave
excavation, 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. After her funeral scene, there is no further
mention of Ophelia.
Sparknotes
writes:
Polonius’s daughter, a beautiful young woman with whom
Hamlet has been in love. Ophelia is a sweet and innocent
young girl, who obeys her father and her brother,
Laertes. Dependent on men to tell her how to behave, she
gives in to Polonius’s schemes to spy on Hamlet. Even in
her lapse into madness and death, she remains maidenly,
singing songs about flowers and finally drowning in the
river amid the flower garlands she had gathered.