Discussion of Whether Hamlet Loved Ophelia

In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, we are presented with several different conflicting statements on the relationship between our main character Hamlet and his girlfriend Ophelia. During the first two acts, Hamlet states that he loves Ophelia, intends to marry her, and is upset that Ophelia's father disapproves of their relationship. However, as the story unfolds and Hamlet is sucked farther and farther into the conspiracy to kill his uncle and avenge his father, Hamlet begins saying that he hates Ophelia, and that she is nothing more than a whore to him. By the third act, I believe Hamlet's true personality, as well as his views of Ophelia are shown.

In the second Act, Hamlet writes a letter to Ophelia, which is read to the audience by Ophelia’s father, Polonius.

“Doubt thou the stars are fire;

Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.” By this point, while Hamlet has talked to his father ghost and he is making plans on avenging his father, he still has time to focus on day to day life and ensuring he has a wife and plans for having a family in the future. At this point in the story, Hamlet has the ability to focus on Ophelia, and be upset with Ophelia's father and Polonius restricting their ability to see and talk to each other. However, at this point, Ophelia shows her father the letter, which causes Hamlet to not trust people, including his family, which, combined with his father's death, sets Hamlet onto his descent into madness. In the beginning of act three, Hamlet claims that while he does not anymore, he did love Ophelia.

“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.”

Hamlet contradicts this in his next line, but I believe that Hamlet truly believes that he loved Ophelia. If he did not mean this, then his earlier poem for Ophelia, his intent to marry her, and his hatred towards Ophelia’s father, Polonius, was all a lie from Hamlet. However, Hamlet had no reason to lie about his love for her. At the start of act three, Hamlet’s opinion of Ophelia changes radically. Hamlet performs the famous “To be or not to be” speech, and at this point he is considering whether or not it is worth throwing away his life, and eventually dying, simply to avenge his father. Directly after his questioning his own mortality, he begins yelling at Ophelia.

“You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot

so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of

it: I loved you not.”

This is very contradictory to what he had said a moment prior, when he claimed that he used to love her, but does not anymore. I believe this is when Hamlet’s true colors begin to show. At this point, Hamlet has questioned his own mortality and realizes that death is not something to be feared, and he is willing to die or commit suicide to avenge his father.

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil”

Hamlet is ready to put his future and his life with Ophelia behind him, and instead accept that death is a probable possibility. He has accepted that his future is not as important as his fathers revenge, so he no longer needs to be nice to Ophelia, and starts yelling at her and telling her she is worthless. One of the most interesting things Hamlet says is that she needs to go to a nunnery.

“Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a

breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;

but yet I could accuse me of such things that it

were better my mother had not borne me: I am very

proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at

my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,

imagination to give them shape, or time to act them

in. What should such fellows as I do crawling

between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,

all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.

Where's your father?”

A nunnery is both a place that nuns go to study and stay holy, but also Elizabethan slang for a brothel. So Hamlet is essentially telling her that she is nothing more than a sinner and a whore, who is no better than her father. At this point Hamlet shows himself as a horrible person who will turn on people that he claims to have once loved.

At the end of act four, Ophelia drowns herself due to the grief Hamlet put her through. When Hamlet learns of Ophelia’s death, he claims that he has always loved her.

“I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers

Could not, with all their quantity of love,

Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?”

In front of his Mother and Uncle, two people he has no respect for, he claims that he loved her forever. This leads me to believe that Hamlet was not looking for their pity, but rather Hamlet wanted to believe his own lies and not be guilted by the death that he caused. By this point, Hamlet has been dealing with his father's death, his uncle betraying the king, being banished to England, and his girlfriend, who he claims to have once loved, and his own slow descent into insanity. Hamlet needs to feel as though he did not cause this, and that he did really love her.

Hamlet has shown that, while at some point he may have loved Ophelia, by the end of the story any love and humanity he once showed to her was gone. He yelled at her, told her that she was never really loved, and guilted her until eventually she commited suicide over his cruelty. Hamlet’s lack of kindness towards someone that he once loved shows how cruel and awful Hamlet really is. In the beginning, I believe Hamlet once loved Ophelia, but Hamlet changes drastically by the third act, and any love for her had gone away, and we can say that by the end of the story Hamlet did not love Ophelia.