een an
Imogen, a Cordelia, even a Portia or a Juliet, the story must have taken
another shape. Hamlet would either have been stimulated to do his duty,
or (which is more likely) he would have gone mad, or (which is
likeliest) he would have killed himself in despair. Ophelia, therefore,
was made a character who could not help Hamlet, and for whom on the
other hand he would not naturally feel a passion so vehement or profound
as to interfere with the main motive of the play.[76] And in the love
and the fate of Ophelia herself there was introduced an element, not of
deep tragedy but of pathetic beauty, which makes the analysis of her
character seem almost a desecration.

Ophelia is plainly quite young and inexperienced. She has lost her
mother, and has only a father and a brother, affectionate but worldly,
to take care of her. Everyone in the drama who has any heart is drawn to
her. To the persons in the play, as to the readers of it, she brings the
thought of flowers. 'Rose of May' Laertes names her.

Lay her in the earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring!

--so he prays at her burial. 'Sweets to the sweet' the Queen murmurs, as
she scatters flowers on the grave; and the flowers which Ophelia herself
gathered--those which she gave to others, and those which floated about
her in the brook--glimmer in the picture of the mind. Her affection for
her brother is shown in two or three delicate strokes. Her love for her
father is deep, though mingled with fear. For Hamlet she has, some say,
no deep love--and perhaps she is so near childhood that old affections
have still the strongest hold; but certainly she has given to Hamlet all
the love of which her nature is as yet capable. Beyond these three
beloved ones she seems to have eyes and ears for no one. The Queen is
fond of her, but there is no sign of her returning the Queen's
affection. Her existence is wrapped up in these three.

On this childlike nature and on Ophelia's inexperience everything
depends. The knowledge that 'there's tricks in the world' has reached
her only as a vague report. Her father and brother are jealously anxious
for her because of her ignorance and innocence; and we resent their
anxiety chiefly because we know Hamlet better than they. Her whole
character is that of simple unselfish affection. Naturally she is
incapable of understanding Hamlet's mind, though she can feel its
beauty. Naturally, too, she