Just as the political action of Hamlet begins in media res, so does the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia.  Hamlet’s motivation to avenge his father, who dies, “with all [his] imperfections on [his] head,” most vigorously produces Hamlet’s subsequent introspection (1.5.79), yet his character is also revealed through his abrupt romantic dialogue with Ophelia, a vehicle through whom Hamlet becomes more deeply developed to the reader, a vehicle who forces Hamlet to act.  Hamlet is large:  “If there is a God in Shakespeare, he hides in the human will, which finds itself free to evade all ideas of order, and proves not to be free at all” (Bloom 110).  Hamlet’s will, the most enduringly powerful personae in perhaps all of the tragedies, is lodged in a modernist self-doubt until the romantic interlude in act 3.  As both Hamlet and Ophelia engage in their own political preoccupations the romance scene sits centered in the action where in this marginalized romance, Hamlet becomes more vibrant.  Shakespeare’s rhetorical omitting of romantic development highlights Hamlet’s introspection, contributes to his isolation, and mirrors the ambiguity of love itself, establishing a second tragedy, an undercurrent eclipsed by the “most unnatural” political events of the play (1.5.80).  Shakespeare consistently alludes to Hamlet’s questioning of consciousness, which suggests the true tragedy in Hamlet is not Hamlet’s death, but the loss of love, the responsibility of which can be projected onto any of the errors made by the prominent lovers in the play:  Gertrude’s quick remarrying of Claudius, and Polonius’ domination of Ophelia.  Ophelia’s suffering through the actions of Laertes, Polonius, Hamlet, and ultimately by her own hand to subsequently call Hamlet to action creates the dark horror of tragedy in Hamlet Prince of Denmark.  
Ophelia is bound to the males in her family and must obey Polonius, preserve her honor, and rebuke Hamlet’s affection for her; yet these obligations serve only the males in the tragedy.   This female upon male dependency is almost entirely consistent with Shakespearean daughters.  Like Desdemona in Othello, Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, and Cornelia in King Lear, Ophelia must patiently wait until either her father or her lover brings her character forth.  Laertes begins his silencing of Ophelia by warning her against Hamlet:  
Perhaps he loves you now, /And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch/ The
virtue of his will, but you must fear, / His greatness weighed, his will is not his
own? / He may not, as unvalued persons do, / Carve for himself, for on his choice depends/ The safety and health of this whole state. . . ./ Be wary then; best safety lies in fear. / Youth to itself rebels, though none else near. (1.3.14-20, 42-43)  
Laetres suggests Hamlet’s politics will take precedence over his duty to her, yet he still, “show[s] [her] the steep and thorny way to heaven” (1.3.47).  Laertes approaches Ophelia’s romance with good will, and appeals to her fear as well as the quality of the relationship itself; Ophelia understands, yet unlike Desdemona and Lavinia, and somewhat like Juliet, she speaks of this unfairness which foreshadows how limited she will become.  Laertes, despite his power over his sister, is a lesser character until Ophelia’s death, at which point his extreme affection for Ophelia in her simple burial, his excess of expression as he hurls himself into her almost minimalist grave creates in Hamlet the desire to be forgiven by this “gentleman.”  Like any other of Shakespeare’s heroines, Ophelia’s death positively affects the men’s reconciliation with gentlemanly status.  Surely any Bardologist would recognize how Ophelia, as property, bound to her father and brother, a lesser but still superior figure.
Unlike Laertes’ seemingly earnest concern for Ophelia’s well-being, Polonius develops Ophelia as he chastises her for even marginally reciprocating Hamlet’s tenders:  “Think yourself a baby/ That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay/ Which are not sterling. . . . Set your entreatments at a higher rate/ Than a command to parley” (1.4.104-122).  Through Polonius, Ophelia’s actions in reciprocating by accepting letters and words of emotion have jeopardized her father’s reputation, and the father speaks only for her chastity and his good name.  Unlike Ophelia’s previous conversation with Laertes, she is commanded to obey, “Look to’t, I charge you.  Come your ways,” and is not requested to “fear” as before (1.4.134).  Ophelia, riddled with guilt and self-questioning does obey, for she respects the traditions against which Cornelia and Juliet rebel.  The reader may speculate to Ophelia’s own feelings, but she is never allowed to give them freely as she is bound in her lines as she is bound to her father; therefore one must interpret through Ophelia’s actions.  Ophelia’s weak rebuttal against Polonius’ charges of impropriety in arguing Hamlet does abide by romantic custom and has been, “in honorable fashion” (110) and with “holy vows of heaven” (113) is her last attempt, a weak crying out, against Polonius’ much stronger voice.  She only defends the manner in which he courted her; she does not venture forth her own tenders.  Her defense is scant, however, and her process of self-sacrificial isolation continues, contributing to her madness.  Hamlet’s slaying of Polonius provides a potential liberation for Ophelia, yet she goes mad.  
In contrast to Laertes and Polonius, Hamlet comes to Ophelia only two scenes later to seal her isolation, which will enable his own action and death.  However, as any lovers realize, romantic love is never entirely solid—the ego and the affections are tender and susceptible to influence, especially if one is already weakened by respective filial responsibility.  By the time the lovers appear onstage together in Act 3, scene 1, Ophelia has been commanded by father and brother to abandon her offstage romance—she is weakened by political ties that bind, which is a terrible position for the tender affections already.   The reader, equipped with the binding responsibility and distractions of Hamlet and Ophelia, is now given only a brief insight into why, perhaps, these two loved, yet it is enough to create the establishment of what is truly lost in the play, what is truly tragic about Hamlet, and this is the loss, not of life, but of love.  This play is about Hamlet, who, possessing the superior consciousness ingests the other players in order to work towards his revenge agenda.  In Classical terms, the death of an extraordinary individual must serve some purpose, and Ophelia’s bridal death fulfills the most necessary purpose of bringing Hamlet to the realization that because there is nothing left for him (his father is dead, his mother has remarried, his new father is the murderer, his lover has betrayed him), he must take action against Claudius.  Critic Summer Block quotes, “For Hamlet, the question is all the more pressing because his vast intellect is so totally out of proportion to the meanness of his task, to a revenge killing that he cannot deign to commit.  Bloom explains, ‘the disproportion between agent and act could have been masked only by theatricalism.’ His response is solitude, indifference, and irony, for he ‘longs for a mighty opposite, and discovers he has to be his own. He inaugurates the situation in which each of us has to be our own worst enemy’” (www.summerblock.com).  
The limited romantic development forces the reader to employ a suspension of disbelief as the lovers meet.  Ophelia is limited, dutiful, weak, and unlike Juliet and Cleopatra in that she abides by the wishes of her father and brother and ignores her own affections; yet for a character as dynamic as Hamlet to lover her, she must possess some greatness.  Hamlet is self-absorbed, brooding, and judgmental, but he becomes light, self-sacrificing and endearing in his brief conversation with Ophelia, explaining how he might have persuaded him to love him:  “Soft you now, / The fair Ophelia! @ Nymph, in thy orisons/ Be all my sins remembered” (3.1.89-90).  As Ophelia meets Hamlet, she carries “remembrances of yours/ That I have longed to redeliver” (93-95) and within her mind the reader remembers Polonius’ command of, “Look to’t, I charge you” (1.2.132-134).  She feels as Juliet Capulet might feel, forced into a marriage to the County, but Ophelia, being watched, cannot speak of her deception (Wehling).  At the same time, she seems to seek his renewed affections: “And with them words of so sweet breath composed/ As made the things more rich” (3.1.98).   As Ophelia approaches Hamlet with his gifts, even though her father and brother have goaded her, she crawls briefly out of her domestic responsibility to show her intentions.  Ophelia is perhaps not so flat to just blindly obey her father; Her lines deceive her in her wit.  As she and Hamlet converse, the lovers flashback to earlier times between them.  She hopes that in returning the gifts she will stir Hamlet to remember their love.  She wants Hamlet to be well, to be in love with her, to marry her and to refuse her returning of the gifts; she hopes Hamlet will respond with a renewed interest in her and their love, claiming her again.  She hopes the gifts will shake him loose from the distance between them, and, unaware of the supernatural complications that he must keep to himself, she attributes his distance perhaps to her own faulty affection (Wehling).  Fate distances them, making Hamlet a closer allegiance to Classical tragic behavior.  “Shakespearean irony has much to do with Chaucerian saying of one thing while meaning another, and has few traces of Socratic professed ignorance” (Bloom 115).  There is not much about Hamlet to like until Ophelia reveals as a lover, until we see him, for just a glimpse, as someone capable of love and of sharing wits with a woman.  When Hamlet enters in Act 3, Ophelia reciprocates the love banter: “Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce / than with honesty?” (3.1.109-110) As Ophelia and Hamlet share wits, he loves her back for that moment, losing his defense because Ophelia is “being the girl he fell in love with” (Wehling).  Hamlet lets escape, “I did love you once” (3.1.115).  It certainly is director’s discretion, but for this one moment, Hamlet escapes from his nihilistic brooding to focus upon someone else; In the previous two acts, Hamlet shows his intelligence and wit, but he is also angry, unworldly and unkind (mostly to his mother) so this sensitivity to Ophelia sells him.  One might imagine their eyes locked in a sort of “love duet,” Hamlet’s hands desperately clutching Ophelia’s and with a confessional tone behind him (Wehling).  Shakespeare offers his audience a glimpse into what the author might consider a cause worthy of true love, or a relationship that promises to cast off the unholy dysfunction of Hamlet’s own parents, yet Hamlet’s affection for Ophelia is overshadowed by what his father’s ghost has compelled him to do just as Ophelia is bound to her father’s honor.  Hamlet and Ophelia are yet this pause, completing his humanness as a character and transitions him from brooding nihilist to insightful romantic.  Their affair does not serve longevity but without his romantic affections, he would be flat, not military great with honor in his history, and not king, just grieving, brooding son.  He is self-occupied, but it is not until he mourns for Ophelia that he becomes the likeable character with whom we fully empathize.  Ophelia has managed to not only give insight to her male counterparts but she propels him to do what other women in tragedies cannot do—act.  She involuntarily empowers him.
Hamlet’s first suggestion that Ophelia “get thee to a nunnery” is a kind one, but his subsequent professions of these same lines after he asks for Polonius, are terrifying.  Hamlet has felt deeply for Ophelia, and this love lost is the tragedy of Act three.  Here he kills the duet between himself and Ophelia, isolating her, and by killing Polonius she is almost utterly alone—like him.  He, strangely, cannot understand her position, and she is not aware of his burden.  Without the support of the males in her life, she is worthless, mad, compromising her chastity for a man whom she later abuses:  “Quoth she, ‘Before you tumbled me, / You promised me to wed’. . . ‘So would I’a’ done, by younder sun, / And thou hadst not come to my bed’” (4.5.62-66).  Hamlet is also deeply discouraged by the broken love duet, producing his callousness.  We see his grief when he talks to Horatio- he admires Horatio’s stoicism and distance because Hamlet feels for Ophelia—he wants to be a cold observer, like Horatio, and just observe reality, not partake emotionally:
“ . . .blessed are those/ Whose blood and judgment are so well commeddled/ That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger/ To sound what stop she please.  Give me that man/ That is not passion’s slave/ and I will wear him/ In y heart’s core, ay. In my heart of heart, / As I do thee (3.2.67-75).  Hamlet, floating alone, is isolated in his painful connection to love, not life.  His father has been murdered, his mother has married the murderer, his community finds him insane, and through these he recognizes that without loving attachments, one is limited:  “What is a man, / If his chief good and market of his time/ Be but to sleep and feed?  A beast, no more” (4.5.33-36).  Hamlet articulates that to transcend mere beastly status, one must love, and when he loses love, he wishes to, “Be buried quick with her…” (5.1.268).  Could Shakespeare possibly have Hamlet recover from this?  There is no other option for Hamlet than death.
Often the love shared within a tragedy has a ripple effect on the conflicts of the play.  The love lost between Ophelia and Hamlet and Ophelia’s tragic death is more tragic than the death of Hamlet for it causes more of a resolution, as required by the Classical model.  Ophelia’s betrayal causes further isolation for Hamlet, which causes his impulsiveness that can be seen in his murder of Polonius, which further accounts for Ophelia’s madness and death, contributing to Hamlet’s utter isolation and action against Claudius demonstrating, “To what bases uses we may return…” (5.1. 191).  Hamlet and Ophelia are the only characters that demonstrate love worthy of tragedy; Gertrude loves too soon, Claudius has too many sins upon his soul to engage in romantic love, King Hamlet demonstrates in Act 1 his perspective of idealized love, which is more chivalric and platonic—not the intimacy we hope Ophelia and Hamlet share (Wehling).   We want to believe this type of love existed in Denmark—in life—it is the poetry of love that likely stirred the Elizabethan audience as it does modern audiences.  It would be wonderful for Hamlet to be in love and happy.  Shakespeare, perhaps cognizant of this, develops the relationship to a point when we realize it is feasible and then pulls it from us; Gertrude contributes to this sad image, ironically:
There is a willow grows askant the brook, That shows his hoary leaves in the
glassy stream/ Therewith fantastic garlands did she make/  Of crowflowers,
nettles, daisies, and long purples . . . When down her weedy trophies and herself/
Fell in the weeping brook.  Her clothes spread wide, / And mermaidlike awhile
they bore her up, / Which time she chanted snatches of old laudes . . . Till that her
garments, heavy with their drink, / Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay/ to muddy death. (4.7.164-180)
Ophelia, a twisted bride for hungry death, surrounded by her garland, doing violence against herself (Rom&Jul. 5.3.240) pulls Hamlet’s only hope for romantic love away from him.  Gertrude again reminds the reader of Ophelia’s importance as she stands throwing flowers upon her grave:  “Sweets to the sweet!  Farewell. / I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife. / I thought thy bridebed to have decked, sweet maid, And not have strewed thy grave” (5.1.233-235).  Ophelia’s death also reincarnates Laertes’ gentlemanly importance as he leaps into her grave, bringing Hamlet to another emotional epiphany:  “I loved Ophelia.  Forty thousand brothers/ Could not with all their quantity of love/ Make up my sum.  What wilt thou do for her?” (5.1.258-260).  
       Ophelia’s suffering calls Hamlet to action and creates the dark horror of tragedy of the play.   She, like many tragic women who fall because of their men, haunts Hamlet with her nettles and her silence.  According to Classicist, J.J. Pollitt, “Solon of Athens tries to reconcile the wisdom of Zeus with injustice in the world and is bewildered:  
In every activity there is danger, nor does anyone know, / at an enterprise’s start, where he will end up. / One man, striving to do what is right, but lacking foresight, / falls headlong into great folly and great hardship, while to another who acts wrongly, God in all things gives / pure good luck, redemption from his own thoughtlessness . . . . The immortals bestow rich profits upon men, / but folly often appears as the result, which when Zeus/ sends it to punish, strikes now this man, now that one. (4)
Hamlet concludes the play that produces some sense to the death; there is conflict resolution, unlike the senseless dying in King Lear.  Hamlet’s anxiety is a product of great responsibility, and if his comrades suffer, regardless of rank or gender, they suffer without knowledge of cause, as most great lovers and kings have done and likely will continue to do.  


Works Cited
Block, Summer.  Review of Harold Bloom.  http://www.summerblock.com/Bloom.pdf.  
Accessed July 2005.  
Bloom, Harold.  Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?  New York:  Penguin, 2004.
Pollitt, J.J.  Art and Experience in Classical Greece. Cambridge:  University Press, 1972.  
Wehling, Tom.  MICDS.  Personal Interview.  July 2005.