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Rh 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.

—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 obeys her