The trouble with Ophelia is that she is nothing. Mild, submissive and frequently silent, she is a character who speaks in only five scenes of Hamlet, Shakespeare’s longest and wordiest of plays. Her speech and behaviour are frequently circumscribed by the characters around her, most of whom are men. The most interesting thing Ophelia achieves in the whole of the play is her madness, but this is short-lived, and her death and its aftermath are governed by the words and actions of others.
Hamlet and Ophelia both use the word ‘nothing’ in the following exchange in the play:
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