“He is dead and gone”
Ophelia’s descent into madness can often seem shockingly abrupt, and her distracted behaviour also feel forced and melodramatic in style. Performing this scene can be a thankless challenge for an actor, being particularly exposed as the rest of the cast largely stand mutely and stare. The genuine tragedy of her collapse can only be appreciated if we can understand the psychological precedents that lead her to such distress. It may be that she is simply a naive young woman, who very quickly finds herself in perplexing and threatening circumstances beyond her control.

What she took for a promising romantic relationship with Hamlet turns into something deeply disturbing after she heeds both her brother and her father’s counsel to be more circumspect in her responses to him. She is naturally unsettled when Hamlet visits her “with his doublet all unbraced” and “Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,/ And with a look so piteous in purport/ As if he had been loosed out of hell/ To speak of horrors”, and then does not speak to her. We could grant then that she undertakes her father’s request to draw Hamlet out in good faith because she is bewildered and distessed by his erratic behaviour. She is concerned for his well being, and seeks to understand this change herself.

When Hamlet lashes out at Ophelia in the nunnery scene, it may be that he has discerned something of her dissemblance in her demeanour, and feels betrayed not just by her returning his love letters, but also by her deception. Whatever the exact source of his pain and anger, Ophelia is further shaken by the inexplicable force and form of his response: “O help him, you sweet heavens!…Heavenly powers restore him.”  She is hurt and saddened by his state of mind.

In one of the most effective portrayals of the relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet that I have seen, these early scenes between them suggested not that Ophelia had been naive in her attachment to him, but that a deep and sensual connection had existed between them. One that he was as unhappy to sever as she was. He was not toying callously with her, he was lashing out in his own pain at what they have lost. A true love that can no longer survive in the face of the horrors that he must face. Given this depth of feeling in their original relationship, the scale of Ophelia’s pain and disorder is all the more credible and profound. Especially when you add the unfathomable horror that Hamlet murders her father.

Given these psychological precedents it becomes possible to imagine Ophelia being so distracted by grief that she falls into the stream in a kind of distrait trance, or as some would have it that she deliberately lets herself fall into the waters. Either way, when she sings that “He is dead and gone”, she may be lamenting the irretrievable loss of her father and/or her lover.