In which Shakespeare play does the character Ophelia appear? Ophelia appears in William Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet.
Ophelia is a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes, and romantic interest of Prince Hamlet. Her relationship with Hamlet becomes strained when her father orders her to stop seeing him and later uses her to help spy on him.
After Hamlet kills Polonius, Ophelia descends into madness and sings songs while handing out flowers with symbolic meanings. Queen Gertrude later reports that Ophelia fell from a willow tree into a brook and drowned. The play leaves some uncertainty about whether her death was accidental or suicide.
A common mix-up is associating Ophelia with Romeo and Juliet because both are famous Shakespeare tragedies featuring doomed young lovers. Ophelia belongs exclusively to Hamlet, which was probably written around 1599–1601. Her image has also inspired major paintings, including John Everett Millais’s 1852 Ophelia.