Ophelia is Polonius's daughter, Laertes's sister and Hamlet's sweetheart. When her brother and father tell her to keep away from the prince, in Act I, scene 3, she yields to her father: "I shall obey, my lord." Following his orders, she rebuffs Hamlet's letters and denies him access to her.
In Act II, scene 1, she tells her father that Hamlet came to her disheveled, seized her wrists, sighed, and left without taking his eyes from her. In Act III, scene 1, she is placed before him as bait, with the king and Polonius hidden, and hears from Hamlet "I did not love you" and the order "Go to a convent." When he leaves, she laments: "Oh, what a noble mind is here brought low!"
After her father's death, in Act IV, scene 5, she appears singing of a dead man and handing out flowers to Laertes, the king and the queen. One of her lines is "we know what we are, but know not what we may be."
In scene 7 of the same act, Gertrude says that Ophelia fell into a brook when a branch broke while she was hanging garlands of flowers, and that she drowned. In Act V, scene 1, two gravediggers argue whether she deserves Christian burial, and a priest says "Her death was doubtful" and that, without the king's order, she would be buried in unconsecrated ground. Hamlet, who arrives during the burial, says: "I loved Ophelia."