Hamlet: Ophelia's CharacterAs for Ophelia in Shakespeare's tragic drama Hamlet, is she an innocent type or not? Is he a victim or not? This essay will explore these and other questions related to this character. Rebecca West in “A Court and World Infected by the Disease of Corruption” ferociously, and perhaps baselessly, attacks Ophelia's virginity: There is no more bizarre aspect of the misreading of Hamlet's Character than the assumption that his relations with Ophelia were innocent and that Ophelia was a correct and shy virgin of exquisite sensitivity. . . . She was not a chaste young woman. This is demonstrated by his tolerance of Hamlet's obscene conversations, which cannot be explained as consistent with the customs of the time. If this were the reason, all the men and women in Shakespeare's plays, Romeo and Juliet, Beatrice and Benedict, Miranda and Ferdinand, Antony and Cleopatra, would have spoken obscenely to each other, which is not the case (107) . West's interpretation of the character of Ophelia is not a shared sentiment among critics, so her innocence is questioned but not overturned. As of now, the reader/spectator sees that the protagonist of the tragedy, Prince Hamlet, initially appears dressed in solemn black. He is mourning the death of his father, allegedly caused by a snake bite, while he was a student at Wittenberg. Hamlet laments his mother's hasty remarriage to his father's brother, an incestuous act; so in his first soliloquy he shouts: "Fragility, your name is woman!" Ophelia enters the play with her brother Laertes, who, leaving for school, says goodbye to her and gives her advice on her relationship with Hamlet. Op......middle of paper......Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint of Shakespeare's Women. Np: np, 1981.Shakespeare, William. The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.htmlWard & Trent, et al. The Cambridge history of English and American literature. New York: Sons of G. P. Putnam, 1907–21; New York: Bartleby.com, 2000 http://www.bartleby.com/215/0816.htmlWest, Rebecca. “A Court and a world infected by the disease of corruption”. Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardò. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. of the Court and the Castle. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957. Wilkie, Brian, and James Hurt. “Shakespeare”. Literature of the Western world. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992.