In Ophelia's next appearance,[4] she tells Polonius that Hamlet rushed into her room with his clothing askew and a "hellish" expression on his face; he only stared at her, nodding three times without speaking to her.

Laertes then jumps into Ophelia's grave excavation, asking for the burial to wait until he has held her in his arms one last time and proclaims how much he loved her.

[15] The early modern stage in England had an established set of emblematic conventions for the representation of female madness: dishevelled hair worn down, dressed in white, bedecked with wild flowers, Ophelia's state of mind would have been immediately 'readable' to her first audiences.

[17] Her action of offering wild flowers to the court suggests, Showalter argues, a symbolic deflowering, while even the manner of her 'doubtful death', by drowning, carries associations with the feminine (Laertes refers to his tears on hearing the news as "the woman").

[19] Showalter relates a theatrical anecdote that vividly captures this sense of overlap between a performer's identity and the role she plays: "The greatest triumph was reserved for Susan Mountfort, a former actress at Lincoln's Inn Fields who had gone mad after her lover's betrayal.

One night in 1720 she escaped from her keeper, rushed to the theater, and just as the Ophelia of the evening was to enter for her mad scene, "sprang forward in her place ... with wild eyes and wavering motion."

From Mrs Lessingham in 1772 to Mary Catherine Bolton, playing opposite John Kemble in 1813, the familiar iconography of the role replaced its passionate embodiment.

[21] In the 19th century, she was portrayed by Helen Faucit, Dora Jordan, Frances Abington, and Peg Woffington, who won her first real fame by playing the role.

[22] Theatre manager Tate Wilkinson declared that next to Susannah Maria Cibber, Elizabeth Satchell (of the famous Kemble family) was the best Ophelia he ever saw.

[24] Jean Simmons played Ophelia to Laurence Olivier's Oscar-winning Hamlet performance in 1948 and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

[25] More recently, Ophelia has been portrayed by Anastasiya Vertinskaya (1964),[26] Marianne Faithfull (1969),[27] Helena Bonham Carter (1990),[28] Kate Winslet (1996), Julia Stiles (2000), Mariah Gale (2009) and Daisy Ridley (2018).

[32] Robert Schumann in 'Herzeleid' from 'Sechs Gesänge' (opus 107 nr 1; 1852) puts the poem of Titus Ullrich to music, which is dedicated to the figure of Ophelia, ending with her name sung twice.

[33] Gregory Crewdson's untitled picture from 2001 whose unofficial reference title is Ophelia,[34] is a still photograph that was created with a life size set of a living room flooded with water built on a sound stage and lit with a cinematic lighting team.

[35] The play Opheliamachine by Magda Romanska, is a postmodern tale of love, sex and politics in a fragmented world of confused emotions and global, virtual sexuality.

Dylan portrays her as a religious woman in an "iron vest", who spends her time "peeking into Desolation Row", even though her eyes are fixed on "Noah's great rainbow".