SOURCE: Lyons, Bridget Gellert. “The Iconography of Ophelia.” ELH 44, no. 1 (spring 1977): 60-74.

In the following essay, Lyons discusses two emblematic episodes in Hamlet that feature Ophelia: her distribution of flowers (IV.v) and the scene where the prince encounters her as she walks about reading a book (III.i). In the first instance she is closely associated with the mythical nymph Flora, the critic points out, and in the second with figures of female piety—including the Virgin Mary—yet on both occasions the iconographic associations are deeply ambivalent and support conflicting interpretations of her character.

When Polonius arranges Ophelia's meeting with Hamlet in the third act of the play, he assigns gestures to her and provides her with a prop, deliberately fashioning her into an image intended to convey an easily readable meaning:

Ophelia, walk you here. …                                                                                                                         Read on this book; That show of such an exercise...