1.  How is it that in his first soliloquy Hamlet makes no reference whatever to Ophelia?

2.  How is it that in his second soliloquy, on the departure of the Ghost, he again says nothing about her?  When the lover is feeling that he must make a complete break with his past, why does it not occur to him at once that he must give up his hopes of happiness in love?

3.  Hamlet does not, as the popular theory supposes, break with Ophelia directly after the Ghost appears to him; on the contrary, he tries to see her and sends letters to her (II. i. 109).  What really happens is that Ophelia suddenly repels his visits and letters.  Now, we know that she is simply obeying her father’s order; but how would her action appear to Hamlet, already sick at heart because of his mother’s frailty,[71] and now finding that, the moment fortune has turned against him, the woman who had welcomed his love turns against him too?  Even if he divined (as his insults to Polonius suggest) that her father was concerned in this change, would he not still, in that morbid condition of mind, certainly suspect her of being less simple than she had appeared to him?[72] Even if he remained free from this suspicion, and merely thought her deplorably weak, would he not probably feel anger against her, an anger like that of the hero of Locksley Hall against his Amy?

4.  When Hamlet made his way into Ophelia’s room, why did he go in the garb, the conventionally recognised garb, of the distracted lover?  If it was necessary to convince Ophelia of his insanity, how was it necessary to convince her that disappointment in love was the cause of his insanity?  His main object in the visit appears to have been to convince others, through her, that his insanity was not due to any mysterious unknown cause, but to this disappointment, and so to allay the suspicions of the King.  But if his feeling for her had been simply that of love, however unhappy, and had not been in any degree that of suspicion or resentment, would he have adopted a plan which must involve her in so much suffering?[73]

5.  In what way are Hamlet’s insults to Ophelia at the play-scene necessary either to his purpose of convincing her of his insanity or to his purpose of revenge?  And, even if he did regard them as somehow means to these ends, is it conceivable that he would have uttered them, if his feeling for her were one of hopeless but unmingled love?

6.  How is it that neither when he kills Polonius, nor afterwards, does he appear to reflect that he has killed Ophelia’s father, or what the effect on Ophelia is likely to be?

7.  We have seen that there is no reference to Ophelia in the soliloquies of the First Act.  Neither is there the faintest allusion to her in any one of the soliloquies of the subsequent Acts, unless possibly in the words (III. i. 72) ’the pangs of despised love.’[74] If the popular theory is true, is not this an astounding fact?