Ophelia

Ophelia by the end of act four somewhat takes the main lead character wise. Alone her life because of recent events has witnessed many tragedies. Firstly she has lost the love of Hamlet then on top of this she has lost her father at the hands of Hamlet although there is no real solid evidence to suggest that Ophelia knows that it was Hamlet that killed her late father.
Personally i feel that Hamlet is partially to blame for Ophelia's madness and ultimately her death. Although he isn't solely to blame i feel that Hamlet played a big part towards what eventually happened to Ophelia. The rejection he showed Ophelia obviously effected her mentally and it didn't help that on top of this rejection Ophelia then had to deal with the loss of her father.

Personally i think that the play could still have been good even if Ophelia wasn't in it although i feel that it would not have been as effective. My reason for this is simply that i feel Ophelia is used as a prop, bait if you like for Claudius and Polonius' plans to progress. Also if it had not been for Ophelia there would not be as much emotion due to the fact that in the previous scenes Ophelia is seen to be quite an Innocent character who loves Hamlet enough to lie to her father. She is seen as a very timid character who you would feel sympathetic towards. This is evident when she ultimately drowns, looking at it both ways if she had committed suicide we as an audience who sympathises with her would feel bad that Ophelia felt that bad that she had to kill herself because she felt like she had nothing more to live for. On the other hand if it was an accident and she fell into the water and drowned we would still feel sorry for her. I think that Shakespeare has used Ophelia as a character in which set the mood and atmosphere throughout the scenes. If she had not been in the play there would not be nearly as much sympathy and emotion in it and i also feel she is used as a sort of time bomb for Laertes feeling and anger to emerge.