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The Role of Relationships

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the role of relationships is expressed in three types of relationships which are love, friend and parent child relationships. The four significant relationships are the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia, Hamlet and Gertrude, Gertrude and Claudius and Hamlet and Horatio. Hamlet and Ophelia’s love relationship is not accepted by her family because they think Hamlet is only using her. Hamlet and Gertrude’s parent child relationship gets weak because of her marriage to her brother in law Claudius, which Hamlet does not like that. Claudius and Gertrude’s love relationship is seen as incest by Hamlet, while Horatio and Hamlet’s friendship is a good friendship because Horatio is someone that Hamlet trust and can depend on for anything.
Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship is one that is not accepted by her family because Hamlet is from royalty and Ophelia is not and because of this Polonius warns Ophelia about Hamlet. To everyone it seems as if Hamlet is just using Ophelia for sexual pleasure and nothing more. “Tis told me he hath very oft late/ Given private time to you, and you yourself/ Have of your audience been most free and/ Bounteous. If it be so (as so’tis put on me, / And that in way of caution), I must tell you/ You do not understand yourself so clearly/ As it behooves my daughter and your honor.”(I, iii, 99-106)
Even Ophelia’s brother and father warn her about Hamlet, and how he may be using her but she does not listen because she is in love with Hamlet and does not believe he would use her. “Perhaps he loves you now, / And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch/ The virtue of his will; but you must fear, / His greatness weighed, his will is not his own,” (I, iii, 17-20).
After finding out that Hamlet murder her father and left for England, Ophelia is shock and goes mad because she thinks Hamlet only used her. She is so upset that she tells everyone what happened...