In act 4, what new insight does Ophelia's grief evoke?

In act 4 we see the drastic change in Ophelia. The gentleman tells Queen Gertrude that beautiful young girl has been seen roaming singing songs of nonsense and talking about her father in lines that aren't easy to follow.



She speaks much of her father, says she hears
There’s tricks i' th' world, and hems, and beats her heart,
Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt
That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
The hearers to collection. They aim at it,
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,
Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,
Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.




In act 4, scene 5, Ophelia comes to the castle to speak with the Queen, "the beauteous majesty of Denmark." This new Ophelia is a mess and communicates through seemingly nonsensical song lyrics. She never directly answers Gertrude's questions; instead, she sings a response that may or may not give us insight into the cause of her sadness. When King Claudius talks to her, she speaks, but the responses remain just a cryptic.

As she sings of death it can be assumed she is singing about her father's recent death.



He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone,

At his head a grass-green turf,

At his heels a stone.



But the song the follows gives us insight into her relationship with Hamlet. Her songs turn from ones about death to songs about men's unfaithfulness. She sings that they way men convince young women to go to bed with them is to promise to marry them but then refusing to marry them afterward because they are no longer virgins.





Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,

All in the morning betime,

And I a maid at your window,

To be your Valentine.

Then up he rose, and donned his clothes,

And dupped the chamber door.
Let in the maid that out a maid

Never departed more.



This leads the audience to believe that Hamlet and Ophelia slept together, and, because she doesn't understand why he's gone to England, believes that he has abandoned her after she expected to be married to him. Our suspicions are confirmed when continues by singing to her boyfriend's parents her warning that men will make promises to their women and then leave the promises unfulfilled the morning after. Her second song includes dialogue between a girl and boy who could illustrate the last interactions between her and Hamlet.



Young men will do ’t, if they come to ’t.
  By Cock, they are to blame.
 Quoth she, “Before you tumbled me,
  You promised me to wed.”

 He answers,
 “So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
  An thou hadst not come to my bed."






Our last hint that something happened between Ophelia and Hamlet is in the flowers she hands out. When she returns later in the scene she has flowers to give to different members of the court. Just as flowers have meaning to us today, they did to Shakespeare's audience as well. She presents rosemary for remembrance, fennel for strength, columbine for madness, daisies for innocence, and the most important violets for faithfulness and modesty. She pauses and laments that she doesn't have any violets to give them. "I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died." Did she lose Hamlet's faithfulness too?

The next time Ophelia is mentioned is when Gertrude is telling is explaining to the audience the circumstances of Ophelia's death. Hamlet leaving would make Ophelia upset, but if he left after sleeping with her we could see another reason for her death.