This depiction of Shakespeare's tragic heroine Ophelia was praised for its psychological insight. The madness and death of Ophelia were popular subjects for painters in the later 19th century. In Shakespeare's play Ophelia drowns herself in a river, driven mad by Hamlet's rejection of her. The painting was exhibited beside lines adapted from Hamlet:

There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook
That shews his hoar leaves in the glossy stream
There with fantastic garland did she make
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples.

The more than 30 types of flowers in this picture--and their symbolism--would have been familiar to Victorian viewers: the flowers surrounding Ophelia, and those in the garland she wears on her head, refer to constancy, love, hopelessness, and mourning; she wears a ring a grasses, relating to her longing for Hamlet. She holds a poppy-bud, symbolic of death.