Ophelia whomever he wants. Ophelia's father, Polonius, who enters while Laertes is leaving, also forbids Ophelia from pursuing Hamlet, as Polonius fears that Hamlet is not earnest about her. In Ophelia's next appearance, she tells Polonius that Hamlet rushed into her room with his clothing askew and a "hellish" expression on his face; he only stared at her, nodding three times without speaking to her. Based on what Ophelia told him, Polonius concludes that he was wrong to forbid Ophelia from seeing Hamlet, and that Hamlet must be mad with love for her. Polonius immediately decides to go to Claudius, the
171 Ophelia 171 Ophelia Ophelia (minor planet designation: 171 Ophelia) is a large, dark Themistian asteroid that was discovered by French astronomer Alphonse Borrelly on 13 January 1877, and named after the fictional character Ophelia in Shakespeare's play "Hamlet". This asteroid is a member of the Themis family of asteroids that share similar orbital elements. It probably has a primitive composition, similar to that of the carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. A 1979 study of the Algol-like light curve produced by this asteroid concluded that it was possible to model the brightness variation by assuming a binary system with a circular orbit, a period