Final answer:
Claudius attributes Ophelia's madness to erotomania stemming from her unrequited love for Hamlet, reflecting the Elizabethan view of female insanity as an emotional and biological malady.
Step-by-step explanation:
According to Claudius, Ophelia's ailment is believed to be the result of her unrequited love for Hamlet, which gives rise to erotomania, or love-madness. This condition was commonly associated with female madness during the Elizabethan era, seen as a biological and emotional response to repressed sexual desire.
Ophelia's madness contrasted with Hamlet's intellectual melancholy, reflecting the gendered views of mental health of the time.
The representation of Ophelia on stage and in art over the centuries, as described by Elaine Showalter, has been influenced by evolving theories of female insanity and sexuality, including those related to hysteria, sexual repression, and even suggestions of incestuous desires. These portrayals have also mirrored societal understanding and treatment of women's mental health issues.
According to Claudius, the cause of Ophelia's ailment is her unrequited love and repressed sexual desire. In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Claudius mentions that Ophelia's madness stems from her inability to have her love for Hamlet reciprocated and her suppressed sexual desires.
This idea is explored in the treatise on hysteria titled The Suffocation of the Mother and in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Ophelia's affliction, known as erotomania, was believed to be biological and emotional in origin.