Okay, here's what you should you know about Ophelia; I am certain my new friend, Taylor Alison Swift, does and a lot of the story that resonates with what she's gone through in the public eye.
I'm a freshly minted Swiftie and it was fated! (Or a coincidence, but fate is more fun.) In college, I wrote a paper about how the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood depicted Hamlet's Ophelia. When I first saw the album cover for Showgirl, I joked that Swift was entering her Pre-Raphaelite era. Shortly after, I heard the first video would be the Fate of Ophelia and here we are.
Ophelia in General and in the Album Cover/Video
The cover art for Life of a Showgirl is inspired by John Millais's Ophelia (picture below). It's the most revered and famous of any Ophelia paintings. The opening scene of Fate of Ophelia video shows this painting on the right, behind the mop cart. The P-RB were part of the Late Romantic movement (1850-early 20th century), specific to a group of British painters and poets who who, unlike most other art and literary movements in the 19th century, had celebrated female painters and poets.
(The PR-B put the B in Bohemian, so as you'd expect, most came from wealthy families. They were wild, colorful, and scandalous - lots of bed hopping and betrayal fueled by so much drugs and alcohol. So very much. I know Rosetti was cut off by his parents and maybe a couple others? We should ask Julian Fellows to develop a series about them.)
The painting Taylor emerges from is by Friedrich Heyser's Ophelia, who was also part of the Late Romantic movement (picture below).
Anyway, Ophelia was a wildly popular subject across Romanticism (late 17th century – early 20th century) along with pretty much all of the art movements in Europe at the time, especially in the French Classicism, Symbolism, and Academic. The P-RB were especially obsessed with her (many paintings below).
She's endured as a popular figure in many forms of art and media, too. One of my favorites is a Simpsons episodes and it's gold. I listed a few other places Ophelia's popped up, but if you googled I’m sure there are thousands more. (The Simpsons ep is season 13 (ha!) ep 14.)
Hamlet: A Quick Summary
tl;dr – She’s lied to, gaslighted (gaslit?), and used as a pawn by all
the men in her life. Ophelia goes mad because of her father’s death and drowns
accidentally.
Many people have either never read Hamlet or did, but years and years ago, so this isn’t a “people who don’t know the story are dumb.” I have an unfair advantage - I don’t know how many times I’ve read or seen the play.
The two versions I've seen everywhere are inaccurate (especially in reaction videos and pop culture):
- Hamlet breaks up with Ophelia, so she kills herself.
- Hamlet breaks up with Ophelia, she goes mad and dies accidentally.
Essentially, she is lied to, gaslit, abused, and used as a pawn by four men in her life: King Claudius, (the late King Hamlet’s brother), Polonius (Ophelia’s father and Claudius’s chief advisor), Laertes (brother), Prince Hamlet (betrothed)
1. Hamlet’s father dies; his
mother immediately marries the king’s brother while Hamlet is still traveling home from university,
2. Laertes and Ophelia are
close; he’s likely the only one who loves and supports her in any meaningful
way. Before leaving for France, in the beginning of the play, he bluntly tells her Hamlet will likely fall
out of love with her.
3. King Hamlet appears as a
ghost to Hamlet and tells him to avenge his death: His brother (Claudius)
killed him!
4. Claudius knows Hamlet
suspects him. He tells Polonius (a boorish toady whose nose lives up Claudius’s
ass) he’s worried Hamlet’s irrationally angry with his mother for the quick
marital turnaround and becoming unbalanced. Both are true; the genius of Claudius's villainy
is in how he takes advantage of the situation.
4. Polonius worries it’s politically unwise for Ophelia to remain betrothed to Hamlet and orders her to break up with
him. She, an obedient noblewoman, was truly devoted to her
undeserving father, ends it immediately.
5. Shortly after this,
Claudius decides Ophelia would be perfect to spy on Hamlet. Polonius, in a
bewilderingly quick turnaround, orders her to arrange a meeting with Hamlet to
reconcile. Hamlet, half mad himself, is unspeakably cruel to her – if you know
the phrase “get thee to a nunnery” it’s from this play. A nunnery is a
convent but was also popular slang for a brothel. He accuses
her of being unchaste - a convent would let her do penance for her sins; a
brothel lets her complete her fall.
6. Since Ophelia doesn't
get any intel, Polonius decides to do the spying. He hides behind a tapestry in
Gertrude’s chamber (Hamlet’s mom) to eavesdrop when Hamlet confronts her.
Polonius accidentally makes a noise and the increasingly paranoid Hamlet blindly
stabs into the drapes, killing Ophelia’s father.
7. Ophelia goes mad after
her father dies. Hamlet’s cruelty couldn’t have helped, but didn’t kick off her
insanity.
8. Ophelia doesn't commit
suicide. She’s wandering around in nature (her madness focuses on herbs and
flowers), climbs a tree, a branch breaks, and she falls into
a stream and drowns. Accidental death caused by insanity and an inability to identify sturdy branches. (Her death scene is considered one of the best
passages written in all of literature. It's included it below the
paintings.)
The Paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites
On the top, Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s The First Madness of
Ophelia and under it, John Everett Millais’s Ophelia. Fun fact: the
model in Millais’s painting is Rosetti's wife. Most of the members
modeled for paintings for each other (men and women) and most of them also
wrote poetry. Rosetti met his wife, Elizabeth Siddel, while they were modeling for another artist.
Waterhouse painted three, all titled Ophelia so they’re
distinguished by their dates. Very annoying when you have to write a paper about them.
Arthur Hughes
Other (more or less) Contemporary Artists
Alexandre Cabanel (French Classicism)
Marcus Stone, and Jules Joseph Lefevbre (Romanticism)
George Frederic Watts (Symbolism)
Eugene Delacroix (French Romanticism)
Edwin Austin Abbey (Late Romanticism)
Popping up in Pop Culture (I’m sorry, that’s awful)
You'll see Ophelia pops up all the time and everywhere. Here are the
ones I know off the top of my head:
- One of my favorite poems, T.S. Eliot's The
Wasteland, has several allusions to her.
- Sons of Anarchy, another favorite, is
based on Hamlet and the writers even lift a few lines, the one I remember is
that the sheriff thinks Jax’s (Hamlet) father died because of “poison poured in
his ear”; King Hamlet died of the same: Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, /
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, / And in the porches of my ears did
pour / The leperous distillment
- The heroine in Dostoevsky's The Brothers
Karamazov is based on Ophelia.
- Dmitri Shostakovich's Incidental Music to
Hamlet features a movement titled "Ophelia's Song," which depicts
her descent into madness (if you don't know the name, he's one of the greats in
classical music and I love his music very much).
- Hector Berlioz, a French Romanticist, did an
orchestral piece about Hamlet and one of its movements is The Death of
Ophelia. (A lot of people love him, but I am not one. He’s not bad, but
no Shostakovich.)
- One of Uranus's moons is named Ophelia.
- The TV show Succession is inspired by Shakespeare’s King Lear, but sometimes borrows from Hamlet and others. The writers are Brits and huge Shakespeare fans; Brian Cox is a classically trained Shakespearean actor who’s famous in the U.K. as a theater actor – he is, in fact, Sir Brian Cox. They borrow from lots of his plays (and poems – the show is crack for people who’ve studied literature). Shiv who ends up being a combo of Lear's daughter and Lady MacBeth.
· In a recent interview Taylor said Succession is one of
her favorite shows and (drum roll please) that the
tone/perspective of “Father Figure” was inspired by the scene where Roy Shiv’s
(Cox) realizes that his family are not serious people.
§ Shakespeare, Ophelia’s death scene
There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide
And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and endued unto
that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
