Ophelia

Ophelia is the Shakespearian heroine most commonly depicted in art. The mis en scene surrounding her death ( garlands of flowers each with their own meaning, the river, her long hair, and the heavily embroidered gown) have captured artists’ imaginations for years.

Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, reports Ophelia’s death in one of the most tragically poignant passages in all of Shakespeare. She uses nature, water, and flower imagery to show how the tormented beauty is now free of the cruel human world.

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering 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 indued
Unto that element.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7

Here are some of my favourite Ophelia paintings