“Ophelia” by Sir John Everett Millais
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Muddy Death
“When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook.
Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up…
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.”
- “Hamlet” Act 4 Scene 7
Ophelia is a character from Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet”.
Upon finding out that her crush (the eponymous Hamlet) accidentally killed her father, she suffered a mental breakdown and while walking through woods collecting wild flowers and singing haunting songs, she fell into a river and drowned.
Her last living moment is what John Everett Millais captured in this painting. His goal being to paint the very act of dying as something beautiful.
While many other artists painted Ophelia before and after, it was almost always to capture the moments before her slippy-fall… and yet it’s Millais’ vision that lives on in our collective memory.
