Fascinating Things You Might Not Know About Millais’s Ophelia
The classic amalgamation of art and literature
Act IV, Scene VII of Hamlet in a speech by Queen Gertrude —
Out of her mind with grief, Ophelia has been making garlands of wildflowers. She climbs into a willow tree overhanging a brook to dangle some from its branches, and a bough breaks beneath her. She lies in the water singing songs, as if unaware of her danger (“incapable of her own distress”).
Her clothes, trapping air, have allowed her to temporarily stay afloat (“Her clothes spread wide, / And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up.”). But eventually, “her garments, heavy with their drink, / Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay” down “to muddy death”.
It is that moment when Hamlet has murdered Ophelia’s father, Polonius, and Ophelia is shell-shocked by the death of her father at the hands of her beloved Hamlet. She is unable to face this tragic loss and letting herself drown in the river. An empty lifeless gaze is visible on her face and she seems to be surrendering herself to death.
This is Ophelia — the tragic-romantic figure from Hamlet which is Shakespeare’s most powerful and influential work of literature. Almost after 250 years, during the Victorian era, Ophelia’s character was rekindled…
