Ophelia
Posted: April 3, 2014 Filed under: Art, Prose, Writing | Tags: 19th century, 20th century, 21st century, Alessandra Sanguineti, Alessandra Sanguinetti, art history, death, drowned, Ellen Kooi, Fire with Fire, Gregory Crewdson, Hamlet, John Everett Millais, Nadav Kander, Ophelia, recreation, Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Ophelia, the way home, Tom Hunter, Virginia Madsen, water, William Shakespeare, woman 1 Comment“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: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Ophelia. John Everett Millais. 1851.
Millais‘ emblematic representation of Shakespeare’s Ophelia recreated through the ages:
Virginia Madsen recreates Ophelia in this scene from the film Fire with Fire, 1986.
The Way Home. Tom Hunter. 1999-2001.
Untitled (Ophelia). Gregory Crewdson. 2001.
Alessandra Sanguineti. Ophelia. 2002.
Erin Oconnor Posing as Ophelia. Nadav Kander. 2004.
Almere – Ophelia. Ellen Kooi. 2006.
“Lay her i’ the earth:
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring!”
