Death of Ophelia


Padme as Ophelia



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: 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 Act IV, scene vii







Alexandre Cabanel, 1883 Eugene Delacroix, 1853


Paul Albert Steck, 1895 W.G. Simmonds, 1910


Sir John Everett Millais, 1852 Odilon Redon, 1905


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