Taylor Swift released her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, on October 3rd. Fans of William Shakespeare will especially appreciate the first song, titled “The Fate of Ophelia,” and its music video, which draws inspiration from his tragic play Hamlet (written around 1599-1601).
In the song, Swift expresses being rescued from a potentially tragic outcome, comparing it to the story of “Ophelia,” which many believe is about her partner, Travis Kelce.
“And if you’d never come for me,” goes the song. “I might’ve drowned in the melancholy.”
Ophelia, the main character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is famously known for her tragic death by drowning. This happened after she was rejected by Hamlet and witnessed his killing of her father. The lyric in Swift’s song and the artwork for The Life of a Showgirl seem to be based on a 19th-century painting. This painting shows the scene from Hamlet where Ophelia loses her mind, falls into a river, and drowns after discovering Hamlet killed her father.
It was fashionable at the time to create paintings based on the works of William Shakespeare, and Ophelia was a frequently chosen subject. John Everett Millais’ painting of “Ophelia” shows her floating in a stream, with her head and upper body visible above the water while the rest of her is underwater.
The Tate museum in the UK says that artist Elizabeth Siddal sat as a model for Millais for about four months. She posed in a bathtub filled with water that was kept warm using lamps. Millais then decorated her body with flowers representing themes like love, pain, innocence, and faithfulness.
The painting also served as inspiration for versions of Hamlet directed by Laurence Olivier (1948) and Kenneth Branagh (1996). It even appeared in the 1995 music video for “Where The Wild Roses Grow” by Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. The art news website ArtNet noted that a scene from season 3 of White Lotus – where Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Woods are shown floating lifeless in the water – seems to be directly influenced by the Millais painting. More recently, the 2019 film Ophelia, starring Daisy Ridley, is perhaps the most well-known portrayal of the character in popular culture, offering a fresh perspective on Hamlet by telling the story from Ophelia’s point of view.
Swift recognized the Hamlet allusion while discussing her upcoming album on Kelce’s podcast. She playfully said, “He might not have read Hamlet, but I filled him in on the story, so he’s aware of what it’s about.”
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2025-10-03 09:06