
Shakespeare's
Hamlet and the story of Ophelia
The story of Ophelia has always been a favorite of
mine. Beautiful Ophelia entrusts her happiness with
the males in her life...yet this is her downfall. When
she betrays Hamlet, she loses him, driving her to
madness. It all ends with her sad floral songs at the
entrancing brook, where her adornment drowns her.
Hamlet - Act IV, scene VII
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.