Ophelia, 1850 Millais, Depicts Ophelia's Death in Hamlet

Ophelia
1850 Millais, Depicts Ophelia's Death in Hamlet

Ophelia
John Millais 1850Oil paint on canvas (2’6” x 3’6”)

Actual size.

The painting depicts Ophelia's Death in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act IV, Scene vii

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    [My notes:
    Hamlet and Ophelia are lovers.
    Hamlet kills Ophelia's father.
    When Ophelia finds out, she loses touch with reality.
     Ophelia drowns.]

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QUEEN GERTRUDE reports Ophelia's death:

      "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 [1] boughs her coronet [2] weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke; [3]
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore [4] her up:

"Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued [5]
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."

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Ophelia
Study by John Millais

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[1] overhanging

[2] Prickly leaves or flowers.

[3] The branch broke and Ophelia falls into the brook.

[4] held or supported

[6] Ophelia behaves as though the weeds and water were her natural habitat.

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