Taylor Swift‘s newly launched album The Lifetime of a Showgirl contains a tune that attracts on a well-known but tragic narrative taken up by artists and writers alike throughout time.
The primary monitor on the document, titled “The Destiny of Ophelia,” refers the character who meets a tragic finish in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Within the play, Hamlet by accident kills Ophelia’s father, inflicting her to interrupt up together with her lover. She turns into so consumed by grief that she in the end drowns herself.
The narrative has not solely impressed Swift, however numerous others because it was initially revealed in 1623. One such instance is John Everett Millais’s portray Ophelia (1851–52), which depicts the titular character singing within the moments earlier than she dies in a rustic stream. The Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece gives a layered and romanticized view of feminine struggling, with every flower related to a specific advantage within the Victorian period.
The Tate, which owns the portray and reveals it recurrently at Tate Britain in London, posted the portray this week to debate what the museum community described as “the true Destiny of Ophelia”: the dying of its mannequin, the artist Elizabeth Siddal, in 1862 following a laudanum overdose. (Suicide was unlawful when Siddal died, and the circumstances of her dying are nonetheless debated.)
Swift’s album cowl, which equally reveals the pop sensation floating together with her head simply above water, has drawn comparisons to the Millais portray.
For her half, nonetheless, Swift has reclaimed the narrative of Ophelia in mild of her to this point profitable relationship together with her now-fiancé, the American soccer participant Travis Kelce.
Within the upbeat pop tune, the singer gives within the first verse, “And if you happen to’d by no means come for me / I’d’ve drowned within the melancholy,” not not like the Shakespearean character.
Within the refrain, Swift subsequently croons “Late one evening / You dug me out of my grave / And saved my coronary heart from the destiny of Ophelia.” Later rewriting a cheerful ending the character herself by no means acquired, Swift sings, “It’s about to be the sleepless evening you’ve been dreaming of / The destiny of Ophelia”.
Within the second verse, Swift gives additional backstory on the character who eluded love earlier than referencing her personal turbulent relationship historical past previous to her relationship with Kelce. In the long run, Swift says that, as a result of she discovered love with Kelce, she won’t die as Ophelia did: “The destiny of Ophelia / It’s locked inside my reminiscence / And solely you possess the important thing / Not drowning and deceived / All since you got here for me.”
The twist in “The Destiny of Ophelia” recollects an analogous reclamation in Swift’s 2008 monitor “Love Story,” which turns one other Shakespeare tragedy—Romeo and Juliet in that case—on its head.
