Cultural references to Ophelia

Ophelia, a character in William Shakespeare's drama Hamlet, is often referred to in literature and the arts,[1] often in connection to suicide, love, and/or mental instability.

Ophelia was a favorite subject of artist John William Waterhouse.[citation needed]

Literature

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Ophelia by John Everett Millais (1852) is part of the Tate Gallery collection. His painting influenced the image in both Laurence Olivier's and Kenneth Branagh's films of Hamlet.[citation needed]
 
Ophelia as appeared in The Works of Shakspere, with notes by Charles Knight, ca. 1873

Novels

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  • Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, in the first chapter of his 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov, described a capricious young woman who committed suicide by throwing herself off a steep cliff into a river, simply to imitate Shakespeare's Ophelia. Dostoevsky concludes that "Even then, if the cliff, chosen and cherished from long ago, had not been so picturesque, if it had been merely a flat, prosaic bank, the suicide might not have taken place at all." Dostoevsky also depicts the heroine Grushenka as Ophelia, binding the two through the words "Woe is me!" in the chapter titled "The First Torment".[2]
  • Dating Hamlet (2002), by Lisa Fiedler, tells a version of Ophelia's story.[3]
  • Agatha Christie's characters refer to Ophelia in the novels After the Funeral (1953), Third Girl (1966) and Nemesis (1971).[4][5]
  • In Jasper Fforde's novel Something Rotten (2004) Ophelia tries to take over the play during Hamlet's excursion to the real world.[6]
  • Ophelia by Lisa Klein tells the story of Hamlet from Ophelia's point of view.[7]
  • In Paul Griffiths' novel let me tell you (2008) Ophelia tells a narrative using only her words from Hamlet, rearranged. The novel has been adapted as music by Hans Abrahamsen.[8][9]

Poetry

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Non-fiction

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  • Mary Pipher alluded to Ophelia in the title of her nonfiction book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. The book puts forth the thesis that modern American teenage girls are victimized, lost, and unsure of themselves, like Ophelia.[12][13]

Drama

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  • In 2011 the Department of Theatre and Performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum invited director Katie Mitchell and Leo Warner of 59 Productions to conceive and produce a video installation exploring the nature of 'truth in performance'.[14] Taking as its inspiration 5 of the most influential European theatre directors of the last century, the project examines how each of the practitioners would direct the actress playing Ophelia in the famous 'mad' scenes in the play. This multiscreen video installation, launched at the Chantiers Europe festival at the Theatre de la Ville in Paris on 4 June, and opened at the museum on 12 July 2011.[15][16]

Film and television

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Music

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Classical works

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Contemporary

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The First Madness of Ophelia (1864), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Science

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Video games

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  • The Sims 2, one of the three neighborhoods, Strangetown, is inhabited by a character named Ophelia Nigmos. An interesting fact is that another neighborhood called Veronaville is entirely based on and dedicated to the plays of William Shakespeare.
  • Brütal Legend features a supporting character named Ophelia, voiced by Jennifer Hale.[55] Her name and story are references to the plot of Hamlet.
  • Elsinore retells Hamlet from the point of view of Ophelia, who is caught in a time loop that always results in her death and seeks to escape it while investigating mysteries in the castle.

Arthur Hughes

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John William Waterhouse

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Other artists

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References

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  1. ^ Harris, Jonathan Gil (2010). Shakespeare and Literary Theory. Oxford University Press. p. 118. ISBN 9780199573387. Retrieved 12 July 2019.
  2. ^ Jackson, Robert Louis; Allen, Elizabeth Cheresh; Morson, Gary Saul (1995). Freedom and Responsibility in Russian Literature: Essays in Honor of Robert Louis Jackson. Northwestern University Press. pp. 105–109. ISBN 9780810111462. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
  3. ^ Shaughnessy, Robert (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture. Cambridge University Press. p. 125. ISBN 9780521844291.
  4. ^ Bunson, Matthew (2000). The Complete Christie: An Agatha Christie Encyclopedia. Simon and Schuster. p. 185. ISBN 9780671028312. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
  5. ^ Hopkins, Lisa (2016). Shakespearean Allusion in Crime Fiction: DCI Shakespeare. Springer. p. 44. ISBN 9781137538758. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
  6. ^ Funk, Wolfgang (2015). The Literature of Reconstruction: Authentic Fiction in the New Millennium. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. p. 157. ISBN 9781501306181. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
  7. ^ Loftis, Sonya Freeman; Kellar, Allison; Ulevich, Lisa (2017). SHAKESPEARE'S HAMLET IN AN ERA OF TEXTUAL EXHAUSTION. Routledge. ISBN 9781351967457. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
  8. ^ Shakespeare in Our Time: A Shakespeare Association of America Collection. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2016. ISBN 9781472520432.
  9. ^ Tommasini, Anthony (18 January 2016). "Review: 'Let Me Tell You' Has Its New York Premiere". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
  10. ^ Bailey, Helen Phelps (1964). Hamlet in France: From Voltaire to Laforgue ; (with an Epilogue). Librairie Droz. p. 150. ISBN 9782600034708.
  11. ^ Bloom, Harold (2007). T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Infobase Publishing. p. 186. ISBN 9780791093078. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
  12. ^ Code, Lorraine (2002). Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories. Routledge. p. 3. ISBN 9781134787265. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
  13. ^ "Why 'Women Rowing North' May Be the Next Boomer Bible". Next Avenue. 14 March 2019. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
  14. ^ "Five Truths - 59 Productions".
  15. ^ "Five Truths - Victoria and Albert Museum". Archived from the original on 1 August 2011.
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  17. ^ Dunn, George A.; Eberl, Jason T. (2013). Sons of Anarchy and Philosophy: Brains Before Bullets. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781118641668. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
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  21. ^ Honig, Bonnie; Marso, Lori J. (2016). Politics, Theory, and Film: Critical Encounters with Lars von Trier. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190600204.
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