The Fate of Ophelia track on Taylor Swift's latest album The Life of a Showgirl, references the famed character in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Photo / Getty Images
Swift’s new single, The Fate of Ophelia, references the famed character, who went mad and drowned. We asked some scholars for their take.
Hours after Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, was released, her fans arrived in droves at movie theatres around the United States. They wore Eras Tour shirts and sparkles and the album’s signature colour orange, because when Taylor Swift releases a record, it’s an all-consuming, weekend-spanning event.
In this case, Swifties showed up for The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, an 89-minute “theatrical experience” in which Swift debuted the lyric videos for the 12 tracks and briefly explained the story behind each song. At a showing in Arlington, Virginia, the packed audience on Friday afternoon cheered as Swift appeared on screen, sitting in a director’s chair.
Swift only revealed a few notable tidbits: while discussing Cancelled!, which she called a “tongue-in-cheek” song about social outrage, she said that she’s the go-to person whom other people (presumably famous ones) frantically call for advice when they feel the wrath of the public. She explained that she wanted to collaborate with pop star Sabrina Carpenter on the title track, a tale about the strangeness of fame, because she admires how Carpenter has adjusted to the spotlight. She didn’t go into detail about Wood, whose lyrics include some spicy euphemisms about her fiancé Travis Kelce’s physical attributes, though she let a pause linger at the end of her vague explanation. (The audience laughed knowingly.)
But the main point of the film was to debut the music video for The Fate of Ophelia, which played twice, and included behind-the-scenes footage of Swift directing the video. The song, co-written by Swift and her pop-producer collaborators Max Martin and Shellback, is the album’s lead single, and references the famed character in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet who goes mad and drowns.
The Ophelia imagery looms large on this record. The cover of the album features Swift in a water-filled bathtub in a slinky showgirl get-up, meant to evoke John Everett Millais’ 1850s painting of Ophelia’s death; the music video begins and ends with similar scenes. When Swift announced the album over the summer, she said the project was inspired by her time behind the curtain on her record-breaking Eras Tour; and the cover art referenced how she would unwind after each physically gruelling, three-hour-plus concert by taking a bath. But she was also thinking about Ophelia’s depressing fate.
During the movie, Swift said that the idea for the song sparked when she was in the studio with Martin and Shellback and scrolling through a list of song ideas on her phone. Shellback happened to play a “really cool chord progression” just as her eyes scanned across the word Ophelia. She started thinking about what would have happened if Ophelia had not been driven crazy – by her father, by Hamlet inadvertently killing her father, by being rejected by Hamlet – and met someone who actually treated her well.
“All these men were just gaslighting her until she drowned,” Swift said. She started imagining how to reframe the story. “What if the hook is that you saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia? Basically, you are the reason why I didn’t end up like this tragic poetic heroine, hero, girl, who passed away in fictional world?”
Thus, the track was born: “Late one night, you dug me out of my grave and / Saved my heart from the fate of / Ophelia,” Swift sings in the chorus, and mixes in internet-speak: “Keep it 100 on the land, the sea, the sky / Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes.” At one point in the video, which features scenes of various showgirls, someone randomly throws Swift a football; she didn’t mention Kelce by name, but clearly didn’t want to leave any room for doubt about who has great vibes.
Swift has been drawn to the Bard in the past, though she tends to repurpose his tragedies. In 2008, she released Love Story (her lead single off her sophomore country album Fearless), which offered a cheerier take on a devastating tale: In her version, Romeo and Juliet clear up any misunderstandings and end up married. The song was an enormous hit and helped Swift pave a path to pop superstardom.
“I love Shakespeare,” Swift said earnestly during the movie, and then made fun of herself for saying something so obvious. “It holds up! It’s actually not overhyped. And I just love those tragedies so much, I fall in love with those characters so much, that it hurts me that they die.” She liked to think that fans might learn something from her allusions to the Ophelia painting. “Art history for pop fans,” she said.
Swift always sends a pointed message with her lead single, so what exactly is she trying to say here – besides offering a window into her literary inspirations? It seems significant that the broader concept is about a woman being driven to madness, a topic that Swift has tackled in the past: the very literal Mad Woman in 2020, the wounded lyrics throughout The Tortured Poets Department in 2024.
While this idea often has to do with love (“Don’t blame me, love made me crazy,” she sings on the 2017 album Reputation), and Swift turns Ophelia into a romantic story, she has emphasised that the album itself is driven by her experience on the Eras Tour, which became a cultural phenomenon and the highest-grossing tour in history.
Swift also sings on the record about the surreal and damaging aspects of fame. So Swift putting this song front and centre could also be a subtle reminder about how, in addition to escaping Ophelia’s fate and finding love, she has emerged triumphant from the mind-bending experience of being a celebrity in the male-dominated music industry. She has remained on top of the world even after she has felt, well, Cancelled! over the backlashes to various things she has said and done.
Some good news: Shakespeare scholars will not cancel Swift for invoking Hamlet. Before the album dropped, The Washington Post spoke with some experts at the Folger Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington (which houses the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare-related material) to see what they thought of the biggest pop star on the planet stepping on their turf. Patricia Akhimie, the director, and Ashley Buchanan, associate director for fellowships, said they understood why Swift would be drawn to such a fascinating character – especially one who goes through such a relatable scenario for women. The men in Ophelia’s life have competing desires for what she should do, and it turns into a no-win scenario.
They pointed out that Ophelia doesn’t actually die onstage; her death is described by another character, which is the only way the audience knows what happened to her. Swift, on the other hand, features herself as Ophelia right on the cover of her album. As she gazes meaningfully at the camera while floating in the bathtub, it looks like she can actually take control of her own story.
“That is an image that is fully informed by the artist who created the music, and who had input into the construction of that image and all that it means,” Akhimie said. “So that’s a real taking back of the power in creating an image of your own self and your work.”
As the public knows, there’s nothing Swift craves more than ownership of her work. Buchanan theorised that for Swift, the concept of Ophelia escaping her original fate could also represent a rebirth: “I think she is going to – through her music, through her lyrics – be reborn into a new era.”
And yes, they are pleased whenever Shakespeare becomes a topic of discussion in current pop culture.
“I love when contemporary artists in whatever medium use Shakespeare to do something that is new and unexpected,” Akhimie said. “To me, that is the most important work that Shakespeare can do in our contemporary world.”
“Plenty of artists have built on Shakespeare. It’s timeless throughout the centuries,” Buchanan added. “I think it’s because it’s these timeless experiences of love, loss and self-expression, and using beautiful words to try to understand your own lived experience.”