Ophelia

Larded with sweet flowers;Which bewept to the grave did go

With true-love showers.

Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce

than with honesty?

Let in the maid, that out a maidNever departed more.

But truly I do fear it.

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,  That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;

Therewith fantastic garlands did she makeOf crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purplesThat liberal shepherds give a grosser name,  

But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:

There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weedsClambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;When down her weedy trophies and herselfFell in the weeping brook.

Her clothes spread wide;And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds;   As one incapable of her own distress,Or like a creature native and induedUnto that element: but long it could not be

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious layTo muddy death.  

How now, Ophelia!Nay, but Ophelia,

Pretty Ophelia!

MUSIC“Beathe Me”, written by Dan Carey,

performed by Sía

TEXTLines spoken by or about the character of Ophelia, from “The Tragedy of Hamlet”, by

William Shakespeare

The ARTISTSIn order of their work’s appearance.

Georg FalkenburgUnknown

Dr. Huge Diamond, photograph of asylum patientDominico Tonjetti

Jean Baptiste BertrandMadaleine Lemair

ETJohn W. Waterhouse

Robert WestallW. G. Simmonds

Joseph StellaPaul Steck

Ernest HerbertAuguste Preault

OpheliaTitle song, written and performed by Natalie

Merchant