orginal image taken with fujifinepix
manipulated in PS Elements 7
own stock used
model myself
lighting: industrial floodlight
170 veiws 14-01-11

the sorrow and pain of Shakespeare’s Ophelia, is something that always seems to touch deeply in my heart everytime i read “Hamlet”. The madness and the torment she suffers, with the final descion beng suicide, of beliving there is no other option, i think somewhere in the back of my mind, i understand.

“QUEEN GERTRUDE:
One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,
So fast they follow; your sister’s drown’d, Laertes.

LAERTES:
Drown’d! O, where?

QUEEN GERTRUDE:
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 boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
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.

LAERTES :
Alas, then, she is drown’d?

QUEEN GERTRUDE:
Drown’d, drown’d.

LAERTES:
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears: but yet
It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will: when these are gone,
The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord:
I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
But that this folly douts it."