[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-132983-en":3,"doc-seo-132983-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":21,"is_downloadable":21,"audit_status":21,"page_count":22,"language":23,"language_code":24,"site_id":25,"html_lang":24,"table_of_contents":26,"faqs":27,"seo_title":28,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":29,"read_time":20},132983,3848291630094,"Emma Wilson","https://eur-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_085a072bc5b1113ac321206ff7593b45",2,"Literature","Shakespeare and the Fate of Taylor Swift - Original Article","“The Fate of Ophelia” uses a Shakespearean allusion to frame Taylor Swift’s relationship with her fiancé, Travis Kelce. The essay reads Ophelia from Hamlet as a model of melancholy love culminating in suicide and argues that Swift positions Kelce as the anti-Hamlet, reversing earlier “moody” portrayals. It further explores how the song restores Swift’s identity as a Shakespeare reader and reimagines Ophelia by linking Shakespeare’s character to Swift’s pop stardom, lyrics, and public narrative.","Public Humanities (2025), 1, e167, 1–5 doi:10.1017/pub.2025.10084  \nRO U N DTA B L E  \nShakespeare and the Fate of Taylor Swift  \nJeffrey R. Wilson   \nHarvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA [Email:](Email: jeffrey_wilson@harvard.edu)[ jeffrey_wilson@harvard.edu](Email: jeffrey_wilson@harvard.edu)  \n(Received 12 October 2025; revised 23 October 2025; accepted 23 October 2025)  \nAbstract  \n“The Fate of Ophelia,” the opening track on Taylor Swift’s album The Life of a Showgirl, includes an unsettling Shakespearean allusion. Ophelia was the jilted lover of the melancholy prince in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a woman whose life ends in suicide. Swift’s song says her fiancé, Travis Kelce, saved her from the fate of Ophelia, positioning her previous boyfriends as moody philosophers and the funloving jock Kelce as the anti-Hamlet. This song also recuperates Swift as a reader of Shakespeare after the startingly bad account of Romeo and Juliet in “Love Story,” the song that started Swift’s career.  \nKeywords: Ophelia; Taylor Swift; The Fate of Ophelia; The Life of a Showgirl; William Shakespeare  \nTravis Kelce is the anti-Hamlet. That’s the point of Taylor Swift’s Shakespearean love letter to her fiancé in “The Fate of Ophelia,” the opening track on her album The Life of a Showgirl.  \nThe song recounts their very public courtship, which began when Kelce told the Internet that he wantedto date her.1 “I heardyou calling on the megaphone./You want to see me all alone,”Swift croonsin the album’s first lines.2 AssheputitonKelce’s New Heights podcast,“This is sort  \nofwhat I’ve been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager.”3 Apparently, Swift was in a bad place, as this shockingly confessional song reveals:  \nAnd if you’d never called for me, I might have drowned in melancholy.  \nI swore my loyalty to me, myself, and I Right before you lit my sky up.  \nThen comes the Shakespearean twist: Swift sings that Kelce saved her from “the fate of Ophelia.” It’s a troubling allusion, suggesting suicide.  \nIn Hamlet, Ophelia is the daughter of Polonius, the King’s closest advisor. She and the cerebral, brooding Prince Hamlet are an item, or they were—they do not really know  \n1 New Heights 2023.  \n2 Swift 2025.  \n3 New Heights 2025.  \n© The Author(s), 2025 . Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence ([http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.  \n[https://doi.org/10.1017/pub.2025.10084](https://doi.org/10.1017/pub.2025.10084 Published)[ Published](https://doi.org/10.1017/pub.2025.10084 Published) online by Cambridge University Press  \n2 Jeffrey R. Wilson  \nwhere they stand. Then he flies off the handle, chiding,“Get thee to a nunnery!”4 In Swift’s reading of the play:  \nThe eldest daughter of a nobleman,  \nOphelia lived in fantasy.  \nBut love was a cold bed full of scorpions.  \nThe venom stole her sanity.5  \nKnowing Ophelia’s story gives texture to the situation Swift imagined herself in. Knowing Swift’s story also expands our understanding of Shakespeare’s character. What if, instead of seeing Ophelia as the mousy daughter of a nobleman who is helplessly pilloried by the men in her life, we see her as a genius songstress, a romantic who longs for traditional love in a world rapidly changing around her, as a pop-diva superstar whose reluctant entry to politics aggrieves the highest power in the land, as a celebrity with a fiercely loyal following who suffersin silence behind the scenes? The fate ofOphelia in Shakespeare’splay hits different if it follows the life of a showgirl.  \nShakespeare conveyed Ophelia’s madness by having her sing songs in public, some of them moody and atmospheric:  \nHe is dead and gone, lady,  \nHe is dead and gone;  \nAt his head a grass-green turf, ","cbCaimcfXfVBWqDQ","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaimcfXfVBWqDQ","pdf",575578,8,1,5,"English","en",105,"# The Shakespearean allusion in “The Fate of Ophelia”\n## Ophelia, Hamlet, and the suicide implication\n## Kelce as the anti-Hamlet\n# Swift’s Shakespearean readership and career context\n## “Love Story” and the earlier Romeo and Juliet account\n## Recuperating Swift as a reader\n# Recasting Ophelia’s madness and songs\n## Ophelia’s public singing in 4.2\n## Drowning in 4.4 and its cultural afterlife\n# Public courtship and lyrical transformation","[{\"question\":\"How does “The Fate of Ophelia” connect Taylor Swift to Shakespeare’s Hamlet?\",\"answer\":\"The song opens with an allusion to Ophelia’s tragic fate in Hamlet, where Ophelia is associated with melancholy love and suicide. Swift uses this framing to interpret her own romantic story in Shakespearean terms.\"},{\"question\":\"Why is Travis Kelce described as the “anti-Hamlet”?\",\"answer\":\"The essay argues that Swift’s narrative positions Kelce against the melancholy prince’s pattern, making Kelce the figure who saves her from Ophelia’s fate. Kelce’s role is contrasted with moody, philosophizing ex-boyfriends.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the essay say about Ophelia’s death and funeral implications in Hamlet?\",\"answer\":\"It notes that Shakespeare’s gravediggers treat Ophelia’s death as suicide, which explains why she cannot receive full Christian burial rights. This reading underpins the disturbing force of the allusion in Swift’s song.\"}]","Shakespeare and the Fate of Taylor Swift - Original Article | PDF",1787212276,{"code":4,"msg":31,"data":32},"ok",{"site_id":25,"language":24,"slug":33,"title":13,"keywords":34,"description":14,"schema_data":35,"social_meta":86,"head_meta":88,"extra_data":90,"updated_unix":29},"shakespeare-and-the-fate-of-taylor-swift-original-article","",{"@graph":36,"@context":85},[37,53,68],{"@type":38,"itemListElement":39},"BreadcrumbList",[40,44,47,50],{"item":41,"name":42,"@type":43,"position":21},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":45,"name":46,"@type":43,"position":11},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",{"item":48,"name":12,"@type":43,"position":49},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":51,"name":13,"@type":43,"position":52},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/shakespeare-and-the-fate-of-taylor-swift-original-article/132983/",4,{"url":51,"name":13,"@type":54,"author":55,"headline":13,"publisher":57,"fileFormat":60,"inLanguage":24,"description":14,"dateModified":61,"datePublished":62,"encodingFormat":60,"isAccessibleForFree":63,"interactionStatistic":64},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":56},"Person",{"url":41,"name":58,"@type":59},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-07","2026-08-20",true,{"@type":65,"interactionType":66,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":67},"ViewAction",{"@type":69,"mainEntity":70},"FAQPage",[71,77,81],{"name":72,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":74},"How does “The Fate of Ophelia” connect Taylor Swift to Shakespeare’s Hamlet?","Question",{"text":75,"@type":76},"The song opens with an allusion to Ophelia’s tragic fate in Hamlet, where Ophelia is associated with melancholy love and suicide. Swift uses this framing to interpret her own romantic story in Shakespearean terms.","Answer",{"name":78,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":79},"Why is Travis Kelce described as the “anti-Hamlet”?",{"text":80,"@type":76},"The essay argues that Swift’s narrative positions Kelce against the melancholy prince’s pattern, making Kelce the figure who saves her from Ophelia’s fate. Kelce’s role is contrasted with moody, philosophizing ex-boyfriends.",{"name":82,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":83},"What does the essay say about Ophelia’s death and funeral implications in Hamlet?",{"text":84,"@type":76},"It notes that Shakespeare’s gravediggers treat Ophelia’s death as suicide, which explains why she cannot receive full Christian burial rights. This reading underpins the disturbing force of the allusion in Swift’s song.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":51,"og:type":87,"og:title":13,"og:site_name":58,"og:description":14},"article",{"robots":89,"canonical":51},"index,follow",{"doc_id":7,"site_id":25},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":92},[93,97,100,104,108,113,118,122,127,130,134],{"id":21,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":94,"show_sort_weight":95,"slug":96},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":11,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":12,"show_sort_weight":98,"slug":99},80,"literature",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":101,"show_sort_weight":102,"slug":103},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":105,"show_sort_weight":106,"slug":107},"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":109,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":110,"show_sort_weight":111,"slug":112},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":114,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":115,"show_sort_weight":116,"slug":117},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":20,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":119,"show_sort_weight":120,"slug":121},"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":123,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":124,"show_sort_weight":125,"slug":126},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":125,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":128,"show_sort_weight":125,"slug":129},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":131,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":132,"show_sort_weight":131,"slug":133},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":135,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":136,"show_sort_weight":22,"slug":137},19,"General","general"]