(above) Ophelia by John Everett Millais (1852)

(left) "Ophelia" by The Lumineers (2016)

OPHELIA  There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.

Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies,

that’s for thoughts.

LAERTES  A document in madness: thoughts and remembrance

fitted.

OPHELIA  There’s fennel for you, and columbines.

There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we

may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. You must wear

your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would

give you some violets, but they withered all when

my father died. They say he made a good end.

Common features between the Ophelia renditions in the video: vacant, staring eyes and a high soprano, something childlike about her madness, hair down and long and disheveled... Major differences: sometimes the line "he is dead and gone lady" is directed at Gertrude, making the song more accusatory. There is sometimes a possession-style vibe to her in this moment, I wonder how agentive her death (potential suicide) is after this moment.

For more information about music in Shakespeare's plays, feel free to skim this article. A relevant snippet from this source: "The pathos of Ophelia’s madness was increased with the knowledge, which probably went back to childhood, of the folk songs she croons in her distraction."

A fun phrase from the same article that perhaps isn't all that related to Ophelia but still interesting and so I'm including it: "Certain instruments had symbolic significance for Elizabethans. Hoboys (oboes) were ill winds that blew no good; their sounds presaged doom or disaster... Hoboys provided a grim overture to the dumb show in Hamlet."

Madness and Gender

The gendered dynamics of madness in Hamlet are notable, and we see Ophelia and Hamlet embodying very different versions of madness. Ophelia's conduct is closer to the 19th century's "hysteria" diagnosis given to women, while Hamlet is more in line with "melancholia". 

In early modern England, one's physical and emotional state was thought to be tied to the movement of humors in the body, a theory of the body that came from ancient Mesopotamia. When one was ill, dyscrasia, or the imbalance of humors, was to blame. Melancholia was thought to be the result of an excess of black bile, and was "grossest of the foure corporall humours , which if it abound too much , causeth heavinesse and sadnes of minde" (Cockeram, English Dictionarie, 1623).

Madness and Religion

Madness was also sometimes thought to be a battle between good (sacred) and evil (demonic) forces within the body. The clip to the right, from the movie Possession (1981), is a literal manifestation of that idea.