Posted by Alumni from The Atlantic
April 22, 2026
In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the lovelorn Ophelia famously drowns. The prince of Denmark has cruelly spurned her, her father has died, and she's stricken with grief. If only she had realized Taylor Swift's vision for her: In the song 'The Fate of Ophelia,' the pop star imagines that she has instead been saved by a new suitor. Her version of the tragic figure, Swift sings, is 'no longer drowning and deceived, all because you came for me.' Hollywood has been making me think of Swift's track quite a bit lately. The sparkly earworm deploys one of her favorite tricks: messing around with a literary classic for lyrical fodder. Cinema has been going through its own 'Fate of Ophelia' era these past few months, with a litany of new adaptations that dramatically alter their source material. The writer-director Emerald Fennell turned Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte's Gothic novel about obsession and social status, into erotic fanfiction. Maggie Gyllenhaal introduced audiences to a vengeful Mary... learn more