Analysis reveals Shakespearean references in Swift's lyrics, suggesting a contrast between past and present relationships.
Abstract “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 fun-loving 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.
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J. Richard Wilson (2025) studied this question.
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