Saturday, January 18, 2025

Invisible Strings - 29. "Ophelia, Mania from the Willow Tree" by Andrea Simpson

"Ophelia, Mania from the Willow Tree" by Andrea Simpson

It seems that "mad woman" would be the obvious choice here, but when I compared the song and the poem, it just didn't sit with me. There's a lot of anger in "mad woman" that I just don't pick up in the poem.

I think a closer match is "hoax." My first clue was the line in the poem, "What is your reason?" followed later by, "Please give me any reason?" And these lines seem to match the line in the song, "Stood on the cliffside screaming / 'Give me a reason.'" Both the poem and the song mention the word blue in relation to sadness.

In the first verse of the song, she mentions a "twisted knife," and the first line of the poem reads, "We marked our love / with the blade of your grandfather's knife."

From my very basic understanding of Ophelia's character in Hamlet, she is in love with Hamlet, but he spurns her in front of Polonius and Claudius, who had planned to eavesdrop on her conversation with him. This (along with the death of her father) drives her mad. This seems to align with the final lines in the song, "My only one / My kingdom come undone / My broken drum / You have beaten my heart."

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