Sarah Bernhardt's Ophelia

Authors

  • Alan R. Young Acadia University

Keywords:

Hamlet, Ophelia, Art, Sculpture, Painting

Abstract

This essay argues that both Sarah Bernhardt's 1880 sculpture of the drowned Ophelia and her later, on-stage appearance in 1886 as the dead Ophelia contributed significantly to the nineteenth-century obsession with death and sexuality. The cult of Ophelia was central to this obsession, and in both her sculpture and stage appearance, Bernhardt added subversive aspects that hinted at the nature of the female subject and the afterlife of Ophelia that would continue to play a significant role in visual culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Author Biography

Alan R. Young, Acadia University

Alan R. Young is Professor Emeritus at Acadia University. He has written extensively on Shakespeare, emblem literature, the English Renaissance, and the literature of Atlantic Canada. In a number of recent articles, and in his Hamlet and the Visual Arts, 1709-1900 (2002) and Punch and Shakespeare in the Victorian Era (2007), he has documented aspects of the nineteenth-century reception and appropriation of Shakespeare. He has had a long-standing interest in visual representations of Ophelia and recently created a website concerned with "The Death of Shakespeare's Ophelia, Popular Culture, and Web 2.0."

Issue Cover text: B&L, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2013. Image: 19th century actress Sarah Bernhardt dressed as Hamlet poses holding Yorick's skull.

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Published

2013-05-01

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 1 (2013): Spring/Summer

Section

Articles