There’s nothing worse than demeaning a woman with regard to her “comprehension” of something. As if women don’t get enough grief/aren’t already questioned constantly whenever they say anything that a man (or fellow woman) can pounce on as being “wrong.” Just look at the clip of Kurt Loder correcting Jewel about the meaning of “casualty” in her A Night Without Armor poetry book. Or having to point out that Olivia Rodrigo cited the wrong Joan Didion text when explaining her inspiration behind “all-american bitch.” But, unfortunately, there are times when it has to be done. Taylor Swift incorporating Hamlet—or what she thinks is Hamlet—into a song called “The Fate of Ophelia” qualifies as one of those times.

While some might consider it “well-intentioned” or even beneficial that Swift should draw so many ears to the “wonderful world of Shakespeare,” it’s not really as though the playwright (or “The Bard,” as some [more pretentious] people like to call him) needs more attention. In fact, apart from Swift herself, he might just be the most revered “bard” out there. Conspiracy theories aside as to whether or not Shakespeare was the true author of the plays that the world now has coursing through their consciousness (with no need of any assistance from Swift on that front), Hamlet is amongst the most well-known, beloved and oft-cited of Shakespeare robust oeuvre. Often to the point where many people don’t feel they need to even bother reading the play. Swift’s fiancé, Travis Kelce, being one such person. As confirmed on the episode of the Kelce brothers’ New Heights podcast wherein Swift declared, “He may not have read Hamlet, but I explained it to him.”

But the truth is, one tends to wonder if she even read it. And if she did, did she actually understand it? Because she seems to have totally missed the part where the “fate of Ophelia,” no matter how you slice it, spin it or generally wield it to suit your own purposes, is all about how women have no agency. That the trajectory of their life is to be “handed off” from their father to their “suitor,” and both “saviors” tend to treat them like shit. Like things. Commodities to be bartered depending on their age, appearance and status (side note: little has fundamentally changed on that front, though society would certainly like to believe otherwise). Throughout Hamlet, Ophelia is accordingly passed around by the men in her life like, well, a football (to use a simile that Kelce would understand). Manipulated to do their bidding and acquiescing every time. Just as a “good girl” should.

Of course, there’s a chance that Swift, looking back on things, sees herself in that way. Hence, the song “Father Figure” on The Life of a Showgirl, which has her speaking from the POV of, most likely, Scott Borchetta, the head of Big Machine Records who signed her when she was fourteen (though Swift will insist, in part thanks to her politically correct media training, that it was a certain scene in Succession that mostly inspired it). But even if she did “once upon a time” view herself as the exploited ingenue, at present, there’s not much about Ophelia she can “identify with,” being a rich, empowered woman and all. Though not so empowered that she can’t help but revert back to the reverence for fairy tales that have conditioned and brainwashed women into believing in the proverbial “white knight” or “knight in shining armor” concept for centuries.

To preemptively defend what she must know is treacly slop that’s very challenging to get most people to swallow, Swift has said during the interview blitzkrieg promoting the album that the overall theme of a song like “The Fate of Ophelia” (and, for instance, “Eldest Daughter”) is that people—and women in particular—aren’t supposed to act like they need things anymore. Least of all love/romance. That it has become increasingly “uncool” to express that kind of desire (and, by the way, such a desire can be expressed, it just doesn’t have to be so grotesque and mind-numbing). But the truth is, it’s never been “cooler” amidst the political climate currently dominating the U.S. The one wherein the term and “lifestyle” of a tradwife is not deemed embarrassing, but something that all women should strive for. And it seems, with this album, that’s what Swift herself is aspiring to (hence, why it should probably just be called The Life of a Tradwife). All while taking Ophelia down with her, who would have actually been spared from madness and being driven to suicide if she hadn’t been indoctrinated to believe that only a man could “save” her, whether that was Polonius or Hamlet.

And maybe the worst, most offensive thing about Swift’s interpretation is that she could have employed the finest, most erudite scholars on the subject to confirm that what she was saying really correlated with what happened in the play. Then again, if she had consulted any Shakespearean authority about this track, there’s no denying they would have begged her not to turn this tragedy into some saccharine fairy tale/ode to a football player that’s meant to be a kind of “stand-in” for Hamlet. Though, of course, there are the ardent Swifties who would say she’s not, like, talking about about Hamlet and Ophelia, it’s just more, like, a metaphor for how he “saved” her from the depths of despair (granted, it’s a bit of a stretch to imagine someone such as Swift ever being genuinely suicidal—she’s much too delusional in her grandeur for that). This “defense,” however, doesn’t change the fact that she has deliberately rewritten Shakespeare’s tragedy to have a Hollywood ending. It’s the most affronting thing she could have done to his work. Of course, Swift isn’t alone in this trend, but seems, instead, to be part of a larger zeitgeist that’s been cropping up of late, especially in theater (see also: &Juliet). A trend that reflects the collective inability to accept reality in any way, shape or form. Accept that, oftentimes, things are fundamentally…unpalatable.

Swift, having grown up as part of a generation that was far more coddled than previous ones (especially if they grew up as the daughter of a financial advisor), has effectively shown this inability to accept that which is unpleasant, commenting of the track to Hits Radio, “I have this fixation on Shakespeare characters that I love and I can’t stand to see them meet a tragic demise.” That much was already made glaringly obvious on 2008’s “Love Story,” during which Romeo and Juliet is the object of her decimation. A song she wrote because she compared her parents not approving of a boy she wanted to date to the forbidden love of a Montague and a Capulet. So it is that the following lyrics now exist in the “Taylor canon”: “See you make your way through the crowd/And say hello/Little did I know/That you were Romeo, you were throwing pebbles/And my daddy said, ‘Stay away from Juliet’/And I was crying on the staircase/Begging you, ‘Please don’t go’/And I said, ‘Romeo, take me/Somewhere we can be alone/I’ll be waiting, all there’s left to do is run/You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess/It’s a love story, baby, just say yes.’”

In 2008, it seemed a lot more people were willing to say yes. That is, to Swift delivering mushy, mawkish reimaginings of Shakespeare characters and their fates. This could have been in no small part due to the particular breed of frothy pop that arose during that post-financial crisis era, when the masses appeared to want to black out reality entirely rather than deal with the aftermath of such an Establishment fuck-up (see also: the success of erstwhile Swift nemesis Katy Perry’s music at that time).

But in 2025, listeners don’t seem as keen to take Swift’s shallow “reinterpretation” (a.k.a. total misreading) of Ophelia as a work of “brilliance.” Particularly as it’s a complete insult to women not only of the present age, but all those women who came before and had to deal with the level of subjugation that Ophelia did. Nonetheless, Swift feels obliged to remake this character into some kind of fairy-tale princess (of the Disney-bastardized variety) by swooning over what Kelce “did for her,” “All that time, I sat alone in my tower [are we talking about Rapunzel or Ophelia?—difficult to say]/You were just honing your powers/Now I can see it all/Late one night, you dug me out of my grave [are we talking about Travis Kelce or Ed Gein?—difficult to say] and/Saved my heart from the fate of/Ophelia.” Meanwhile, Ophelia is committing suicide anew over hearing this track from the great beyond.

Then, of course, there are the oh so shudder-inducing lyrics, “Keep it one hundred on the land, thе sea, the sky” (though it should be, grammatically speaking, “Keep it one hundred on the land, in thе sea and in the sky”). Never mind that the very phrase, “Keep it one hundred,” is a prime example of AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) being reappropriated by a white person. And yes, Swift is sure to parade all of her colonizing tendencies on The Life of a Showgirl, particularly “Wi$h Li$t,” when she sings, “I just want you/Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you,” along with, “This empire belongs to me” on “Father Figure” (even if sung as “someone else”).

Occasionally, Swift sort of remembers to bring the song more fully back to Ophelia by stating objective facts about her. For example, “The eldest daughter of a nobleman/Ophelia lived in fantasy.” Though her “living in fantasy” isn’t entirely true at the outset. It’s more like she retreats into her mind palace once she gains complete confirmation that all men are shit. Elsewhere, Swift peppers in another phrase she must have thought was endlessly poetic: “But love was a cold bed full of scorpions/The venom stole her sanity.” Side note: there is no mention of scorpions in Hamlet, not even as a metaphor. But now, thanks to Swift, there’s probably a new Mandela effect related to this play brewing. Not to mention the fact that there will be an entire generation that uses this appalling “summary” of the play as their version of CliffsNotes for it. Even though they would be better off listening to Cher Horowitz’s (Alicia Silverstone) take on the play, because it was clear she had a yen for accuracy when she corrected Heather (Susan Mohun) in Clueless about who said “to thine own self be true,” insisting, “Well, I remember Mel Gibson [who plays Hamlet in the 1990 movie] accurately, and he didn’t say that. That Polonius guy did.”

Evidently, Swift couldn’t resist being true to herself by doing Ophelia (de facto, Shakespeare and Literature itself) dirty like this. Because, as she so “articulately” told Jimmy Fallon and his The Tonight Show audience with specific regard to this song and how people have reacted to it online, “It’s so fun to have fun, and I really appreciate you guys having fun with me.” Alas, if the continued dumbing down of the culture and its ability to engage in close readings of a text is “having fun,” count this reader out.