BBC News – Tudor coroners’ records give clue to ‘real Ophelia’ for Shakespeare

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An Oxford historian has found evidence of a story that could be the real-life inspiration for Shakespeare’s tragic character, Ophelia. Dr Steven Gunn has found a coroner’s report into the drowning of a Jane Shaxspere in 1569. The girl, possibly a young cousin of William Shakespeare, had been picking flowers when she fell into a millpond near Stratford upon Avon. Dr Gunn says there are “tantalising” links to Ophelia’s drowning in Hamlet. A four-year research project, carried out by Oxford University academics, has been searching through 16th century coroners‘ reports.

via BBC News – Tudor coroners’ records give clue to ‘real Ophelia’ for Shakespeare.

Ophelia’s Death, from the Olivier film version of Hamlet.

Strange Random Hamlet Quote:

Lay her i’ the earth:

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring!

- Laertes, Act V, scene I

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