ABSTRACT
Lisa Klein’s 2006 novel Ophelia imagines both a past and a future for the eponymous character. Readers of Hamlet will recall Gertrude describing her death to Laertes and Claudius in IV. vii. and Laertes and Hamlet leaping into her grave in V. i. The opening of Klein’s work, however, finds Ophelia having survived and reading a letter from Horatio. Over hundreds of pages, Ophelia responds to such questions and tells the character’s side of the story, all the while offering particular insights into her relationships with Polonius, Hamlet, and Elsinore. Claire McCarthy’s 2018 film adaptation, which stars Daisy Ridley (Ophelia), Naomi Watts (Gertrude and Mechtild), Clive Owen (Claudius) and George MacKay (Hamlet), goes even further in exploring the question of women’s rights. In this article, I discuss with Klein and McCarthy their creative projects. In the first half, Klein and I explore how her novel came to be; her reading of, and her response to, Hamlet; her thoughts about the film; and finally the afterlives of her characters. In the second half, I ask McCarthy about the appeal of this project; the challenges of negotiating between Shakespeare’s play and Klein’s novel; the film’s distinctive visual style; and her understanding of the characters. As McCarthy says, “Hamlet’s tragedy is Ophelia’s triumph.” Accordingly, we conclude by exploring the character’s choices, what they say about this historical moment, and what this film affords newcomers to, and experts of, Shakespeare.
