This is “The Lady of Shallot” by Arthur Hughes, which I was surprised to find out because I thought it was Ophelia. Lot of strange women lying in ponds in British lit, as a famous British person once put it. Along with watery tarts and moistened bints.
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17 Responses
Thank you for the link to Brian O’Neill, I hadn’t seen that sketch before and it made me laugh and wince at the underlying truth of it at the same time.
One of the first Monty Python bits I committed to memory. Reading through the transcript, I can still hear them.
The girls in the background: “OMG this drama queen AGAIN.”
That girl at the left has already earned her breastfeeding badge and her middle-school makeup application badge, though. Don’t know that she has a leg to stand on…
“But we were expecting Moses!”
That made me giggle laugh. Thanks for the humour on a Monday morning.
Being the nerd I am, I though Ophelia too, but that’s Millais. Sheesh. Does one age out of nerd?
Well, I haven’t, but now I wear the term proudly. Also “wonk.” “Geek” I refuse.
Nerd and Wonk are great terms, good for you for refusing Geek (the carny definition of it is gross). Taf
I also thought Ophelia at first glance, but since I will turn 70 later this month, I am doubtful about any of us aging out of “nerd”, sorry, I don’t think it is possible to lose the nerd title. Taf
Nun: Someone tell her she was baptized at birth & this is all unnecessary.
5 onlookers and not a single one could be bothered to call 911? Typical.
How could it be Ophelia? You can’t drown yourself in a boat. You need to get into the water for that.
She’s not in a boat. Arthur’s Shalott isn’t, anyway.
She isn’t ? So what is that black boat-shaped thing with the red heart attached to it that she’s lying in?
To quote Tennyson:
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And around about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
[…]
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
[…]
For ere she reach’d upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
Son of a gun, you’re right. I didn’t look closely enough.
The poor models, some of them actually had to lie in water, poor Elizabeth Siddall nearly died from cold/pneumonia portraying Ophelia, the artist Millais didn’t notice the lamps keeping the water warm had gone out. Her father had to force the artist to pay her medical bills