"The rest is silence..."

--For Anch--

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1882

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,

And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;

Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and indu'd

Unto that element; but long it could not be

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay

To muddy death.

--Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1601

Waterhouse does have a few of her (the Pre-Raphaelites did love their tragic women), although they depict scenes before and after her drowning, not whilst it is occurring like Millais.  I do like the Millais best, but this one by Waterhouse is lovely as well:

John William Waterhouse, Ophelia, 1894

It looks almost as if it could be an extension of his Hylas and the nymphs, no? As though Hylas is being pulled to his watery grave just behind her. It's all very tragic, but so very, very pretty. As Claudius says:

Are you like the painting of a sorrow,

A face without a heart?