GERTRUDE                Her clothes spread wide

And mermaid–like awhile they bore her up,

Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and endued

Unto that element. But long it could not be

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay

To muddy death.

LAERTES                    Alas, then she is drowned .

GERTRUDE    Drowned, drowned.  (4.7.173-182)

Her clothes spread wide—there’s a shift in focus from the flowers to Ophelia herself, but clothes rather than body, person; the garments are oddly animate, spreading, carrying, surrounding her in a corona, a flower of cloth (and if one imagines a farthingale, an air-pocket, even)—and mermaid-like awhile they bore her up; Ophelia floats on the surface, or at least her top half does (is she imagined as vertical? that’s what the mermaid perhaps suggests? but mermaids are powerful, siren-singers, sexy, dangerous; Ophelia is briefly invested with an agency, a glamour that she has never had)—which time she chanted snatches of old lauds, the song fragments again, but that they’re old lauds suggests religious songs, songs of praise? unknowable; Ophelia’s being distanced, into flowers, art, music, myth, a lost spiritual past, gently carried away… Most pertinently, she was as one incapable of her own distress—she didn’t seem to realise the danger she was in, or to be able to do anything about it!—or like a creature native and endued unto that element. Perhaps she had become a water-nymph, already part of the brook; in her element. (That element refers most naturally to the water, but grammatically it can also refer to her own distress; Ophelia can’t see any way out, any possibility of not feeling like this. She has become endued to pain and despair.) But long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink—and that would make sense to an early modern audience on the bankside, layers of woollen skirts and petticoats, linen smock, their sodden weight, garments laced and tied together, not able to be kicked or pulled off easily, a deadly, dragging clutch of cloth. No need for stones in the pockets. It was, in the end, Ophelia’s clothes which pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death—and Gertrude can’t evade or obscure that final brutal reality, the contrast between airy melody, bright flowers, shining water, and the mud, the earth, of death. Muddy, not pretty, a choking, silty death.

Alas, then she is drowned. It’s all that he can say, poor Laertes, stunned, redundantly stating the obvious (the flowers and the singing haven’t registered or made a difference). The sound speaks for him, a howl, dull, final, and Gertrude echoes back: drowned, drowned, a passing bell.