A specific source of inspiration for me is Millais' painting Ophelia, taken from Shakespeare's Hamlet. The painting depicts Ophelia after her descent into madness following the death of her father. This painting at the Tate Britain has a powerful presence it is both sickeningly beautiful and terrible, a juxtaposition that invites questions about what madness really looks like. Even these many years ago it was still something that was being glamourised. To be able to make a terrible death look so visually alluring and romanticised is thought provoking. My interest in poetry as being a prompt for paintings stemmed from my exploration of Pre-Raphaelite art. The passage from Hamlet reads:  

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"There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
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 indued
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, 1948, 112)

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