William Shakespeare’s Hamlet inspired Taylor Swift’s song “The Fate of Ophelia” from The Life of a Showgirl.
Ophelia is a character in Hamlet whose story ends in madness and death by drowning. Swift discussed that tragic fate while announcing the album, and the song reworks the image into a contrast between Ophelia’s downfall and the narrator’s changed outcome.
The reference also helps explain the album artwork, which features Swift submerged in water. The visual and lyrical ideas are connected to Ophelia’s most famous scene and to the broader show-business imagery surrounding the record.
The answer is Hamlet, not the name of the character. Ophelia is the figure referenced in the song title; Hamlet is the Shakespeare play in which she appears. Other Shakespeare tragedies such as Macbeth and King Lear are separate works and do not provide the song’s named inspiration.