The Death and Rebirth of Ophelia

What if Ophelia traded places with an acting company slattern, faked her death, escaped the rottenness that was Denmark of Hamlet, and reinvented herself in the process? What if we see Hamlet as a murdering, corrupt, philandering lout? Read this amusing alternative literary history and find out all the wild answers to these and many other pertinent questions.

-Alan Catlin, poet, How Will the Heart Endure?



What an intriguing premise, almost like something out of an "Elvis is Alive" urban legend! Ophelia, Hamlet's scorned betrothed, daughter of the garrulous Polonius, did not drown but switched places with Cunegonde, one of the members of the itinerant troupe of actors, an identity swap like...like something out of Shakespeare! Not that many are fooled, Hamlet, Horatio, Laertes, Griselda, or Gertrude, or most of her fellow tragedians. But what becomes of her? Does Fortinbras save the day in Denmark? What do you think? Lusty as Shakespeare, too, Robert Cooperman's The Death and Rebirth of Ophelia soars with imagination. Read this re-envisioned take of Hamlet and be enthralled and stunned all over again by the shenanigans at Elsinore!

-Charles Rammelkamp, author of See What I Mean? and The Trapeze of Your Flesh