Taylor Swift keeps borrowing Shakespeare. These experts approve.

Hours after Taylor Swift s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, was released on Friday, her fans arrived in droves at movie theaters around th...

Hours after Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” was released on Friday, her fans arrived in droves at movie theaters around the country. They wore Eras Tour shirts and sparkles and the album’s signature color orange, because when Taylor Swift releases a record, it’s an all-consuming, weekend-spanning event.

In this case, Swifties showed up for “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” an 89-minute “theatrical experience” in which Swift debuted the lyric videos for the 12 tracks and briefly explained the story behind each song. At a showing in Arlington, Virginia, the packed audience on Friday afternoon cheered as Swift appeared on screen, sitting in a director’s chair.

Swift only revealed a few notable tidbits: While discussing “Cancelled!,” which she called a “tongue-in-cheek” song about social outrage, she said that she’s the go-to person whom other people (presumably famous ones) frantically call for advice when they feel the wrath of the public. She explained that she wanted to collaborate with pop star Sabrina Carpenter on the title track, a tale about the strangeness of fame, because she admires how Carpenter has adjusted to the spotlight. 

But the main point of the film was to debut the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia,” which played twice, and included behind-the-scenes footage of Swift directing the video. The song, co-written by Swift and her pop-producer collaborators Max Martin and Shellback, is the album’s lead single, and references the famed character in William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” who goes mad and drowns.

The Ophelia imagery looms large on this record. The cover of the album features Swift in a water-filled bathtub in a slinky showgirl get-up, meant to evoke John Everett Millais’s 1850s painting of Ophelia’s death; the music video begins and ends with similar scenes. When Swift announced the album over the summer, she said the project was inspired by her time behind the curtain on her record-breaking Eras Tour; and the cover art referenced how she would unwind after each physically grueling, three-hour-plus concert by taking a bath. But she was also thinking about Ophelia’s depressing fate.