They bore him barefaced on the bier: William Shakespeare and Cheryl Frances-Hoad

In Act 4, Scene 5 of Hamlet, the grieving Ophelia moves in and out of song, singing fragments about death and loss. In this episode, I explore Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s setting of one of those fragments, “They bore him barefaced on the bier,” and the ways her music captures the strange instability of Ophelia’s song—its off-kilter dance rhythms, its collisions of simplicity and dissonance, and the moment when song itself seems to break down under the pressure of grief.

The episode features soprano Ruby Hughes and lutenist Jonas Nordberg, performing Nordberg’s arrangement of the song on Hughes’s 2026 album Amidst the Shades.

They bore him barefaced on the bier;
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
And in his grave rain'd many a tear:--
Fare you well, my dove!

And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
No, no, he is dead:
Go to thy death-bed:
He never will come again.

His beard was as white as snow,
All flaxen was his poll:
He is gone, he is gone,
And we cast away moan:
God ha' mercy on his soul!

From Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5