Quite possibly.
From a story in the Independent...
Ophelia's death in Hamlet sees the lovesick noblewoman drowning while picking flowers "in the weeping brook, her clothes spread wide". Now Oxford University academics sifting through 16th-century records have discovered the likely inspiration for the tragic Shakespearean heroine.
Oxford historian Dr Steven Gunn is in charge of a team at the univer- sity's history faculty which is ploughing through accounts of all the accidental deaths which occurred in England in the 16th century.
Among their number is a report of the 1569 death of one Jane Shaxpere, a two-and-a-half-year-old girl who fell into a mill pond while picking marigolds 20 miles from Shakespeare's home in Stratford-upon-Avon. According to Dr Gunn, Shaxpere is a "likely" relation to the Bard and a "strong contender" for Ophelia's inspiration.
"Shakespeare is processing the events of his life in the plots of his plays," said Dr Gunn. "And also things that happen in Shakespeare plays reflect things his audience would have recognised. Many other people at the time would have known people who drowned, and many of them would have drowned in similar ways to this."
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