the best
of their way to England, charged with those letters the sense of which
Hamlet had altered to their own deserved destruction.

The pirates, who had the prince in their power, showed themselves gentle
enemies; and knowing whom they had got prisoner, in the hope that the
prince might do them a good turn at court in recompense for any favour
they might show him, they set Hamlet on shore at the nearest port in
Denmark. From that place Hamlet wrote to the king, acquainting him with
the strange chance which had brought him back to his own country, and
saying that on the next day he should present himself before his
majesty. When he got home, a sad spectacle offered itself the first
thing to his eyes.

This was the funeral of the young and beautiful Ophelia, his once dear
mistress. The wits of this young lady had begun to turn ever since her
poor father's death. That he should die a violent death, and by the
hands of the prince whom she loved, so affected this tender young maid,
that in a little time she grew perfectly distracted, and would go about
giving flowers away to the ladies of the court, and saying that they
were for her father's burial, singing songs about love and about death,
and sometimes such as had no meaning at all, as if she had no memory of
what happened to her. There was a willow which grew slanting over a
brook, and reflected its leaves on the stream. To this brook she came
one day when she was unwatched, with garlands she had been making, mixed
up of daisies and nettles, flowers and weeds together, and clambering up
to hang her garland upon the boughs of the willow, a bough broke, and
precipitated this fair young maid, garland, and all that she had
gathered, into the water, where her clothes bore her up for a while,
during which she chanted scraps of old tunes, like one insensible to her
own distress, or as if she were a creature natural to that element: but
long it was not before her garments, heavy with the wet, pulled her in
from her melodious singing to a muddy and miserable death. It was the
funeral of this fair maid which her brother Laertes was celebrating, the
king and queen and whole court being present, when Hamlet arrived. He
knew not what all this show imported, but stood on one side, not
inclining to interrupt the ceremony. He saw the flowers strewed upon her
grave, as the custom was in maiden burials, which the queen herself
threw in; and as she threw them she said, "Sweets to the s