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64 j HAMLET.

~ “Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this,” cried the Queen.

And Hamlet answered bitterly, “Almost as bad as to kill a king,
and marry his brother.” Then Hamiet told the Queen plainly all his
thoughts, and how he knew of the murder, and begged her, at least, to
have no more friendship or kindness of the base Claudius, who had killed
the good King. And as they spoke the King’s ghost again appeared
before Hamlet, but the Queen could not see it. So when the ghost was
gone, they parted. tee

When the Queen told Claudius what had passed, and how Polonius
was dead, he said, ‘This shows plainly that Hamlet is mad, and since
che has killed the chancellor, it is for his own safety that we must carry
out our plan, and send him away to England.”

So Hamlet was sent, under charge of two courtiers who served the
King, and these bore letters to the English Court, requiring that Hamlet
should be put to death. But Hamlet had the good sense to get at these
letters, and put in others instead, with the names of the two courtiers
who were so ready to betray him. Then, as the vessel went to England,
Hamlet escaped on board a pirate ship, and the two wicked courtiers left
him to his fate, and went on, to meet theirs.

Hamlet hurried home, but in the meantime a dreadful thing had
happened. Poor pretty Ophelia, having lost her lover and her father,
lost her wits too, and went in sad madness about the Court, with straws,
and weeds, and flowers in her hair, singing strange scraps of song, and
talking poor, foolish, pretty talk with no heart of meaning to it. And
one day, coming to a stream where willows grew, she tried to hang a
flowery garland on a willow, and fell in the water with all her flowers,
and so died.

And Hamlet had loved her, though his plan of seeming madness
had made him hide it; and when he came back, he found the King and
Queen, and the Court, weeping at the funeral of his dear love and lady.

Ophelia’s brother, Laertes, had also just come to Court to ask justice
for the death of his father, old Polonius; and now, wild with erief, he
leaped into his sister’s grave, to clasp her in his arms once more.

“T loved ‘her more than forty thousand brothers,” cried Hamlet,
and leaped into the grave after him, and they fought till they were
parted.