OPHELIA.
Ophelia, daughter of Polonius, lord-chamberlain to Claudius, King of Denmark, was beloved by Prince Hamlet, son of the previous, and nephew of the then reigning sovereign; for Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, had with indecent haste married her deceased husband's brother. The shame of this unseemly conduct in his mother, added to grief for the death of his revered father, had so preyed on the mind of Hamlet, that a morbid melancholy took possession of him, and, it would seem, endowed him with supernatural prescience to suspect that his father had been murdered by his uncle, who had crowned his wicked ambition by marrying the queen-widow. While in this state of distracting doubt, he was informed, by some gentlemen of the court, that as they were on guard before the palace, the ghost of the late king, his noble father, had appeared to them three successive nights; whereupon, Hamlet watched with them, to test the truth of their words. At midnight the ghost appeared, and beckoned to Hamlet to follow it to a retired spot, where to his amazed ears it revealed the story of its murder by the treacherous brother, and commanded Hamlet to avenge the foul deed, but to leave the punishment of the guilty queen to Heaven and her own conscience: and then, as the cock crew, the poor ghost vanished.
