is widow, and
ascending the throne of Denmark, to the exclusion of young Hamlet, the
son of the buried king, and lawful successor to the throne.

But upon no one did this unadvised action of the queen make such
impression as upon this young prince, who loved and venerated the
memory of his dead father almost to idolatry, and being of a nice sense
of honour, and a most exquisite practicer of propriety himself, did
sorely take to heart this unworthy conduct of his mother Gertrude:
insomuch that, between grief for his father's death and shame for his
mother's marriage, this young prince was overclouded with a deep
melancholy, and lost all his mirth and all his good looks; all his
customary pleasure in books forsook him, his princely exercises and
sports, proper to his youth, were no longer acceptable; he grew weary
of the world, which seemed to him an unweeded garden, where all the
wholesome flowers were choked up, and nothing but weeds could thrive.
Not that the prospect of exclusion from the throne, his lawful
inheritance, weighed so much upon his spirits, though that to a young
and high-minded prince was a bitter wound and a sore indignity; but
what so galled him, and took away all his cheerful spirits, was, that
his mother had shown herself so forgetful to his father's memory; and
such a father! who had been to her so loving and so gentle a husband!
and then she always Appeared as loving and obedient a wife to him, and
would hang upon him as if her affection grew to him: and now within two
months, or as it seemed to young Hamlet, less than two months, she had
married again, married his uncle, her dear husband's brother, in itself
a highly improper and unlawful marriage, from the nearness of
relationship, but made much more so by the indecent haste with which it
was concluded, and the unkingly character of the man whom she had
chosen to be the partner of her throne and bed. This it was, which more
than the loss of ten kingdoms, dashed the spirits and brought a cloud
over the mind of this honourable young prince.

In vain was all that his mother Gertrude or the king could do to
contrive to divert him; he still appeared in court in a suit of deep
black, as mourning for the king his father's death, which mode of dress
he had never laid aside, not even in compliment to his mother upon the
day she was married, nor could he be brought to join in any of the
festivities or rejoicings of that (as appeared to him) disgraceful da