,
the king's chief counsellor in affairs of state. He had sent her
letters and rings, and made many tenders of his affection to her, and
importuned her with love in honourable fashion: and she had given
belief to his vows and importunities. But the melancholy which he fell
into latterly had made him neglect her, and from the time he conceived
the project of counterfeiting madness, he affected to treat her with
unkindness, and a sort of rudeness: but she good lady, rather than
reproach him with being false to her, persuaded herself that it was
nothing but the disease in his mind, and no settled unkindness, which
had made him less observant of her than formerly; and she compared the
faculties of his once noble mind and excellent understanding, impaired
as they were with the deep melancholy that oppressed him, to sweet
bells which in themselves are capable of most exquisite music, but when
jangled out of tune, or rudely handled, produce only a harsh and
unpleasing sound.

Though the rough business which Hamlet had in hand, the revenging of
his father's death upon his murderer, did not suit with the playful
state of courtship, or admit of the society of so idle a passion as
love now seemed to him, yet it could not hinder but that soft thoughts
of his Ophelia would come between, and in one of these moments, when he
thought that his treatment of this gentle lady had been unreasonably
harsh, he wrote her a letter full of wild starts of passion, and in
extravagant terms, such as agreed with his supposed madness, but mixed
with some gentle touches of affection, which could not but show to this
honoured lady that a deep love for her yet lay at the bottom of his
heart. He bade her to doubt the stars were fire, and to doubt that the
sun did move, to doubt truth to be a liar, but never to doubt that he
loved; with more of such extravagant phrases. This letter Ophelia
dutifully showed to her father, and the old man thought himself bound
to communicate it to the king and queen, who from that time supposed
that the true cause of Hamlet's madness was love. And the queen wished
that the good beauties of Ophelia might be the happy cause of his
wildness, for so she hoped that her virtues might happily restore him
to his accustomed way again, to both their honours.

But Hamlet's malady lay deeper than she supposed, or than could be so
cured. His father's ghost, which he had seen, still haunted his
imagination, and the sacred injunction to