And that he calls for drink, I'll have prepared him
A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venomed stuck,
Our purpose may hold there.—But stay, what
noise?
escapes your poisoned sword tip, the drink will kill him. But
wait, what's that sound?
Enter GERTRUDE
GERTRUDE enters.
GERTRUDE
One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
160
So fast they follow.—Your sister's drowned,
Laertes.
GERTRUDE
The bad news just keeps on coming, one disaster after another.
Your sister's drowned, Laertes.
LAERTES
Drowned? Oh, where?
LAERTES
Drowned? Oh, where?
GERTRUDE
There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands did she come
165
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do “dead men's
fingers” call them.
There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,
170
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like a while they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds
As one incapable of her own distress,
175
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
GERTRUDE
There's a willow that leans over the brook, dangling
its white leaves over the glassy water. Ophelia made wild wreaths
out of those leaves, braiding in crowflowers, thistles, daisies, and
the orchises that vulgar shepherds have an obscene name for, but
which pure-minded girls call “dead men's
fingers.” Climbing into the tree to hang the wreath of
weeds on the hanging branches, she and her flowers fell into the
gurgling brook. Her clothes spread out wide in the water, and buoyed
her up for a while as she sang bits of old hymns, acting like
someone who doesn't realize the danger she's
in, or like someone completely accustomed to danger. But it was only
a matter of time before her clothes, heavy with the water they
absorbed, pulled the poor thing out of her song, down into the mud
at the bottom of the brook.
