Read the excerpt from Act IV of Hamlet.Claudius: Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door. What is the matter?Gentleman: Save yourself, my lord; The ocean, overpeering of his list, Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste Than young Laertes, in a riotous head, O'erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord; And, as the world were now but to begin, Antiquity forgot, custom not known, The ratifiers and props of every word, They cry, 'Choose we; Laertes shall be king!' Caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds, 'Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!'
Read the excerpt from Act IV of Hamlet.Gentleman: She speaks much of her father; says she hears There's tricks i' the world; and hems, and beats her heart; Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt, That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing . . .Horatio: 'Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.Gertrude: Let her come in. [Exit Gentleman.] To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss: So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
Read the excerpt from Act IV of Hamlet.Ophelia:Larded with 'sweet flower;Which bewept to the grave did goWith true-love showers.Claudius: How do you, pretty lady?Ophelia: Well, God 'ild you! They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord! we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!
Read the excerpt from Act IV of Hamlet.Claudius: Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you. [Exit HORATIO.] O! this is the poison of deep grief; it springs All from her father's death. O Gertrude, Gertrude! When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions. First, her father slain; Next, your son gone; but he most violent author Of his own just remove: the people muddied, Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers, For good Polonius’ death; and we have done but greenly, In hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Ophelia Divided from herself and her fair judgment, Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, what plot event causes Ophelia’s mental decline?
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