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 day.

What mostly troubled him was an uncertainty about the manner of his
father's death. It was given out by Claudius, that a serpent had stung
him: but young Hamlet had shrewd suspicions that Claudius himself was
the serpent; in plain English, that he had murdered him for his crown,
and that the serpent who stung his father did now sit on the throne.

How far he was right in this conjecture, and what he ought to think of
his mother, how far she was privy to this murder, and whether by her
consent or knowledge, or without, it came to pass, were the doubts
which continually harassed and distracted him.

A rumour had reached the ear of young Hamlet, that an apparition,
exactly resembling the dead king his father, had been seen by the
soldiers upon watch, on the platform before the palace at midnight,
for two or three nights successively. The figure came constantly clad
in the same suit of armour, from head to foot, which the dead king was
known to have worn: and they who saw it (Hamlet's bosom-friend Horatio
was one) agreed in their testimony as to the time and manner of its
appearance: that it came just as the clock struck twelve; that it
looked pale, with a face more of sorrow than of anger; that its beard
was grisly, and the colour a _sable silvered_, as they had seen it in