From this time Hamlet affected a certain wildness and strangeness
in his apparel, his speech, and behaviour, and did so excellently
counterfeit the madman, that the king and queen were both deceived,
and not thinking his grief for his father's death a sufficient cause
to produce such a distemper, for they knew not of the appearance of
the ghost, they concluded that his malady was love, and they thought
they had found out the object.

Before Hamlet fell into the melancholy way which has been related, he
had dearly loved a fair maid called Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius,
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