There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, 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 pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element.
– William Shakespeare
Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7. Gertrude’s poignant report of Ophelia’s drowning to Claudius and Laertes. She reports that she fell into a brook and her clothes became heavy with waer and pulled her under. While drowning, she seemed oblivious to her plight and "chanted snatches of old tunes." This account supports Ophelia’s accidental death as a result of her madness. But later she is denied a full Christian burial by the church on the grounds that she committed suicide. Many suggest that she was driven to drown herself following her rejection by Hamlet and the murder of her father.
