Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare
he kissed her again and again, crying that his great seas of joy drowned him with their sweetness. "Give me my robes," he said: "O Heaven, bless my girl!" Then there came to him, though none else could hear it, the sound of heavenly music, and falling asleep, he beheld the goddess Diana, in a vision. "Go," she said to him, "to my temple at Ephesus, and when my maiden priests are met together, reveal how thou at sea didst lose thy wife."

Pericles obeyed the goddess and told his tale before her altar. Hardly had he made an end, when the chief priestess, crying out, "You are--you are--O royal Pericles!" fell fainting to the ground, and presently recovering, she spoke again to him, "O my lord, are you not Pericles?" "The voice of dead Thaisa!" exclaimed the King in wonder. "That Thaisa am I," she said, and looking at her he saw that she spoke the very truth. Thus Pericles and Thaisa, after long and bitter suffering, found happiness once more, and in the joy of their meeting they forgot the pain of the past. 

To Marina great happiness was given, and not only in being restored to her dear parents; for she married Lysimachus, and became a princess in the land where she had been sold as a slave. HAMLETHamlet was the only son of the King of Denmark. He loved his father and mother dearly--and was happy in the love of a sweet lady named Ophelia. Her father, Polonius, was the King's Chamberlain. 

While Hamlet was away studying at Wittenberg, his father died. Young Hamlet hastened home in great grief to hear that a serpent had stung the King, and that he was dead. The young Prince had loved his father so tenderly that you may judge what he felt when he found that the Queen, before yet the King had been laid in the ground a month, had determined to marry again--and to marry the dead King's brother. 

Hamlet refused to put off mourning for the wedding. "It is not only the black I wear on my body," he said, "that proves my loss. I wear mourning in my heart for my dead father. His son at least remembers him, and grieves still." Then said Claudius the King's brother, "This grief is unreasonable. Of course you must sorrow at the loss of your father, but--" "Ah," said Hamlet, bitterly, "I cannot in one little month forget those I love." 

With that the Queen and Claudius left him, to make merry over their wedding, forgetting the poor good King who had been so kind to them both. And Hamlet, left alone, began to wonder and to question as to what he ought to do. For he could not believe the story about the snake-bite. It seemed to him all 
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