Saturday, November 14, 2009

Can someone translate Act 4 Scene 7, Gertrudes passage into modern english??

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: but long it could not be


Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,


Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay


To muddy death.

Can someone translate Act 4 Scene 7, Gertrudes passage into modern english??
There is a willow tree next to a river,


and you can see the leaves reflected in the river.


Ophelia came to the tree with lots of garlands of flowers.


She climbed up the tree to hang the flowers,


But the branch brook and she and her garlands fell into the river.


Her dress spread out around her in the water, and they kept her afloat for a little while, while she sang old songs, like someone who didn't know they were in trouble or an animal that was used to it. But, before long, her clothes, wet and heavy, dragged Ophelia into the water and she drowned.


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