The Queen's son chose a beautiful line from Hamlet to farewell his mother. Although it is undoubtedly very lovely, to me, coming as it does from a speech spoken over the coffin of Hamlet, whose life and comportment could not in any way to be said to be similar to that of Charles's mother's, it seemed a not entirely apposite choice.
Instead, the words of Shakespeare that sprang to my mind as the public mourning drew to a close and the "wand of office" was broken were these from The Tempest, among the most beautiful ever written:
"Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
From The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1
