The Tragedy Of Hamlet, Prince Of Denmark

1 Enter King and Laertes.
2 KING.
3 Now must your conscience my acquittance seal,
4 And you must put me in your heart for friend,
5 Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
6 That he which hath your noble father slain
7 Pursu’d my life.
8 LAERTES.
9 It well appears. But tell me
10 Why you proceeded not against these feats,
11 So crimeful and so capital in nature,
12 As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
13 You mainly were stirr’d up.
14 KING.
15 O, for two special reasons,
16 Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew’d,
17 But yet to me they are strong. The Queen his mother
18 Lives almost by his looks; and for myself,—
19 My virtue or my plague, be it either which,—
20 She’s so conjunctive to my life and soul,
21 That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
22 I could not but by her. The other motive,
23 Why to a public count I might not go,
24 Is the great love the general gender bear him,
25 Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
26 Would like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
27 Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows,
28 Too slightly timber’d for so loud a wind,
29 Would have reverted to my bow again,
30 And not where I had aim’d them.
31 LAERTES.
32 And so have I a noble father lost,
33 A sister driven into desperate terms,
34 Whose worth, if praises may go back again,
35 Stood challenger on mount of all the age
36 For her perfections. But my revenge will come.
37 KING.
38 Break not your sleeps for that. You must not think
39 That we are made of stuff so flat and dull
40 That we can let our beard be shook with danger,
41 And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more.
42 I lov’d your father, and we love ourself,
43 And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine—
44 Enter a Messenger.
45 How now? What news?
46 MESSENGER.
47 Letters, my lord, from Hamlet.
48 This to your Majesty; this to the Queen.
49 KING.
50 From Hamlet! Who brought them?
51 MESSENGER.
52 Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not.
53 They were given me by Claudio. He receiv’d them
54 Of him that brought them.
55 KING.
56 Laertes, you shall hear them.
57 Leave us.
58 [_Exit Messenger._]
59 [_Reads._] ‘High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your
60 kingdom. Tomorrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes. When I
61 shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasions of my
62 sudden and more strange return.
63 HAMLET.’
64 What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
65 Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?
66 LAERTES.
67 Know you the hand?
68 KING.
69 ’Tis Hamlet’s character. ‘Naked!’
70 And in a postscript here he says ‘alone.’
71 Can you advise me?
72 LAERTES.
73 I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come,
74 It warms the very sickness in my heart
75 That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,
76 ‘Thus diest thou.’
77 KING.
78 If it be so, Laertes,—
79 As how should it be so? How otherwise?—
80 Will you be rul’d by me?
81 LAERTES.
82 Ay, my lord;
83 So you will not o’errule me to a peace.
84 KING.
85 To thine own peace. If he be now return’d,
86 As checking at his voyage, and that he means
87 No more to undertake it, I will work him
88 To an exploit, now ripe in my device,
89 Under the which he shall not choose but fall;
90 And for his death no wind shall breathe,
91 But even his mother shall uncharge the practice
92 And call it accident.
93 LAERTES.
94 My lord, I will be rul’d;
95 The rather if you could devise it so
96 That I might be the organ.
97 KING.
98 It falls right.
99 You have been talk’d of since your travel much,
100 And that in Hamlet’s hearing, for a quality
101 Wherein they say you shine. Your sum of parts
102 Did not together pluck such envy from him
103 As did that one, and that, in my regard,
104 Of the unworthiest siege.
105 LAERTES.
106 What part is that, my lord?
107 KING.
108 A very riband in the cap of youth,
109 Yet needful too, for youth no less becomes
110 The light and careless livery that it wears
111 Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
112 Importing health and graveness. Two months since
113 Here was a gentleman of Normandy,—
114 I’ve seen myself, and serv’d against, the French,
115 And they can well on horseback, but this gallant
116 Had witchcraft in’t. He grew unto his seat,
117 And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
118 As had he been incorps’d and demi-natur’d
119 With the brave beast. So far he topp’d my thought
120 That I in forgery of shapes and tricks,
121 Come short of what he did.
122 LAERTES.
123 A Norman was’t?
124 KING.
125 A Norman.
126 LAERTES.
127 Upon my life, Lamord.
128 KING.
129 The very same.
130 LAERTES.
131 I know him well. He is the brooch indeed
132 And gem of all the nation.
133 KING.
134 He made confession of you,
135 And gave you such a masterly report
136 For art and exercise in your defence,
137 And for your rapier most especially,
138 That he cried out ’twould be a sight indeed
139 If one could match you. The scrimers of their nation
140 He swore had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
141 If you oppos’d them. Sir, this report of his
142 Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy
143 That he could nothing do but wish and beg
144 Your sudden coming o’er to play with him.
145 Now, out of this,—
146 LAERTES.
147 What out of this, my lord?
148 KING.
149 Laertes, was your father dear to you?
150 Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
151 A face without a heart?
152 LAERTES.
153 Why ask you this?
154 KING.
155 Not that I think you did not love your father,
156 But that I know love is begun by time,
157 And that I see, in passages of proof,
158 Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
159 There lives within the very flame of love
160 A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
161 And nothing is at a like goodness still,
162 For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
163 Dies in his own too much. That we would do,
164 We should do when we would; for this ‘would’ changes,
165 And hath abatements and delays as many
166 As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
167 And then this ‘should’ is like a spendthrift sigh
168 That hurts by easing. But to the quick o’ th’ulcer:
169 Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake
170 To show yourself your father’s son in deed,
171 More than in words?
172 LAERTES.
173 To cut his throat i’ th’ church.
174 KING.
175 No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize;
176 Revenge should have no bounds. But good Laertes,
177 Will you do this, keep close within your chamber.
178 Hamlet return’d shall know you are come home:
179 We’ll put on those shall praise your excellence,
180 And set a double varnish on the fame
181 The Frenchman gave you, bring you in fine together
182 And wager on your heads. He, being remiss,
183 Most generous, and free from all contriving,
184 Will not peruse the foils; so that with ease,
185 Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
186 A sword unbated, and in a pass of practice,
187 Requite him for your father.
188 LAERTES.
189 I will do’t.
190 And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword.
191 I bought an unction of a mountebank
192 So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
193 Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
194 Collected from all simples that have virtue
195 Under the moon, can save the thing from death
196 This is but scratch’d withal. I’ll touch my point
197 With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly,
198 It may be death.
199 KING.
200 Let’s further think of this,
201 Weigh what convenience both of time and means
202 May fit us to our shape. If this should fail,
203 And that our drift look through our bad performance.
204 ’Twere better not assay’d. Therefore this project
205 Should have a back or second, that might hold
206 If this did blast in proof. Soft, let me see.
207 We’ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings,—
208 I ha’t! When in your motion you are hot and dry,
209 As make your bouts more violent to that end,
210 And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepar’d him
211 A chalice for the nonce; whereon but sipping,
212 If he by chance escape your venom’d stuck,
213 Our purpose may hold there.
214 Enter Queen.
215 How now, sweet Queen?
216 QUEEN.
217 One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,
218 So fast they follow. Your sister’s drown’d, Laertes.
219 LAERTES.
220 Drown’d! O, where?
221 QUEEN.
222 There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
223 That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.
224 There with fantastic garlands did she make
225 Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
226 That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
227 But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.
228 There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
229 Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
230 When down her weedy trophies and herself
231 Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
232 And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up,
233 Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes,
234 As one incapable of her own distress,
235 Or like a creature native and indued
236 Unto that element. But long it could not be
237 Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
238 Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
239 To muddy death.
240 LAERTES.
241 Alas, then she is drown’d?
242 QUEEN.
243 Drown’d, drown’d.
244 LAERTES.
245 Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
246 And therefore I forbid my tears. But yet
247 It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
248 Let shame say what it will. When these are gone,
249 The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord,
250 I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
251 But that this folly douts it.
252 [_Exit._]
253 KING.
254 Let’s follow, Gertrude;
255 How much I had to do to calm his rage!
256 Now fear I this will give it start again;
257 Therefore let’s follow.
258 [_Exeunt._]