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A Room in the Castle. | |
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Enter KING, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN. | |
| King. I like him not, nor stands it safe with us | |
| To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you; | |
| I your commission will forthwith dispatch, | 5 |
| And he to England shall along with you. | |
| The terms of our estate may not endure | |
| Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow | |
| Out of his lunacies. | |
| Guil. We will ourselves provide. | 10 |
| Most holy and religious fear it is | |
| To keep those many many bodies safe | |
| That live and feed upon your majesty. | |
| Ros. The single and peculiar life is bound | |
| With all the strength and armour of the mind | 15 |
| To keep itself from noyance; but much more | |
| That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest | |
| The lives of many. The cease of majesty | |
| Dies not alone, but, like a gulf doth draw | |
| What’s near it with it; it is a massy wheel, | 20 |
| Fix’d on the summit of the highest mount, | |
| To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things | |
| Are mortis’d and adjoin’d; which, when it falls, | |
| Each small annexment, petty consequence, | |
| Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone | 25 |
| Did the king sigh, but with a general groan. | |
| King. Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage; | |
| For we will fetters put upon this fear, | |
| Which now goes too free-footed. | |
| Ros. & Guil We will haste us. [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. | 30 |
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Enter POLONIUS. | |
| Pol. My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet: | |
| Behind the arras I’ll convey myself | |
| To hear the process; I’ll warrant she’ll tax him home; | |
| And, as you said, and wisely was it said, | 35 |
| ’Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, | |
| Since nature makes them partial, should o’er-hear | |
| The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege: | |
| I’ll call upon you ere you go to bed | |
| And tell you what I know. | 40 |
| King. Thanks, dear my lord. [Exit POLONIUS. | |
| O! my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; | |
| It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t; | |
| A brother’s murder! Pray can I not, | |
| Though inclination be as sharp as will: | 45 |
| My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent; | |
| And, like a man to double business bound, | |
| I stand in pause where I shall first begin, | |
| And both neglect. What if this cursed hand | |
| Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood, | 50 |
| Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens | |
| To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy | |
| But to confront the visage of offence? | |
| And what’s in prayer but this two-fold force, | |
| To be forestalled, ere we come to fall, | 55 |
| Or pardon’d, being down? Then, I’ll look up; | |
| My fault is past. But, O! what form of prayer | |
| Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder?’ | |
| That cannot be; since I am still possess’d | |
| Of those effects for which I did the murder, | 60 |
| My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen. | |
| May one be pardon’d and retain the offence? | |
| In the corrupted currents of this world | |
| Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice, | |
| And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself | 65 |
| Buys out the law; but ’tis not so above; | |
| There is no shuffling, there the action lies | |
| In his true nature, and we ourselves compell’d | |
| Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults | |
| To give in evidence. What then? what rests? | 70 |
| Try what repentance can: what can it not? | |
| Yet what can it, when one can not repent? | |
| O wretched state! O bosom black as death! | |
| O limed soul, that struggling to be free | |
| Art more engaged! Help, angels! make assay; | 75 |
| Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel | |
| Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe. | |
| All may be well. [Retires and kneels. | |
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Enter HAMLET. | |
| Ham. Now might I do it pat, now he is praying; | 80 |
| And now I’ll do ’t: and so he goes to heaven; | |
| And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d: | |
| A villain kills my father; and for that, | |
| I, his sole son, do this same villain send | |
| To heaven. | 85 |
| Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge. | |
| He took my father grossly, full of bread, | |
| With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; | |
| And how his audit stands who knows save heaven? | |
| But in our circumstance and course of thought | 90 |
| ’Tis heavy with him. And am I then reveng’d, | |
| To take him in the purging of his soul, | |
| When he is fit and season’d for his passage? | |
| No. | |
| Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent; | 95 |
| When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, | |
| Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed, | |
| At gaming, swearing, or about some act | |
| That has no relish of salvation in ’t; | |
| Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, | 100 |
| And that his soul may be as damn’d and black | |
| As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays: | |
| This physic but prolongs thy sickly days. [Exit. | |
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The KING rises and advances. | |
| King. My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: | 105 |
| Words without thoughts never to heaven go. [Exit. | |
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