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Another Room in the Same. | |
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Enter KING and LAERTES. | |
| King. Now must your conscience my acquittance seal, | |
| And you must put me in your heart for friend, | |
| Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear, | 5 |
| That he which hath your noble father slain | |
| Pursu’d my life. | |
| Laer. It well appears: but tell me | |
| Why you proceeded not against these feats, | |
| So crimeful and so capital in nature, | 10 |
| As by your safety, wisdom, all things else, | |
| You mainly were stirr’d up. | |
| King. O! for two special reasons; | |
| Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew’d, | |
| But yet to me they are strong. The queen his mother | 15 |
| Lives almost by his looks, and for myself,— | |
| My virtue or my plague, be it either which,— | |
| She’s so conjunctive to my life and soul, | |
| That, as the star moves not but in his sphere, | |
| I could not but by her. The other motive, | 20 |
| Why to a public count I might not go, | |
| Is the great love the general gender bear him; | |
| Who, dipping all his faults in their affection, | |
| Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone, | |
| Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows, | 25 |
| Too slightly timber’d for so loud a wind, | |
| Would have reverted to my bow again, | |
| And not where I had aim’d them. | |
| Laer. And so have I a noble father lost; | |
| A sister driven into desperate terms, | 30 |
| Whose worth, if praises may go back again, | |
| Stood challenger on mount of all the age | |
| For her perfections. But my revenge will come. | |
| King. Break not your sleeps for that; you must not think | |
| That we are made of stuff so flat and dull | 35 |
| That we can let our beard be shook with danger | |
| And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more; | |
| I lov’d your father, and we love ourself, | |
| And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine,— | |
| |
Enter a Messenger. | 40 |
| How now! what news? | |
| Mess. Letters, my lord, from Hamlet: | |
| This to your majesty; this to the queen. | |
| King. From Hamlet! who brought them? | |
| Mess. Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not: | 45 |
| They were given me by Claudio, he receiv’d them | |
| Of him that brought them. | |
| King. Laertes, you shall hear them. | |
| Leave us. [Exit Messenger. | |
| High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes; when I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasions of my sudden and more strange return. HAMLET. | 50 |
| What should this mean? Are all the rest come back? | |
| Or is it some abuse and no such thing? | |
| Laer. Know you the hand? | |
| King. ’Tis Hamlet’s character. ‘Naked,’ | |
| And in a postscript here, he says, ‘alone.’ | 55 |
| Can you advise me? | |
| Laer. I’m lost in it, my lord. But let him come: | |
| It warms the very sickness in my heart, | |
| That I shall live and tell him to his teeth, | |
| ‘Thus diddest thou.’ | 60 |
| King. If it be so, Laertes, | |
| As how should it be so? how otherwise? | |
| Will you be rul’d by me? | |
| Laer. Ay, my lord; | |
| So you will not o’er-rule me to a peace. | 65 |
| King. To thine own peace. If he be now return’d, | |
| As checking at his voyage, and that he means | |
| No more to undertake it, I will work him | |
| To an exploit, now ripe in my device, | |
| Under the which he shall not choose but fall; | 70 |
| And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe, | |
| But even his mother shall uncharge the practice | |
| And call it accident. | |
| Laer. My lord, I will be rul’d; | |
| The rather, if you could devise it so | 75 |
| That I might be the organ. | |
| King. It falls right. | |
| You have been talk’d of since your travel much, | |
| And that in Hamlet’s hearing, for a quality | |
| Wherein, they say, you shine; your sum of parts | 80 |
| Did not together pluck such envy from him | |
| As did that one, and that, in my regard, | |
| Of the unworthiest siege. | |
| Laer. What part is that, my lord? | |
| King. A very riband in the cap of youth, | 85 |
| Yet needful too; for youth no less becomes | |
| The light and careless livery that it wears | |
| Than settled age his sables and his weeds, | |
| Importing health and graveness. Two months since | |
| Here was a gentleman of Normandy: | 90 |
| I’ve seen myself, and serv’d against, the French, | |
| And they can well on horseback; but this gallant | |
| Had witchcraft in ’t, he grew unto his seat, | |
| And to such wondrous doing brought his horse, | |
| As he had been incorps’d and demi-natur’d | 95 |
| With the brave beast; so far he topp’d my thought, | |
| That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks, | |
| Come short of what he did. | |
| Laer. A Norman was ’t? | |
| King. A Norman. | 100 |
| Laer. Upon my life, Lamord. | |
| King. The very same. | |
| Laer. I know him well; he is the brooch indeed | |
| And gem of all the nation. | |
| King. He made confession of you, | 105 |
| And gave you such a masterly report | |
| For art and exercise in your defence, | |
| And for your rapier most especially, | |
| That he cried out, ’twould be a sight indeed | |
| If one could match you; the scrimers of their nation, | 110 |
| He swore, had neither motion, guard, nor eye, | |
| If you oppos’d them. Sir, this report of his | |
| Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy | |
| That he could nothing do but wish and beg | |
| Your sudden coming o’er, to play with him. | 115 |
| Now, out of this,— | |
| Laer. What out of this, my lord? | |
| King. Laertes, was your father dear to you? | |
| Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, | |
| A face without a heart? | 120 |
| Laer. Why ask you this? | |
| King. Not that I think you did not love your father, | |
| But that I know love is begun by time, | |
| And that I see, in passages of proof, | |
| Time qualifies the spark and fire of it. | 125 |
| There lives within the very flame of love | |
| A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it, | |
| And nothing is at a like goodness still, | |
| For goodness, growing to a plurisy, | |
| Dies in his own too-much. That we would do, | 130 |
| We should do when we would, for this ‘would’ changes, | |
| And hath abatements and delays as many | |
| As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; | |
| And then this ‘should’ is like a spendthrift sigh, | |
| That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o’ the ulcer; | 135 |
| Hamlet comes back; what would you undertake | |
| To show yourself your father’s son in deed | |
| More than in words? | |
| Laer. To cut his throat i’ the church. | |
| King. No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize; | 140 |
| Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes, | |
| Will you do this, keep close within your chamber. | |
| Hamlet return’d shall know you are come home; | |
| We’ll put on those shall praise your excellence, | |
| And set a double varnish on the fame | 145 |
| The Frenchman gave you, bring you, in fine, together, | |
| And wager on your heads: he, being remiss, | |
| Most generous and free from all contriving, | |
| Will not peruse the foils; so that, with ease | |
| Or with a little shuffling, you may choose | 150 |
| A sword unbated, and, in a pass of practice | |
| Requite him for your father. | |
| Laer. I will do ’t; | |
| And, for that purpose, I’ll anoint my sword. | |
| I bought an unction of a mountebank, | 155 |
| So mortal that, but dip a knife in it, | |
| Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, | |
| Collected from all simples that have virtue | |
| Under the moon, can save the thing from death | |
| That is but scratch’d withal; I’ll touch my point | 160 |
| With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly, | |
| It may be death. | |
| King. Let’s further think of this; | |
| Weigh what convenience both of time and means | |
| May fit us to our shape. If this should fail, | 165 |
| And that our drift look through our bad performance | |
| ’Twere better not assay’d; therefore this project | |
| Should have a back or second, that might hold, | |
| If this should blast in proof. Soft! let me see; | |
| We’ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings: | 170 |
| I ha ’t: | |
| When in your motion you are hot and dry,— | |
| As make your bouts more violent to that end,— | |
| And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepar’d him | |
| A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping, | 175 |
| If he by chance escape your venom’d stuck, | |
| Our purpose may hold there. But stay! what noise? | |
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Enter QUEEN. | |
| How now, sweet queen! | |
| Queen. One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, | 180 |
| So fast they follow: your sister’s drown’d, Laertes. | |
| Laer. Drown’d! O, where? | |
| Queen. There is a willow grows aslant a brook, | |
| That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; | |
| There with fantastic garlands did she come, | 185 |
| 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, | 190 |
| 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, | 195 |
| Or like a creature native and indu’d | |
| 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. | 200 |
| Laer. Alas! then, she is drown’d? | |
| Queen. Drown’d, drown’d. | |
| Laer. Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, | |
| And therefore I forbid my tears; but yet | |
| It is our trick, nature her custom holds, | 205 |
| Let shame say what it will; when these are gone | |
| The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord! | |
| I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze, | |
| But that this folly douts it. [Exit. | |
| King. Let’s follow, Gertrude. | 210 |
| How much I had to do to calm his rage! | |
| Now fear I this will give it start again; | |
| Therefore let’s follow. [Exeunt. | |
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