Enter King and Laertes
1 KING. Now must your conscience my acquittance
seal,
2
And you must put me in your heart for friend,
3
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
4
That he which hath your noble father slain
Pursued my life.
5 LAER.
It well appears. But tell me
6
Why you proceeded
not against these feates
7
So crimefull and
so capital in nature,
8
As by your safety,
wisdom, all things else,
You mainly were stirred up.
9 KING.
O for two special reasons,
10
Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinewed,
11
But yet to me they're strong. The Queen his mother
12
Lives almost by his looks; and for myself,
13
My virtue or my plague, be it either which,
14
She's so conjunctive
to my life and soul
15
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
16
I could not but by her. The other motive
17
Why to a public count I might not go
18
Is the great love the general gender bear him,
19
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
20
Would, like the
spring that turneth wood to stone,
21
Convert his gives to graces, so that my arrows,
22
Too slightly timbred for so
loud a wind,
23
Would have reverted to my bow again,
24
But not where I have
aimed them.
25 LAER. And so have I a noble father lost,
26
A sister driven into desperate terms,
27
Whose worth,
if praises may go back again,
28
Stood challenger on a mount of all the age
29
For her perfections. But my revenge will come.
30 KING. Break not your sleeps for that, you must
not think
31
That we are made of stuff so flat and dull,
32
That we can let our beard be shook with danger
33
And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more.
34
I loved your father and we love our self,
35
And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine.
Enter a Messenger with Letters.
36 MESS. These
to Your Majesty, this to the Queen.
37 KING. From Hamlet! Who brought them?
38 MESS. Sailors my Lord they say. I saw them not.
39
They were given me by Claudio, he received them
40
Of him that brought
them.
41 KING. Laertes, you shall hear them. Leave us.
42
"High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your kingdom.
43
Tomorrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes, when I shall,
44
first asking you pardon thereunto, recount the occasion of my sudden
45
return."
46 KING. What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
47
Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?
LAER. Know you the hand?
48 KING.
It's Hamlet's character.
49
Naked, and in a postscript here he says:
50
"Alone". Can you advice
me?
51 LAER I am lost in it my Lord, but let him come.
52
It warms the very sickness in my heart
53
That I live and tell him to his teeth:
"Thus didst thou."
54 KING.
If it be so Laertes,
55
As how should it be so, how otherwise
Will you be ruled by me?
56 LAER.
I my Lord,
57
So you will not o'errule me to a peace.
58 KING. To thine own peace, if he be now returned
59
As checking
at his voyage, and that he means
60
No more to undertake it. I will work him
61
To an exploit, now ripe in my devise,
62
Under the which he shall not choose but fall.
63
And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe,
64
But even his mother shall uncharge the practice
And call it accident.
65 LAER.
My Lord I will be ruled
66
The rather if you could devise it so
That I might be the organ.
67 KING.
It falls right,
68
You have been talked of since your travail much,
69
And that in Hamlet's hearing. For a quality
70
Wherein they say you shine, your sum of parts
71
Did not together pluck such envy from him
72
As did that one, and that in my regard
Of the unworthiest siege.
73 LAER.
What part is that my Lord?
74 KING. A very ribald in the cap of youth,
75
Yet needful too; for youth no less becomes
76
The light and careless livery that it wears
77
Than settled age, his sables, and his weeds
78
Importing health and graveness;
two months since
79
Here was a gentleman of Normandy.
80
I have seen myself, and served, against the French,
81
And they can well
on horseback, but this gallant
82
Had witchcraft in it. He grew unto his seat,
83
And to such wondrous doing, brought his horse,
84
As had he been incorpsed, and demy natured
85
With the brave beast. So farre he topt
my thought,
86
That I in forgery of shapes and tricks
Come short of what he did.
87 LAER.
A Norman was't?
88 KING. A Norman.
LAER. Uppon my life, Lamound.
89 KING.
The very same.
90 LAERT. I know him well. He is the brooch indeed
And gem of all the nation.
91 KING.
He made confession of you,
92
And gave you such a masterly report
93
For art and exercise in your defence,
94
And for your rapier most especial,
95
That he cried out 'twould be a fight indeed
96
If one could match you; the
scrimures of their nation,
97
He swore, had neither motion, guard nor eye
98
If you opposed
them; sir, this report of his
99
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy,
100
That he could nothing do, but wish and beg
101
Your sudden coming o'er to play with you.
Now out of this.
102 LAERT.
What out of this my Lord?
103 KING. Laertes, was your father dear to you?
104
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?
105 LAERT.
Why ask you this?
106 KING. Not that I think you did not love your father,
107
But that I know, love is begun by time,
108
And that I see in passages of proof;
109
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
110
There lives within
the very flame of love
111
A kind of week or snuff that will abate it,
112
And nothing is at a like goodness still,
113
For goodness growing to a pleurisy
114
Dies in his own too much. That we would do,
115
We should do when we would: for this would changes,
116
And hath abatements and delays as many
117
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents,
118
And then this should is like a spent thirsts sigh
119
That hurts by easing; but to the quick of the
ulcer,
120
Hamlet comes back. What would you undertake
121
To show yourself in
deed your father's son
More than in words?
122 LAERT.
To cut his throat in the Church.
123 KING. No place indeed should murder sanctuarise;
124
Revenge should have no bounds. But good Laertes,
125
Will you do this? Keep close within your chamber,
126
Hamlet returned, shall know you are come home,
127
We'll put on those shall praise your excellence,
128
And set a double varnish on the fame
129
The French man gave you, bring you in fine together
130
And wager o'er your heads; he being remiss,
131
Most generous, and free from all contriving,
132
Will not peruse the foils, so that, with ease,
133
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
134
A sword unbated, and in a pace of practice
Requite him for your father.
135 LAERT.
I will do't
136
And for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword.
137
I bought an unction of a mountebank
138
So mortal, that but dip a knife in it,
139
Where it draws blood, no cataplasm so rare,
140
Collected from all simples that have virtue
141
Under the moon, can save the thing from death.
142
That is but scratch withal; I'll touch my point
143
With this contagion, that if I gall him slight,
It may be death.
144 KING.
Let's further think of this.
145
Weigh what convenience both time and means
146
May fit us to our shape if this should fail,
147
And that our drift look through our bad performance.
148
'Twere better not essayed. Therefore, this project
149
Should have a back or second that might hold
150
If this did blast in proof. Soft, let me see.
151
We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings.
152
I have it: when
in your motion you are hot and dry,
153
As make your bouts more violent to that end,
154
And that he calls for a drink, I'll have prepared him
155
A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
156
If he by chance escape your venomed stuck,
157
Our purpose may hold there;
but stay, what noise?
Enter Queen.
158 QUEE. One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,
159
So fast they follow. Your Sister's drowned Laertes.
160 LAER. Drowned,owhere?
161 QUEE. There is a willow grows aslant
a brook
162
That shows his hore
leaves in the glassy stream.
163
Therewith, fantastic garlands did she make
164
Of Crow-flowers, Nettles, Daisies and long Purples,
165
That liberal Shepherds give a grosser name,
166
But our cold maids
do dead men's fingers call them.
167
There, on the pendant boughs her cronet weeds
168
Clambering to hang. An envious sliver broke,
169
When down her weedy trophies and herself
170
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
171
And Mermaid like awhile they bore her up,
172
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,
173
As one incapable of her own distress,
174
Or like a creature native and endued
175
Unto that element. But long it could not be
176
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
177
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
178 LAER.
Alas, then she is drowned.
179 QUEE. Drowned, drowned.
180 LAER. Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
181
And therefore I forbid my tears. But yet,
182
It is our trick, nature her custom holds.
183
Let shame say what it will, when these are gone,
184
The woman will be out. Adieu my Lord,
185
I have a speech of fire
that fain would blaze,
But that this fool doubts
it.
Exit
186 KING.
Let's follow Gertrude,
187
How much I had to do to calm his rage.
188
Now fear I this will give it start again,
189
Therefore let's follow.
Exeunt. |
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