10

15

20

1

As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
You mainly were stirred up.

King.

O, for two special reasons, Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinewed,

But yet to me they're strong. The Queen
his mother

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
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,

Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aimed them.

25 Laer. And so have I a noble father lost,
A sister driven into desperate terms,

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 30

Mess.

not think

That we are made of stuff so flat and dull

That we can let our beard be shook with

danger

And think it pastime.

hear more.

You shortly shall

I loved your father, and we love ourself,

And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine-35
Enter a Messenger with Letters.

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. They were given me by Claudio. He received 40

them

Of him that brought them.

King.

Leave us.

Laertes, you shall hear them. [Exit Messenger. [Reads.] "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 45 asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasion of my sudden [and more strange] return.

Hamlet.

99

What should this mean? Are all the rest

come back?

Or is it some abuse, and no such thing? 50 Laer, Know you the hand?

King.

'Tis Hamlet's character. "Naked!"

And in a postscript here, he says "alone."
Can you advise me?

55 Laer. I'm lost in it, my lord. But let him come. It warms the very sickness in my heart,

60

65

70

That I shall live and tell him to his teeth, "Thus didest thou."

King.

Laer.

As how should it be so?

Will you be ruled by me?

If it be so, Laertes

How otherwise?—

Ay, my lord,

So you will not o'errule me to a peace. King. To thine own peace. If he be now returned,

Laer.

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;
And for his death no wind of blame shall
breathe,

But even his mother shall uncharge the
practice

And call it accident.

My lord, I will be ruled;

It falls right.

The rather, if you could devise it so
That I might be the organ.

King.

You have been talked of since your travel

much,

And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality

Wherein, they say, you shine. Your sum of
parts

Did not together pluck such envy from him
As did that one, and that, in my regard,

Laer.

Of the unworthiest siege.

What part is that, my lord? King. A very riband in the cap of youth, 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. months since,

Laer.

Here was a gentleman of Normandy;

Two

I've seen myself, and served against, the
French,

80

And they can well on horseback; but this 85 gallant

Had witchcraft in 't. He grew unto his seat, And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,

As had he been incorpsed and demi-natured
With the brave beast. So far he topped my
thought,

That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks, 90
Come short of what he did.

King. A Norman.

Laer. Upon my life, Lamond.

King.

A Norman, was 't?

The very same.

Laer. I know him well. He is the brooch indeed

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100

105

110

115

And gem of all the nation.
King. He made confession of you,

Laer.

And gave you such a masterly report
For art and exercise in your defence
And for your rapier most especial,

That he cried out, 'twould be a sight indeed,
If one could match you. The scrimers of
their nation,

He swore, had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
If you opposed 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.
Now, out of this-

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?

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.
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,