SCENE VII.-Another Room in the same. Enter KING and LAERTES. KING. Now must your conscience my acquittance seal, Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear, Pursu'd my life. LAER. It well appears :--But tell me, Why you proceeded not against these feats, As by your safety, wisdom, all things else, KING. O, for two special reasons; (My virtue, or my plague, be it either which,) Is the great love the general gender bear him: Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone, That we can let our beard be shook with danger, And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine,— How now? what news? MESS. Enter a Messenger. 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 to me by Claudio, he receiv'd them. KING. Laertes, you shall hear them :-Leave us. [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 asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasions of my sudden and more strange return. What should this mean? Are all the rest come back? Or is it some abuse, or no such thing? LAER. Know you the hand? KING. T is Hamlet's character. "Naked," As how should it be so? how otherwise? LAER. If so you'll not o'er-rule me to a peace. KING. To thine own peace. If he be now return'd,— As checking at his voyage, and that he means 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 ; [LAER. My lord, I will be rul'd KING. It falls right. You have been talk'd of since your travel much, As did that one; and that, in my regard, Of the unworthiest siege. What part is that, my lord? LAER. Yet needful too; for youth no less becomes a Checking at, in the folio. The quarto of 1611, liking not. Hamlet. The light and careless livery that it wears, Than settled age his sables, and his weeds, Importing health and graveness.—a] Some two months hence, I have seen myself, and served against the French, And they ran well on horseback: but this gallant As he had been incorps'd and demi-natur'd с With the brave beast: so far he pass'd my thought, Come short of what he did. LAER. I know him well: he is the brooch, indeed, And gem of all the nation. KING. He made confession of you; And gave you such a masterly report, For art and exercise in your defence, And for your rapier most especially, That he cried out, 't would be a sight indeed, If one could match you: [the scrimers of their nation, If you oppos'd them:] Sir, this report of his That he could nothing do, but wish and beg Your sudden coming o'er, to play with him. LAER. Why out of this, my lord? KING. Laertes, was your father dear to you? 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; A kind of wick, or snuff, that will abate it; a The passage in brackets is not found in the folio; but is printed from quarto (B). And nothing is at a like goodness still; For goodness, growing to a plurisya, Dies in his own too-much: That we would do, We should do when we would; for this would changes, As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; And then this should is like a spendthrift's sigh, To show yourself your father's son in deed More than in words? LAER. The Frenchman gave you; bring you, in fine, together, LAER. Under the moon, can save the thing from death, It 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, a Plurisy. Warburton would read plethory. But plurisy was constantly used in the sense of fulness, abundance, by the poets. Thus, in Massinger, we have " The lines in brackets are not in the folio. • In deed. So the folio; in the quartos, "indeed your father's son." Remiss-inattentive. • Peruse-examine. Unbated-not blunted. plurisy of goodness," and And that our drift look through our bad performance, If this should blast in proof. Soft;-let me see:- When in your motion you are hot and dry, (As make your bouts more violent to that end,) If he by chance escape your venom'd stuck, How now, sweet queen? Enter QUEEN. QUEEN. One woe doth tread upon another's heel, So fast they follow :-Your sister 's drown'd, Laertes. QUEEN. There is a willow grows aslant a brook", Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide; Or like a creature native and indued Unto that element: but long it could not be, a Commings-meetings in assault. The comming is the venue. In the quartos we have cunnings. Aslant a brook, in the folio; in the quartos, ascaunt the brook. • So the folio. In the quarto we have "There with fantastic garlands did she make;" which all the modern editors have corrupted into "therewith;" as if Ophelia made her garlands of the willow. To "make" is used in the sense of to "come"-to make way-to proceed. But the reading of the folio, come, saves the obscurity. |