Laertes. A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.

Ophelia. There's fennel for you, and columbines ; there's rue for you; and here's some for me; we may call 180 it herb of grace o' Sundays. O! you may wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died. They say he made a good end,—

For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.

Laertes. Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favour and to prettiness.

Ophelia. And will he not come again?

And will he not come again?

No, no, he is dead;

Go to thy death-bed,

He never will come again.

His beard was as white as snow

All flaxen was his poll,

He is gone, he is gone,

And we cast away moan:

185

190

195

God ha' mercy on his soul!

And of all Christian souls! I pray God.

wi' ye!

Laertes. Do you see this, O God?

God be

[Exit. 200

King. Laertes, I must commune with your grief,

Or you deny me right. Go but apart,

Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,

And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me.
If by direct or by collateral hand

205

They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
To you in satisfaction; but if not,

Be you content to lend your patience to us,
And we shall jointly labour with your soul
To give it due content.

Laertes.

Let this be so:

His means of death, his obscure burial,

No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
No noble rite nor formal ostentation,
Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call't in question.

So you shall;

King.
And where the offence is let the great axe fall.
I pray you go with me.

210

215

[Exeunt.

SCENE VI.-Another Room in the Same.

Enter HORATIO and a Servant.

Horatio. What are they that would speak with me?
Servant. Sailors, sir: they say, they have letters for you.
Horatio. Let them come in.
[Exit Servant.

I do not know from what part of the world
I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.

Enter Sailors.

First Sailor. God bless you, sir.
Horatio. Let him bless thee too.

Second Sailor. He shall, sir, an't please him. There's a letter for you, sir ;-it comes from the ambassador that was bound for England;-if your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is.

Horatio. Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked this, give these fellows some means to the king: they have letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very war-like appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour; in the grapple I boarded them on the instant they got clear of our ship, so I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy, but they knew what they did; I am to do a good turn for them. Let the king have the letters I have sent ; and repair thou to me with as much haste as thou wouldst fly death. I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows will bring thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern_hold their course for England: of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell.

He that thou knowest thine,

HAMLET.

Come, I will give you way for these your letters;
And do't the speedier, that you may direct me
To him from whom you brought them.

SCENE VII.—Another Room in the Same.

Enter KING and LAERTES.

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

[Exeunt.

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,

That he which hath your noble father slain

Pursu'd my life.
Laertes.
It well appears but tell me
Why you proceeded not against these feats,
So crimeful and so capital in nature,

As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
You mainly were stirr'd up.

5

O for two special reasons;

10

King.
Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew'd,
But yet to me they are 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 timber'd for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aim'd them.

Laertes. And so have I a noble father lost;

25

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 not think

30

That we are made of stuff so flat and dull

That we can let our beard be shook with danger

And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more;

35

I lov'd your father, and we love ourself,

And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine,

Enter a Messenger.

Letters, my lord, from Hamlet.

How now! what news?

Messenger.

This to your majesty; this to the queen.

King. From Hamlet! who brought them?

Messenger. Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not: They were given me by Claudio, he receiv'd them Of him that brought them.

40

King.
Leave us.
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 re-
turn.
HAMLET.
What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
Or is it some abuse and no such thing?
Laertes. Know you the hand?

Laertes, you shall hear them.
[Exit Messenger.

King.

45

50

'Tis Hamlet's character. 'Naked,'

And in a postscript here, he says, 'alone.'

Can you advise me?

Laertes. 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.'

King.
As how should it be so ? how otherwise?

Will you be rul'd by me?

Laertes.

So you will not o'er-rule me to a peace.

55

If it be so, Laertes,

Ay, my lord;

60

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;

65

And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe,
But even his mother shall uncharge the practice
And call it accident.

Laertes.
My lord, I will be rul'd;
The rather, if you could devise it so
That I might be the organ.

It falls right.

King.
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
Did not together pluck such envy from him
As did that one, and that, in my regard,
Of the unworthiest siege.

Laertes.
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

70

75

Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
Importing health and graveness. Two months since
Here was a gentleman of Normandy :

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

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.

Laertes.

King. A Norman.

A Norman was't?

Laertes. Upon my life, Lamord.

King.

The very same.

Laertes. 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, 'twould be a sight indeed

80

85

90

95

If one could match you; the scrimers of their nation, 100
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.
Now, out of this,-

Laertes.

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?

Laertes.

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,

105

111

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,

We should do when we would, for this would' changes,

115