HAMLET. William Shakespeare

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.

       [Exeunt.]

       SCENE VII. Another room in the Castle.

       [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,

       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,

       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

       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.

       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 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. 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.]

       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:

       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.]

       [Reads]‘High and mighty,—You shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. Tomorrow 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.’

       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.’

       Can you advise me?

       Laer.

       I am 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 didest thou.’

       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’errule me to a peace.

       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 exploit, now ripe in my device,

       Under the which he shall not choose but fall:

       And for his death no wind 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

       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

       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,

       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,—

       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;