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.
First 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
[Reads] ‘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 warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour, and 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 speed 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 make 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 Claudius and Laertes
King Claudius
Now must your conscience my acquaintance 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
Pursued 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.
King Claudius
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.
Laertes
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 Claudius
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 loved your father, and we love ourself;
And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine —
Enter a Messenger
How now! what news?
Messenger
Letters, my lord, from Hamlet:
This to your majesty; this to the queen.
King Claudius
From Hamlet! who brought them?
Messenger
Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not:
They were given me by Claudio; he received them
Of him that brought them.
King Claudius
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 occasion 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?
Laertes
Know you the hand?
King Claudius
’Tis Hamlets character. ‘Naked!
And in a postscript here, he says ‘alone.’
Can you advise me?
Laertes
It warms the very sickness in my heart,
That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,
‘Thus didest thou.’
King Claudius
If it be so, Laertes —
As how should it be so? how otherwise?—
Will you be ruled by me?
Laertes
Ay, my lord;
So you will not o’errule me to a peace.
King Claudius
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:
And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe,
But even his mother shall uncharge the practise
And call it accident.
Laertes
My lord, I will be ruled;
The rather, if you could devise it so
That I might be the organ.
King Claudius
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.
Laertes
What part is that, my lord?
King Claudius
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 served 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 incorpsed and demi-natured
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
A Norman was’t?
King Claudius
A Norman.
Laertes
Upon my life, Lamond.
King Claudius
The very same.
Laertes
I know him well: he is the brooch indeed
And gem of all the nation.
King Claudius
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,
If one could match you: the scrimers of their nation,
He swore, had 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,—
Laertes
What out of this, my lord?
King Claudius
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 Claudius
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;
Dies in his own too much: that we would do
We should do when we would; for this ‘would’ changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this ‘should’ is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o’ the ulcer:—
Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake,
To show yourself your father’s son in deed
More than in words?
Laertes
To cut his throat i’ the church.
King Claudius
No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize;
Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,
Will you do this, keep close within your chamber.
Hamlet return’d shall know you are come home:
We’ll put on those shall praise your excellence
And set a double varnish on the fame
The Frenchman gave you, bring you in fine together
And wager on your heads: he, being remiss,
Most generous and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils; so that, with ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
A sword unbated, and in a pass of practise
Requite him for your father.
Laertes
I will do’t:
And, for that purpose, I’ll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank,
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death
That is but scratch’d withal: I’ll touch my point
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
It may be death.
King Claudius
Let’s further think of this;
Weigh what convenience both of time and means
May fit us to our shape: if this should fail,
And that our drift look through our bad performance,
’Twere better not assay’d: therefore this project
Should have a back or second, that might hold,
If this should blast in proof. Soft! let me see:
We’ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings: I ha’t.
When in your motion you are hot and dry —
As make your bouts more violent to that end —
And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepared him
A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venom’d stuck,
Our purpose may hold there.
Enter Queen Gertrude
How now, sweet queen!
Queen Gertrude
One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,
So fast they follow; your sister’s drown’d,
Laertes.
Laertes
Drown’d! O, where?
Queen Gertrude
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
Laertes
Alas, then, she is drown’d?
Queen Gertrude
Drown’d, drown’d.
Laertes
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears: but yet
It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will: when these are gone,
The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord:
I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
But that this folly douts it.
Exit
King Claudius
Let’s follow, Gertrude:
How much I had to do to calm his rage!
Now fear I this will give it start again;
Therefore let’s follow.
Exeunt
ACT V
SCENE I. A CHURCHYARD.
Enter two Clowns, with spades, & c
First Clown
Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation?
Second Clown
I tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave straight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial.
First Clown
How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence?
Second Clown
Why, ’tis found so.
First Clown
It must be ‘se offendendo;’ it cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act: and an act hath three branches: it is, to act, to do, to perform: argal, she drowned herself wittingly.
Second Clown
Nay, but hear you, goodman delver,—
First Clown
Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here stands the man; good; if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,— mark you that; but if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.
Second Clown
But is this law?
First Clown
Ay, marry, is’t; crowner’s quest law.
Second Clown
Will you ha’ the truth on’t? If this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o’ Christian burial.
First Clown
Why, there thou say’st: and the more pity that great folk should have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves, more than their even Christian. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentleman but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers: they hold up Adam’s profession.
Second Clown
Was he a gentleman?
First Clown
He was the first that ever bore arms.
Second Clown
Why, he had none.
First Clown
What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture? The Scripture says ‘Adam digged:’ could he dig without arms? I’ll put another question to thee: if thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself —
Second Clown
Go to.
First Clown
What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?
Second Clown
The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.
First Clown
I like thy wit well, in good faith: the gallows does well; but how does it well? it does well to those that do in: now thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the church: argal, the gallows may do well to thee. To’t again, come.
Second Clown
‘Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?’
First Clown
Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.
Second Clown
Marry, now I can tell.
First Clown
To’t.
Second Clown
Mass, I cannot tell.
Enter Hamlet and Horatio, at a distance
First Clown
Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating; and, when you are asked this question next, say ‘a grave-maker: ‘the houses that he makes last till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan: fetch me a stoup of liquor.
Exit Second Clown
He digs and sings
In youth, when I did love, did love,
Methought it was very sweet,
To contract, O, the time, for, ah, my behove,
O, methought, there was nothing meet.
Hamlet
Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making?
Horatio
Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.
Hamlet
’Tis e’en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.
First Clown
[Sings]
But age, with his stealing steps,
Hath claw’d me in his clutch,
And hath shipped me intil the land,
As if I had never been such.
Throws up a skull
Hamlet
That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain’s jaw-bone, that did the first murder! It might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o’er-reaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?
Horatio
It might, my lord.
Hamlet
Or of a courtier; which could say ‘Good morrow, sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?’ This might be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord such-a-one’s horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not?