I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat;For, though I am not splenitive and rash, Yet have I something in me dangerous, Which let thy wiseness fear: hold off thy hand. KING CLAUDIUS Pluck them asunder. QUEEN GERTRUDE Hamlet, Hamlet! All Gentlemen,-- HORATIO Good my lord, be quiet.
The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave HAMLET Why I will fight with him upon this theme Until my eyelids will no longer wag. QUEEN GERTRUDE O my son, what theme? HAMLET I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her? KING CLAUDIUS O, he is mad, Laertes. QUEEN GERTRUDE For love of God, forbear him. HAMLET 'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do:
Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself?
Woo't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile?
I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
Be buried quick with her, and so will I:
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground, Singeing his pate against the burning zone, Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou. QUEEN GERTRUDE This is mere madness:
And thus awhile the fit will work on him;Anon, as patient as the female dove, When that her golden couplets are disclosed, His silence will sit drooping. HAMLET Hear you, sir;What is the reason that you use me thus?
I loved you ever: but it is no matter;
Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew and dog will have his day.
Exit KING CLAUDIUS I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon him.
Exit HORATIO
To LAERTES
Strengthen your patience in our last night's speech;We'll put the matter to the present push.
Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.
This grave shall have a living monument:
An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;
Till then, in patience our proceeding be.
Exeunt SCENE II. A hall in the castle. Enter HAMLET and HORATIO HAMLET So much for this, sir: now shall you see the other;You do remember all the circumstance? HORATIO Remember it, my lord? HAMLET Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting, That would not let me sleep: methought I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly, And praised be rashness for it, let us know, Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will,-- HORATIO That is most certain. HAMLET Up from my cabin, My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark Groped I to find out them; had my desire.
Finger'd their packet, and in fine withdrew To mine own room again; making so bold, My fears forgetting manners, to unseal Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio,--O royal knavery!--an exact command, Larded with many several sorts of reasons Importing Denmark's health and England's too, With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life, That, on the supervise, no leisure bated, No, not to stay the grinding of the axe, My head should be struck off. HORATIO Is't possible? HAMLET Here's the commission: read it at more leisure.
But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed? HORATIO I beseech you. HAMLET Being thus be-netted round with villanies,--Ere I could make a prologue to my brains, They had begun the play--I sat me down, Devised a new commission, wrote it fair:
I once did hold it, as our statists do, A baseness to write fair and labour'd much How to forget that learning, but, sir, now It did me yeoman's service: wilt thou know The effect of what I wrote? HORATIO Ay, good my lord. HAMLET An earnest conjuration from the king, As England was his faithful tributary, As love between them like the palm might flourish, As peace should stiff her wheaten garland wear And stand a comma 'tween their amities, And many such-like 'As'es of great charge, That, on the view and knowing of these contents, Without debatement further, more or less, He should the bearers put to sudden death, Not shriving-time allow'd. HORATIO How was this seal'd? HAMLET Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.
I had my father's signet in my purse, Which was the model of that Danish seal;Folded the writ up in form of the other, Subscribed it, gave't the impression, placed it safely, The changeling never known. Now, the next day Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent Thou know'st already. HORATIO So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to't. HAMLET Why, man, they did make love to this employment;They are not near my conscience; their defeat Does by their own insinuation grow:
'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes Between the pass and fell incensed points Of mighty opposites. HORATIO Why, what a king is this! HAMLET Does it not, think'st thee, stand me now upon--He that hath kill'd my king and whored my mother, Popp'd in between the election and my hopes, Thrown out his angle for my proper life, And with such cozenage--is't not perfect conscience, To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd, To let this canker of our nature come In further evil? HORATIO It must be shortly known to him from England What is the issue of the business there. HAMLET It will be short: the interim is mine;And a man's life's no more than to say 'One.'
But I am very sorry, good Horatio, That to Laertes I forgot myself;For, by the image of my cause, I see The portraiture of his: I'll court his favours.
But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me Into a towering passion. HORATIO Peace! who comes here?
