TPTT The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: ACT IV
Introduction
ACT I
ACT II
ACT III
ACT IV
SCENE I. A room in the castle.
SCENE II. Another room in the castle.
SCENE III. Another room in the castle.
SCENE IV. A plain in Denmark.
SCENE V. Elsinore. A room in the castle.
SCENE VI. Another room in the castle.
SCENE VII. Another room in the castle.
ACT V
About the Play
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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
5     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,
10    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--
15    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,
20    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,
25    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,
30    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
35    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:
40    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
45    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
50    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!
55    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,
60    '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;
65    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,
70    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;
75    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
80    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
85    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,
90    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,
95    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
100   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
105   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,
110   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
115   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,
120   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,
125   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,
130   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,
135   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
140   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
145   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,
150   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.
155   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
160   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
165   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:
170   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,
175   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
180   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
185   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
190   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
195   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
200   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,
205   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!
210   Now fear I this will give it start again;
      Therefore let's follow.
Exeunt
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