The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 135
MESSENGER Save yourself, my lord.
The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
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Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
O’erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord,
And, as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known –
The ratifiers and props of every word –
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They cry, ‘Choose we! Laertes shall be king.’
Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,
‘Laertes shall be king, Laertes king.’
QUEEN How cheerfully on the false trail they cry.
O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs.
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[A noise within.]
KING The doors are broke.
Enter LAERTES with Followers.
LAERTES
Where is this king? – Sirs, stand you all without.
FOLLOWERS No, let’s come in.
LAERTES I pray you give me leave.
FOLLOWERS We will, we will.
LAERTES I thank you. Keep the door. Exeunt Followers.
O thou vile king,
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Give me my father.
QUEEN [holding him] Calmly, good Laertes.
LAERTES
That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard,
Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
Even here between the chaste unsmirched brow
Of my true mother.
KING What is the cause, Laertes,
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That thy rebellion looks so giant-like? –
Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.
There’s such divinity doth hedge a king
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will. – Tell me, Laertes,
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Why thou art thus incens’d. – Let him go, Gertrude. –
Speak, man.
LAERTES Where is my father?
KING Dead.
QUEEN But not by him.
KING Let him demand his fill.
LAERTES How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with.
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To hell, allegiance! Vows to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes, only I’ll be reveng’d
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Most throughly for my father.
KING Who shall stay you?
LAERTES My will, not all the world’s.
And for my means, I’ll husband them so well,
They shall go far with little.
KING Good Laertes,
If you desire to know the certainty
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Of your dear father, is’t writ in your revenge
That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
Winner and loser?
LAERTES None but his enemies.
KING Will you know them then?
LAERTES
To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms,
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And, like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,
Repast them with my blood.
KING Why, now you speak
Like a good child and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father’s death
And am most sensibly in grief for it,
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It shall as level to your judgment ‘pear
As day does to your eye.
[A noise within. Ophelia is heard singing.]
Let her come in.
LAERTES How now, what noise is that?
Enter OPHELIA.
O heat, dry up my brains. Tears seven times salt
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye.
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By heaven, thy madness shall be paid with weight
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
Dear maid – kind sister – sweet Ophelia –
O heavens, is’t possible a young maid’s wits
Should be as mortal as an old man’s life?
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Nature is fine in love, and where ’tis fine
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.
OPHELIA [Sings.]
They bore him bare-fac’d on the bier,
And in his grave rain’d many a tear –
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Fare you well, my dove.
LAERTES
Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move thus.
OPHELIA You must sing A-down a-down, and you Call
him a-down-a. O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the
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false steward that stole his master’s daughter.
LAERTES This nothing’s more than matter.
OPHELIA There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance –
pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s
for thoughts.
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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 it herb of grace a Sundays. You must wear your
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rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would give you
some violets, but they withered all when my father
died. They say a made a good end.
[Sings.] For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.
LAERTES Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself
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She turns to favour and to prettiness.
OPHELIA [Sings.]
And will ’a not come again?
And will ’a not come again?
No, no, he is dead,
Go to thy death-bed,
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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.
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God a mercy on his soul.
And of all Christian souls. God buy you. Exit.
LAERTES Do you see this, O God?
KING Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
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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
They find us touch’d, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours
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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 funeral –
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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.
KING So you shall.
And where th’offence is, let the great axe fall.
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I pray you go with me. Exeunt.
4.6 Enter HORATIO and a Servant.
HORATIO What are they that would speak with me?
SERVANT Seafaring men, 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
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I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.
Enter
Sailors.
1 SAILOR God bless you, sir.
HORATIO Let him bless thee too.
1 SAILOR A shall, sir, and please him. There’s a letter for
you, sir. It came from th’ambassador that was bound
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for England – if your name be Horatio, as I am let to
know it is.
HORATIO [Reads the letter.] 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
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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
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knew what they did: I am to do a turn for them. Let the
King have the letters I have sent, and repair thou to me
with as much speed as thou wouldest 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
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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.
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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.
4.7 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.
LAERTES It well appears. But tell me
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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,
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But yet to me th’are strong. The Queen his mother
Lives almost by his looks, and for myself –
My virtue or my plague, be it either which –
She is so conjunctive to my life and soul
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
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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,
Work like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
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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,
But not where I had aim’d them.
LAERTES And so have I a noble father lost,
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A sister driven into desp’rate 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
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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 –
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Enter a Messenger with letters.
MESSENGER These 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.
KING Laertes, you shall hear them. –
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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 occasion of my sudden and more
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strange return.
Hamlet.
What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?