The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare/Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, The (1990)(Animated Pixels)[!][CDTV-PC].iso/shakes/text/34/04_07

Text File | 1991-04-10 | 9KB | 266 lines

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
    Pursued my life.

Laertes                    It well appears. But tell me
    Why you proceeded not against these feats,
    So criminal and so capital in nature,
    As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
    You mainly were stirred up.

King                                    O, for two special reasons,
    Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinewed,
    But yet to me they're 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 timbered for so loud a wind,
    Would have reverted to my bow again,
    But not where I have aimed them.

Laertes    And so have I a noble father lost;
    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
    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, with letters.

    How now, what news?

Messenger                            Letters, my lord, from Hamlet.
    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 received 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 you
            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                            'Tis Hamlet's character. 'Naked'!
    And in a postscript here he says 'alone'.
    Can you devise me?

Laertes    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 diest thou.'

King                        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    To thine own peace. If he be now returned,
    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 practice
    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                                        It falls right.
    You have been talked 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    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 had he been incorpsed, and demi-natured
    With the brave beast. So far he topped my thought
    That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,
    Come short of what he did.

Laertes                                        A Norman was't?

King    A Norman.

Laertes    Upon my life, Lamord.

King                                The very same.

Laertes    I know him well. He is the brooch indeed,
    And gem, of all the nation.

King    He made confession of you,
    And gave you such a masterly report
    For art and exercise in your defence,
    And for your rapier most especial,
    That he cried out 'twould be a sight indeed
    If one could match you. The scrimers of their nation
    He swore 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 you.
    Now, out of this-

Laertes                        What out of this, my lord?

King    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    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,
    For goodness, growing to a plurisie,
    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's sigh
    That hurts by easing. But, to the quick of th' ulcer:
    Hamlet comes back; what would you undertake
    To show yourself your father's son
    More than in words?

Laertes                        To cut his throat i'th' church.

King    No place indeed should murder sanctuarize;
    Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,
    Will you do this? - keep close within your chamber.
    Hamlet returned 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 practice,
    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 scratched withal. I'll touch my point
    With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
    It may be death.

King                        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 assayed; therefore this project
    Should have a back or second that might hold
    If this did 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 venomed stuck,
    Our purpose may hold there. But stay, what noise?

                               Enter QUEEN.

Queen    One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
    So fast they follow. Your sister's drowned, Laertes

Laertes    Drowned! O, where?

Queen    There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook,
    That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
    Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
    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 pendant boughs her crownet weeds
    Clamb'ring 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 a while they bore her up;
    Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,
    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,
    Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
    To muddy death.

Laertes                    Alas, then she is drowned.

Queen    Drowned, drowned.

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.
                            [Weeps.] When these are gone,
    The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord.
    I have a speech o' fire that fain would blaze,
    But that this folly douts it.
                                                [Exit.
King                                        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.