The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare (moboreader .TXT) 📕

violent author Of his own just remove; the people muddied, Thick and and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers For good Polonius’ death, and we have done but greenly In hugger-mugger to inter him; Poor Ophelia Divided from herself and her fair-judgment, Without the which we are Pictures or mere beasts; Last, and as such containing as all these, Her brother is in secret come from France; And wants not buzzers to infect his ear Feeds on his wonder, keep, himself in clouds, With pestilent speeches of his father’s death, Wherein necessity, of matter beggar’d, Will nothing stick Our person to arraign In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this, Like to a murd’ring piece, in many places Give, me superfluous death. A noise within.

Queen. Alack, what noise is this?

King. Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.

 

Enter a Messenger.

 

What is the matter?

Mess. Save Yourself, my lord:

The ocean, overpeering of his list,

Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste Than Young Laertes, in a riotous head, O’erbears Your offices. 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, They cry ‘Choose we! Laertes shall be king!’

Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds, ‘Laertes shall be king! Laertes king!’

A noise within.

Queen. How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!

O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!

King. The doors are broke.

 

Enter Laertes with others.

 

Laer. Where is this king?- Sirs, staid you all without.

All. No, let’s come in!

Laer. I pray you give me leave.

All. We will, we will!

Laer. I thank you. Keep the door. [Exeunt his Followers.]

O thou vile king,

Give me my father!

Queen. Calmly, good Laertes.

Laer. That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard; Cries cuckold to my father; brands the harlot Even here between the chaste unsmirched brows Of my true mother.

King. What is the cause, Laertes,

That thy rebellion looks so giantlike?

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, Why thou art thus incens’d. Let him go, Gertrude.

Speak, man.

Laer. Where is my father?

King. Dead.

Queen. But not by him!

King. Let him demand his fill.

Laer. How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with: 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 world, I give to negligence, Let come what comes; only I’ll be reveng’d Most throughly for my father.

King. Who shall stay you?

Laer. My will, not all the world!

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

Of your dear father’s death, is’t writ in Your revenge That swoopstake you will draw both friend and foe, Winner and loser?

Laer. None but his enemies.

King. Will you know them then?

Laer. To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms 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, It shall as level to your judgment pierce As day does to your eye.

A noise within: ‘Let her come in.’

Laer. 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!

By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by 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?

Nature is fine in love, and where ‘tis fine, It sends some precious instance of itself After the thing it loves.

 

Oph. (sings)

They bore him barefac’d on the bier (Hey non nony, nony, hey nony) And in his grave rain’d many a tear.

 

Fare you well, my dove!

Laer. Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, It could not move thus.

Oph. You must sing ‘A-down a-down, and you call him a-down-a.’ O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that stole his master’s daughter.

Laer. This nothing’s more than matter.

Oph. There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.

Laer. A document in madness! Thoughts and remembrance fitted.

Oph. 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 o’ Sundays.

O, you must wear your rue with a difference! There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they wither’d all when my father died. They say he made a good end.

 

[Sings] For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.

 

Laer. Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favour and to prettiness.

Oph. (sings)

And will he not come again?

And will he not come again?

No, no, he is dead;

Go to thy deathbed;

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.

God ‘a’mercy on his soul!

 

And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God b’ wi’, you.

Exit.

Laer. Do you see this, O God?

King. Laertes, I must commune with your grief, Or you deny me right. Go but apart,

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, 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.

Laer. Let this be so.

His means of death, his obscure funeral-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.

I pray you go with me.

Exeunt

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Scene VI.

Elsinore. Another room in the Castle.

 

Enter Horatio with an Attendant.

 

Hor. What are they that would speak with me?

Servant. Seafaring men, sir. They say they have letters for you.

Hor. Let them come in.

[Exit Attendant.]

I do not know from what part of the world I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.

 

Enter Sailors.

 

Sailor. God bless you, sir.

Hor. Let him bless thee too.

Sailor. ‘A shall, sir, an’t please him. There’s a letter for you, sir,- it comes from th’ ambassador that was bound for England-if your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is.

Hor. (reads the letter) ‘Horatio, when thou shalt have overlook’d 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 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.

 

<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM

SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS

PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE

WITH PERMISSION. ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE

DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS

PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED

COMMERCIALLY. PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY

SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>

 

Scene VII.

Elsinore. 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.

Laer. 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. O, for two special reasons,

Which may to you, perhaps, seein 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 gives 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.

Laer. 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 lov’d your father, and we love ourself, And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine-Enter a Messenger with letters.

 

How now? What news?

Mess. Letters, my lord, from Hamlet:

This to your Majesty; this to the Queen.

King. From Hamlet? Who brought them?

Mess. 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.

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