Complete Plays, The

by William Shakespeare

What are they that would speak with me?

  Servant

  Sailors, 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

  I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.

  Enter Sailors

  First Sailor

  God bless you, sir.

  Horatio

  Let him bless thee too.

  First Sailor

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

  Horatio

  [Reads] ‘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 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 make you way for these your letters;

  And do’t the speedier, that you may direct me

  To him from whom you brought them.

  Exeunt

  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

  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,

  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 —

  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 timber’d for so loud a wind,

  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,

  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

  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:

  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

  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 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!

  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,

  ‘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;

  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,

  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;

  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

  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

  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 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

  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

  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,

  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

  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,

  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,

  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,

  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,

  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

  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

  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 practise

  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 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

  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:

  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 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

  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

  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

  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

  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

  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,

  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!

  Now fear I this will give it start again;

  Therefore let’s follow.

  Exeunt

  ACT V

  SCENE I. A CHURCHYARD.

  Enter two Clowns, with spades, & c

  First Clown

  Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation?

  Second Clown

  I tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave straight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial.

  First Clown

  How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence?

  Second Clown

  Why, ’tis found so.

  First Clown

  It must be ‘se offendendo;’ it cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act: and an act hath three branches: it is, to act, to do, to perform: argal, she drowned herself wittingly.

  Second Clown

  Nay, but hear you, goodman delver,—

  First Clown

  Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here stands the man; good; if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,— mark you that; but if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.

  Second Clown

  But is this law?

  First Clown

  Ay, marry, is’t; crowner’s quest law.

  Second Clown

  Will you ha’ the truth on’t? If this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o’ Christian burial.

  First Clown

  Why, there thou say’st: and the more pity that great folk should have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves, more than their even Christian. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentleman but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers: they hold up Adam’s profession.

  Second Clown

  Was he a gentleman?

  First Clown<
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  He was the first that ever bore arms.

  Second Clown

  Why, he had none.

  First Clown

  What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture? The Scripture says ‘Adam digged:’ could he dig without arms? I’ll put another question to thee: if thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself —

  Second Clown

  Go to.

  First Clown

  What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

  Second Clown

  The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.

  First Clown

  I like thy wit well, in good faith: the gallows does well; but how does it well? it does well to those that do in: now thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the church: argal, the gallows may do well to thee. To’t again, come.

  Second Clown

  ‘Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?’

  First Clown

  Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.

  Second Clown

  Marry, now I can tell.

  First Clown

  To’t.

  Second Clown

  Mass, I cannot tell.

  Enter Hamlet and Horatio, at a distance

  First Clown

  Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating; and, when you are asked this question next, say ‘a grave-maker: ‘the houses that he makes last till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan: fetch me a stoup of liquor.

  Exit Second Clown

  He digs and sings

  In youth, when I did love, did love,

  Methought it was very sweet,

  To contract, O, the time, for, ah, my behove,

  O, methought, there was nothing meet.

  Hamlet

  Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making?

  Horatio

  Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

  Hamlet

  ’Tis e’en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.

  First Clown

  [Sings]

  But age, with his stealing steps,

  Hath claw’d me in his clutch,

  And hath shipped me intil the land,

  As if I had never been such.

  Throws up a skull

  Hamlet

  That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain’s jaw-bone, that did the first murder! It might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o’er-reaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?

  Horatio

  It might, my lord.

  Hamlet

  Or of a courtier; which could say ‘Good morrow, sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?’ This might be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord such-a-one’s horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not?