SCENE VII. Another room in the castle. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark  Shakespeare homepage  |  Hamlet  | Act 4, Scene 7 

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 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. 



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