Enter LAERTES, armed; Danes following.

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

Danes. No, let's come in.

pray you, give me leave.

[They retire without the door.

Laer. I thank you;-keep the door.-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, unsmirched1 brow
Of my true mother.

King.
What is the cause, Laertes,
That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?—
Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person;
There's such divinity doth hedge 2 a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.-Tell me, Laertes,

Why thou art thus incensed.-Let him go, Gertrude ;—
Speak, man.

Laer. Where is my father?

King.

Queen.

Dead.

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 worlds I give to negligence,3 Let come what comes; only I'll be revenged Most thoroughly for my father.

King.

Who shall stay you?

1 Unsmirched is unsullied, spotless. See Act i. Sc. 3.

2 Quarto 1603-wall.

3"But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer."-Macbeth.

Laer. My will, not all the world's;

And, for my means, I'll husband them so well,
They shall
go far with little.

King.

If

Good Laertes,

you desire to know the certainty

Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge, That, sweepstake, 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-rendering pelican,

Repast them with

my blood.1

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 pierce3
As day does to your eye.

Danes. [Within.] Let her come in.
Laer. How now! what noise is that?

Enter OPHELIA, fantastically dressed with straws and flowers.

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 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?
Nature is fine in love; and where 'tis fine,

3 Pierce is the reading of the folio. The quarto has 'pear, an awkward contraction of appear.

4 "Nature is fine in love." The three concluding lines of this speech are not in the quarto. The meaning appears to be, Nature is refined by love, the senses are rendered more ethereal, and some precious portions of the mental energies fly off, or are sent after the beloved object.

It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.

Oph. They bore him barefaced on the bier;
Hey no nonny, nonny hey nonny;

And in his grave rained 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, Down-a-down, an you call him a-down-a. O, how the wheel1 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.2

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;-you may wear your rue with a difference.-There's a daisy.-I would give you some violets; but they withered all, when my father died. They say he made a good end

For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy,—

[Sings.

Laer. Thought3 and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favor, and to prettiness.

Oph. And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?

[Sings.

1 The wheel is the burden of a ballad, from the Latin rota, a round, which is usually accompanied with a burden frequently repeated. Steevens forgot to note from whence he made the following extract, though he knew it was from the preface to some black letter collection of songs or sonnets:-"The song was accounted a good one, though it was not moche graced with the wheele, which in no wise accorded with the subject matter thereof."

2 Our ancestors gave to almost every flower and plant its emblematic meaning.

3 Thought, among our ancestors, was used for grief, care, pensiveness.

No, no, he is dead;

Go to thy death-bed,

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!1

And of all Christian souls! I pray God. God be wi’
you!
[Exit OPHELIA.

Laer. Do you see this, O God?

2

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 touched, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
To in satisfaction; but, if not,

you

Be you content to lend your patience to us,
And we shall jointly labor with

To give it due content.3

your soul

Laer.
Let this be so;
His means of death, his obscure funeral,4-

1 Poor Ophelia, in her madness, remembers the ends of many old popular ballads. "Bonny Robin" appears to have been a favorite. The editors have not traced the present one. It is introduced in Eastward Hoe, written by Jonson, Chapman, and Marston, where some parts of this play are apparently burlesqued.

2 The folio reads common, which is only a varied orthography of the same word. "We will devise and common of these matters."-Baret. 3 Thus in the quarto 1603:

"King. Content you, good Laertes, for a time, Although I know your grief is as a flood,

Brim full of sorrow; but forbear a while,

And think already the revenge is done

On him that makes you such a hapless son.

"Laer. You have prevailed, my lord, a while I strive

To bury grief within a tomb of wrath,

Which once unhearsed, then the world shall hear
Laertes had a father he held dear.

"King. No more of that, ere many days be done
You shall hear that you do not dream upon."

4 Folio-burial.

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 the offence is, let the great axe fall.

I

pray you, go with me.

[Exeunt.

SCENE VI. Another Room in the same

Enter HORATIO and a Servant.

Hor. What are they that would speak with me?

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

Enter Sailors.

1 Sail. God bless you, sir.

Hor. Let him bless thee too.

3

I Sail. 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.

Hor. [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

1 The funerals of knights and persons of rank were made with great ceremony, formerly. Sir John Hawkins observes that "the sword, the helmet, the gauntlet, spurs, and tabard, are still hung over the grave of every knight."

2 Quarto-sea-faring men.

3 Folio-it came.