Hamlet 20

⁷HamletUp from my cabin,
My sea-gown scarf’d about me, in the dark
Groped I to find out them; had my desire,
Finger’d their packet, and in fine withdrew
To mine own room again; making so bold,
My fears forgetting manners, to unseal
Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio⁠—
O royal knavery!⁠—an exact command,
Larded with many several sorts of reasons
Importing Denmark’s health and England’s too,
With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life,
That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,
No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
My head should be struck off.

¹¹HamletBeing thus be-netted round with villainies⁠—
Ere I could make a prologue to my brains,
They had begun the play⁠—I sat me down,
Devised a new commission, wrote it fair:
I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness to write fair and labour’d much
How to forget that learning, but, sir, now
It did me yeoman’s service: wilt thou know
The effect of what I wrote?

¹⁵HamletWhy, even in that was heaven ordinant.
I had my father’s signet in my purse,
Which was the model of that Danish seal;
Folded the writ up in form of the other,
Subscribed it, gave’t the impression, placed it safely,
The changeling never known. Now, the next day
Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent
Thou know’st already.

¹⁹HamletDoes it not, think’st thee, stand me now upon⁠—
He that hath kill’d my king and whored my mother,
Popp’d in between the election and my hopes,
Thrown out his angle for my proper life,
And with such cozenage⁠—is’t not perfect conscience,
To quit him with this arm? and is’t not to be damn’d,
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil?

²³Enter Osric.

²⁷HamletThy state is the more gracious; for ’tis a vice to know him. He hath much land, and fertile: let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king’s mess: ’tis a chough; but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.

³¹HamletNo, believe me, ’tis very cold; the wind is northerly.

³⁵HamletI beseech you, remember⁠—Hamlet moves him to put on his hat.

³⁹HamletThe concernancy, sir? why do we wrap the gentleman in our more rawer breath?

¹³¹KingShe swounds to see them bleed.

¹³⁵HamletThe point envenom’d too!
Then, venom, to thy work. Stabs the King.

¹³⁹LaertesHe is justly served;
It is a poison temper’d by himself.
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet:
Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee,
Nor thine on me! Dies.

¹⁴³OsricYoung Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,
To the ambassadors of England gives
This warlike volley.

¹⁴⁷Prince FortinbrasWhere is this sight?

¹⁵¹HoratioNot from his mouth,
Had it the ability of life to thank you:
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
Are here arrived give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placed to the view;
And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
How these things came about: so shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall’n on the inventors’ heads: all this can I
Truly deliver.