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,

20 Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows,
Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aimed them.

30

Laer. 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. 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?

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 received them

Of him that brought them.

King. Leave us.

Laertes, you shall hear them.
[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?

Laer. Know you the hand?

King. 'Tis Hamlet's character. Naked,

And in a postscript here he says alone.

Can you advise me?

Laer. I am 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,

As how should it be so? how otherwise?-
Will you be ruled by me?

40

50

Laer.

Ay, my lord;

So you will not o'er-rule me to a peace.

60 King. To thine own peace. If he be now returned,

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 practice,
And call it accident.

Laer.

My lord, I will be ruled;

The rather, if you could devise it so

That I might be the organ.

It falls right.

King. 70 You have been talked 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.

Laer.

What part is that, my lord?

King. 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, 80

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 topped my thought,
That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,

Come short of what he did.

Laer. I know him well; he is the brooch, indeed, And gem of all the nation.

King. He made confession of you,

And gave you such a masterly report
For art and exercise in your defense,

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 neither motion, guard, nor eye,

If you opposed them. Sir, this report of his

Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy,

100

That he could nothing do but wish and beg
Your sudden coming o’er, to play with him.
Now, out of this,

Laer.

What out of this, my lord?

King. Laertes, was your father dear to you? Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,

A face without a heart?

Laer.

Why ask you this?

King. Not that I think you did not love your father, 110 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

120 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?