TheHamletAesthetic

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Enter KING and LAERTES.

King: 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.

Laer.: It well appears. But tell me why you proceeded not against these feats, so criminal and so capital in nature, as by your safety, wisdom, all things else, you mainly were stirred up.

King: Oh, for two special reasons, which may to you perhaps seem much unsinewed, 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 timbered for so loud a wind, would have reverted to my bow again, and not where I had aimed them.

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 MESSENGER.]

How now, what news?

Messenger: Letters, my lord, from Hamlet. This to your majesty, this to the queen.[Gives KING letters.]

King: 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: Laertes, you shall hear them.—Leave us.

[Exit MESSENGER.]

[Reads.]

“High and mighty,

You shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. Tomorrow 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.

Enter HORATIO and SERVANT.

Hor.: What are they that would speak with me?

Servant: Seafaring men, sir. They say they have letters for you.

Hor.: 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.]

Sailor: God bless you, sir.

Hor.: Let him bless thee too.

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. [Gives HORATIO a letter.]

Hor.: “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 valor, 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. Fare-well. He that thou knowest thine,

Hamlet.”

Come, I will give you way for these your letters, And do ’t the speedier, that you may direct me To him from whom you brought them.

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