Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,

‘Laertes shall be king, Laertes king.’

QUEEN GERTRUDE

How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!

A noise within

O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!

KING CLAUDIUS The doors are broke.

Enter Laertes ⌈with his followers at the door⌉

LAERTES

Where is the King?—Sirs, stand you all without.

ALL HIS FOLLOWERS No, let’s come in.

LAERTES I pray you, give me leave.

ALL HIS FOLLOWERS We will, we will.

LAERTES

I thank you. Keep the door.

⌈exeunt followers⌉

O thou vile king,

Give me my father.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Calmly, good Laertes.

LAERTES

That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard,

Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot

Even here between the chaste unsmirchèd brow

Of my true mother.

KING CLAUDIUS

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 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.

LAERTES

Where is my father?

KING CLAUDIUS

Dead.

QUEEN GERTRUDE (to Laertes)

But not by him.

KING CLAUDIUS

Let him demand his fill.

LAERTES

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,

Let come what comes. Only I’ll be revenged

Most throughly for my father.

KING CLAUDIUS Who shall stay you?

LAERTES My will, not all the world;

And for my means, I’ll husband them so well

They shall go far with little.

KING CLAUDIUS

Good Laertes,

If 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?

LAERTES None but his enemies.

KING CLAUDIUS Will you know them then?

LAERTES

To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms,

And, like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,

Repast them with my blood.

KING CLAUDIUS

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 judgement pierce

As day does to your eye.

A noise within

VOICES (within) Let her come in.

LAERTES How now, what noise is that?

Enter Ophelia as before

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 by weight

Till our scale turns 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

It sends some precious instance of itself

After the thing it loves.

OPHELIA (sings)

They bore him barefaced on the bier,

Hey non nony, nony, hey nony,

And on his grave rained many a tear—

Fare you well, my dove.

LAERTES

Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge,

It could not move thus.

OPHELIA You must sing ‘Down, a-down’, and you, ‘Call him a-down-a’. O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward that stole his master’s daughter. LAERTES This nothing’s more than matter.

OPHELIA There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray, love, remember. And there is pansies; that’s for thoughts.

LAERTES

A document in madness—thoughts and remembrance fitted.

OPHELIA There’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it herb-grace o’ Sundays. O, you must 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 a made a good end.

(Sings) For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.

LAERTES

Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself

She turns to favour and to prettiness.

OPHELIA (sings)

And will a not come again,

And will a not come again?

No, no, he is dead,

Go to thy death-bed,

He never will come again.

His beard 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.

And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God b’wi’ ye.

⌈Exeunt Ophelia and Gertrude⌉

LAERTES Do you see this, O God?

KING CLAUDIUS

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 you in satisfaction. But if not,

Be you content to lend your patience to us,

And we shall jointly labour with your soul

To give it due content.

LAERTES

Let this be so.

His means of death, his obscure 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 CLAUDIUS

So you shall;

And where th’offence is, let the great axe fall.