I pray you go with me.

Exeunt

4.6 Enter Horatio with a Servant

HORATIO

What are they that would speak with me?

SERVANT

Sailors, sir. They say they have letters for you.

HORATIO 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⌉

A SAILOR God bless you, sir.

HORATIO Let him bless thee too.

A SAILOR A shall, sir, an’t please him. There’s a letter for you, sir. It comes from th’ambassador that was bound for England—if your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is.

HORATIO (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 valour, 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 haste 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. Farewell.

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. Exeunt

4.7 Enter King Claudius and Laertes

KING CLAUDIUS

Now must your conscience my acquittance 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.

LAERTES

It well appears. But tell me

Why you proceeded not against these feats,

So crimeful and so capital in nature,

As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,

You mainly were stirred up.

KING CLAUDIUS

O, for two special reasons,

Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinewed,

And yet to me they’re 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 guilts 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.

LAERTES

And so have I a noble father lost,

A sister driven into desp’rate terms,

Who has, if praises may go back again,

Stood challenger, on mount, of all the age

For her perfections. But my revenge will come.

KING CLAUDIUS

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 with letters

How now? What news?

MESSENGER

Letters, my lord, from Hamlet.

This to your majesty; this to the Queen.

KING CLAUDIUS From Hamlet? Who brought them?

MESSENGER

Sailors, my lord, they say. I saw them not.

They were given me by Claudio. He received them.

KING CLAUDIUS

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 th’occasions 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?

LAERTES

Know you the hand?

KING CLAUDIUS

’Tis Hamlet’s character.

‘Naked’—and in a postscript here he says

‘Alone’. Can you advise me?

LAERTES

I’m 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,

‘Thus diddest thou’.

KING CLAUDIUS

If it be so, Laertes—

As how should it be so, how otherwise?—

Will you be ruled by me?

LAERTES

If so you’ll not o’errule me to a peace.

KING CLAUDIUS

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. Some two months since

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 into his seat,

And to such wondrous doing brought his horse

As had he been incorpsed and demi-natured

With the brave beast. So far he passed my thought

That I in forgery of shapes and tricks