SCENE II. A hall in the Castle.
[Enter Hamlet and Horatio.]
Ham.
So much for this, sir: now let me see the other;
You do remember all the circumstance?
Hor.
Remember it, my lord!
Ham.
Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep: methought I lay
Worse than the mutinies in the bilboes. Rashly,
And prais’d be rashness for it,—let us know,
Our indiscretion sometime serves us well,
When our deep plots do fail; and that should teach us
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
Hor.
That is most certain.
Ham.
Up from my cabin,
My sea-gown scarf’d about me, in the dark
Grop’d 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.
Hor.
Is’t possible?
Ham.
Here’s the commission: read it at more leisure.
But wilt thou bear me how I did proceed?
Hor.
I beseech you.
Ham.
Being thus benetted round with villanies,—
Or I could make a prologue to my brains,
They had begun the play,—I sat me down;
Devis’d 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?
Hor.
Ay, good my lord.
Ham.
An earnest conjuration from the king,—
As England was his faithful tributary;
As love between them like the palm might flourish;
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear
And stand a comma ‘tween their amities;
And many such-like as’s of great charge,—
That, on the view and know of these contents,
Without debatement further, more or less,
He should the bearers put to sudden death,
Not shriving-time allow’d.
Hor.
How was this seal’d?
Ham.
Why, 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 the form of the other;
Subscrib’d it: gave’t the impression; plac’d it safely,
The changeling never known. Now, the next day
Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent
Thou know’st already.
Hor.
So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to’t.
Ham.
Why, man, they did make love to this employment;
They are not near my conscience; their defeat
Does by their own insinuation grow:
‘Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
Between the pass and fell incensed points
Of mighty opposites.
Hor.
Why, what a king is this!
Ham.
Does it not, thinks’t thee, stand me now upon,—
He that hath kill’d my king, and whor’d 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?
Hor.
It must be shortly known to him from England
What is the issue of the business there.
Ham.
It will be short: the interim is mine;
