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.

SCENE VII.-Another Room in the same.

Enter KING and LAERTES.

KING. 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,
Pursu'd my life.
LAER.
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 stirr'd up.

KING.
O, for two special reasons;
Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew'd,
But yet to me they are strong. The queen, his

mother,

Lives almost by his looks; and for myself,

(*) First folio, and.

(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 timber'd for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aim'd* 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

Soş you will not o'er-rule me to a peace.
KING. To thine own peace. If he be now
return'd,-

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 rul'd;
The rather, if you could devise it so,
That I might be the organ.

KING.

It falls right.

& Thus diddest thou !] The reading of the 1603 quarto is,"That I shall live to tell him, thus he dies,"

which by some may be thought superior.

b As checking at his voyage,-] To check, a technical phrase from falconry, means to fly from or shy at. "For who knows not, quoth she, that this hawk which cones now so fair to the first, may to-morrow check at the lure."-HINDE's Eliosto Libidinoso, 1606, quoted by Steevens. Again, in Massinger's play of "The Unnatural Combat," Act V. Sc. 2,

"and there's something here that tells me

I stand accomptable for greater sins

I never check'd at."

And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality
Wherein, they say, you shine: your sum of parts
Did not together pizck such envy from him,
As doi that one: and that, in my regard,
Of the unworthiest sieve.

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 sabies and his weeds,
Importing health and graveness."-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 he had been incorps'd and demi-natur'd
With the brave beast: so far he topp'd my
thought,

That I. in forgery of shapes and tricks,

Come short of what he did.

e of the unworthiest siege.] Siege is seat, place, state; and the meaning therefore is, Of the most ignoble rank.

d Importing health and graveness.] These words, and the preceding lines to "And call it accident," inclusive, are not in the

folio.

e And they can well on horseback:] The folio misprints this, "ran well."

f-defence,-] That is, Science of Defence, as the knowledge of sword-play was formerly called. See note 6, p. 216, Vol. I. gscrimers-] Fencers, from the French, Escrimeur.

h If you oppos'd them.] The passage beginning, "the scrimers," &c., is not in the folio.

KING. Not that I think you did not love your father;

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
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:--b

Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake,
To show yourself your father's son in deed
More than in words?

[gether,

LAER. To cut his throat i' the church. KING. No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize; [Laertes, Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Will you do this, keep close within your chamber. Hamlet return'd shall know you are come home: We'll put on those shall praise your excellence, And set a double varnish on the fame The Frenchman gave you; bring you, in fine, toAnd wager on your heads: he, being remiss, Most generous, and free from all contriving, Will not peruse the foils; so that, with ease, Or with a little shuffling, you may choose A sword unbated, and, in a pass of practice, Requite him for your father.

d

LAER. I will do't: And, for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword. I bought an unction of a mountebank, So mortal, that but dip† a knife in it, Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, Collected from all simples that have virtue Under the moon, can save the thing from death That is but scratch'd withal: I'll touch my point With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly, It may be death.

KING. Weigh what convenience both of time and means May fit us to our shape: if this should fail, And that our drift look through our bad performance, 'T were better not assay'd; therefore this project

Let's further think of this;

LAER. Drown'd!-O, where?

QUEEN. There is a willow grows ascaunt‡a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

But
our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them :
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down the weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, a while they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indu'd
Unto that element: but long it could not be,
Till that her garments, heavy with their§ drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay ||
To muddy death.

LAER.

Alas, then, is she drown'd? QUEEN. Drown'd, drown'd.

LAER. Too much of water hast thou, poor

(*) First folio, commings.
(1) First folio, aslant.
() First folio, buy.

e-venom'd stuck,-] "Stuck."

[Exeunt.

(+) First folio, the.

(§) First folio, her.

() First folio, doubts.

tuck, is perhaps used for a

sword; or it may mean a thrust, stoccata.

f How now, sweet queen ?] The parallel passage in the 1603 quarto is, "How now Gertred, why looke you heavily?" but all subsequent editions, until the folio of 1632, omit "now." gincapable-] Unsusceptible, unintelligent.

VOL. III.

385

C C

2 CLO. Go to.

1 CLO. What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?a

2 CLO. The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.

1 CLO. I like thy wit well, in good faith; the gallows does well; but how does it well? it does well to those that do ill: now, thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the church; argal, the gallows may do well to thee. To 't again, come.

2 CLO. Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?

1 CLO. Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.b

2 CLO. Marry, now I can tell.

1 CLO. To 't.

2 CLO. Mass, I cannot tell.

a What is he that builds, &c.] Queries of this description formed a favourite item in the homely festivities of our forefathers. One of the earliest collections of them known, is a little book called "Demaundes Joyous," printed in 1511, by Wynkyn de Worde, of the questions in which Steevens remarks, "The innocence may deserve a praise, which is not always due to their delicacy."

band unyoke.] A rustic phrase for giving over work, of which the meaning here may be, as Caldecott explains it,"Unravel this, and your day's work is done, your team you may then unharness."

31 a man or eGo, get thee to Yaughan;] Whether by "Yaughan place is meant, or whether the word is a corruption, we are not qualified to determine. Mr. Collier once conjectured that it

HAM. There's another: why might not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in 's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha ?(3)

HOR. Not a jot more, my lord.

HAM. Is not parchment made of sheep-skins?
HOR. Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too.

(*) First folio, It.

(t) First folio, o're offices. "might be a misunderstood stage-direction for the 1 Clown to yawn;"! he now accepts the emendation of his annotator, who reads "to yon."

-a politician,-] A plotter, a schemer for his own advantage, so Hotspur calls Henry the Fourth,-"this vile politician;" and Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, who had scant brains for circumvention, declares he "had as lief be a Brownist as a politician."

e For and-] "For and," as Mr. Dyce has shown, answers here to "And eke," as the line reads in a version of this song published in Percy's Relics of Ancient English Poetry,"And eke a shrowding shete."

cc 2