The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom : I will speak daggers to her, but use none; SCENE III. A Room in the Same. Enter the King, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDEN STERN. King. I like him not; nor stands it safe with us, The terms of our estate may not endure Guil. We will ourselves provide. Most holy and religious fear it is, To keep those many many bodies safe, Ros. The single and peculiar life is bound, 44 To shend is to injure, whether by reproof, blows, or otherwise. Shakespeare generally uses shent for reproved, threatened with angry words. "To give his words seals" is therefore to carry his punishment beyond reproof. The allusion is the sealing a deed to render it effective. 1 So the folio; the quartos read "so near us" instead of "so dangerous," and brows instead of lunacies. H. What's near it with it: it is a massy wheel, Did the king sigh, but with a general groan. age; For we will fetters put upon this fear, Which now goes too free-footed. Ros. Guil. We will haste us. [Exeunt. Enter POLONIUS. Pol. My lord, he's going to his mother's closet. Behind the arras I'll convey myself, To hear the process: I'll warrant, she'll tax him home; And, as you said, and wisely was it said, "Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear The speech of vantage.2 Fare you well, my liege : I'll call upon you ere you go to bed, And tell you what I know. King. Thanks, dear lord. O! my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; 2 "Speech of vantage" probably means "speech having the advantage of a mother's partiality." H. 3 That is, "though I were not only willing, but strongly inclined to pray, my guilt would prevent me." And, like a man to double business bound, And what's in prayer, but this two-fold force,- Or pardon'd, being down? Then, I'll look up; Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe: All may be well! 5 [Retires and kneels. 4 That is, caught as with birdlime. See 2 Henry VI., Act i. sc. 3, note 6. This speech well marks the difference between crime and Enter HAMLET. Hum. Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying; And now I'll do't:-and so he goes to heaven; And so am I reveng'd? That would be scann'd:" A villain kills my father; and, for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge." passage ? guilt of habit. The conscience here is still admitted to audience. Nay, even as an audible soliloquy, it is far less improbable than is supposed by such as have watched men only in the beaten road of their feelings. But the final -"All may be well!" is remarkable; the degree of merit attributed by the self-flattering soul to its own struggles, though baffled, and to the indefinite half promise, half command, to persevere in religious duties. COLE RIDGE. H. 6 That requires consideration. In the first line of this speech. the quartos read but now 'a is a praying," instead of "pat, now he is praying." And in the fifth line, the folio has foul instead of sole. H. 7 Thus the folio; the quartos have “base and silly" instead of "hire and salary." H. 8 That is, more horrid seizure, grasp, or hold. Hent was often used as a verb in the same sense. See The Winter's Tale, Act iv. sc. 2, note 19.- Dr. Johnson and others have exclaimed against what Hamlet here says, as showing a thorough-paced and unmitigable fiendishness of spirit. Coleridge much more justly regards the motives assigned for sparing the king, as "the marks of reluctance and procrastination." At all events, that they are not Hamlet's real motives, is evident from their very extravagance. When he is drunk, asleep, or in his rage; Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven; The King rises and advances. [Exit. King. My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go. [Exit. SCENE IV. Another Room in the Same. Enter the Queen and POLONIUS. Pol. He will come straight. Look, you lay home to him; Tell him, his pranks have been too broad to bear with; And that your grace hath screen'd and stood be tween Much heat and him. I'll silence me e'en here. 'Pray you, be round with him. Ham. [Within.] Mother, mother, mother!1 With the full conviction that he ought to kill the king, he joins a deep instinctive moral repugnance to the deed: and he here flies off to an ideal revenge, in order to quiet his filial feelings without violating his conscience; effecting a compromise between them, by adjourning a purpose which, as a man, he dare not execute, nor, as a son, abandon. He afterwards asks Horatio,-"Is't not perfect conscience, to quit him with this arm?" which confirms the view here taken, as it shows that even then his mind was not at rest on that score. This speech is found only in the folio. H. H. |