Divided from herself, and her fair judgment;
Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts.
Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France:
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murdering piece,' in many places
Gives me superfluous death!

Queen.

[A noise within. Alack! what noise is this?

Enter a Gentleman.

King. Attend.

Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door :

What is the matter?

Gent.

Save yourself, my lord;

The ocean, overpeering of his list,"

Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste,

Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,

O'erbears your officers! The rabble call him, Lord; And, as the world were now but to begin,

Antiquity forgot, custom not known,

The ratifiers3 and props of every word,+

They cry, Choose we; Laertes shall be king!

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

Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!

Queen. How cheerfully on the false trail they cry! O, this is counter,5 you false Danish dogs. King. The doors are broke.

[Noise within.

a piece of ordnance.

boundary, shore.

3 That is, antiquity and custom are the ratifiers, &c.

4 TYRWHITT suggests work instead of word.

› Hounds run counter when they trace the trail backwards.

Enter LAERTES, armed; Danes following.

Laer. Where is this king?-Sirs, stand you all Dan. No, let's come in.

Laer.

Dan. We will, we will.

[without.

I pray you, give me leave.

[They retire without the door. Laer. I thank you :-keep the door.-O thou vile Give me my father.

Queen.

[king,

Calmly, good Laertes. Laer. That drop of blood, that's calm, proclaims me

bastard;

Cries, Cuckold, to my father; brands the harlot
Even here, between the chaste unsmirched1 brow

Of

my true mother.

King.
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 incens'd;-Let him go,
Speak, man.

Gertrude;

Laer. Where is

my father?

King.

Dead.

Queen.

But not by him.

King. Let him demand his fill.

Laer. How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with.

I dare damnation: To this point I stand,-
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes; only I'll be reveng'd
Most throughly for my father.

King.

u?

Who shall stay you'

Laer. My will, not all the world's:

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

They shall go far with little.

King.

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?

Laer. None but his enemies.

King.

Will you know them then? Laer. To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my And, like the kind life-rend'ring pelican,'

Repast them with my blood.

[arms;

King.
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 judgment 'pear,
As day does to your eye.

Danes. [Within.] Let her come in.
Laer. How now! what noise is that?

Enter OPHELIA, fantastically dressed with straws and flowers.

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 with weight,
Till our scale turn 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.

Oph.

They bore him barefac'd on the bier ;
And in his grave rain'd many a tear ;—

Fare you well, my dove!

1

undistinguishingly.

2 It is almost needless to observe that this account of the bird

is entirely fabulous.