<h2><SPAN name="chap18"></SPAN>HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK</h2>
<p>Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, becoming a widow by the sudden death of King
Hamlet, in less than two months after his death married his brother
Claudius, which was noted by all people at the tim for a strange act of
indiscretion, or unfeelingness, or worse; for this Claudius did no way
resemble her late husband in the qualities of his person or his mind, but
was as contemptible in outward appearance as he was base and unworthy in
disposition; and suspicions did not fail to arise in the minds of some
that he had privately made away with his brother, the late king, with the
view of marrying his widow and ascending the throne of Denmark, to the
exclusion of young Hamlet, the son of the buried king and lawful successor
to the throne.</p>
<p>But upon no one did this unadvised action of the queen make such
impression as upon this young prince, who loved and venerated the memory
of his dead father almost to idolatry, and, being of a nice sense of honor
and a most exquisite practiser of propriety himself, did sorely take to
heart this unworthy conduct of his mother Gertrude; in so much that,
between grief for his father’s death and shame for his mother’s
marriage, this young prince was overclouded with a deep melancholy, and
lost all his mirth and all his good looks; all his customary pleasure in
books forsook him, his princely exercises and sports, proper to his youth,
were no longer acceptable; he grew weary of the world, which seemed to him
an unweeded garden, where all the wholesome flowers were choked up and
nothing but weeds could thrive. Not that the prospect of exclusion from
the throne, his lawful inheritance, weighed so much upon his spirits,
though that to a young and high-minded prince was a bitter wound and a
sore indignity; but what so galled him and took away all his cheerful
spirits was that his mother had shown herself so forgetful to his father’s
memory, and such a father! who had been to her so loving and so gentle a
husband! and then she always appeared as loving and obedient a wife to
him, and would hang upon him as if her affection grew to him. And now
within two months, or, as it seemed to young Hamlet, less than two months,
she had married again, married his uncle, her dear husband’s
brother, in itself a highly improper and unlawful marriage, from the
nearness of relationship, but made much more so by the indecent haste with
which it was concluded and the unkingly character of the man whom she had
chosen to be the partner of her throne and bed. This it was which more
than the loss of ten kingdoms dashed the spirits and brought a cloud over
the mind of this honorable young prince.</p>
<p>In vain was all that his mother Gertrude or the king could do to contrive
to divert him; he still appeared in court in a suit of deep black, as
mourning for the king his father’s death, which mode of dress he had
never laid aside, not even in compliment to his mother upon the day she
was married, nor could he be brought to join in any of the festivities or
rejoicings of that (as appeared to him) disgraceful day.</p>
<p>What mostly troubled him was an uncertainty about the manner of his father’s
death. It was given out by Claudius that a serpent had stung him; but
young Hamlet had shrewd suspicions that Claudius himself was the serpent;
in plain English, that he had murdered him for his crown, and that the
serpent who stung his father did now sit on the throne.</p>
<p>How far he was right in this conjecture and what he ought to think of his
mother, how far she was privy to this murder and whether by her consent or
knowledge, or without, it came to pass, were the doubts which continually
harassed and distracted him.</p>
<p>A rumor had reached the ear of young Hamlet that an apparition, exactly
resembling the dead king his father, had been seen by the soldiers upon
watch, on the platform before the palace at midnight, for two or three
nights successively. The figure came constantly clad in the same suit of
armor, from head to foot, which the dead king was known to have worn. And
they who saw it (Hamlet’s bosom friend Horatio was one) agreed in
their testimony as to the time and manner of its appearance that it came
just as the clock struck twelve; that it looked pale, with a face more of
sorrow than of anger; that its beard was grisly, and the color a SABLE
SILVERED, as they had seen it in his lifetime; that it made no answer when
they spoke to it; yet once they thought it lifted up its head and
addressed itself to motion, as if it were about to speak; but in that
moment the morning cock crew and it shrank in haste away, and vanished out
of their sight.</p>
<p>The young prince, strangely amazed at their relation, which was too
consistent and agreeing with itself to disbelieve, concluded that it was
his father’s ghost which they had seen, and determined to take his
watch with the soldiers that night, that he might have a chance of seeing
it; for he reasoned with himself that such an appearance did not come for
nothing, but that the ghost had something to impart, and though it had
been silent hitherto, yet it would speak to him. And he waited with
impatience for the coming of night.</p>
<p>When night came he took his stand with Horatio, and Marcellus, one of the
guard, upon the platform, where this apparition was accustomed to walk;
and it being a cold night, and the air unusually raw and nipping, Hamlet
and Horatio and their companion fell into some talk about the coldness of
the night, which was suddenly broken off by Horatio announcing that the
ghost was coming.</p>
<p>At the sight of his father’s spirit Hamlet was struck with a sudden
surprise and fear.’ He at first called upon the angels and heavenly
ministers to defend them, for he knew not whether it were a good spirit or bad,
whether it came for good or evil; but he gradually assumed more courage; and
his father (as it seemed to him) looked upon him so piteously, and as it were
desiring to have conversation with him, and did in all respects appear so like
himself as he was when he lived, that Hamlet could not help addressing him. He
called him by his name, “Hamlet, King, Father!” and conjured him
that he would tell the reason why he had left his grave, where they had seen
him quietly bestowed, to come again and visit the earth and the moonlight; and
besought him that he would let them know if there was anything which they could
do to give peace to his spirit. And the ghost beckoned to Hamlet, that he
should go with him to some more removed place where they might be alone; and
Horatio and Marcellus would have dissuaded the young prince from following it,
for they feared lest it should be some evil spirit who would tempt him to the
neighboring sea or to the top of some dreadful cliff, and there put on some
horrible shape which might deprive the prince of his reason. But their counsels
and entreaties could not alter Hamlet’s determination, who cared too
little about life to fear the losing of it; and as to his soul, he said, what
could the spirit do to that, being a thing immortal as itself? And he felt as
hardy as a lion, and, bursting from them, who did all they could to hold him,
he followed whithersoever the spirit led him.</p>
<p>And when they were alone together, the spirit broke silence and told him that
he was the ghost of Hamlet, his father, who had been cruelly murdered, and he
told the manner of it; that it was done by his own brother Claudius,
Hamlet’s uncle, as Hamlet had already but too much suspected, for the
hope of succeeding to his bed and crown. That as he was sleeping in his garden,
his custom always in the afternoon, his treasonous brother stole upon him in
his sleep and poured the juice of poisonous henbane into his ears, which has
such an antipathy to the life of man that, swift as quicksilver, it courses
through all the veins of the body, baking up the blood and spreading a
crust-like leprosy all over the skin. Thus sleeping, by a brother’s hand
he was cut off at once from his crown, his queen, and his life; and he adjured
Hamlet, if he did ever his dear father love, that he would revenge his foul
murder. And the ghost lamented to his son that his mother should so fall off
from virtue as to prove false to the wedded love of her first husband and to
marry his murderer; but he cautioned Hamlet, howsoever he proceeded in his
revenge against his wicked uncle, by no means to act any violence against the
person of his mother, but to leave her to Heaven, and to the stings and thorns
of conscience. And Hamlet promised to observe the ghost’s direction in
all things, and the ghost vanished.</p>
<p>And when Hamlet was left alone he took up a solemn resolution that all he
had in his memory, all that he had ever learned by books or observation,
should be instantly forgotten by him, and nothing live in his brain but
the memory of what the ghost had told him and enjoined him to do. And
Hamlet related the particulars of the conversation which had passed to
none but his dear friend Horatio; and he enjoined both to him and
Marcellus the strictest secrecy as to what they had seen that night.</p>
<p>The terror which the sight of the ghost had left upon the senses of
Hamlet, he being weak and dispirited before, almost unhinged his mind and
drove him beside his reason. And he, fearing that it would continue to
have this effect, which might subject him to observation and set his uncle
upon his guard, if he suspected that he was meditating anything against
him, or that Hamlet really knew more of his father’s death than he
professed, took up a strange resolution, from that time to counterfeit as
if he were really and truly mad; thinking that he would be less an object
of suspicion when his uncle should believe him incapable of any serious
project, and that his real perturbation of mind would be best covered and
pass concealed under a disguise of pretended lunacy.</p>
<p>From this time Hamlet affected a certain wildness and strangeness in his
apparel, his speech, and behavior, and did so excellently counterfeit the
madman that the king and queen were both deceived, and not thinking his
grief for his father’s death a sufficient cause to produce such a
distemper, for they knew not of the appearance of the ghost, they
concluded that his malady was love and they thought they had found out the
object.</p>
<p>Before Hamlet fell into the melancholy way which has been related he had
dearly loved a fair maid called Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius, the
king’s chief counselor in affairs of state. He had sent her letters
and rings, and made many tenders of his affection to her, and importuned
her with love in honorable fashion; and she had given belief to his vows
and importunities. But the melancholy which he fell into latterly had made
him neglect her, and from the time he conceived the project of
counterfeiting madness he affected to treat her with unkindness and a sort
of rudeness; but she, good lady, rather than reproach him with being false
to her, persuaded herself that it was nothing but the disease in his mind,
and no settled unkindness, which had made him less observant of her than
formerly; and she compared the faculties of his once noble mind and
excellent understanding, impaired as they were with the deep melancholy
that oppressed him, to sweet bells which in themselves are capable of most
exquisite music, but when jangled out of tune, or rudely handled, produce
only a harsh and unpleasing sound.</p>
<p>Though the rough business which Hamlet had in hand, the revenging of his
father’s death upon his murderer, did not suit with the playful
state of courtship, or admit of the society of so idle a passion as love
now seemed to him, yet it could not hinder but that soft thoughts of his
Ophelia would come between, and in one of these moments, when he thought
that his treatment of this gentle lady had been unreasonably harsh, he
wrote her a letter full of wild starts of passion, and in extravagant
terms, such as agreed with his supposed madness, but mixed with some
gentle touches of affection, which could not but show to this honored lady
that a deep love for her yet lay at the bottom of his heart. He bade her
to doubt the stars were fire, and to doubt that the sun did move, to doubt
truth to be a liar, but never to doubt that he loved; with more of such
extravagant phrases. This letter Ophelia dutifully showed to her father,
and the old man thought himself bound to communicate it to the king and
queen, who from that time supposed that the true cause of Hamlet’s
madness was love. And the queen wished that the good beauties of Ophelia
might be the happy cause of his wildness, for so she hoped that her
virtues might happily restore him to his accustomed way again, to both
their honors.</p>
<p>But Hamlet’s malady lay deeper than she supposed, or than could be
so cured. His father’s ghost, which he had seen, still haunted his
imagination, and the sacred injunction to revenge his murder gave him no
rest till it was accomplished. Every hour of delay seemed to him a sin and
a violation of his father’s commands. Yet how to compass the death
of the king, surrounded as he constantly was with his guards, was no easy
matter. Or if it had been, the presence of the queen, Hamlet’s
mother, who was generally with the king, was a restraint upon his purpose,
which he could not break through. Besides, the very circumstance that the
usurper was his mother’s husband, filled him with some remorse and
still blunted the edge of his purpose. The mere act of putting a
fellow-creature to death was in itself odious and terrible to a
disposition naturally so gentle as Hamlet’s was. His very
melancholy, and the dejection of spirits he had so long been ill, produced
an irresoluteness and wavering of purpose which kept him from proceeding
to extremities. Moreover, he could not help having some scruples upon his
mind, whether the spirit which he had seen was indeed his father, or
whether it might not be the devil, who he had heard has power to take any
form he pleases, and who might have assumed his father’s shape only
to take advantage of his weakness and his melancholy, to drive him to the
doing of so desperate an act as murder. And he determined that he would
have more certain grounds to go upon than a vision, or apparition, which
might be a delusion.</p>
<p>While he was in this irresolute mind there came to the court certain
players, in whom Hamlet formerly used to take delight, and particularly to
hear one of them speak a tragical speech, describing the death of old
Priam, King of Troy, with the grief of Hecuba his queen. Hamlet welcomed
his old friends, the players, and remembering how that speech had formerly
given him pleasure, requested the player to repeat it; which he did in so
lively a manner, setting forth the cruel murder of the feeble old king,
with the destruction of his people and city by fire, and the mad grief of
the old queen, running barefoot up and down the palace, with a poor clout
upon that head where a crown had been, and with nothing but a blanket upon
her loins, snatched up in haste, where she had worn a royal robe; that not
only it drew tears from all that stood by, who thought they saw the real
scene, so lively was it represented, but even the player himself delivered
it with a broken voice and real tears. This put Hamlet upon thinking, if
that player could so work himself up to passion by a mere fictitious
speech, to weep for one that he had never seen, for Hecuba, that had been
dead so many hundred years, how dull was he, who having a real motive and
cue for passion, a real king and a dear father murdered, was yet so little
moved that his revenge all this while had seemed to have slept in dull and
muddy forgetfulness! and while he meditated on actors and acting, and the
powerful effects which a good play, represented to the life, has upon the
spectator, he remembered the instance of some murderer, who, seeing a
murder on the stage, was by the mere force of the scene and resemblance of
circumstances so affected that on the spot he confessed the crime which he
had committed. And he determined that these players should play something
like the murder of his father before his uncle, and he would watch
narrowly what effect it might have upon him, and from his looks he would
be able to gather with more certainty if he were the murderer or not. To
this effect he ordered a play to be prepared, to the representation of
which he invited the king and queen.</p>
<p>The story of the play was of a murder done in Vienna upon a duke. The duke’s
name was Gonzago, his wife’s Baptista. The play showed how one
Lucianus, a near relation to the duke, poisoned him in his garden for his
estate, and how the murderer in a short time after got the love of Gonzago’s
wife.</p>
<p>At the representation of this play, the king, who did not know the trap
which was laid for him, was present, with his queen and the whole court;
Hamlet sitting attentively near him to observe his looks. The play began
with a conversation between Gonzago and his wife, in which the lady made
many protestations of love, and of never marrying a second husband if she
should outlive Gonzago, wishing she might be accursed if she ever took a
second husband, and adding that no woman did so but those wicked women who
kill their first husbands. Hamlet observed the king his uncle change color
at this expression, and that it was as bad as wormwood both to him and to
the queen. But when Lucianus, according to the story, came to poison
Gonzago sleeping in the garden, the strong resemblance which it bore to
his own wicked act upon the late king, his brother, whom he had poisoned
in his garden, so struck upon the conscience of this usurper that he was
unable to sit out the rest of the play, but on a sudden calling for lights
to his chamber, and affecting or partly feeling a sudden sickness, he
abruptly left the theater. The king being departed, the play was given
over. Now Hamlet had seen enough to be satisfied that the words of the
ghost were true and no illusion; and in a fit of gaiety, like that which
comes over a man who suddenly has some great doubt or scruple resolved, he
swore to Horatio that he would take the ghost’s word for a thousand
pounds. But before he could make up his resolution as to what measures of
revenge he should take, now he was certainly informed that his uncle was
his father’s murderer, he was sent for by the queen his mother, to a
private conference in her closet.</p>
<p>It was by desire of the king that the queen sent for Hamlet, that she
might signify to her son how much his late behavior had displeased them
both, and the king, wishing to know all that passed at that conference,
and thinking that the too partial report of a mother might let slip some
part of Hamlet’s words, which it might much import the king to know,
Polonius, the old counselor of state, was ordered to plant himself behind
the hangings in the queen’s closet, where he might, unseen, hear all
that passed. This artifice was particularly adapted to the disposition of
Polonius, who was a man grown old in crooked maxims and policies of state,
and delighted to get at the knowledge of matters in an indirect and
cunning way.</p>
<p>Hamlet being come to his mother, she began to tax him in the roundest way
with his actions and behavior, and she told him that he had given great
offense to HIS FATHER, meaning the king, his uncle, whom, because he had
married her, she called Hamlet’s father. Hamlet, sorely indignant
that she should give so dear and honored a name as father seemed to him to
a wretch who was indeed no better than the murderer of his true father,
with some sharpness replied:</p>
<p>“Mother, YOU have much offended MY FATHER.”</p>
<p>The queen said that was but an idle answer.</p>
<p>“As good as the question deserved,” said Hamlet.</p>
<p>The queen asked him if he had forgotten who it was he was speaking to.</p>
<p>“Alas!” replied Hamlet, “I wish I could forget. You are
the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife; and you are my
mother. I wish you were not what you are.”</p>
<p>“Nay, then,” said the queen, “if you show me so little
respect, I will set those to you that can speak,” and was going to
send the king or Polonius to him.</p>
<p>But Hamlet would not let her go, now he had her alone, till he had tried
if his words could not bring her to some sense of her wicked life; and,
taking her by the wrist, he held her fast, and made her sit down. She,
affrighted at his earnest manner, and fearful lest in his lunacy he should
do her a mischief, cried out; and a voice was heard from behind the
hangings, “Help, help’ the queen!” which Hamlet hearing,
and verily thinking that it was the king himself there concealed, he drew
his sword and stabbed at the place where the voice came from, as he would
have stabbed a rat that ran there, till, the voice ceasing, he concluded
the person to be dead. But when he dragged forth the body it was not the
king, but Polonius, the old, officious counselor, that had planted himself
as a spy behind the hangings.</p>
<p>“Oh, me!” exclaimed the queen, “what a rash and bloody
deed have you done!”</p>
<p>“A bloody deed, mother,” replied Hamlet, “but not so bad
as yours, who killed a king, and married his brother.”</p>
<p>Hamlet had gone too far to leave off here. He was now in the humor to
speak plainly to his mother, and he pursued it. And though the faults of
parents are to be tenderly treated by their children, yet in the case of
great crimes the son may have leave to speak even to his own mother with
some harshness, so as that harshness is meant for her good and to turn her
from her wicked ways, and not done for the purpose of upbraiding. And now
this virtuous prince did in moving terms represent to the queen the
heinousness of her offense in being so forgetful of the dead king, his
father, as in so short a space of time to marry with his brother and
reputed murderer. Such an act as, after the vows which she had sworn to
her first husband, was enough to make all vows of women suspected and all
virtue to be accounted hypocrisy, wedding contracts to be less than
gamesters’ oaths, and religion to be a mockery and a mere form of
words. He said she had done such a deed that the heavens blushed at it,
and the earth was sick of her because of it. And he showed her two
pictures, the one of the late king, her first husband, and the other of
the present king, her second husband, and he bade her mark the difference;
what a grace was on the brow of his father, how like a god he looked! the
curls of Apollo, the forehead of Jupiter, the eye of Mars, and a posture
like to Mercury newly alighted on some heaven-kissing hill! this man, he
said, HAD BEEN her husband. And then be showed her whom she had got in his
stead; how like a blight or a mildew he looked, for so he had blasted his
wholesome brother. And the queen was sore ashamed that he should so turn
her eyes inward upon her soul, which she now saw so black and deformed.
And he asked her how she could continue to live with this man, and be a
wife to him, who had murdered her first husband and got the crown by as
false means as a thief—and just as he spoke the ghost of his father,
such as he was in his lifetime and such as he had lately seen it, entered
the room, and Hamlet, in great terror, asked what it would have; and the
ghost said that it came to remind him of the revenge he had promised,
which Hamlet seemed to have forgot; and the ghost bade him speak to his
mother, for the grief and terror she was in would else kill her. It then
vanished, and was seen by none but Hamlet, neither could he by pointing to
where it stood, or by any description, make his mother perceive it, who
was terribly frightened all this while to hear him conversing, as it
seemed to her, with nothing; and she imputed it to the disorder of his
mind. But Hamlet begged her not to flatter her wicked soul in such a
manner as to think that it was his madness, and not her own offenses,
which had brought his father’s spirit again on the earth. And he
bade her feel his pulse, how temperately it beat, not like a madman’s.
And he begged of her, with tears, to confess herself to Heaven for what
was past, and for the future to avoid the company of the king and be no
more as a wife to him; and when she should show herself a mother to him,
by respecting his father’s memory, he would ask a blessing of her as
a son. And she promising to observe his directions, the conference ended.</p>
<p>And now Hamlet was at leisure to consider who it was that in his
unfortunate rashness he had killed; and when he came to see that it was
Polonius, the father of the Lady Ophelia whom he so dearly loved, he drew
apart the dead body, and, his spirits being now a little quieter, he wept
for what he had done.</p>
<p>The unfortunate death of Polonius gave the king a pretense for sending
Hamlet out of the kingdom. He would willingly have put him to death,
fearing him as dangerous; but he dreaded the people, who loved Hamlet, and
the queen, who, with all her faults, doted upon the prince, her son. So
this subtle king, under pretense of providing for Hamlet’s safety,
that he might not be called to account for Polonius’s death, caused
him to be conveyed on board a ship bound for England, under the care of
two courtiers, by whom he despatched letters to the English court, which
in that time was in subjection and paid tribute to Denmark, requiring, for
special reasons there pretended, that Hamlet should be put to death as
soon as he landed on English ground. Hamlet, suspecting some treachery, in
the nighttime secretly got at the letters, and, skilfully erasing his own
name, he in the stead of it put in the names of those two courtiers, who
had the charge of him, to be put to death; then sealing up the letters, he
put them into their place again. Soon after the ship was attacked by
pirates, and a sea-fight commenced, in the course of which Hamlet,
desirous to show his valor, with sword in hand singly boarded the enemy’s
vessel; while his own ship, in a cowardly manner, bore away; and leaving
him to his fate, the two courtiers made the best of their way to England,
charged with those letters the sense of which Hamlet had altered to their
own deserved destruction.</p>
<p>The pirates who had the prince in their power showed themselves gentle
enemies, and, knowing whom they had got prisoner, in the hope that the
prince might do them a good turn at court in recompense for any favor they
might show him, they set Hamlet on shore at the nearest port in Denmark.
From that place Hamlet wrote to the king, acquainting him with the strange
chance which had brought him back to his own country and saying that on
the next day he should present himself before his Majesty. When he got
home a sad spectacle offered itself the first thing to his eyes.</p>
<p>This was the funeral of the young and beautiful Ophelia, his once dear
mistress. The wits of this young lady had begun to turn ever since her
poor father’s death. That he should die a violent death, and by the
hands of the prince whom she loved, so affected this tender young maid
that in a little time she grew perfectly distracted, and would go about
giving flowers away to the ladies of the court, and saying that they were
for her father’s burial, singing songs about love and about death,
and sometimes such as had no meaning at all, as if she had no memory of
what happened to her. There was a willow which grew slanting over a brook,
and reflected its leaves on the stream. To this brook she came one day
when she was unwatched, with garlands she had been making, mixed up of
daisies and nettles, flowers and weeds together, and clambering up to bang
her garland upon the boughs of the willow, a bough broke and precipitated
this fair young maid, garland, and all that she had gathered, into the
water, where her clothes bore her up for a while, during which she chanted
scraps of old tunes, like one insensible to her own distress, or as if she
were a creature natural to that element; but long it was not before her
garments, heavy with the wet, pulled her in from her melodious singing to
a muddy and miserable death. It was the funeral of this fair maid which
her brother Laertes was celebrating, the king and queen and whole court
being present, when Hamlet arrived. He knew not what all this show
imported, but stood on one side, not inclining to interrupt the ceremony.
He saw the flowers strewed upon her grave, as the custom was in maiden
burials, which the queen herself threw in; and as she threw them she said:</p>
<p>“Sweets to the sweet! I thought to have decked thy bride bed, sweet
maid, not to have strewed thy grave. Thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s
wife.”</p>
<p>And he heard her brother wish that violets might spring from her grave;
and he saw him leap into the grave all frantic with grief, and bid the
attendants pile mountains of earth upon him, that he might be buried with
her. And Hamlet’s love for this fair maid came back to him, and he
could not bear that a brother should show so much transport of grief, for
he thought that he loved Ophelia better than forty thousand brothers. Then
discovering himself, he leaped into the grave where Laertes was, all as
frantic or more frantic than he, and Laertes, knowing him to be Hamlet,
who had been the cause of his father’s and his sister’s death,
grappled him by the throat as an enemy, till the attendants parted them;
and Hamlet, after the funeral, excused his hasty act in throwing himself
into the grave as if to brave Laertes; but he said he could not bear that
any one should seem to outgo him in grief for the death of the fair
Ophelia. And for the time these two noble youths seemed reconciled.</p>
<p>But out of the grief and anger of Laertes for the death of his father and
Ophelia the king, Hamlet’s wicked uncle, contrived destruction for
Hamlet. He set on Laertes, under cover of peace and reconciliation, to
challenge Hamlet to a friendly trial of skill at fencing, which Hamlet
accepting, a day was appointed to try the match. At this match all the
court was present, and Laertes, by direction of the king, prepared a
poisoned weapon. Upon this match great wagers were laid by the courtiers,
as both Hamlet and Laertes were known to excel at this sword play; and
Hamlet, taking up the foils, chose one, not at all suspecting the
treachery of Laertes, or being careful to examine Laertes’s weapon,
who, instead of a foil or blunted sword, which the laws of fencing
require, made use of one with a point, and poisoned. At first Laertes did
but play with Hamlet, and suffered him to gain some advantages, which the
dissembling king magnified and extolled beyond measure, drinking to Hamlet’s
success and wagering rich bets upon the issue. But after a few pauses
Laertes, growing warm, made a deadly thrust at Hamlet with his poisoned
weapon, and gave him a mortal blow. Hamlet, incensed, but not knowing,the
whole of the treachery, in the scuffle exchanged his own innocent weapon
for Laertes’s deadly one, and with a thrust of Laertes’s own
sword repaid Laertes home, who was thus justly caught in his own
treachery. In this instant the queen shrieked out that she was poisoned.
She had inadvertently drunk out of a bowl which the king had prepared for
Hamlet, in case that, being warm in fencing, he should call for drink;
into this the treacherous king had infused a deadly poison, to make sure
of Hamlet, if Laertes had failed. He had forgotten to warn the queen of
the bowl, which she drank of, and immediately died, exclaiming with her
last breath that she was poisoned. Hamlet, suspecting some treachery,
ordered the doors to be shut while he sought it out. Laertes told him to
seek no farther, for he was the traitor; and feeling his life go away with
the wound which Hamlet had given him, he made confession of the treachery
he had used and how he had fallen a victim to it: and he told Hamlet of
the envenomed point, and said that Hamlet had not half an hour to live,
for no medicine could cure him; and begging forgiveness of Hamlet, he
died, with his last words accusing the king of being the contriver of the
mischief. When Hamlet saw his end draw near, there being yet some venom
left upon the sword, he suddenly turned upon his false uncle and thrust
the point of it to his heart, fulfilling the promise which he had made to
his father’s spirit, whose injunction was now accomplished and his
foul murder revenged upon the murderer. Then Hamlet, feeling his breath
fail and life departing, turned to his dear friend Horatio, who had been
spectator of this fatal tragedy; and with his dying breath requested him
that he would live to tell his story to the world (for Horatio had made a
motion as if he would slay himself to accompany the prince in death), and
Horatio promised that he would make a true report as one that was privy to
all the circumstances. And, thus satisfied, the noble heart of Hamlet
cracked; and Horatio and the bystanders with many tears commended the
spirit of this sweet prince to the guardianship of angels. For Hamlet was
a loving and a gentle prince and greatly beloved for his many noble and
princelike qualities; and if he had lived, would no doubt have proved a
most royal and complete king to Denmark.</p>
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