Act 4, Scene 7

Another room in the Castle.

[Enter King and Laertes.]
King Claudius
2994 Now must your conscience my acquittance seal,
2995 And you must put me in your heart for friend,
2996 Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
2997 That he which hath your noble father slain
2998 Pursu'd my life.
Laertes
2999 It well appears:—but tell me
3000 Why you proceeded not against these feats,
3001 So crimeful and so capital in nature,
3002 As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
3003 You mainly were stirr'd up.
King Claudius
3004 O, for two special reasons;
3005 Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew'd,
3006 But yet to me they are strong. The queen his mother
3007 Lives almost by his looks; and for myself,—
3008 My virtue or my plague, be it either which,—
3009 She's so conjunctive to my life and soul,
3010 That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
3011 I could not but by her. The other motive,
3012 Why to a public count I might not go,
3013 Is the great love the general gender bear him;
3014 Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
3015 Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
3016 Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows,
3017 Too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind,
3018 Would have reverted to my bow again,
3019 And not where I had aim'd them.
Laertes
3020 And so have I a noble father lost;
3021 A sister driven into desperate terms,—
3022 Whose worth, if praises may go back again,
3023 Stood challenger on mount of all the age
3024 For her perfections:—but my revenge will come.
King Claudius
3025 Break not your sleeps for that:—you must not think
3026 That we are made of stuff so flat and dull
3027 That we can let our beard be shook with danger,
3028 And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more:
3029 I lov'd your father, and we love ourself;
3030 And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine,—
[Enter a Messenger.]
King Claudius
3031 How now! What news?
Messenger
3032 Letters, my lord, from Hamlet:
3033 This to your majesty; this to the queen.
King Claudius
3034 From Hamlet! Who brought them?
Messenger
3035 Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not:
3036 They were given me by Claudio:—he receiv'd them
3037 Of him that brought them.
King Claudius
3038 Laertes, you shall hear them.
3039 Leave us.
[Exit Messenger.]
[Reads]
King Claudius
3040 'High and mighty,—You shall know I am set naked on your
3041 kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes:
3042 when I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the
3043 occasions of my sudden and more strange return. HAMLET.'
King Claudius
3044 What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
3045 Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?
Laertes
3046 Know you the hand?
King Claudius
3047 'Tis Hamlet's character:—'Naked!'—
3048 And in a postscript here, he says 'alone.'
3049 Can you advise me?
Laertes
3050 I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come;
3051 It warms the very sickness in my heart
3052 That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,
3053 'Thus didest thou.'
King Claudius
3054 If it be so, Laertes,—
3055 As how should it be so? how otherwise?—
3056 Will you be rul'd by me?
Laertes
3057 Ay, my lord;
3058 So you will not o'errule me to a peace.
King Claudius
3059 To thine own peace. If he be now return'd—
3060 As checking at his voyage, and that he means
3061 No more to undertake it,—I will work him
3062 To exploit, now ripe in my device,
3063 Under the which he shall not choose but fall:
3064 And for his death no wind shall breathe;
3065 But even his mother shall uncharge the practice
3066 And call it accident.
Laertes
3067 My lord, I will be rul'd;
3068 The rather if you could devise it so
3069 That I might be the organ.
King Claudius
3070 It falls right.
3071 You have been talk'd of since your travel much,
3072 And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality
3073 Wherein they say you shine: your sum of parts
3074 Did not together pluck such envy from him
3075 As did that one; and that, in my regard,
3076 Of the unworthiest siege.
Laertes
3077 What part is that, my lord?
King Claudius
3078 A very riband in the cap of youth,
3079 Yet needful too; for youth no less becomes
3080 The light and careless livery that it wears
3081 Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
3082 Importing health and graveness.—Two months since,
3083 Here was a gentleman of Normandy,—
3084 I've seen myself, and serv'd against, the French,
3085 And they can well on horseback: but this gallant
3086 Had witchcraft in't: he grew unto his seat;
3087 And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
3088 As had he been incorps'd and demi-natur'd
3089 With the brave beast: so far he topp'd my thought
3090 That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,
3091 Come short of what he did.
Laertes
3092 A Norman was't?
King Claudius
3093 A Norman.
Laertes
3094 Upon my life, Lamond.
King Claudius
3095 The very same.
Laertes
3096 I know him well: he is the brooch indeed
3097 And gem of all the nation.
King Claudius
3098 He made confession of you;
3099 And gave you such a masterly report
3100 For art and exercise in your defence,
3101 And for your rapier most especially,
3102 That he cried out, 'twould be a sight indeed
3103 If one could match you: the scrimers of their nation
3104 He swore, had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
3105 If you oppos'd them. Sir, this report of his
3106 Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy
3107 That he could nothing do but wish and beg
3108 Your sudden coming o'er, to play with him.
3109 Now, out of this,—
Laertes
3110 What out of this, my lord?
King Claudius
3111 Laertes, was your father dear to you?
3112 Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
3113 A face without a heart?
Laertes
3114 Why ask you this?
King Claudius
3115 Not that I think you did not love your father;
3116 But that I know love is begun by time,
3117 And that I see, in passages of proof,
3118 Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
3119 There lives within the very flame of love
3120 A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
3121 And nothing is at a like goodness still;
3122 For goodness, growing to a plurisy,
3123 Dies in his own too much: that we would do,
3124 We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes,
3125 And hath abatements and delays as many
3126 As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
3127 And then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh,
3128 That hurts by easing. But to the quick o' the ulcer:—
3129 Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake
3130 To show yourself your father's son in deed
3131 More than in words?
Laertes
3132 To cut his throat i' the church.
King Claudius
3133 No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize;
3134 Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,
3135 Will you do this, keep close within your chamber.
3136 Hamlet return'd shall know you are come home:
3137 We'll put on those shall praise your excellence
3138 And set a double varnish on the fame
3139 The Frenchman gave you; bring you in fine together
3140 And wager on your heads: he, being remiss,
3141 Most generous, and free from all contriving,
3142 Will not peruse the foils; so that with ease,
3143 Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
3144 A sword unbated, and, in a pass of practice,
3145 Requite him for your father.
Laertes
3146 I will do't:
3147 And for that purpose I'll anoint my sword.
3148 I bought an unction of a mountebank,
3149 So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
3150 Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
3151 Collected from all simples that have virtue
3152 Under the moon, can save the thing from death
3153 This is but scratch'd withal: I'll touch my point
3154 With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
3155 It may be death.
King Claudius
3156 Let's further think of this;
3157 Weigh what convenience both of time and means
3158 May fit us to our shape: if this should fail,
3159 And that our drift look through our bad performance.
3160 'Twere better not assay'd: therefore this project
3161 Should have a back or second, that might hold
3162 If this did blast in proof. Soft! let me see:—
3163 We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings,—
3164 I ha't:
3165 When in your motion you are hot and dry,—
3166 As make your bouts more violent to that end,—
3167 And that he calls for drink, I'll have prepar'd him
3168 A chalice for the nonce; whereon but sipping,
3169 If he by chance escape your venom'd stuck,
3170 Our purpose may hold there.
[Enter Queen.]
King Claudius
3171 How now, sweet queen!
Queen Gertrude
3172 One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
3173 So fast they follow:—your sister's drown'd, Laertes.
Laertes
3174 Drown'd! O, where?
Queen Gertrude
3175 There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
3176 That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
3177 There with fantastic garlands did she come
3178 Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
3179 That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
3180 But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
3181 There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
3182 Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke;
3183 When down her weedy trophies and herself
3184 Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
3185 And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;
3186 Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes;
3187 As one incapable of her own distress,
3188 Or like a creature native and indu'd
3189 Unto that element: but long it could not be
3190 Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
3191 Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
3192 To muddy death.
Laertes
3193 Alas, then she is drown'd?
Queen Gertrude
3194 Drown'd, drown'd.
Laertes
3195 Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
3196 And therefore I forbid my tears: but yet
3197 It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
3198 Let shame say what it will: when these are gone,
3199 The woman will be out.—Adieu, my lord:
3200 I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
3201 But that this folly douts it.
[Exit.]
King Claudius
3202 Let's follow, Gertrude;
3203 How much I had to do to calm his rage!
3204 Now fear I this will give it start again;
3205 Therefore let's follow.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 3005archaic vocab
“unsinew'd”
Unsinew'd = without muscle, weak, feeble. Claudius is saying his two reasons for not acting against Hamlet may look thin or spineless to Laertes, though he considers them strong.
TLN 3009archaic vocab
“so conjunctive to my life and soul,”
Conjunctive = closely joined, in direct conjunction (an astronomical term). Claudius borrows the language of planetary astronomy: Gertrude is so tightly bound to him as a planet to its sphere that he cannot move without her. The following line makes the metaphor explicit.
TLN 3010cultural context
“as the star moves not but in his sphere”
Elizabethan cosmology held that each star (and planet) was fixed to a hollow crystalline sphere that revolved around the Earth. Stars could not move independently — they only moved because their sphere moved. Claudius says he and Gertrude are inseparable in the same way.
TLN 3015cultural context
“like the spring that turneth wood to stone,”
Claudius refers to a petrifying spring — a natural mineral spring (common in parts of England and Europe) whose lime-rich water coats objects in stone. Just as such a spring turns wood to stone, the public's love for Hamlet would transform even his crimes into virtues in popular opinion.
TLN 3016archaic vocab
“Convert his gyves to graces”
Gyves (pronounced 'jives') = leg-irons, shackles used to chain prisoners. Claudius says the people's love for Hamlet would turn even his fetters — the marks of a criminal — into ornaments and virtues ('graces'). The contrast is between shame and praise.
TLN 3086cultural context
“he grew unto his seat;”
The Norman horseman Lamond was so skilled that he seemed to grow out of the saddle — horse and rider fused into one creature. The phrase 'incorps'd and demi-natur'd / With the brave beast' on the next lines makes this explicit: 'incorps'd' means embodied into, 'demi-natur'd' means sharing half the nature of the horse.
TLN 3088archaic vocab
“incorps'd and demi-natur'd”
Two coined words: 'incorps'd' = incorporated into one body (from Latin corpus, body); 'demi-natur'd' = sharing half the nature of the horse. Shakespeare invents hybrid vocabulary to describe a centaur-like union of rider and beast — the highest possible compliment to a horseman.
TLN 3103archaic vocab
“scrimers of their nation”
Scrimers (also scrymers) = fencers, swordsmen (from French escrimeurs). Claudius says that even the best French swordsmen were no match for Laertes — praise designed to stoke Laertes's pride and draw him into the plot.
TLN 3116rhetorical device
“love is begun by time,”
Claudius makes a pseudo-philosophical argument: love (and by extension, the desire for revenge) is subject to time and therefore fades unless acted on immediately. It is a rhetorical manipulation — he is weaponizing the truism that feelings decay in order to pressure Laertes into acting now. The argument conveniently serves Claudius's own need to eliminate Hamlet quickly.
TLN 3122archaic vocab
“growing to a plurisy,”
Plurisy (also pleurisy in other contexts here used differently) = excess, overabundance — from Latin plus (more). Claudius's point is that even goodness, allowed to swell past its proper measure, kills itself. It is a medical metaphor: too much of a good thing becomes a disease.
TLN 3128archaic vocab
“the quick o' the ulcer”
The quick = the raw, living flesh beneath a wound or sore (still alive in 'cut to the quick'). Claudius dismisses his philosophical digression and says: let's get to the painful, living core of the matter — i.e., the murder plot. The phrase signals a gear-shift from rhetoric to action.
TLN 3144cultural context
“A sword unbated”
In Elizabethan stage fencing and practice bouts, foils were 'bated' — fitted with a blunted tip (a button or leather cap) so they could not pierce flesh. An 'unbated' sword has its sharp point fully exposed. Claudius is proposing that Laertes secretly swap in a real, lethal blade while everyone believes the match is a friendly exhibition.
TLN 3148cultural context
“an unction of a mountebank”
An unction = an ointment applied by rubbing (same root as 'anointing'); a mountebank = a traveling quack or con-man who sold miracle medicines from a platform (Italian montambanco: mount-on-bench). Laertes bought a deadly poison ointment from a fraudulent street doctor — the irony being that the quack's wares, useless for healing, work perfectly well for killing.
TLN 3150archaic vocab
“no cataplasm so rare,”
A cataplasm = a poultice or medicinal plaster laid over a wound (from Greek kataplasma: smeared over). Laertes boasts the poison is so lethal that no healing plaster, however rare and expertly compounded from medicinal herbs ('simples'), could save a man even slightly scratched by his blade.
TLN 3168archaic vocab
“A chalice for the nonce”
A chalice = a goblet or cup, especially a formal drinking vessel. 'For the nonce' = for the particular purpose, for this one occasion (from Old English 'for þan anes': for the one time). Claudius is proposing a poisoned backup cup — a 'chalice' carries churchly connotations of communion, darkly ironic given its murderous use here.
TLN 3175cultural context
“There is a willow grows aslant a brook,”
The weeping willow (Salix species) overhanging water was a long-established English symbol of grief, lost love, and mourning. 'Aslant' = leaning sideways over the water. 'Hoar leaves' (the next line) = silvery-white on their undersides, which gives willows their ghostly shimmer when the leaves turn in the wind. The whole image sets Ophelia's death in a landscape of natural sorrow.
TLN 3178cultural context
“long purples,”
'Long purples' is generally identified as the early purple orchid (Orchis mascula), which grows in damp meadows and has tall spikes of purple flowers. Its roots are finger-shaped tubers — which is why 'liberal' (coarse-spoken) shepherds gave them a sexual nickname, while 'cold maids' (chaste women) called them 'dead men's fingers.' Shakespeare uses both names to layer innocence and death into a single flower.
TLN 3180cultural context
“dead men's fingers call them”
The tuber-roots of the early purple orchid are pale, forked, and roughly finger-shaped — hence chaste women ('cold maids') called them 'dead men's fingers.' The name prefigures Ophelia's own death and carries a grim aptness: she wove into her garland a flower named after corpses as she went to her drowning.
TLN 3182archaic vocab
“an envious sliver broke”
A sliver = a thin splinter or branch broken from the parent tree (from Old English slīfan: to split). 'Envious' here means malicious, malevolent — as though the branch itself bore Ophelia ill will. The word gives the passive accident of a snapping bough a sinister agency, blurring whether her death was accident or fate.
TLN 3187archaic vocab
“incapable of her own distress”
Incapable = not able to comprehend or perceive (not simply 'unable to do'). Gertrude suggests that Ophelia, in her madness, could not grasp that she was dying — she floated and sang as though nothing were wrong. The word adds a layer of tragic mercy: she may have died without knowing she was in danger.
TLN 3192rhetorical device
“To muddy death”
The speech ends with three blunt syllables: 'To muddy death.' The adjective 'muddy' — literal (the brook bottom) and figurative (an ugly, ignoble end) — punctures the beauty of everything that came before. After nineteen lines of elegiac imagery, the crash into 'muddy' forces the audience to feel the ugliness of drowning beneath the loveliness of the description.