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[A room in the castle]
Enter KING [QUEEN, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN]
King. There’s matter in these sighs; these profound heaves | |
| You must translate; ’tis fit we understand them. | |
| Where is your son? | |
| Queen. [Bestow this place on us a little while.] [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.] | 4 |
| Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night! | |
| King. What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet? | |
| Queen. Mad as the seas and wind, when both contend | |
| Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit, | 8 |
| Behind the arras hearing something stir, | |
| He whips his rapier out, and cries, “A rat, a rat!” | |
| And, in his brainish 1 apprehension, kills | |
| The unseen good old man. | 12 |
| King. O heavy deed! | |
| It had been so with us, had we been there. | |
| His liberty is full of threats to all, | |
| To you yourself, to us, to every one. | 16 |
| Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered? | |
| It will be laid to us, whose providence | |
| Should have kept short, restrain’d, and out of haunt, 2 | |
| This mad young man. But so much was our love, | 20 |
| We would not understand what was most fit, | |
| But, like the owner of a foul disease, | |
| To keep it from divulging, let it feed | |
| Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone? | 24 |
| Queen. To draw apart the body he hath kill’d, | |
| O’er whom his very madness, like some ore | |
| Among the mineral of metals base, | |
| Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done. | 28 |
| King. O Gertrude, come away! | |
| The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch, | |
| But we will ship him hence, and this vile deed | |
| We must, with all our majesty and skill, | 32 |
| Both countenance and excuse. Ho, Guildenstern! [Re-]enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN | |
| Friends both, go join you with some further aid. | |
| Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain, | |
| And from his mother’s closet hath he dragg’d him. | 36 |
| Go seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body | |
| Into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this. Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. | |
| Come, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends | |
| To let them know both what we mean to do | 40 |
| And what’s untimely done; [so, haply, slander] | |
| [Whose whisper o’er the world’s diameter, | |
| As level as the cannon to his blank, 3 | |
| Transports his poisoned shot, may miss our name, | 44 |
| And hit the woundless air.] O, come away! | |
| My soul is full of discord and dismay. Exeunt. | |
