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 time
for a strange act of indiscretion, or unfeelingness,
or worse: for this Claudius did no ways 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.
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 honour, and a most exquisite practiser
of propriety himself, did sorely take to heart this
unworthy conduct of his mother Gertrude: insomuch
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
honourable young prince.
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.
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.
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.
A rumour 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 armour, 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 colour 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 shrunk
in haste away, and vanished out of their sight.
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.
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.
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 the neighbouring 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.
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 crustlike 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.
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.
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.
From this time Hamlet affected a certain
wildness and strangeness in his apparel, his speech,
and behaviour, 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.
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 counsellor 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 honourable 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.
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 honoured 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 honours.
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 in, 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.
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.
The story of the play was of a murder
done in Vienna upon a duke. The duke’s
name was Gonzago, his wife 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.
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 colour 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 theatre.
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.
It was by desire of the king that
the queen sent for Hamlet, that she might signify
to her son how much his late behaviour 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 counsellor 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.
Hamlet being come to his mother, she
began to tax him in the roundest way with his actions
and behaviour, and she told him that he had given
great offence 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 honoured 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, “Mother, you have
much offended my father.” The queen
said that was but an idle answer. “As good
as the question deserved,” said Hamlet.
The queen asked him if he had forgotten who it was
he was speaking to? “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.” “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.
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 for
the body, it was not the king, but Polonius, the old
officious counsellor, that had planted himself as
a spy behind the hangings. “Oh me!”
exclaimed the queen, “what a rash and bloody
deed have you done!” “A bloody deed, mother,”
replied Hamlet, “but not so bad as yours, who
killed a king, and married his brother.”
Hamlet had gone too far to leave off here. He
was now in the humour 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 offence, 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 he 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 offences, 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.
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.
The unfortunate death of Polonius
gave the king a pretence 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 pretence of providing for
Hamlet’s safety, that he might not be called
to account for Polonius’ 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 night-time
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 valour, 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.
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 favour 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.
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 hang
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, “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.”
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.
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’ 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’ deadly one, and with a thrust
of Laertes’ 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.