Page 207 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

MARCELLUS
Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land, [75]
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon

And foreign mart for implements of war,
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week.

What might be toward that this sweaty haste [80]
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day,
Who is’t that can inform me?

HORATIO
That can I.
At least the whisper goes so: our last King,

Whose image even but now appear’d to us,
Was as you know by Fortinbras of Norway, [85]
Thereto prick’d on by a most emulate pride,
Dar’d to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet

(For so this side of our known world esteem’d him)
Did slay this Fortinbras, who by a seal’d compact
Well ratified by law and heraldry [90]
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands

Which he stood seiz’d of to the conqueror;
Against the which a moiety competent
Was gaged by our King, which had return’d
To the inheritance of Fortinbras, [95]

Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same cov’nant
And carriage of the article design’d,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle, hot and full,

Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there [100]
Shark’d up a list of lawless resolutes
For food and diet to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in’t, which is no other,

As it doth well appear unto our state,