Page 211 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

Flourish. Enter Claudius King of Denmark, Gertrude the Queen, Council,
including Voltemand, Cornelius, Polonius and his son Laertes, Hamlet
(dressed in black), with Others.

KING
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted

To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature [5]

That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy, [10]

With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,

Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barr’d
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone [15]
With this affair along. For all, our thanks.
Now follows that you know young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,

Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame, [20]
Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,

He hath not fail’d to pester us with message
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother. So much for him. [25]
Now for ourself, and for this time of meeting,

Thus much the business is: we have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras −
Who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears

Of this his nephew’s purpose − to suppress [30]
His further gait herein, in that the levies,
The lists, and full proportions are all made
Out of his subject; and we here dispatch