Page 298 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

To give them seals never my soul consent. [390]
Exit.

Scene III IT

Enter King, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.

KING

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you.
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you.

The terms of our estate may not endure [5]
Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow
Out of his brows.

GUILDENSTERN
We will ourselves provide.

Most holy and religious fear it is
To keep those many many bodies safe
That live and feed upon your Majesty. [10]

ROSENCRANTZ
The single and peculiar life is bound
With all the strength and armour of the mind

To keep itself from noyance; but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests
The lives of many. The cess of majesty [15]
Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw

What’s near it with it. Or it is a massy wheel
Fix’d on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortis’d and adjoin’d, which when it falls, [20]

Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never alone
Did the King sigh, but with a general groan.