Page 334 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

KING

O, for two special reasons,
Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinew’d, [10]
But yet to me th’are strong. The Queen his mother

Lives almost by his looks, and for myself −
My virtue or my plague, be it either which −
She is so conjunctive to my life and soul
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere, [15]
I could not but by her. The other motive

Why to a public count I might not go
Is the great love the general gender bear him,
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,

Work like the spring that turneth wood to stone, [20]
Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows,
Too slightly timber’d for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
But not where I had aim’d them.

LAERTES

And so have I a noble father lost, [25]
A sister driven into desp’rate terms,
Whose worth, if praises may go back again,
Stood challenger on mount of all the age

For her perfections. But my revenge will come.

KING
Break not your sleeps for that. You must not think [30]
That we are made of stuff so flat and dull
That we can let our beard be shook with danger
And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more.

I lov’d your father, and we love ourself,
And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine − [35]

Enter a Messenger with letters.

MESSENGER
These to your Majesty, this to the Queen.