Page 358 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

HORATIO

So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to’t.

HAMLET
Why, man, they did make love to this employment.
They are not near my conscience, their defeat
Does by their own insinuation grow.

’Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes [60]
Between the pass and fell incensed points
Of mighty opposites.

HORATIO
Why, what a king is this!

HAMLET
Does it not, think thee, stand me now upon −

He that hath kill’d my king and whor’d my mother,
Popp’d in between th’election and my hopes, [65]
Thrown out his angle for my proper life
And with such coz’nage − is’t not perfect conscience

To quit him with this arm? And is’t not to be damn’d
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil? [70]

HORATIO
It must be shortly known to him from England
What is the issue of the business there.

HAMLET

It will be short. The interim is mine.
And a man’s life’s no more than to say ‘one’.
But I am very sorry, good Horatio, [75]
That to Laertes I forgot myself;

For by the image of my cause I see
The portraiture of his. I’ll court his favours.
But sure the bravery of his grief did put me
Into a tow’ring passion.