Page 365 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestall their repair hither and
say you are not fit.

HAMLET
Not a whit. We defy augury. There is special [215] providence in the fall of a
sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it
be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he

leaves, knows aught, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be. [220]

A table prepared. Trumpets, Drums, and Officers with cushions. Enter King,
Queen, Laertes, [Osric] and all the State, and Attendants with foils and
daggers.

KING
Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.

[Puts Laertes’s hand into Hamlet’s.]

HAMLET
Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong;
But pardon’t as you are a gentleman.
This presence knows, and you must needs have heard,

How I am punish’d with a sore distraction. [225]
What I have done
That might your nature, honour, and exception
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.

Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet.
If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away, [230]
And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.

Who does it then? His madness. If’t be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d;
His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy. [235]
Sir, in this audience,

Let my disclaiming from a purpos’d evil
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts
That I have shot my arrow o’er the house
And hurt my brother.