make thee dumb, yet are they much too light for the bore23 of the matter. These good fellows will bring thee where I am.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England:
of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell. He that thou
knowest t
hine, Hamlet.'--
Come, I will give you way28 for these your letters, And do't the speedier that you may direct me
To him from whom you brought them.
Exeunt
[Act 4 Scene 6]
running scene 15
Enter King and Laertes
KING Now must your conscience my acquittance seal1, And you must put me in your heart for friend,
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing3 ear, That he which hath your noble father slain
Pursued my life.
LAERTES It well appears. But tell me
Why you proceeded not against these feats7
So crimeful and so capital8 in nature, As by your safety, wisdom, all things else9, You mainly were stirred up.
KING O, for two special reasons,
Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinewed12, And yet to me they are strong. The queen his mother
Lives almost by his looks, and for myself --
My virtue or my plague, be it either which --
She's so conjunctive16 to my life and soul, That, as the star moves not but in his sphere17, I could not but18 by her. The other motive, Why to a public count19 I might not go, Is the great love the general gender20 bear him, Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
Would like the spring that turneth wood to stone22, Convert his gyves23 to graces, so that my arrows, Too slightly timbered24 for so loud a wind, Would have reverted to my bow again
And not where I had aimed them.
LAERTES And so have I a noble father lost,
A sister driven into desperate terms28, Who has -- if praises may go back again29 --
Stood challenger on mount30 of all the age For her perfections: but my revenge will come.
KING Break not your sleeps for that: you must not think That we are made of stuff so flat and dull
That we can let our beard be shook with34 danger And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more:
I loved your father, and we love ourself,