“I have heard of your paintings, too, well enough,” continued
Hamlet, with increasing violence. “God hath given you one face, and
you make yourselves another; you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
nickname God’s creatures. Go to, I’ll no more on it; it hath made me
mad. I say, we will have no more marriages; those that are married
already--all but one”--here he looked darkly towards the arras, where
he knew the King was concealed with Polonius--“shall live; the rest
shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go!”
And with a furious gesture of dismissal Hamlet hurried from the room.
“Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!” sighed Ophelia piteously.
”The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword; the
expectancy and rose of the fair state, the glass of fashion, and the
mould of form, the observed of all observers quite, quite down! And I,
of ladies most deject and wretched, that sucked the honey of his music
vows, now see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells
jangled, out of tune and harsh! Oh, woe is me, to have seen what I
have seen, see what I see!”
While Ophelia was musing thus sadly, the King and Polonius stepped
from their hiding-place. The King was not at all satisfied that
Polonius was right in his surmise that Hamlet had lost his reason
because of Ophelia’s rejected love.
“Love! His affections do not tend that way,” he said decidedly. “Nor
was what he spoke, though it lacked form a little, like madness. There
is something in his soul over which his melancholy sits brooding,
and I fear the result will be some danger. To prevent this, I have
determined that he shall depart with speed for England, to demand
there our neglected tribute. Haply the sea and the sight of foreign
countries will expel this settled matter in his heart, about which his
brains, always beating, makes him thus unlike himself.”
Polonius agreed that it would be a good plan to send Hamlet to
England, though he would not give up his idea that the origin and
commencement of Hamlet’s grief sprang from neglected love. He further
suggested that after the play the Queen should have an interview alone
with Hamlet, and try to get from him the cause of his grief, and that
Polonius himself should be placed where he could hear their conference.
“If the Queen cannot discover the cause, send him to England, or
confine him where your wisdom shall think best,” he concluded.
“It shall be so,” declared the King. “Madness in great ones must not
go unwatched.”
* * * * *
The play on which so much depended was now to be performed. Hamlet had
inserted some speeches of his own, and before the performance began he
gave some excellent advice to the players on the art of acting. While
they were making ready, Hamlet had a few private words with Horatio.
In the midst of the trouble and turmoil of his own soul, his fretted
spirit turned with deep affection to the quiet strength of this
faithful friend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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