Act IV
Scene I
A room in the castle.
Enter King, Queen, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.
King
There’s matter in these sighs, these profound heaves:You must translate: ’tis fit we understand them.Where is your son?
Queen
Bestow this place on us a little while. Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.Ah, mine good lord, what have I seen to-night!
King
What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?
Queen
Mad as the sea and wind, when both contendWhich is the mightier: in his lawless fit,Behind the arras hearing something stir,Whips out his rapier, cries, “A rat, a rat!”And, in this brainish apprehension, killsThe unseen good old man.
King
O heavy deed!It had been so with us, had we been there:His liberty is full of threats to all;To you yourself, to us, to every one.Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer’d?It will be laid to us, whose providenceShould have kept short, restrain’d and out of haunt,This mad young man: but so much was our love,We would not understand what was most fit;But, like the owner of a foul disease,To keep it from divulging, let it feedEven on the pith of Life. Where is he gone?
Queen
To draw apart the body he hath kill’d:O’er whom his very madness, like some oreAmong a mineral of metals base,Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done.
King
O Gertrude, come away!The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch,But we will ship him hence: and this vile deedWe must, with all our majesty and skill,Both countenance and excuse. Ho, Guildenstern!
Reenter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Friends both, go join you with some further aid: Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain, And from his mother’s closet hath he dragg’d him: Go seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body Into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this. Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Come, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends; And let them know, both what we mean to do, And what’s untimely done. So haply slander—1 Whose whisper o’er the world’s diameter, As level as the canon to his blank, Transports his poison’d shot, may miss our name, And hit the woundless air. O, come away! My soul is full of discord and dismay. Exeunt.
- Here we encounter another complication due to combining two versions of Hamlet. In the First Folio, the text is missing almost four lines of verse. These lines have been restored from the Second Quarto but the print was not perfect: a portion of a verse line was not completed. Scholars have proposed “So haply slander—” as a possible emendation. Another guess made by scholars is “So dreaded slander—.” —Emma Sweeney ↩