Act V, Scene 2
HAMLET
So much for this, sir. Now shall you see the other.
You do remember all the circumstance?
HORATIO
Remember it, my lord!
HAMLET
Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly—
And praised b rashness for it—let us know;
Our indiscretion sometime serves us well
When our deep plots do pall. And that should learn us
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will…
HORATIO
That is most certain.
HAMLET Up from my cabin,
My sea-gown scarfed about me, in the dark
Groped I to find out them; Had my desire,
Fingered their packet, and in fine withdrew
To mine own room again, making so bold—
My fears forgetting manners—to unfold
Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio,
A royal knavery! An exact command,
Larded with many several sorts of reasons;
Importing Denmark’s health and England’s too;
With (ho!) such bugs and goblins in my life;
That on the supervise, no leisure bated;
No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
My head should be struck off!
HORATIO
Is it possible?
HAMLET
Here’s the commission! Read it at more leisure.
[HAMLET hands the paper to HORATIO.]
But wilt thou hear now how I did proceed?
HORATIO I beseech you.
HAMLET Being thus benetted round with villanies,
Or I could make a prologue to my brains,
They had begun the play. I sat me down,
Devised a new commission, wrote it fair—
I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness ot write fair, and labored much
How to forget that learning. But, sir, now
It did me yeoman’s service! Wilt thou know
Th’ effect of what I wrote?
HORATIO Ay, my good lord.
HAMLET
An earnest conjuration from the King,
As England was his faithful tributary,
As love between them like the palm might flourish
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear
And stand a comma ‘tween their amities,
And many suchlike ases of great charge,
That, on the view and knowing of these contents,
Without debatement further, more or less,
He should those bearers put to suddent death,
Not shriving time allowed.
HORATIO How was this sealed?
HAMLET
Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.
I had my father’s signet in my purse,
Which was the model of that Danish seal.
Folded the writ up in the form of th’ other,
Subscribed it, gave it the impression, placed it safely.
The changeling never known! Now, the next day
Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent
Thou knowst already.
HORATIO
So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to it.
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