Andrew Williams - Textausgabe + Lektüreschlüssel. William Shakespeare - Hamlet

Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,

As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

MARCELLUS. Let’s do’t, I pray, and I this morning know

Where we shall find him most convenient.

Exeunt.

[16] Scene 2

[The hall of the castle]

Flourish; enter Claudius, King of Denmark, Gertrude the Queen, Council: as Polonius and his son Laertes, Hamlet, [clad in black,] and others, among them Voltemand and Cornelius; Attendants.

KING. Though yet of Hamlet our 17dear brother’s death

The memory be green, and that it us befitted

To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom

To be contractedin one brow of woe,

Yet so far hath discretionfought with nature

That we with wisest sorrow think on him,

Together with remembrance of ourselves:

Therefore our sometime sister 18, now our queen,

Th’ imperial jointressto this warlike state,

Have we, as ’twerewith a defeatedjoy,

With an auspiciousand a droppingeye,

With mirth in funeral and with dirgein marriage,

In equal scale weighing delight and dole,

[17] Taken to wife; nor have we herein barred

Your better wisdoms, which have freelygone

With this affair along 19– for all, our thanks.

Now follows that you know young Fortinbras,

Holding a weak supposalof our worth,

Or thinking byour late dear brother’s death

Our state to be disjointand out of frame,

Co-leaguèdwith this dream of his advantage,

He hath not failed to pesterus with message

Importingthe surrender of those lands

Lost by his father, with all bandsof law,

To our most valiant brother – so much for him.

Now forourself, and for this time of meeting,

Thus much the business is: We have here writ

To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras –

Who, impotentand bedrid, scarcely hears

Of this his nephew’s purpose – to suppress

[18] His further gaitherein, in that the levies,

The lists, and full proportionsare all made

Out of his subject. And we here dispatch

You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,

Forbearers of this greeting to old Norway,

Giving to you no further personal power

To business with the King, more than the scope

Of these dilatedarticles allow.

[Hands over papers.]

Farewell, and let your haste commendyour duty.

KING. We doubt it nothing, heartily farewell.

Exeunt Voltemand and Cornelius.

And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?

You told us of some suit, what is’t, Laertes?

You cannot speak of reasonto the Dane

And lose your voice; what wouldstthou 20beg, Laertes,

That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?

The head is not more nativeto the heart,

The hand more instrumentalto the mouth,

[19] Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.

What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

LAERTES. My dreadlord,

Your leaveand favour to return to France,

From whence though willingly I came to Denmark

To show my duty in your coronation,

Yet now, I must confess, that duty done,

My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France

And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

KING. Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?

POLONIUS. ’A hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave

By laboursome petition, and at last

Upon his will I sealed my hard consent;

I do beseechyou, give him leave to go.

KING. Take thy fair hour, Laertes, time be thine,

And thy best gracesspend it at thy will. –

But now, my cousinHamlet, and my son …

HAMLET. [Aside]. A little more than kin, and less than kind. 21

KING. How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET. Not so, my lord, I am too much in the “ son”.

[20] QUEEN. Good Hamlet, cast thy nightedcolour off,

And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark;

Do not for ever with thy vailèdlids

Seek for thy noble father in the dust,

Thou know’st ’tis common, all that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity. 22

HAMLET. Ay, madam, it is common.

QUEEN. If it be,

Why seems it so particular with thee?

HAMLET. Seems, madam! Nay, it is, I know not “seems”.

’Tis not alone my inkycloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspirationof forced breath,

No, nor the fruitfulriver in the eye,

Nor the dejected haviourof the visage,

Together with all forms, modes, shapesof grief,

That can denoteme truly. These indeed seem,

For they are actionsthat a man might play,

But I have that within which passesshow –

These but the trappingsand the suits of woe.

[21] KING. ’Tis sweet and commendablein your nature, Hamlet,

To give these mourning duties to your father,

But you must know your father lost a father,

That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound

In filialobligation for some term

To do obsequioussorrow. But to persever

In obstinate condolementis a course

Of impious stubbornness, ’tis unmanly grief,

It shows a will most incorrectto heaven,

A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,

An understanding simple and unschooled.

For what we know must be and is as common

As any the most vulgarthing to sense,

Why should we in our peevishopposition

Take it to heart? Fie, ’tis a faultto heaven,

A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,

To reason most absurd, whose common theme

Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,

[22] From the first corse 23till hethat died to-day,

“This must be so“ … We pray you, throw to earth

This unprevailingwoe, and think of us

As of a father – for let the world take note,

You are the most immediate to our throne, 24

And with no less nobilityof love

Than that which dearest father bears his son,

Do I imparttoward you … For your intent

In going back to schoolin Wittenberg 25,

It is most retrogradeto our desire,

And we beseech you, bend you to remain

Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,

Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

QUEEN. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet:

I pray thee, stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.

HAMLET. I shall in all my bestobey you, madam.

KING. Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply,

Be as ourself in Denmark. – Madam, come,

This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet

Sits smiling tomy heart, in gracewhereof,

No jocund healththat Denmark drinks to-day

[23] But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,

And the king’s rousethe heaven shall bruitagain,

Re-speaking earthly thunder; come away.

Flourish, exeunt all but Hamlet.

HAMLET. O, that this too too sulliedflesh would melt,

Thawand resolveitself into a dew,

Or that the Everlastinghad not fixed

His canon’gainst self-slaughter! 26O God, God,

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the usesof this world!

Fie on’t, ah fie, ’tis an unweededgarden

That grows to seed, things rankand gross in nature

Possess it merely. That it should come thus,

But two months dead, nay, not so much, not two, 27

So excellent a king, that was tothis

Hyperionto a satyr, so loving to my mother,

[24] That he might not beteemthe winds of heaven

Visit her face too roughly – heaven and earth,

Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on, and yet within a month,

Let me not think on’t … frailty, thy name is woman!