The Shakespeare Story-Book

“A bloody deed! Almost as bad, good mother, as kill a King and marry with his brother,” said Hamlet solemnly.

“As kill a King?” echoed the Queen, astounded.

“Ay, lady, it was my word.”

Hamlet lifted the arras, and found that, after all, it was not the guilty murderer whom he had hoped to punish, but the meddlesome old Chamberlain, who had fallen a victim to his sudden impulse. His task of vengeance had still to be accomplished.

“Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell,” said the young Prince, gazing at him sorrowfully. “I took thee for thy better; take thy fortune! Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.”

Thus the officious old man’s prying ways met their punishment. And Hamlet’s lack of resolution, too, brought its penalty; for if he had had strength of will to carry out what he believed to be his duty, he would not have thus trusted to the blind impulse of the moment, and a comparatively innocent life would not have been sacrificed.

But he had matters too important waiting to spare much time for regret. Letting the arras fall on the henceforth silent prattler, Hamlet turned to his mother. In the most forcible manner he pointed out to the Queen how blameworthy had been her conduct. In vivid language he sketched a portrait of her two husbands, showing how noble had been the one brother, and how contemptible was the other. What strange delusion could have cheated the Queen, after knowing her first husband, to have married such a wretched being as Claudius?

“O Hamlet, speak no more!” implored the Queen. “These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears; no more, sweet Hamlet.”

“A murderer and a villain!” continued Hamlet, with increasing scorn and vehemence; “a slave that is not the twentieth part the tithe of your former lord; a buffoon king; a cutpurse of the empire and the sceptre, who from the shelf the precious diadem stole, and put it in his pocket!”

“No more!” besought the Queen.

“A king of shreds and patches – ”

Hamlet’s torrent of wrath died on his lips. Before him stood once more the spirit of his father, gazing at him with calm, rebuking eyes.

“Save me, and hover o’er me with your wings, you heavenly guards!” murmured the young Prince, in an awestruck whisper. “What would your gracious figure?”

The vision, apparent to Hamlet, was not visible to the Queen. She only saw the sudden change that had come to her son, and the rapt look on his face.

“Alas, he’s mad!” she sighed.

“Do you not come your tardy son to chide?” continued Hamlet, still in the same hushed voice, “who, lost in time and passion, lets go by the important acting of thy dread command? Oh, say!”

The Ghost replied that his visit was indeed to whet his son’s almost blunted purpose. But now he bade Hamlet note how startled and amazed the Queen was, and told him to speak to her and soothe her.

“How is it with you, lady?” said Hamlet absently.

“Alas! how is it with you?” retorted the Queen, for to her it seemed that Hamlet was looking at vacancy, and holding converse with the empty air. “Whereon do you look?”

“On him – on him! Look you, how pale he glares!.. Do you see nothing there?”

“Nothing at all; yet all that is, I see.”

“Nor did you nothing hear?”

“No, nothing but ourselves.”

“Why, look you there! Look how it steals away! My father, in his habit as he lived! Look where he goes, even now, out at the portal.”

The Queen saw nothing of the figure gliding away, and told Hamlet that it must be the coinage of his brain, the sort of delusion which madness was very cunning in.

“Madness!” echoed Hamlet; and he bade his mother note that his pulse beat as calmly as her own, and that it was not madness which he uttered. Bring him to the test, he said, and he would re-word the matter, which madness could not do. In short, his words were so convincing that the Queen could no longer refuse to believe them. Before they parted, she promised to adopt a very different mode of behaviour from her usual pleasure-loving frivolity, and not to allow herself to be persuaded by the crafty Claudius that anything her son might say or do arose from madness.

“I must to England; you know that?” asked Hamlet.

“Alack, I had forgotten; it is so arranged,” said the Queen.

“There are letters sealed,” said Hamlet, “and my two schoolfellows, whom I will trust as I will adders fanged – they bear the mandate. Let the knavery work; for ’tis sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard, and it shall go hard but I will delve one yard below their mines, and blow them at the moon.”

“Rosemary for Remembrance”

Hamlet’s suspicions with regard to fresh villainy on the part of the King were justified. Claudius dared not do any harm to the young Prince in his own country, for he was greatly beloved by the people. On the plea, therefore, that it was for the benefit of his health, he was despatched to England, but letters were given to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who accompanied him, commanding that on his arrival the Prince should be instantly beheaded.

Suspecting treachery, Hamlet managed to get possession of these letters, and in their place he put others, written by himself, in which the English Government was begged, as a favour to Denmark, to put the bearers to death. Thus Rosencrantz and Guildenstern fell victims to their own treachery, and met the fate to which they were shamelessly conducting their old schoolfellow.

The day after the changing of the letters their ship was chased by pirates. Finding they were too slow of sail to escape, they made a valiant resistance. In the grapple Hamlet boarded the pirates’ vessel. At that very instant the ships got clear, so he alone became their prisoner. They treated him well, knowing who he was, and expecting to get a good reward, and not long after he had left Denmark Hamlet again set foot in his own country. He did not at first announce his return to the King and Queen, but sent a message privately to Horatio, who at once hastened to him.

During his absence from Denmark a sad thing had happened. Poor Ophelia, overwhelmed by all the sorrows that had fallen on her, had lost her reason. Hamlet’s strange behaviour had been the first shock, and on her father’s sudden death, and Hamlet’s departure for England, the slender strength snapped utterly, and the young girl was carried away in the full flood of calamity.

Ever sweet and gentle, as she had been all her life, Ophelia was so still; there was no violence or malice in her malady. She was indeed distracted with grief, and spoke strange words, but when allowed her own way she went harmlessly about, only decking herself with flowers, and singing sweet and touching snatches of quaint old songs.

The King and Queen were deeply grieved at this new misfortune that had fallen on their young favourite, for the Queen, at least, loved her tenderly. They had also grounds for uneasiness concerning themselves; disquieting rumours began to be current. Rather foolishly, they had tried to hush up the cause of Polonius’s death, and had had him hurriedly interred, without proper rites or ceremony. His son Laertes had come secretly from France, and tittle-tattlers were not lacking to pour into his ears malicious reports of his father’s death. Finally, there was an attempt at insurrection. Laertes went to the palace, followed by a riotous mob, shouting, “Laertes shall be King! Laertes King!” They broke down the doors, overcame the guard, and Laertes forced his way into the presence of the King and Queen.

“O thou vile King, give me my father!” he demanded, with menacing gesture.

“Calmly, good Laertes,” implored the Queen, while the King, with all the subtle art in which he was so skilled, tried to soothe the infuriated young man, and asked him why he was so incensed.

“How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with,” cried Laertes fiercely, flinging off all semblance of allegiance. “Let come what comes, only I’ll be revenged most thoroughly for my father.”

“Who shall stay you?” asked the King mildly.

“My will, not all the world!” retorted Laertes roughly. “And for my means, I’ll husband them so well, they shall go far with little.”

The King was just explaining that he was in no sense guilty of Polonius’s death, when there was a stir at the door, and the next moment Ophelia entered. At the sight of the beautiful young maiden, in her simple white robe, her long yellow locks floating free on her shoulders, her sweet blue eyes opened wide in vacant gaze, a sudden check came to the young man’s violence.

“O rose of May! Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!” he murmured, with tenderest pity. “Oh heavens! is it possible a young maid’s wits should be as mortal as an old man’s life?”

Ophelia carried flowers in her hand, and she came in singing and talking to herself.

“They bore him barefaced on the bier;Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;And in his grave rain’d many a tear: —

“Fare you well, my dove.”

“Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, it could not move thus,” said Laertes.

Ophelia now began to distribute the flowers she held in her hand. First she gave some to her brother.

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.”

“A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted,” said Laertes.

“There’s fennel for you, and columbines,” said Ophelia to the King, (fennel is an emblem of flattery, and columbines of thanklessness). “There’s rue for you,” to the Queen, “and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace on Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died; they say he made a good end, —

For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.”

“Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, she turns to favour and to prettiness,” said Laertes, as smiling, and kissing her hand, the poor wit-bereft maiden went singing on her way.

His desire for vengeance was redoubled, and he resolved that his sister’s madness should be dearly paid for. He therefore lent a ready ear when the King declared that the blame of everything that had happened was due to Hamlet, explaining that he had been unable to punish him up to the present, owing to the intense love borne him by his mother, and all the people. Even as they were talking arrived a letter from Hamlet himself; it ran thus:

“High and Mighty,

“You shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes: when I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasion of my sudden and more strange return.

“Hamlet.”

Hamlet’s return happened most aptly, and the King immediately suggested a plan whereby Laertes could gratify his vengeance without fear of being found out. While Laertes had been in France, he had been greatly talked about for his skill in fencing, and a Norman gentleman who had come to the Danish Court brought a marvellous report of his prowess in the use of the rapier. This account filled Hamlet with envy; he was himself a master in the art of fencing, and he longed for Laertes to come back and try a match with him. The King now proposed that Laertes should challenge Hamlet to a trial of skill.

“He, being heedless, most generous and free from all contriving, will not look closely at the foils,” continued the King cunningly, “so that with ease, or with a little shuffling, you may choose a sword unbated, and in a pass of practice requite him for your father.”

Laertes not only consented to this dastardly scheme, – he went a step further, and declared that he would anoint the point of the rapier with some poison so mortal that no remedy in all the world could save from death the thing that was but scratched with it. He would touch the point of this sword with this poison, so that if he wounded Hamlet ever so slightly it would be death. In addition to this, in case Hamlet should escape unhurt from the fencing, the King said he would have a chalice near with poisoned wine, so that if he grew thirsty, and called for drink, he would meet his death in that manner.

Their further plotting was interrupted by the Queen, who came hurrying in with further tidings of woe. Ophelia was drowned.

“Drowned! Oh, where?” cried Laertes.

“There is a willow grows aslant a brook that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,” began the Queen; and she told how Ophelia, having woven many fantastic garlands of wild flowers, had clambered into this tree, to hang her wreaths on the drooping boughs, when a branch broke, and Ophelia and her trophies fell into the brook. There for awhile her clothes bore her up, and she floated down the current, still singing snatches of old tunes; but before she could be rescued, the weight of her garments, heavy with the water, dragged her down to death.

Laertes could not restrain his tears when he heard of the loss of his dear sister, but the King guessed that his rage would soon start up with fresh fury, and he resolved not to lose sight of the young man till his scheme of vengeance was accomplished.

The King’s Wager

In the churchyard at Elsinore two men were digging a grave. As they worked they talked, and the elder one expounded the law to his young assistant. The former asked if the person for whom they were digging the grave was to be buried in Christian burial.

“I tell thee she is,” said the second man, “and therefore make her grave straight; the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial.”

“How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence?” argued the first grave-digger.

“Why, ’tis found so,” answered the second.

“Here lies the point,” persisted the first, who dearly loved an argument. “If I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act, and an act hath three branches – it is to act, to do, and to perform; argal, she drowned herself unwittingly.”

“Nay, but hear you, good man delver – ”

“Give me leave,” interposed the other, with his air of superiority. “Here lies the water – good; here stands the man – good; if the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes – mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself; argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.”

“But is this law?” asked the second rustic, rubbing his bewildered pate.

“Ay, marry, is it; crowner’s quest law,” returned the other decisively.

Having sufficiently impressed his companion by his display of superior knowledge, the first grave-digger despatched him for “a stoup of liquor,” and continued his toil alone, singing to himself as he did so.

Two newcomers had in the meanwhile entered the churchyard. These were Hamlet and Horatio. Hamlet was struck by the utter insensibility of the man, who callously pursued his mournful task, and shovelled earth and human bones alike aside with the most complete indifference. To Hamlet the sight of these poor human remains awakened many reflections, and, in his usual fashion, he began to ponder over them, and speculate what had formerly been the destiny – possibly a brilliant and distinguished one – of the skulls which were now knocked about so disrespectfully. Presently he spoke to the man, and asked whose grave he was digging, and with the exercise of much patient good-humour was at last able to extract the information that it was for “one that was a woman, but, rest her soul, she’s dead.”

“How long have you been a grave-digger?” was his next question.

“Of all the days in the year, I came to it that day that our last King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.”

“How long is that since?”

“Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that,” was the civil answer. “It was the very day young Hamlet was born – he that is mad, and sent into England.”

“Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?” inquired Hamlet.

“Why, because he was mad; he shall recover his wits there; or if he do not, it’s no great matter there.”

“Why?”

“It will not be seen in him there, there the men are as mad as he.”

“How came he mad?”

“Very strangely, they say.”

“How ‘strangely’?”

“Faith, e’en with losing his wits.”

“Upon what ground?”

“Why, here in Denmark,” said the rustic, misunderstanding the question. “I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.”

He next threw up with his spade a skull, which he said had been that of Yorick, the King’s jester.

“Let me see,” said Hamlet, taking it gently into his hands. “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio – a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times. Here hung the lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your jibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.”

Hamlet’s meditations were interrupted by the arrival of the funeral procession, which now entered the churchyard. After the bier walked Laertes, as chief mourner, and the King and Queen followed, with their attendants. Hamlet and Horatio, who had retired on the approach of the mourners, did not at first know who was about to be buried, but when the bier was lowered into the grave, Hamlet knew from the words spoken by Laertes that it was no other than the fair Ophelia.

“Sweets to the sweet: farewell!” said the Queen, scattering flowers. “I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife; I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid, and not have strewed thy grave.”

“Hold off the earth awhile, till I have caught her once more in my arms,” cried Laertes; and, leaping into the grave, he shouted wildly to them to pile their dust on the living and the dead.

“What is he whose grief bears such an emphasis?” cried Hamlet, coming forward. “This is I, Hamlet the Dane.” And he, too, leaped into the grave.

At the sight of the young Prince, all Laertes’s wrath blazed up in full fury. He sprang on him, and grappled with him, almost throttling him. Hamlet, thus attacked, bade Laertes hold off his hand, for though not hot-tempered and rash, yet he had something dangerous in him which it would be wise to fear. The attendants parted the incensed young men, and they came out of the grave, but they still regarded each other with looks of defiance.

“Why, I will fight with him upon this theme, until my eyelids will no longer wag,” said Hamlet.

“O my son, what theme?” asked the Queen.

“I loved Ophelia,” said Hamlet; “forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.”

In Laertes’s own style of exaggeration, Hamlet hurled forth a fiery challenge, and then, with sudden self-contempt, he ended in half-sad irony:

“Nay, an thou’lt mouth, I’ll rant as well as thou.”

The next day Hamlet and Horatio were walking in the hall of the castle, when a very elegant and affected young Danish nobleman approached, and, with many bows and flourishes, delivered his message, which was a challenge from Laertes to a fencing match. The King had laid a heavy wager on Hamlet – six Barbary horses against six French rapiers and poniards, that in a dozen passes Laertes would not exceed Hamlet three hits.

“Sir, I will walk here in the hall,” answered Hamlet; “if it please his Majesty, it is the breathing-time of day with me. Let the foils be brought, the gentleman willing; if the King hold his purpose, I will win for him if I can; if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.”

“You will lose this wager, my lord,” said Horatio, when young Osric, with a final sweeping bow of his plumed cap, had retired.

“I do not think so,” said Hamlet. “Since he went into France I have been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds. – But thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart; but it is no matter.”

“Nay, good my lord – ”

“It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a woman.”

“If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will go and tell them you are not fit.”

“Not a whit; we defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is it to leave betimes? Let be.”

Now entered the King and Queen, Laertes, Osric, and other lords; attendants with foils and gauntlets; and servants carrying a table with flagons of wine on it.

“Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me,” said the King, putting Laertes’s hand into Hamlet’s.

With his customary sweetness of disposition, Hamlet courteously apologised to Laertes for any wrong he might have done him, saying that it was only due to the excitement of the moment. Laertes accepted his offered friendship, but with little grace. Then the foils were brought, and while Hamlet, utterly unsuspicious, made his choice, Laertes, with some shuffling, managed to secure the foil he wanted, with the button off, and anointed its point with venom.

The King ordered the goblets of wine to be set in readiness, and commanded that if Hamlet gave the first or second hit a salute should be fired from the guns on the battlements. Then, with hypocritical friendliness, he pretended, in honour of Hamlet, to drop a pearl of great value into the goblet, but it was in reality some deadly poison.

At first the fencers seemed pretty evenly matched, but Hamlet secured the first hit. The King drank to his health, the trumpets sounded, and cannon were fired outside. The King sent a little page with the cup of wine to Hamlet, but the Prince said he would play the next bout first, and bade the boy set it by awhile. Again they played.

“Another hit! What say you?” Hamlet appealed to the judges.

“A touch, a touch, I do confess,” agreed Laertes.

“Our son shall win,” said the deceitful King.

“The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet,” said his mother.

“Gertrude, do not drink,” said the King, but it was too late; before Claudius could prevent her, she had lifted to her lips the cup of poisoned wine, which the little page had placed on a table beside her.

The third bout of fencing began, and this time it was more vigorous than before, for Hamlet reproached Laertes for not putting forth his full powers. A feeling of shame had doubtless hitherto restrained Laertes, and he felt that what he was going to do was almost against his conscience. Nevertheless, he now thrust in good earnest. He wounded Hamlet, but in the scuffle his rapier flew out of his hand. Hamlet tossed his own weapon to Laertes, and picked up the poisoned one which had fallen to the ground. The struggle was resumed, and this time Hamlet wounded Laertes. The match begun in play was becoming serious.

“Part them; they are incensed!” cried the King.

“Nay, come again,” said Hamlet.

“Look to the Queen there, ho!” called out Osric, for at that moment she fell back, half unconscious.

“They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?” asked Horatio of Hamlet.

“How is it, Laertes?” asked Osric.

“Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric; I am justly punished with mine own treachery.”

“How does the Queen?” asked Hamlet.

“She swoons to see them bleed,” said the King, anxious to cover up the cause of her death.

“No, no, the drink, the drink!” gasped the Queen, “O my dear Hamlet – the drink, the drink! I am poisoned!”

“O, villainy! Ho! let the door be locked! Treachery! Seek it out,” cried Hamlet.

Laertes, on the point of death, confessed the whole plot, and Hamlet, stung at last to vengeance, stabbed the wicked King with Laertes’s poisoned weapon, which he held in his hand.

“He is justly served,” said Laertes. “Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet. Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee, nor thine on me.”

“Heaven make thee free of it!” said Hamlet, as the young man fell back motionless. “I follow thee. I am dead, Horatio. Wretched Queen, adieu!”

Horatio, feeling that he no longer cared to live, seized the cup, and would have drunk off what was left of the poisoned wine, but with a last effort of failing strength, Hamlet wrenched the cup out of his hands, and dashed it to the ground.

Far off in the distance was heard the music of a triumphant march, and learning that it was the youthful Fortinbras, returning with conquest from Poland, Hamlet prophesied that he would be elected as the new King, and gave his dying voice for him as his successor. Then murmuring, “The rest is silence,” the young Prince sank quietly back, with a smile of unearthly radiance on his face, and at last the storm-tossed spirit was at peace.