Act 2.3
(Claudius is awake in his room. He reads. Christian knocks and enters. Act 2.4 occurs simultaneously with this dialogue, and can be played interspersed or one after the other)
Christian:
Your Highness will please pardon me for any interruption.
Claudius:
Christian, my friend, you can cause me no great disruption. No need for you to “Highness” me. I have no vast pretentions. Not even do I have, my friend, any such intentions.
Christian:
The king, dear sir, is deeply moved, troubled beyond cause.
Claudius:
For such a tale, I will not fail to, at any time, take pause.
Christian:
His father haunts him night for night and even taints each day. I hazard you know the cause. Truth or not, that’s where his mind goes, and he finds there madness’ jaws.
Claudius:
What madness does he find therein? How be it manifest?
Christian:
He tells that he would kill his son, the worst of sin, and his salvation be divest. He says that once he killed the king, thus a patricide to boot. He swears he did to save your life, but he fears it was power he pursued. He screams that the madness of your father lives in him, and he will lose mind and will and do the thing within. He obsesses on the young Hamlet prince until he can see him plot to tear the crown from off his head and leave him with just naught. He feels he is empty without his crown, and hollow in his soul. He wishes to be released from pain; that is his other goal. In the end, he swears he’ll kill himself or slay Hamlet in his youth. He sees and hears his father too, and fears he speaks the truth.
Claudius:
What is it that this aberration ask or say, or does it make demand?
Christian:
He asks for vengeance in his name and to kill the boy in hand. Even here he makes not sense. Old Hamlet died at his son’s hand and that life he leaves at rest.
Claudius:
In death, that old King would in some way rest from the burden of his sins. If he kills his only son, a new hell in life begins. Madness is a subtle fiend which makes of life such bargains that hold a logic of their own and makes the righteous turn to sin. The best we try in life to do can sometimes turn to dross and that which we had hoped to gain suddenly becomes loss.
Christian:
In his pain he calls for you as the only one who’ll calm the evil spirits inside of him. In you he sees his balm. I tend to him most every night, and every night’s more grim. None else can stand the torture that the king submits unto himself this evil there to nurture. Please fly to him and do what you can do, anything to end this horror. He cannot live. He cannot die. He can but stay in sorrow.
Claudius:
I will go to him, my king, and to him my brother. Perhaps if he can but feel my love, this evil we can smother. His thoughts do poison him as you do so careful note. But in the love from me and from above we can seek an antidote.
Christian:
Do what you can for this king and man. How much longer can he suffer?
Claudius:
Against such pain I will try to gain a foothold and make a buffer. I thank you for your care of him and for your secrecy. There’s nothing here that the nation needs to know or less to see. You are a man of a gentle soul, and such a man is pure. You give comfort where you can, and such comforts don’t come sure. But know this friend, our lord commends your effort on his part. You reach out with your love for him, and you’ve touched him with your heart.
Christian:
I seek no reward for this or any recognition. Please go to him and ease his pain, make safe his disposition.
Claudius:
Let us return and there to learn what strategy to follow. I will do the good that I truly should to lift this man from sorrow.