Act 2.6
Christian:
I am Christian, you husband’s guard who in great duty, love him. He is my king and what I bring to him is simple, gentle comfort. Night on night, I hear in fright how in depth and breadth he suffer. He wishes you to come to him, and you can do no other.
Gertrude:
I am compelled, for in love I dwell in this way and many parts. I know your name; you have some fame as my husband king’s stalwart.
Christian:
I am this, true, and in this serve you in the deepest loyalty. It is for the man I take my stand as well as fight for his royalty. He has in ways, for all his days, lived a life of glory. Now things have changed, and he does arrange for you to come and hear his ending’s story.
Gertrude:
I know him as ill, although he still avoids my knowing this directly. I have found, and my life has thus been bound, by discovery circumspectly. Is he ill, and gravely so, for my mind is deeply fraught? Deep in fear that holds me dear and in that I am caught. It is a snare that holds me there in suspension and in hope. Can he recover and so discover how I love him still even near death’s scope.
Christian:
I will tell you true. I cannot lie to you. He’s in the jaws of madness. It chews him through night after night and brings me greatest sadness. All find it hard to hear him cry looking for his name. At times he cannot tell who he is and where or from whence he came. He calls himself a Hamlet true, but his father and his son. His confusion so great and his pain of late have brought him to new places. His father haunts him every night and in his fright, he knows just what he faces.
Gertrude:
What does he face? Some great disgrace? I’ll stand by him in any season. He need not despair when I am there and will love him back to reason.
Christian:
To reason he now feels he’s lost. In sadness I do concur. It swift invades his days as well, and that must not occur. He cannot shame his crown and throne, spread madness through the country. He will make what he has made great into an awful mockery.
Gertrude:
Come, let us make but fast for him, my husband, king, and father. I am his love; I am his queen; for him there is no other. I can mayhap grant him some peace, at least for now the moment. Just some reprieve from how he grieves and suffers in his torment.
(She walks to the door to exit)
Christian:
(To himself) In madness now there is no peace, and her love will not prevail. Of all things that might bring relief, only death, in truth, can’t fail.