Act 2.7
(Gertrude enters. Claudius goes to her and stops her on her way to King Hamlet sitting on his bed and staring)
Claudius:
If you please, my queen, take a while to tarry here with me.
Gertrude:
I must go where there is a need, so please soon set me free.
Claudius:
The king seems calm. That’s all to all our good. Still there’s a thing most grievous wrong, that we but must pursue. In his mind he has combined all Hamlets into one. He will not subside, until he’s died or he has killed our son.
King:
Where is Hamlet?
Gertrude:
(Goes to the king’s side) He is here, my love, as I am here for you.
King:
He is here? I am here? All are here and all of them are me? Nothing less can give redress and thus I am set free. I am the king long dead of old, and I am still my son, here I am the killing man, and there’s nothing to be done. I must kill the Hamlet still that I have left alive. It matter not lest it be forgot that he is my own son. I am him. I am a son, and I know my father killed. I’ll kill my son, the old king’s will be done, and thus complete the cycle. Ours is a tragic house. There can be no doubt, and I am but the instrument. All these Hamlets play on me, and I am always dissonant. Where is Hamlet? Let him come as ghost or as a live being. I killed him once and then again, and all of that is sinning. I am sinned not sinned against, and for that I should die. If my brother will but kill, I’ll be saved still from the crime that I decry. The blood of father, blood of son, in that blood I’ll drown. I cannot stand to live and stand. Please come and put me down. For Hamlet son let it be done, and not a word to him. He must not know how this will go or he be drawn to sin. He’ll be over sad, and truth be bad, and madness to him bring. In madness come, a ghost’s will done, and from this he must cringe. Or he will cry and will not deny, his right to sweet revenge. Where is Hamlet? Avenge me!
(At this cry, Christian enters and goes to the king)
Christian:
The dawn has come, and he has not done, the madness still abides. If that holds true, it’s a day to rue, when the king cannot reside in sanity but in the profanity of what he would despise. I come to him at that cry, and I try to offer comfort. By and by, he will but sigh and fall to tortured slumber.
Gertrude:
He does not know that I have come. If I he cannot see, can’t know it’s me, I can offer no salvation. I come to ease, to bring him peace, but can’t free him from this perdition. All sense is sparse, and I cannot parse, all the things he’s said. But I can hear, and in it I fear, he wants and pleads for death.
Claudius:
Do you endorse this our bloody course, this regicidal, fratricidal, patricidal killing? If you do, then it be true, I am painful willing.
Gertrude:
I cannot stand to see this man alive and somehow dead. To save our son, to save his soul, it must be as you have said. I agree. You’ll set him free, and our son will live. In the end, then you will bend, and the crown to our son will give.