Act 1. 5
(King Hamlet alone on stage in room, pondering and waiting. He looks into a mirror)
King:
Who am I? Am I a man who leaves behind him no posterity? Does my name become a life long lost in with immediate celerity? Am I thus just a sterile hybrid then, who grows once but in death is simply gone? Or still become an empty tune that lost the words of song? How can I stand this emptiness if childlessness undone, if I've no one who is of my blood to sit upon my throne?
Who am I? That is a phrase I've heard before from man who'd lost his way. In mind and spirit he did fade and all his wits were frayed. Yet he exists beyond his death although in he life he faltered. Here am I, his first born son, and in me he's not much altered. Am I bound for madness too, to follow him to death? If I cannot resolve my life, I never will find rest. Without such rest will my mind fly? Will it, too, proceed to die and leave me to his torture? He left me that as legacy as part of my great fortune. Left me here but half a man full of boast and no becoming. I need to know whither I will go if I leave no son aborning. Half a man with a young wife and half a brother, too. Can I make a plot for them to end and to see my horror through? Can I pass on my blood this way if by a route bizarre circuitous? Am I so desperate to forge a plot that I know as dangerous?
What is an act of desperation but desperation in itself? There must be an end to exasperation if there be nothing else. I have a need that takes me far beyond our simple reason. The aid I need must be free of greed and any thought of treason. I need someone whom I can trust, a man for every season. He is here in Claudius, both my son and brother. Here is a man who will always stand when others will just falter. I find him loyal but to no fault, like a free man not one haltered. If in desperation act, I can do so with assurance
my brother will stand by me and offer his endurance. He will come and abide with me. He will suffer and do my bidding. I know that I give him no choice but to sin one way or in another way still sinning.
I have sent for him and thus he comes to find himself enwebbed. I do only hope that he must do this awful thing I need, and I also dread.
(Claudius enters through a secret door)
Claudius:
My lord, I have come.
King:
Do you come here as a ghost as well unseen here in the dark before dawn?
Claudius: I stalked the halls most carefully and did as I was bidden.
King:
In that you did succeed and remained quite hidden?
Claudius:
I can to you in in my best stealth, and that is how I leave. I do not know why this is so, and I could scarce but breathe.
King:
The way you came will be just the same when you've swiftly gone. You must go by all unseen and return before the dawn. The cock will crow, and you will know the matter of your coming.
Claudius:
I remain but at your will and at your bidding come. Why you've made such a secret, grave, I can hardly tell, but your will be done.
King:
It is most grave for I am aged and there are those who look for me to falter. The danger that befalls a crown is something no one can alter. I cannot be seen to come to you in some fearful supplication.
Claudius:
Thus am I come a secret here, but I do appear in some fearful apprehension.
King:
Your apprehension has some ground for this is a fearful time. I am aged, and that will not change, and I need my will be done. But it has come to a fearful place, this thing that I have planned. I ask of you to wait a while and I will my mind uncover. In the end, you will soon bend to that which you discover.
Claudius:
You, as in all things, will lead and I will follow. In absolute trust, that I must, or my faith will have proved hollow.
King:
There are in my body but two kings, one of them is natural. It is the man who serves as king in a way we see as factual. I take the throne. I use the power. I exercise its might, but I'm rounded in myself for I have frail limits in my life. I will surely die one day and before my aging humble. In some way, this natural king, will, at last, full stumble. In that I'll fall from my crown, but the essence of rule persever, so God's dominion come to ending here in Denmark never. The other is the body politic, the one that is the spiritual. It comes replete as the divine seat and essence of king's power. My body dies, but the king survives, as all around will cry: “The king is dead. Long live the king,” and so the king's forever.
Claudius:
You do embody these two kings in ways I see as splendid. I feel rule by example true will never full be ended. You set a standard for a king that touches the divine. No one will come to take away that sunlight as it shines. And shine it will in history evading our shared mortality.
King:
That must depend on how this ends and who on the throne succeed. If you wish my ideals of a king held true, the king but must remain our breed. He must breed true in fact and disposition, for others stand in full command of a strong ambition and will beshrew before they're through the truth of our tradition.
Claudius:
Our tradition but Denmark is and as it is, it thrives. I hate to foresee the fate of these if tradition does not survive.
King:
Tradition holds and can be bold if its hero stands beside. That is why we must try to rectify the disruptions that occur. Even in the natural king such disorders come unasked. Even our father, who once was king, brought such things to pass.
Claudius:
What you have made has thus rectified the damage that he did. That you should blame yourself in this is something to forbid.
King:
But I have sinned in such strong ways that I forever feel this guilt. I acted right in all my might, but still my soul feels ill. I acted on my own behalf, for you, and for the kingdom. Still I feel this pain is real and speaks beyond all reason.
I am aged as our father aged. In his decrepitude he was destroyed
By a mind that long had been strong, no longer was he buoyed
In his confusion, he hated me and did endless harm
Until his death I feared my life, one of countless, pained alarm
He degraded his fair rule when his mind did fill with fear. How a man so fearless once against the greatest foe could feel such fear of what was not real, we can never truly know. In truth, he did not know himself, thus from himself was lost. He lived in horror of you then and on fear's fire he was tossed. He would have killed you for a plot that did not in the least exist. We argued to the point of death, and still he did persist. I feared, my brother, for your life, and perforce, I did a thing I had not known I’d dare.
When you were born I took his place for our father soon after then had died.
Your mother, too, was lost to you, and you made a plaintive cry.
Although you were my brother, half, the half I almost hated
I wished your life to be in calm, the old gods propitiated
You have grown into the man I see, filled with thought about the mysteries
Of life and love which are all oblique but for their answers you do seek.
You distain the force of politics—all that and power, too.
That means you have all my trust. There is no else but you.
Claudius:
But soft my liege and my brother too, you also feel my father
I agree that world you see has much danger that its proffers
Your touch on me has gentle been and under you I've flowered
I feel such strength, and my thoughts intense, I seek no other power
In that you place your trust in me, and you will find it deeply founded
Please come to me with whatever plea that you heart desires
Still remember this, if I can speak bold, that your wife, though young, gives you her love
Exclusive from all others. I know this too, and tell you, true, as your son and brother
King Hamlet:
This is the case, and it troubles me, for I have a need most pressing.
I talk to you for in your trust that’s true; I can share thoughts most distressing.
You have lived a somewhat cloistered life. For all I know you're chaste.
It is a most desired life, and one that I might have embraced
But to be king, means more than that. It means he has to breed
To bring a son into the world behooves his first and final deed
Succession must be smooth, you see, to protect our Denmark's being.
Others dream of kings and think of their own crown, and they are always, secret scheming.
Claudius:
To ease your fears, as it appears, perhaps I can rule with you. I will stand discrete behind, and some day at your side. In time you will accustom me and them to my life then politic. I would learn from you just what to do in every point specific. Others would come to trust in me and from that I would try to rule in justice and your tradition when you, at some point, die.
King:
You offer me the best of you, and in that I am flattered. That's not the point of why I saved your life; that was not the matter. I knew that half your blood held taint for the body politic, and now I need still what will appear the pure blood of my creed. Your mother was a beauty, in heart as well as mind, but she was common in her duty to our country and to all in need. I loved her, too, as I love you for a beauty not political, but I cannot trust that is enough in a world so hypocritical. They speak of love and act in hate born of a king's desire. I know it burns, and I discern that it could set our land afire. Our father brought you to this world out of an act of passion. But when you were born, he was swiftly sworn to some kind of maddened action. You had killed your mother, in his mind, and that he'd scarce forgive, and he feared you’d take his throne, so he swore you would not live. I hesitate to tell this tale, but at last this truth is known. He was a man who long could hate and so could never give.
Claudius:
Now I feel confused. I knew not our father, but the stories told of a man quite bold, and now you tell me this. I cannot help but to ask to qualify or I will think amiss. You say my father hated me, and that my mother was too common. I know she died to make my life free, and that I know is solemn. But if she was too low for your royal house, and I am tainted thus by half, so I too find a low position. How could he marry thus, and then repent the issue?
King:
That he made you with his loins is true, but out of love no telling. He took your mother out of pride when he felt his manhood swelling. He married her to make him safe from your manipulation. In your age could set against him a royal threat that one day could claim succession.
Claudius:
Did our father ever love? Did he ever care? If I came just from his lust, I could feel despair. That makes my heart more open to you, if such a thing is likely. You were, in truth, my father too, and you served me that way mightily. You must have suffered when quite young, and in that I feel sorrow. What could you feel about that day when you knew not what was tomorrow?
King:
I knew that day was dangerous, as it had been all my life. To live with the elder Hamlet then was to live immersed in strife. Our father was a cold wind in a country frozen. He felt his wrath toward the end of life that was his path best chosen. He often turned his wrath on you and added his deepest fears. I kept you safe from out his path, and that went on for years. Until he knew you were a traitor born, and his power you'd usurp. At this long last, I did hold fast, and you from him protected. It came to this, I could not be remiss; I killed him undetected. He died quite silently one night with my help of suffocation. He was asleep and in so deep he made no supplication. All this happened so you were safe, and it went undetected. He suffered so within his mind that all was relief and I went unsuspected. We do not speak of king's gone mad, and we leave the past alone. We let the good of reputation stand, and not sink it like a stone. No one must know of the madness there that might have cost your life. I did the act for you and him to save you both from strife. Still I hold the thought in mind and of my guilty patricide. And after death, I do guess that guilt will yet abide. What e'er the cost, even if I'm lost, I knew the thing as right. It was an act of love as well, to save him from his night.
Claudius:
But was it sin to protect your kin from an old man's madness? If he'd killed me in his rage, would not his soul been forfeit and his eternity all sadness? You had to act full in your youth, no more than sixteen years. It was an act that you took, in fact, to release him and me from fear.
King:
I know the fear that he once felt because the throne’s unsure. I married Gertrude in some hope because her blood is pure. She brings the royal to our house, her father was my squire. He noble was and nobly fought, and noble then he died. Gertrude came to us or she might have come to naught. The queen and I did raise you both each in your own turn. I loved that queen, but childless be, no heir did our love earn. She died of fever one winter night, and my heart was rent. I turned at last to Gertrude’s love before my life was spent. But now I know that it is me that's low in whatever makes a child. The thought of this betrays my kiss in all of our encounters. I feel her love and can respond, but that the truth can't alter. I feel the elder Hamlet here for he has sought revenge. That I would be king and still lose the thing that makes dynasty emerge. Without a son, my name is lost, and I will end this line. This thought I bear, and it brings despair and drives me from my mind.
Claudius:
Tell me how I can comfort you, and now that I know your tale, I feel such compassion that it cries for action to make some recompense. You saved me then and you have spent your father's love on me. Tell me how, for I want to know, how to help to give you peace.
King:
You move me with your sorrow, and I do not wish your pain. I think upon the morrow, we will meet and speak again for the dawn is near and our talk is dear and secrets must remain. I'll call for you and Gertrude, too, the same as I have now. You will come swift, and I will remit the thought I will bestow. Hold you to your determination for I will need your strength. To secure this throne with your help alone, I will go to any length. Farewell my brother, son and subject, all of these at once. You are a country by yourself, and in you I feel great wealth.
Claudius:
All the riches I possess in mind as well as spirit were a gift of your sure love, and to answer full I never will come near it.
Exit
King:
And so I have prepared them both, planted the seed of action. They have heard and felt what I have spoken, and for me they feel a passion. I will make that passion true an expression of the right. In confusion they will act in the darkness of the night. I pray to God that I can keep my sanity intact. If madness comes, it's his revenge to strike me from my mind. That we should end our lives in a blend of madness and in rage. I will come to know as time goes by and I further age. I'll have a son, and heir be done and then all will be safe.