![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Claudius has presumably had a little time to calm his choler and to compose himself. He also has Guildenstern and Rosencrantz at his service and he is ready to take executive action after suffering Hamlet’s turn at being a playwright.
KING CLAUDIUS
I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you;
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you:
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow
Out of his lunacies.
GUILDENSTERN
We will ourselves provide:
Most holy and religious fear it is
To keep those many many bodies safe
That live and feed upon your majesty.
ROSENCRANTZ
The single and peculiar life is bound,
With all the strength and armour of the mind,
To keep itself from noyance; but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest
The lives of many. The cease of majesty
Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
What's near it with it: it is a massy wheel,
Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoin'd; which, when it falls,
Each small annexment (petty consequence!)
Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.
KING CLAUDIUS
Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage;
For we will fetters put upon this fear,
Which now goes too free-footed.
ROSENCRANTZ/GUILDENSTERN
We will haste us.
Marvin Rosenberg raises a wonderful dark irony. In all of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s blathering about the horror of losing a king, is it not likely that Claudius’s own conscience might be tapped yet again, since he himself has killed a king, and not long ago, which is the source of all his present unease and strife? In any case, he does not have time to dwell on it quite yet, for Polonius now comes to inform Claudius that he is pursuing the plan to overhear Gertrude’s stern talk with the wayward prince.
LORD POLONIUS
My lord, he's going to his mother's closet:
Behind the arras I'll convey myself,
To hear the process; and warrant she'll tax him home:
And, as you said, and wisely was it said,
'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear
The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege:
I'll call upon you ere you go to bed,
And tell you what I know.
KING CLAUDIUS
Thanks, dear my lord.
Now the king is left alone to wrestle with his strucken conscience.
KING CLAUDIUS
I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you;
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you:
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow
Out of his lunacies.
GUILDENSTERN
We will ourselves provide:
Most holy and religious fear it is
To keep those many many bodies safe
That live and feed upon your majesty.
ROSENCRANTZ
The single and peculiar life is bound,
With all the strength and armour of the mind,
To keep itself from noyance; but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest
The lives of many. The cease of majesty
Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
What's near it with it: it is a massy wheel,
Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoin'd; which, when it falls,
Each small annexment (petty consequence!)
Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.
KING CLAUDIUS
Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage;
For we will fetters put upon this fear,
Which now goes too free-footed.
ROSENCRANTZ/GUILDENSTERN
We will haste us.
Marvin Rosenberg raises a wonderful dark irony. In all of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s blathering about the horror of losing a king, is it not likely that Claudius’s own conscience might be tapped yet again, since he himself has killed a king, and not long ago, which is the source of all his present unease and strife? In any case, he does not have time to dwell on it quite yet, for Polonius now comes to inform Claudius that he is pursuing the plan to overhear Gertrude’s stern talk with the wayward prince.
LORD POLONIUS
My lord, he's going to his mother's closet:
Behind the arras I'll convey myself,
To hear the process; and warrant she'll tax him home:
And, as you said, and wisely was it said,
'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear
The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege:
I'll call upon you ere you go to bed,
And tell you what I know.
KING CLAUDIUS
Thanks, dear my lord.
Now the king is left alone to wrestle with his strucken conscience.
