Page:Hamlet (1917) Yale.djvu/135

Prince of Denmark, IV. vii

If one could match you; [the scrimers of their nation,

He swore, had neither motion, guard, nor eye,

If you oppos'd them.] Sir, this report of his

Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy

That he could nothing do but wish and beg

Your sudden coming o'er, to play with him.

Now, out of this,—

Laer. What out of this, my lord?

King. Laertes, was your father dear to you ? Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,

A face without a heart?

Laer. Why ask you this?

King. Not that I think you did not love your father,

But that I know love is begun by time,

And that I see, in passages of proof,

Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.

[There lives within the very flame of love

A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it,

And nothing is at a like goodness still,

For goodness, growing to a plurisy,

Dies in his own too-much. That we would do,

We should do when we would, for this 'would' changes,

And hath abatements and delays as many

As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;

And then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh,

That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o' the ulcer;]

Hamlet comes back; what would you undertake

To show yourself your father's son in deed

More than in words?

Laer. To cut his throat i' the church.

 100 scrimers: fencers

105 play: fence

112 passages of proof; cf. n.

117 plurisy: fulness; cf. n.

120 abatements: diminutions

122 spendthrift sigh; cf. n.

