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The Shakespeare Story-Book
The King’s Wager
In the churchyard at Elsinore two men were digging a grave. As they worked they talked, and the elder one expounded the law to his young assistant. The former asked if the person for whom they were digging the grave was to be buried in Christian burial.
“I tell thee she is,” said the second man, “and therefore make her grave straight; the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial.”
“How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence?” argued the first grave-digger.
“Why, ’tis found so,” answered the second.
“Here lies the point,” persisted the first, who dearly loved an argument. “If I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act, and an act hath three branches – it is to act, to do, and to perform; argal, she drowned herself unwittingly.”
“Nay, but hear you, good man delver – ”
“Give me leave,” interposed the other, with his air of superiority. “Here lies the water – good; here stands the man – good; if the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes – mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself; argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.”
“But is this law?” asked the second rustic, rubbing his bewildered pate.
“Ay, marry, is it; crowner’s quest law,” returned the other decisively.
Having sufficiently impressed his companion by his display of superior knowledge, the first grave-digger despatched him for “a stoup of liquor,” and continued his toil alone, singing to himself as he did so.
Two newcomers had in the meanwhile entered the churchyard. These were Hamlet and Horatio. Hamlet was struck by the utter insensibility of the man, who callously pursued his mournful task, and shovelled earth and human bones alike aside with the most complete indifference. To Hamlet the sight of these poor human remains awakened many reflections, and, in his usual fashion, he began to ponder over them, and speculate what had formerly been the destiny – possibly a brilliant and distinguished one – of the skulls which were now knocked about so disrespectfully. Presently he spoke to the man, and asked whose grave he was digging, and with the exercise of much patient good-humour was at last able to extract the information that it was for “one that was a woman, but, rest her soul, she’s dead.”
“How long have you been a grave-digger?” was his next question.
“Of all the days in the year, I came to it that day that our last King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.”
“How long is that since?”
“Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that,” was the civil answer. “It was the very day young Hamlet was born – he that is mad, and sent into England.”
“Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?” inquired Hamlet.
“Why, because he was mad; he shall recover his wits there; or if he do not, it’s no great matter there.”
“Why?”
“It will not be seen in him there, there the men are as mad as he.”
“How came he mad?”
“Very strangely, they say.”
“How ‘strangely’?”
“Faith, e’en with losing his wits.”
“Upon what ground?”
“Why, here in Denmark,” said the rustic, misunderstanding the question. “I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.”
He next threw up with his spade a skull, which he said had been that of Yorick, the King’s jester.
“Let me see,” said Hamlet, taking it gently into his hands. “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio – a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times. Here hung the lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your jibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.”
Hamlet’s meditations were interrupted by the arrival of the funeral procession, which now entered the churchyard. After the bier walked Laertes, as chief mourner, and the King and Queen followed, with their attendants. Hamlet and Horatio, who had retired on the approach of the mourners, did not at first know who was about to be buried, but when the bier was lowered into the grave, Hamlet knew from the words spoken by Laertes that it was no other than the fair Ophelia.
“Sweets to the sweet: farewell!” said the Queen, scattering flowers. “I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife; I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid, and not have strewed thy grave.”
“Hold off the earth awhile, till I have caught her once more in my arms,” cried Laertes; and, leaping into the grave, he shouted wildly to them to pile their dust on the living and the dead.
“What is he whose grief bears such an emphasis?” cried Hamlet, coming forward. “This is I, Hamlet the Dane.” And he, too, leaped into the grave.
At the sight of the young Prince, all Laertes’s wrath blazed up in full fury. He sprang on him, and grappled with him, almost throttling him. Hamlet, thus attacked, bade Laertes hold off his hand, for though not hot-tempered and rash, yet he had something dangerous in him which it would be wise to fear. The attendants parted the incensed young men, and they came out of the grave, but they still regarded each other with looks of defiance.
“Why, I will fight with him upon this theme, until my eyelids will no longer wag,” said Hamlet.
“O my son, what theme?” asked the Queen.
“I loved Ophelia,” said Hamlet; “forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.”
In Laertes’s own style of exaggeration, Hamlet hurled forth a fiery challenge, and then, with sudden self-contempt, he ended in half-sad irony:
“Nay, an thou’lt mouth, I’ll rant as well as thou.”
The next day Hamlet and Horatio were walking in the hall of the castle, when a very elegant and affected young Danish nobleman approached, and, with many bows and flourishes, delivered his message, which was a challenge from Laertes to a fencing match. The King had laid a heavy wager on Hamlet – six Barbary horses against six French rapiers and poniards, that in a dozen passes Laertes would not exceed Hamlet three hits.
“Sir, I will walk here in the hall,” answered Hamlet; “if it please his Majesty, it is the breathing-time of day with me. Let the foils be brought, the gentleman willing; if the King hold his purpose, I will win for him if I can; if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.”
“You will lose this wager, my lord,” said Horatio, when young Osric, with a final sweeping bow of his plumed cap, had retired.
“I do not think so,” said Hamlet. “Since he went into France I have been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds. – But thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart; but it is no matter.”
“Nay, good my lord – ”
“It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a woman.”
“If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will go and tell them you are not fit.”
“Not a whit; we defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is it to leave betimes? Let be.”
Now entered the King and Queen, Laertes, Osric, and other lords; attendants with foils and gauntlets; and servants carrying a table with flagons of wine on it.
“Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me,” said the King, putting Laertes’s hand into Hamlet’s.
With his customary sweetness of disposition, Hamlet courteously apologised to Laertes for any wrong he might have done him, saying that it was only due to the excitement of the moment. Laertes accepted his offered friendship, but with little grace. Then the foils were brought, and while Hamlet, utterly unsuspicious, made his choice, Laertes, with some shuffling, managed to secure the foil he wanted, with the button off, and anointed its point with venom.
The King ordered the goblets of wine to be set in readiness, and commanded that if Hamlet gave the first or second hit a salute should be fired from the guns on the battlements. Then, with hypocritical friendliness, he pretended, in honour of Hamlet, to drop a pearl of great value into the goblet, but it was in reality some deadly poison.
At first the fencers seemed pretty evenly matched, but Hamlet secured the first hit. The King drank to his health, the trumpets sounded, and cannon were fired outside. The King sent a little page with the cup of wine to Hamlet, but the Prince said he would play the next bout first, and bade the boy set it by awhile. Again they played.
“Another hit! What say you?” Hamlet appealed to the judges.
“A touch, a touch, I do confess,” agreed Laertes.
“Our son shall win,” said the deceitful King.
“The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet,” said his mother.
“Gertrude, do not drink,” said the King, but it was too late; before Claudius could prevent her, she had lifted to her lips the cup of poisoned wine, which the little page had placed on a table beside her.
The third bout of fencing began, and this time it was more vigorous than before, for Hamlet reproached Laertes for not putting forth his full powers. A feeling of shame had doubtless hitherto restrained Laertes, and he felt that what he was going to do was almost against his conscience. Nevertheless, he now thrust in good earnest. He wounded Hamlet, but in the scuffle his rapier flew out of his hand. Hamlet tossed his own weapon to Laertes, and picked up the poisoned one which had fallen to the ground. The struggle was resumed, and this time Hamlet wounded Laertes. The match begun in play was becoming serious.
“Part them; they are incensed!” cried the King.
“Nay, come again,” said Hamlet.
“Look to the Queen there, ho!” called out Osric, for at that moment she fell back, half unconscious.
“They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?” asked Horatio of Hamlet.
“How is it, Laertes?” asked Osric.
“Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric; I am justly punished with mine own treachery.”
“How does the Queen?” asked Hamlet.
“She swoons to see them bleed,” said the King, anxious to cover up the cause of her death.
“No, no, the drink, the drink!” gasped the Queen, “O my dear Hamlet – the drink, the drink! I am poisoned!”
“O, villainy! Ho! let the door be locked! Treachery! Seek it out,” cried Hamlet.
Laertes, on the point of death, confessed the whole plot, and Hamlet, stung at last to vengeance, stabbed the wicked King with Laertes’s poisoned weapon, which he held in his hand.
“He is justly served,” said Laertes. “Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet. Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee, nor thine on me.”
“Heaven make thee free of it!” said Hamlet, as the young man fell back motionless. “I follow thee. I am dead, Horatio. Wretched Queen, adieu!”
Horatio, feeling that he no longer cared to live, seized the cup, and would have drunk off what was left of the poisoned wine, but with a last effort of failing strength, Hamlet wrenched the cup out of his hands, and dashed it to the ground.
Far off in the distance was heard the music of a triumphant march, and learning that it was the youthful Fortinbras, returning with conquest from Poland, Hamlet prophesied that he would be elected as the new King, and gave his dying voice for him as his successor. Then murmuring, “The rest is silence,” the young Prince sank quietly back, with a smile of unearthly radiance on his face, and at last the storm-tossed spirit was at peace.
“Now cracks a noble heart,” said Horatio in loving farewell. “Good-night, sweet Prince; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”
King Lear
The Dowerless Daughter
Long ago in Britain there lived a certain King called Lear, who had three daughters – Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. The King dearly loved all his daughters, but in especial the youngest one, Cordelia. His eldest daughter, Goneril, was married to the Duke of Albany; Regan was married to the Duke of Cornwall; and the Princes of France and Burgundy were rival suitors for the hand of Cordelia.
When King Lear grew old, wishing to shake off all cares and business, he decided to divide his kingdom among his children, leaving the largest portion to the one who loved him the most. He therefore bade each one in turn say how much she loved him, and he hoped, and fully expected, that his favourite, Cordelia, would prove that her affection was the greatest.
Goneril, the eldest, was told to speak first. She at once replied, with great glibness, that she loved her father more than words could express – dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty; beyond what could be valued, rich or rare; no less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour; as much as child ever loved; a love that made breath poor, and speech powerless; beyond all manner of so much, she loved him.
Cordelia, hearing this fluent harangue, was quite astounded, for she knew her sister’s cold and heartless nature. “What shall Cordelia do? Love and be silent,” she said to herself, for she did not choose to compete with loud and empty protestations of this kind.
King Lear, however, was greatly pleased, and awarded to his son-in-law Albany, as Goneril’s dowry, an ample third of his kingdom. Then came Regan’s turn. She declared that everything her sister had said she felt exactly in the same manner, only in a larger measure; and she professed that she was an enemy to every joy excepting her father’s love. Lear thereupon awarded her another third of his kingdom, equal in size to Goneril’s.
Lastly he turned to Cordelia, and asked her what she could say to win a third portion of his possessions, richer than her sisters’.
Cordelia, disgusted at their false hypocrisy, answered simply:
“Nothing.”
“Nothing!” echoed Lear.
“Nothing,” repeated Cordelia.
“Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again,” commanded the frowning King.
Cordelia answered quietly that she loved her father as a child ought to do – she obeyed, honoured, and loved him as a father. If her sisters pretended that he was everything in the world to them, why had they husbands? Haply, when she herself wedded, half her love and duty would go to her husband; she would never marry if, like her sisters, all her love was still to remain with her father.
“Goes thy heart with this?” asked Lear.
“Ay, good my lord,” said Cordelia.
“So young and so untender?”
“So young, my lord, and true,” was the steadfast answer.
“Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower,” cried Lear, his rage bursting forth in full fury.
Always rash and headstrong, even in his best days, old age and infirmities had rendered him still more unruly and wayward, and his fits of unreasoning anger were often beyond control. In the most violent language, he now denounced Cordelia, utterly disowning her as a daughter, and ordering her out of his sight. He sent to summon the two Princes who had made application for her hand, and in the meanwhile divided the remaining portion of his kingdom between Albany and Cornwall, investing them jointly with all the powers of majesty, and declaring that his youngest daughter’s pride, which she called candour, should be her only dower. King Lear reserved to himself a hundred knights, and retained the name and dignity of a King; but everything else – the sway, the revenue, and the government – he said should belong to his sons-in-law. And to confirm this, he took off his crown, and handed it to them to divide between them.
At this flagrant injustice of the old King, an honest and loyal courtier, the Earl of Kent, ventured to remonstrate, and, braving his master’s anger, he pointed out the rash folly of what he was doing, and begged him to reverse his doom. He declared boldly that he would answer for it, on his life if necessary, that Cordelia did not love her father the least of his children.
“Kent, on thy life, no more!” threatened the King.
“My life I never held but as a pawn to wage against thy enemies,” returned Kent fearlessly; “nor fear to lose it, thy safety being the motive.”
The King, deeply incensed, ordered Kent immediately to quit the kingdom; five days were allowed for making preparations; on the sixth he was to depart. If on the tenth day following he were found in the dominions, that moment would be his death.
Nothing daunted, the gallant nobleman bade farewell to the King, and, turning to Cordelia, he gave her a tender word of blessing.
“The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid, that justly think’st, and hast most rightly said!”
As for Goneril and Regan, he hoped that their lavish speeches would be approved by their deeds, so that good effects might spring from words of love. And so the faithful courtier was driven away in mad folly by the master whom he had served so loyally.
The Princes of France and Burgundy, who had been summoned, now made their appearance. King Lear first addressed Burgundy, asking him what dowry he required with his youngest daughter. Burgundy replied that he craved no more than what King Lear had already offered with her, and he supposed King Lear would not tender less.
Lear replied that when Cordelia was dear to him he held her at that value, but now her price was fallen. If Burgundy liked to take her, just as she was, with only the King’s displeasure added, she was his.
“There she stands. Take her or leave her,” he ended curtly.
Burgundy was not inclined to take Cordelia on these terms, and tried civilly to express his refusal. Lear then turned to the King of France, but to him he said he would not do him so much wrong as to offer him a thing which Lear himself hated – a wretch whom nature was almost ashamed to acknowledge as hers.
The King of France replied that it was very strange that she who had been the object of Lear’s praise, the comfort of his age – his best, his dearest – should in a trice of time so absolutely forfeit his favour. Surely she must have committed some terrible offence to lose his affection, and this, without a miracle, he would never believe of her.
The King’s manly and chivalrous words fell like balm on the poor young girl’s wounded heart, and she begged her father to tell him that it was no base or unworthy action on her part that had deprived her of his grace and favour, but only the want of a glib tongue and an ever-avaricious eye.
“Better thou hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better,” was Lear’s resentful answer to this appeal.
“My lord of Burgundy, what say you to the lady?” said France. “Love’s not love when it is mixed with considerations that have nothing to do with the main point. Will you have her? She is herself a dowry.”
“Royal Lear, give but that portion which you yourself proposed, and here I take Cordelia by the hand, Duchess of Burgundy.”
“Nothing; I have sworn; I am firm,” said the old King obstinately.
“I am sorry, then, you have so lost a father that you must lose a husband,” said Burgundy to Cordelia.
“Peace be with Burgundy!” said Cordelia with dignity. “Since respects of fortune are his love, I shall not be his wife.”
The King of France stepped forward and took the maiden by the hand.
“Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised! Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon; if it be lawful, I take up what’s cast away. Thy dowerless daughter, King, thrown to me by hazard, is Queen of us, of ours, and of our France; not all the Dukes of watery Burgundy can buy this unprized, precious maid of me. Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind; thou losest here, a better home to find.”
“Thou hast her, France; let her be thine,” said Lear, “for I have no such daughter, nor shall ever see that face of hers again. Therefore be gone without my grace, my love, my blessing.”
And the offended old King swept away with his train, not deigning to bestow another glance upon his daughter.
“Bid farewell to your sisters,” said the King of France again.
Cordelia, in taking leave of Goneril and Regan, begged them to treat their father well, for too truly she mistrusted their selfishness and hardness of heart. Regan told her haughtily not to prescribe their duties to them; and Goneril bade her study to content her husband, who had only received her out of charity.
”Come, my fair Cordelia,” said the King of France; and, secure in her true lover’s tender protection, the young girl passed from the home that had so cruelly spurned her.