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QUEEN. This is mere madness: And thus awhile the fit will work on him; Anon, as patient as the female dove, When that her golden couplets are disclos’d, His silence will sit drooping. HAMLET. Hear you, sir; What is the reason that you use me thus? I lov’d you ever. But it is no matter. Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. [ Exit. ] KING. I pray thee, good Horatio, wait upon him. [ Exit Horatio . ] [ To Laertes ] Strengthen your patience in our last night’s speech; We’ll put the matter to the present push.— Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son. This grave shall have a living monument. An hour of quiet shortly shall we see; Till then in patience our proceeding be. [ Exeunt. ] SCENE II. A hall in the Castle. Enter Hamlet and Horatio . HAMLET. So much for this, sir. Now let me see the other; You do remember all the circumstance? HORATIO. Remember it, my lord! HAMLET. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay Worse than the mutinies in the bilboes. Rashly, And prais’d be rashness for it,—let us know, Our indiscretion sometime serves us well, When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will. HORATIO. That is most certain. HAMLET. Up from my cabin, My sea-gown scarf’d about me, in the dark Grop’d I to find out them; had my desire, Finger’d their packet, and in fine, withdrew To mine own room again, making so bold, My fears forgetting manners, to unseal Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio, Oh royal knavery! an exact command, Larded with many several sorts of reasons, Importing Denmark’s health, and England’s too, With ho! such bugs and goblins in my life, That on the supervise, no leisure bated, No, not to stay the grinding of the axe, My head should be struck off. HORATIO. Is’t possible? HAMLET. Here’s the commission, read it at more leisure. But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed? HORATIO. I beseech you. HAMLET. Being thus benetted round with villanies,— Or I could make a prologue to my brains, They had begun the play,—I sat me down, Devis’d a new commission, wrote it fair: I once did hold it, as our statists do, A baseness to write fair, and labour’d much How to forget that learning; but, sir, now It did me yeoman’s service. Wilt thou know The effect of what I wrote? HORATIO. Ay, good my lord.