1 I embrace it freely, And will this brother's wager frankly play.
2 Almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king and marry with his brother.
3 Here is your husband, like a mildew'd ear Blasting his wholesome brother.
4 You are the Queen, your husband's brother's wife, And, would it were not so.
5 Look here upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
6 I lov'd Ophelia; forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum.
7 Sir, in this audience, Let my disclaiming from a purpos'd evil Free me so far in your most generous thoughts That I have shot my arrow o'er the house And hurt my brother.
8 But good my brother, Do not as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whilst like a puff'd and reckless libertine Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his own rede.
9 Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand, Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatch'd: Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, Unhous'led, disappointed, unanel'd; No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head.
10 Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death The memory be green, and that it us befitted To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom To be contracted in one brow of woe; Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature That we with wisest sorrow think on him, Together with remembrance of ourselves.
11 Last, and as much containing as all these, Her brother is in secret come from France, Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds, And wants not buzzers to infect his ear With pestilent speeches of his father's death, Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd, Will nothing stick our person to arraign In ear and ear.
12 Now follows, that you know young Fortinbras, Holding a weak supposal of our worth, Or thinking by our late dear brother's death Our state to be disjoint and out of frame, Colleagued with this dream of his advantage, He hath not fail'd to pester us with message, Importing the surrender of those lands Lost by his father, with all bonds of law, To our most valiant brother.