ot the king, but Polonius,
the old officious counsellor, that had planted himself as a spy behind
the hangings. "Oh me!" exclaimed the queen, "what a rash and bloody
deed have you done!" "A bloody deed, mother," replied Hamlet, "but not
so bad as yours, who killed a king, and married his brother." Hamlet
had gone too far to leave off here. He was now in the humour to speak
plainly to his mother, and he pursued it. And though the faults of
parents are to be tenderly treated by their children, yet in the case
of great crimes the son may have leave to speak even to his own mother
with some harshness, so as that harshness is meant for her good, and
to turn her from her wicked ways, and not done for the purpose of
upbraiding. And now this virtuous prince did in moving terms represent
to the queen the heinousness of her offence, in being so forgetful of
the dead king, his father, as in so short a space of time to marry
with his brother and reputed murderer: such an act as, after the vows
which she had sworn to her first husband, was enough to make all vows
of women suspected, and all virtue to be accounted hypocrisy, wedding
contracts to be less than gamesters' oaths, and religion to be a
mockery and a mere form of words. He said she had done such a deed,
that the heavens blushed at it, and the earth was sick of her because
of it. And he shewed her two pictures, the one of the late king, her
first husband, and the other of the present king, her second husband,
and he bade her mark the difference: what a grace was on the brow
of his father, how like a god he looked! the curls of Apollo, the
forehead of Jupiter, the eye of Mars, and a posture like to Mercury
newly alighted on some heaven-kissing hill! this man, he said, _had
been_ her husband. And then he shewed her whom she had got in his
stead: how like a blight or a mildew he looked, for so he had blasted
his wholesome brother. And the queen was sore ashamed that he should
so turn her eyes inward upon her soul, which she now saw so black and
deformed. And he asked her how she could continue to live with this
man, and be a wife to him, who had murdered her first husband, and
got the crown by as false means as a thief--And just as he spoke, the
ghost of his father, such as he was in his lifetime, and such as he
had lately seen it, entered the room, and Hamlet, in great terror,
asked what it would have; and the ghost said that it came to remind
him of the revenge he had promised