ours, 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 showed 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 showed 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, which
Hamlet seemed to have forgot; and the ghost bade him speak to his
mother, for the grief and terror she was in would else kill her. It then
vanished, and was seen by none but Hamlet, neither could he by pointing
to where it stood, or by any