Act III, Scene 3 — The Prayer Scene

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us to let his madness range. Therefore prepare you. I your commission will forthwith dispatch, and he to England shall along with you. The terms of our estate may not endure hazard so near us as doth hourly grow out of his brows.

We will ourselves provide. Most holy and religious fear it is to keep those many many bodies safe that live and feed upon your Majesty.

The single and peculiar life is bound with all the strength and armour of the mind to keep itself from noyance, but much more that spirit upon whose weal depends and rests the lives of many. The cease of majesty dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw what's near it with it. It is a massy wheel fixed on the summit of the highest mount, to whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things are mortised and adjoined, which, when it falls, each small annexment, petty consequence, attends the boist'rous ruin. Never alone did the King sigh, but with a general groan.

Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage, for we will fetters put about this fear, which now goes too free-footed.

We will haste us.

My lord, he's going to his mother's closet. Behind the arras I'll convey myself to hear the process. I'll warrant she'll tax him home, and, as you said — and wisely was it said — 'tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear the speech of vantage. Fare you well, my liege. I'll call upon you ere you go to bed and tell you what I know.

Thanks, dear my lord.

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; it hath the primal eldest curse upon't — a brother's murder. Pray can I not, though inclination be as sharp as will. My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent, and like a man to double business bound I stand in pause where I shall first begin, and both neglect. What if this cursed hand were thicker than itself with brother's blood? Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy but to confront the visage of offence? And what's in prayer but this twofold force, to be forestalled ere we come to fall, or pardoned being down? Then I'll look up. My fault is past — but O, what form of prayer can serve my turn? "Forgive me my foul murder"? That cannot be, since I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the murder: my crown, mine own ambition, and my queen. May one be pardoned and retain th' offence? In the corrupted currents of this world, offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, and oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself buys out the law. But 'tis not so above: there is no shuffling, there the action lies in his true nature, and we ourselves compelled, even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, to give in evidence. What then? What rests? Try what repentance can. What can it not? Yet what can it when one cannot repent? O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul that, struggling to be free, art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay. Bow, stubborn knees, and heart with strings of steel, be soft as sinews of the new-born babe. All may be well.

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying, and now I'll do't.

And so he goes to heaven, and so am I revenged. That would be scanned: a villain kills my father, and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven. Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge. He took my father grossly, full of bread, with all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; and how his audit stands who knows save heaven? But in our circumstance and course of thought 'tis heavy with him. And am I then revenged, to take him in the purging of his soul, when he is fit and seasoned for his passage? No. Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent: when he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, or in th' incestuous pleasure of his bed, at game a-swearing, or about some act that has no relish of salvation in't — then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, and that his soul may be as damned and black as hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays. This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.