TEXT:
CLAUDIUS
To thine own peace. If he be now returned,
As checking at his voyage, and that he means
No more to undertake it, I will work him
To an exploit, now ripe in my device,
Under the which he shall not choose but fall:
And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe,
But even his mother shall uncharge the practise
And call it accident.
LAERTES
My lord, I will be ruled;
The rather, if you could devise it so
That I might be the organ.
CLAUDIUS
It falls right.
You have been talked of since your travel much,
And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality
Wherein, they say, you shine: your sum of parts
Did not together pluck such envy from him
As did that one, and that, in my regard,
Of the unworthiest siege.
LAERTES
What part is that, my lord?
NOTES:
Falconry
All the way back in Act Two, when the Players arrived, Hamlet mentioned French falconers. Falconry and its language appear quite regularly throughout the play, as in this portion of the text when Claudius likens Hamlet’s change of a direction to the ‘checking’ of a hawk. For a more detailed description of falconry in medieval life, click here. For how this language is manipulated in the play, check out Rhodri Lewis’ fascinating book Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness.