TEXT:
HAMLET
Here's the commission: read it at more leisure.
But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed?
HORATIO
I beseech you.
HAMLET
Being thus be-netted round with villanies,
Ere I could make a prologue to my brains,
They had begun the play. I sat me down,
Devised a new commission, wrote it fair:
I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness to write fair and laboured much
How to forget that learning, but, sir, now
It did me yeoman's service: wilt thou know
The effect of what I wrote?
HORATIO
Ay, good my lord.
HAMLET
An earnest conjuration from the king,
As England was his faithful tributary,
As love between them like the palm might flourish,
As peace should stiff her wheaten garland wear
And stand a comma 'tween their amities,
And many such-like 'as'es of great charge,
That, on the view and knowing of these contents,
Without debatement further, more or less,
He should the bearers put to sudden death,
Not shriving-time allowed.
HORATIO
How was this seal'd?
NOTES:
Handwriting
I’m not sure if there’s any such discussion of handwriting elsewhere in Shakespeare’s plays. Lady Macbeth presumably can read her husband’s handwritten letter, but she doesn’t comment on it. Orlando’s notes to Rosalind are seen all over the Forest of Arden, but do we know what the penmanship is like?