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MARCELLUS Good now, sit down and tell me, he that knows,
70Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon
And foreign mart for implements of war,
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
75Does not divide the Sunday from the week.
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint laborer with the day?
Who is ’t that can inform me?
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MARCELLUS All right, let’s sit down and discuss that question.
Somebody tell me why this strict schedule of guards has been
imposed, and why so many bronze cannons are being manufactured in
Denmark, and so many weapons bought from abroad, and why the
shipbuilders are so busy they don’t even rest on Sunday.
Is something about to happen that warrants working this night and
day? Who can explain this to me?
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HORATIO That can I.
At least, the whisper goes so: our last king,
80Whose image even but now appeared to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteemed him)
85Did slay this Fortinbras, who by a sealed compact
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of to the conqueror,
Against the which a moiety competent
90Was gagèd by our king, which had returned
To the inheritance of Fortinbras
Had he been vanquisher, as, by the same covenant
And carriage of the article designed,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
95Of unimprovèd mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in ’t, which is no
other—
100As it doth well appear unto our state—
But to recover of us, by strong hand
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HORATIO I can. Or at least I can describe the rumors. As you know, our
late king, whom we just now saw as a ghost, was the great rival of
Fortinbras, king of Norway. Fortinbras dared him to battle. In that
fight, our courageous Hamlet (or at least that’s how we
thought of him) killed old King Fortinbras, who—on the
basis of a valid legal document—surrendered all his
territories, along with his life, to his conqueror. If our king had
lost, he would have had to do the same. But now old
Fortinbras’s young son, also called
Fortinbras—he is bold, but unproven—has
gathered a bunch of thugs from the lawless outskirts of the country.
For some food, they’re eager to take on the tough
enterprise of securing the lands the elder Fortinbras lost.
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