Scene II. Elsinore. A room of state in the Castle.Flourish. [Enter Claudius, King of Denmark, Gertrude the Queen, Hamlet,
Polonius, Laertes and his sister Ophelia, [Voltemand, Cornelius,]
Lords Attendant.
King. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
Th' imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,
With an auspicious, and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,
Tak
