Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary then; best safety lies in fear:
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.
Oph. I shall the effect of this good lesson keep, 45
As watchman[a 1] to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious[b 1] pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whilst,[a 2] like a puff'd[b 2] and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path[b 3] of dalliance treads 50
And recks not his own rede.[a 3][b 4]
Laer. O, fear me not.
I stay too long; but here my father comes.
Enter Polonius.[a 4]
A double blessing is a double grace;
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.
Pol. Yet here, Laertes! Aboard, aboard, for shame! 55
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for. There;[a 5] my blessing with thee![a 6]
And these few precepts in thy memory[b 5]
Look[a 7] thou character.[b 6] Give thy thoughts no tongue,
- ↑ 46. watchman] Q; watchmen Qq 4–6, F.
- ↑ 49. Whilst] F, Whiles Q, which omits like.
- ↑ 51. rede] Singer (ed. 2), reed Q, reade F.
- ↑ 51. Enter Polonius] Capell, after reed Q, after not F.
- ↑ 57. for. There;] Theobald; for, there Q 1, Q; for there: F.
- ↑ 57. thee] Q 1, Q; you F.
- ↑ 59. Look] Q, See F and many editors.
- ↑ 47. ungracious] graceless. "Swearest thou, ungracious boy?" 1 Henry IV, II. iv. 490.
- ↑ 49. puff'd] bloated. See Merry Wives, V. v. 160.
- ↑ 50. primrose path] Compare Macbeth, II. iii. 21.
- ↑ 51. recks . . . rede] cares not for his own counsel. Clar. Press cites Burns, Epistle to a Young Friend: "And may ye better reck the rede."
- ↑ 59. Parallels for several of these precepts have been pointed out by Rushton (Shakespeare's Euphuism, p. 46) in Lyly's Euphues, and by Hunter in Lord Burghley's ten precepts for his son Robert.
- ↑ 59. character] Shakespeare accents the verb either, as here, on the second syllable, or on the first, as in Sonnets, cxxii. 2.
