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All Site ContentHamletAct 4Scene 7
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"like the spring ..."
Simile
Act 4,
Scene 7
Lines 9b-24

An explanation of the spring simile in Act 4, Scene 7 of myShakespeare’s Hamlet.

Claudius

                                                 Oh , for two special reasons,
Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinewed,
But yet to me they are strong. The queen, his mother,
Lives almost by his looks, and for myself  
(My virtue or my plague, be it either which)
She's so conjuncconjunctive to my life and soul
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her. The other motive 
Why to a public count I might not go
Is the great love the general gender bear him,
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone, 
Convert his guilts to graces so that my arrows,
Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aimed them.    

In this simile, the people’s affection for Hamlet covers over his faults, just as a pool containing dissolved limestone coats a stick dipped into it.