and arrows, so returning, are by poetical justice apt to do the foiled bowman a mischief. That king’s fellow-conspirator, Laertes, is thus punished, and owns it:—
“Osric. How is’t, Laertes?
Laertes. Why as a woodcock to my own springe, Osric;
I am justly killed with mine own treachery.”
And so is the king himself; and he, Laertes testifies,—
“is justly served:
It is a poison tempered by himself”
for Hamlet, which Claudius has just drank of, and drinking died. The tragedy of the prince of Denmark does indeed abound in instances of what Horatio calls
“Accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
And deaths put on by cunning and forced cause;