In this passage from hamlet, act iv, scene vii, king claudius tells laertes why he is not taking action against polonius’s murderer. which lines convey the idea that the danish people love hamlet and that accusing him of murder would generate bad public opinion for claudius?
laertes: it well appears. but tell me
why you proceeded not against these feats,
so criminal and so capital in nature,
as by your safety, greatness, wisdom, all things else
you mainly were stirr'd up
king: o, for two special reasons,
which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinow'd,389
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 is so conjunctive 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,
work, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
so that my arrows,
too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind,
would have reverted to my bow again,
but not where i have aim'd them