Shakespeare Quotes  Cruel to be kind  I do repent; but heaven
hath pleas'd it so To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister. I will bestow him,
and will answer well The death I gave him. So again good night.
I must be cruel only to be kind. Thus bad begins and worse
remains behind.  Hamlet Act 3, scene 4, 173–179  In these lines
addressed to his mother, Hamlet speaks of two different
cruelties. In the first five lines, the prince refers to his own
impulsive killing of the courtier Polonius earlier in the scene.
Polonius had been snooping on Hamlet's meeting with his mother;
and when Hamlet noticed someone stirring behind an arras (wall-
hanging), he ran him through—and so ended Polonius's career.
Hamlet rationalizes his deed—about 150 lines after the event—by
getting the heavens involved: he's "their scourge and minister,"
he claims, chosen to visit justice on the corrupt. Polonius
deserved what he got, but nonetheless Hamlet repents, and
prepares to suffer the conseque