CLAUDIUS      O wretched state, O bosom black as death,

O limed soul that struggling to be free

Art more engaged. Help, angels, make assay.

Bow, stubborn knees, and heart with strings of steel

Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.

All may be well.         (3.3.67-72)

Claudius’s cry of anguish reaches its climax: O wretched state! O bosom black as death! I am evil, desperate, fallen, indelibly stained with sin. (The bosom is his heart, but also in a way his chest, a terrible death wound, or a gangrenous, rotting torso.) O limed soul that struggling to be free art more engaged—and the run-on line makes the hideous image of the doomed bird, struggling against the snare (which is not a mere trap, but which has offered safety and vantage, which has deceived) all the more enthralling. But he’s going to make one last attempt: help, angels, make assay. Just try. Please, help me to try. Bow, stubborn knees—that’s the first thing, kneeling down, the first effort, humbling, humiliating himself—and heart with strings of steel be soft as sinews of the new-born babe. Soften my heart! Help me to feel, to be vulnerable, weak, open, like the frail limbs of a baby. In Macbeth Shakespeare uses the new-born babe as an image for pity, and perhaps that’s the sense here too, a kind of projection of the desperate plea, for kindness, mercy, forgiveness—and pity, too. But first, he must pray for the ability to pray at all. All may be well. It could, it still could, all this could just—go away.