I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
But this folly douts it.
-Laertes
Hamlet Act IV, scene vii, line 190
This folly that Laertes is talking about is the drowning of his sister Ophelia. Douts, in case you didn't know, means to douse. The speech of fire, that's getting doused? Well I’m not so sure what that would have been, but I can tell you that right before the Queen came in to tell them about Ophelia's drowning, Laertes and Claudius were talking about how they were going to kill Hamlet. And Laertes was all in on this because he’d found out that Hamlet had killed Polonius, Laertes’s father. So, yeah, murdered father, drowned sister; Laertes has got a lot of emotions going right now. Too many emotions. He is definitely ablaze.
The sky is ablaze in this picture that I took from my office window in New Haven, Not quite the same thing as Laertes being ablaze, but ablaze nonetheless.
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