Question

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

Answer 1

These lines are correct:

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

Here, Claudius is clearly saying that he cannot accuse Hamlet of anything because the people in Denmark love their prince, so even if he did try to accuse him, nobody would believe him anyway. This is why he doesn't want to accuse Hamlet of Polonious's murder like that, but rather reveal the secret in other ways.