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- HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK
- by William Shakespeare
- PERSONS REPRESENTED.
- Claudius, King of Denmark.
- Hamlet, Son to the former, and Nephew to the present King.
- Polonius, Lord Chamberlain.
- Horatio, Friend to Hamlet.
- Laertes, Son to Polonius.
- Voltimand, Courtier.
- Cornelius, Courtier.
- Rosencrantz, Courtier.
- Guildenstern, Courtier.
- Osric, Courtier.
- A Gentleman, Courtier.
- A Priest.
- Marcellus, Officer.
- Bernardo, Officer.
- Francisco, a Soldier
- Reynaldo, Servant to Polonius.
- Players.
- Two Clowns, Grave-diggers.
- Fortinbras, Prince of Norway.
- A Captain.
- English Ambassadors.
- Ghost of Hamlet's Father.
- Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, and Mother of Hamlet.
- Ophelia, Daughter to Polonius.
- Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers, and other
- Attendants.
- SCENE. Elsinore.
- ACT I.
- Scene I. Elsinore. A platform before the Castle.
- [Francisco at his post. Enter to him Bernardo.]
- Ber.
- Who's there?
- Fran.
- Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.
- Ber.
- Long live the king!
- Fran.
- Bernardo?
- Ber.
- He.
- Fran.
- You come most carefully upon your hour.
- Ber.
- 'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.
- Fran.
- For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,
- And I am sick at heart.
- Ber.
- Have you had quiet guard?
- Fran.
- Not a mouse stirring.
- Ber.
- Well, good night.
- If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
- The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
- Fran.
- I think I hear them.--Stand, ho! Who is there?
- [Enter Horatio and Marcellus.]
- Hor.
- Friends to this ground.
- Mar.
- And liegemen to the Dane.
- Fran.
- Give you good-night.
- Mar.
- O, farewell, honest soldier;
- Who hath reliev'd you?
- Fran.
- Bernardo has my place.
- Give you good-night.
- [Exit.]
- Mar.
- Holla! Bernardo!
- Ber.
- Say.
- What, is Horatio there?
- Hor.
- A piece of him.
- Ber.
- Welcome, Horatio:--Welcome, good Marcellus.
- Mar.
- What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?
- Ber.
- I have seen nothing.
- Mar.
- Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,
- And will not let belief take hold of him
- Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us:
- Therefore I have entreated him along
- With us to watch the minutes of this night;
- That, if again this apparition come
- He may approve our eyes and speak to it.
- Hor.
- Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.
- Ber.
- Sit down awhile,
- And let us once again assail your ears,
- That are so fortified against our story,
- What we two nights have seen.
- Hor.
- Well, sit we down,
- And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.
- Ber.
- Last night of all,
- When yond same star that's westward from the pole
- Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
- Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
- The bell then beating one,--
- Mar.
- Peace, break thee off; look where it comes again!
- [Enter Ghost, armed.]
- Ber.
- In the same figure, like the king that's dead.
- Mar.
- Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.
- Ber.
- Looks it not like the King? mark it, Horatio.
- Hor.
- Most like:--it harrows me with fear and wonder.
- Ber.
- It would be spoke to.
- Mar.
- Question it, Horatio.
- Hor.
- What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night,
- Together with that fair and warlike form
- In which the majesty of buried Denmark
- Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee, speak!
- Mar.
- It is offended.
- Ber.
- See, it stalks away!
- Hor.
- Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee speak!
- [Exit Ghost.]
- Mar.
- 'Tis gone, and will not answer.
- Ber.
- How now, Horatio! You tremble and look pale:
- Is not this something more than fantasy?
- What think you on't?
- Hor.
- Before my God, I might not this believe
- Without the sensible and true avouch
- Of mine own eyes.
- Mar.
- Is it not like the King?
- Hor.
- As thou art to thyself:
- Such was the very armour he had on
- When he the ambitious Norway combated;
- So frown'd he once when, in an angry parle,
- He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
- 'Tis strange.
- Mar.
- Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
- With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
- Hor.
- In what particular thought to work I know not;
- But, in the gross and scope of my opinion,
- This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
- Mar.
- Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
- Why this same strict and most observant watch
- So nightly toils the subject of the land;
- And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
- And foreign mart for implements of war;
- Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
- Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
- What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
- Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
- Who is't that can inform me?
- Hor.
- That can I;
- At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,
- Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
- Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
- Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
- Dar'd to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet,--
- For so this side of our known world esteem'd him,--
- Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by a seal'd compact,
- Well ratified by law and heraldry,
- Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands,
- Which he stood seiz'd of, to the conqueror:
- Against the which, a moiety competent
- Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
- To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
- Had he been vanquisher; as by the same cov'nant,
- And carriage of the article design'd,
- His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
- Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
- Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,
- Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
- For food and diet, to some enterprise
- That hath a stomach in't; which is no other,--
- As it doth well appear unto our state,--
- But to recover of us, by strong hand,
- And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
- So by his father lost: and this, I take it,
- Is the main motive of our preparations,
- The source of this our watch, and the chief head
- Of this post-haste and romage in the land.
- Ber.
- I think it be no other but e'en so:
- Well may it sort, that this portentous figure
- Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
- That was and is the question of these wars.
- Hor.
- A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
- In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
- A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
- The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
- Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;
- As, stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
- Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,
- Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands,
- Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
- And even the like precurse of fierce events,--
- As harbingers preceding still the fates,
- And prologue to the omen coming on,--
- Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
- Unto our climature and countrymen.--
- But, soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
- [Re-enter Ghost.]
- I'll cross it, though it blast me.--Stay, illusion!
- If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
- Speak to me:
- If there be any good thing to be done,
- That may to thee do ease, and, race to me,
- Speak to me:
- If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
- Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid,
- O, speak!
- Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
- Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
- For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
- [The cock crows.]
- Speak of it:--stay, and speak!--Stop it, Marcellus!
- Mar.
- Shall I strike at it with my partisan?
- Hor.
- Do, if it will not stand.
- Ber.
- 'Tis here!
- Hor.
- 'Tis here!
- Mar.
- 'Tis gone!
- [Exit Ghost.]
- We do it wrong, being so majestical,
- To offer it the show of violence;
- For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
- And our vain blows malicious mockery.
- Ber.
- It was about to speak, when the cock crew.
- Hor.
- And then it started, like a guilty thing
- Upon a fearful summons. I have heard
- The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
- Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
- Awake the god of day; and at his warning,
- Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
- The extravagant and erring spirit hies
- To his confine: and of the truth herein
- This present object made probation.
- Mar.
- It faded on the crowing of the cock.
- Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
- Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
- The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
- And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
- The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
- No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm;
- So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
- Hor.
- So have I heard, and do in part believe it.
- But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
- Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill:
- Break we our watch up: and by my advice,
- Let us impart what we have seen to-night
- Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
- This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him:
- Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
- As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?
- Mar.
- Let's do't, I pray; and I this morning know
- Where we shall find him most conveniently.
- [Exeunt.]
- Scene II. Elsinore. A room of state in the Castle.
- [Enter the King, Queen, Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes, Voltimand,
- Cornelius, Lords, and Attendant.]
- King.
- Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
- The memory be green, and that it us befitted
- To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
- To be contracted in one brow of woe;
- Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
- That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
- Together with remembrance of ourselves.
- Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
- Th' imperial jointress to this warlike state,
- Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,--
- With an auspicious and one dropping eye,
- With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
- In equal scale weighing delight and dole,--
- Taken to wife; nor have we herein barr'd
- Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
- With this affair along:--or all, our thanks.
- Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,
- Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
- Or thinking by our late dear brother's death
- Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
- Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,
- He hath not fail'd to pester us with message,
- Importing the surrender of those lands
- Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
- To our most valiant brother. So much for him,--
- Now for ourself and for this time of meeting:
- Thus much the business is:--we have here writ
- To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,--
- Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears
- Of this his nephew's purpose,--to suppress
- His further gait herein; in that the levies,
- The lists, and full proportions are all made
- Out of his subject:--and we here dispatch
- You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand,
- For bearers of this greeting to old Norway;
- Giving to you no further personal power
- To business with the king, more than the scope
- Of these dilated articles allow.
- Farewell; and let your haste commend your duty.
- Cor. and Volt.
- In that and all things will we show our duty.
- King.
- We doubt it nothing: heartily farewell.
- [Exeunt Voltimand and Cornelius.]
- And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?
- You told us of some suit; what is't, Laertes?
- You cannot speak of reason to the Dane,
- And lose your voice: what wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
- That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
- The head is not more native to the heart,
- The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
- Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
- What wouldst thou have, Laertes?
- Laer.
- Dread my lord,
- Your leave and favour to return to France;
- From whence though willingly I came to Denmark,
- To show my duty in your coronation;
- Yet now, I must confess, that duty done,
- My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France,
- And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
- King.
- Have you your father's leave? What says Polonius?
- Pol.
- He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
- By laboursome petition; and at last
- Upon his will I seal'd my hard consent:
- I do beseech you, give him leave to go.
- King.
- Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine,
- And thy best graces spend it at thy will!--
- But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son--
- Ham.
- [Aside.] A little more than kin, and less than kind!
- King.
- How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
- Ham.
- Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun.
- Queen.
- Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
- And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
- Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
- Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
- Thou know'st 'tis common,--all that lives must die,
- Passing through nature to eternity.
- Ham.
- Ay, madam, it is common.
- Queen.
- If it be,
- Why seems it so particular with thee?
- Ham.
- Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not seems.
- 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
- Nor customary suits of solemn black,
- Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath,
- No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
- Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
- Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief,
- That can denote me truly: these, indeed, seem;
- For they are actions that a man might play;
- But I have that within which passeth show;
- These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
- King.
- 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
- To give these mourning duties to your father;
- But, you must know, your father lost a father;
- That father lost, lost his; and the survivor bound,
- In filial obligation, for some term
- To do obsequious sorrow: but to persevere
- In obstinate condolement is a course
- Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
- It shows a will most incorrect to heaven;
- A heart unfortified, a mind impatient;
- An understanding simple and unschool'd;
- For what we know must be, and is as common
- As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
- Why should we, in our peevish opposition,
- Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
- A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
- To reason most absurd; whose common theme
- Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
- From the first corse till he that died to-day,
- 'This must be so.' We pray you, throw to earth
- This unprevailing woe; and think of us
- As of a father: for let the world take note
- You are the most immediate to our throne;
- And with no less nobility of love
- Than that which dearest father bears his son
- Do I impart toward you. For your intent
- In going back to school in Wittenberg,
- It is most retrograde to our desire:
- And we beseech you bend you to remain
- Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
- Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
- Queen.
- Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet:
- I pray thee stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.
- Ham.
- I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
- King.
- Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply:
- Be as ourself in Denmark.--Madam, come;
- This gentle and unforc'd accord of Hamlet
- Sits smiling to my heart: in grace whereof,
- No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day
- But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell;
- And the king's rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
- Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.
- [Exeunt all but Hamlet.]
- Ham.
- O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
- Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
- Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
- His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
- How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
- Seem to me all the uses of this world!
- Fie on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
- That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
- Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
- But two months dead!--nay, not so much, not two:
- So excellent a king; that was, to this,
- Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,
- That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
- Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
- Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
- As if increase of appetite had grown
- By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,--
- Let me not think on't,--Frailty, thy name is woman!--
- A little month; or ere those shoes were old
- With which she followed my poor father's body
- Like Niobe, all tears;--why she, even she,--
- O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason,
- Would have mourn'd longer,--married with mine uncle,
- My father's brother; but no more like my father
- Than I to Hercules: within a month;
- Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
- Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
- She married:-- O, most wicked speed, to post
- With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
- It is not, nor it cannot come to good;
- But break my heart,--for I must hold my tongue!
- [Enter Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo.]
- Hor.
- Hail to your lordship!
- Ham.
- I am glad to see you well:
- Horatio,--or I do forget myself.
- Hor.
- The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
- Ham.
- Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you:
- And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?--
- Marcellus?
- Mar.
- My good lord,--
- Ham.
- I am very glad to see you.--Good even, sir.--
- But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
- Hor.
- A truant disposition, good my lord.
- Ham.
- I would not hear your enemy say so;
- Nor shall you do my ear that violence,
- To make it truster of your own report
- Against yourself: I know you are no truant.
- But what is your affair in Elsinore?
- We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
- Hor.
- My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.
- Ham.
- I prithee do not mock me, fellow-student.
- I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
- Hor.
- Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon.
- Ham.
- Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak'd meats
- Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
- Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
- Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!--
- My father,--methinks I see my father.
- Hor.
- Where, my lord?
- Ham.
- In my mind's eye, Horatio.
- Hor.
- I saw him once; he was a goodly king.
- Ham.
- He was a man, take him for all in all,
- I shall not look upon his like again.
- Hor.
- My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
- Ham.
- Saw who?
- Hor.
- My lord, the king your father.
- Ham.
- The King my father!
- Hor.
- Season your admiration for awhile
- With an attent ear, till I may deliver,
- Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
- This marvel to you.
- Ham.
- For God's love let me hear.
- Hor.
- Two nights together had these gentlemen,
- Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch
- In the dead vast and middle of the night,
- Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father,
- Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,
- Appears before them and with solemn march
- Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd
- By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes,
- Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distill'd
- Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
- Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me
- In dreadful secrecy impart they did;
- And I with them the third night kept the watch:
- Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,
- Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
- The apparition comes: I knew your father;
- These hands are not more like.
- Ham.
- But where was this?
- Mar.
- My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd.
- Ham.
- Did you not speak to it?
- Hor.
- My lord, I did;
- But answer made it none: yet once methought
- It lifted up it head, and did address
- Itself to motion, like as it would speak:
- But even then the morning cock crew loud,
- And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
- And vanish'd from our sight.
- Ham.
- 'Tis very strange.
- Hor.
- As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true;
- And we did think it writ down in our duty
- To let you know of it.
- Ham.
- Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
- Hold you the watch to-night?
- Mar. and Ber.
- We do, my lord.
- Ham.
- Arm'd, say you?
- Both.
- Arm'd, my lord.
- Ham.
- From top to toe?
- Both.
- My lord, from head to foot.
- Ham.
- Then saw you not his face?
- Hor.
- O, yes, my lord: he wore his beaver up.
- Ham.
- What, look'd he frowningly?
- Hor.
- A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
- Ham.
- Pale or red?
- Hor.
- Nay, very pale.
- Ham.
- And fix'd his eyes upon you?
- Hor.
- Most constantly.
- Ham.
- I would I had been there.
- Hor.
- It would have much amaz'd you.
- Ham.
- Very like, very like. Stay'd it long?
- Hor.
- While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.
- Mar. and Ber.
- Longer, longer.
- Hor.
- Not when I saw't.
- Ham.
- His beard was grizzled,--no?
- Hor.
- It was, as I have seen it in his life,
- A sable silver'd.
- Ham.
- I will watch to-night;
- Perchance 'twill walk again.
- Hor.
- I warr'nt it will.
- Ham.
- If it assume my noble father's person,
- I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape
- And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
- If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight,
- Let it be tenable in your silence still;
- And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,
- Give it an understanding, but no tongue:
- I will requite your loves. So, fare ye well:
- Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve,
- I'll visit you.
- All.
- Our duty to your honour.
- Ham.
- Your loves, as mine to you: farewell.
- [Exeunt Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo.]
- My father's spirit in arms! All is not well;
- I doubt some foul play: would the night were come!
- Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise,
- Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
- [Exit.]
- Scene III. A room in Polonius's house.
- [Enter Laertes and Ophelia.]
- Laer.
- My necessaries are embark'd: farewell:
- And, sister, as the winds give benefit
- And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,
- But let me hear from you.
- Oph.
- Do you doubt that?
- Laer.
- For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour,
- Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood:
- A violet in the youth of primy nature,
- Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting;
- The perfume and suppliance of a minute;
- No more.
- Oph.
- No more but so?
- Laer.
- Think it no more:
- For nature, crescent, does not grow alone
- In thews and bulk; but as this temple waxes,
- The inward service of the mind and soul
- Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now;
- And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
- The virtue of his will: but you must fear,
- His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own;
- For he himself is subject to his birth:
- He may not, as unvalu'd persons do,
- Carve for himself; for on his choice depends
- The safety and health of this whole state;
- And therefore must his choice be circumscrib'd
- Unto the voice and yielding of that body
- Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,
- It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
- As he in his particular act and place
- May give his saying deed; which is no further
- Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
- Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain
- If with too credent ear you list his songs,
- Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
- To his unmaster'd importunity.
- Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister;
- And keep you in the rear of your affection,
- Out of the shot and danger of desire.
- The chariest maid is prodigal enough
- If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
- Virtue itself scopes not calumnious strokes:
- The canker galls the infants of the spring
- Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd:
- And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
- Contagious blastments are most imminent.
- Be wary then; best safety lies in fear:
- Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.
- Oph.
- I shall th' effect of this good lesson keep
- As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
- Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
- Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
- Whilst, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
- Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
- And recks not his own read.
- Laer.
- O, fear me not.
- I stay too long:--but here my father comes.
- [Enter Polonius.]
- A double blessing is a double grace;
- Occasion smiles upon a second leave.
- Pol.
- Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
- The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
- And you are stay'd for. There,--my blessing with thee!
- [Laying his hand on Laertes's head.]
- And these few precepts in thy memory
- Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
- Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
- Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
- Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
- Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;
- But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
- Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
- Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
- Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
- Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
- Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
- Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
- But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
- For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
- And they in France of the best rank and station
- Are most select and generous chief in that.
- Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
- For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
- And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
- This above all,--to thine own self be true;
- And it must follow, as the night the day,
- Thou canst not then be false to any man.
- Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
- Laer.
- Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
- Pol.
- The time invites you; go, your servants tend.
- Laer.
- Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well
- What I have said to you.
- Oph.
- 'Tis in my memory lock'd,
- And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
- Laer.
- Farewell.
- [Exit.]
- Pol.
- What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?
- Oph.
- So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.
- Pol.
- Marry, well bethought:
- 'Tis told me he hath very oft of late
- Given private time to you; and you yourself
- Have of your audience been most free and bounteous;
- If it be so,--as so 'tis put on me,
- And that in way of caution,--I must tell you
- You do not understand yourself so clearly
- As it behooves my daughter and your honour.
- What is between you? give me up the truth.
- Oph.
- He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
- Of his affection to me.
- Pol.
- Affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl,
- Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
- Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?
- Oph.
- I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
- Pol.
- Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby;
- That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,
- Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly;
- Or,--not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
- Wronging it thus,--you'll tender me a fool.
- Oph.
- My lord, he hath importun'd me with love
- In honourable fashion.
- Pol.
- Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.
- Oph.
- And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
- With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
- Pol.
- Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
- When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
- Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter,
- Giving more light than heat,--extinct in both,
- Even in their promise, as it is a-making,--
- You must not take for fire. From this time
- Be something scanter of your maiden presence;
- Set your entreatments at a higher rate
- Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
- Believe so much in him, that he is young;
- And with a larger tether may he walk
- Than may be given you: in few, Ophelia,
- Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,--
- Not of that dye which their investments show,
- But mere implorators of unholy suits,
- Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
- The better to beguile. This is for all,--
- I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth
- Have you so slander any moment leisure
- As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
- Look to't, I charge you; come your ways.
- Oph.
- I shall obey, my lord.
- [Exeunt.]
- Scene IV. The platform.
- [Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.]
- Ham.
- The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
- Hor.
- It is a nipping and an eager air.
- Ham.
- What hour now?
- Hor.
- I think it lacks of twelve.
- Mar.
- No, it is struck.
- Hor.
- Indeed? I heard it not: then draws near the season
- Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
- [A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off within.]
- What does this mean, my lord?
- Ham.
- The King doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
- Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;
- And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
- The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
- The triumph of his pledge.
- Hor.
- Is it a custom?
- Ham.
- Ay, marry, is't;
- But to my mind,--though I am native here,
- And to the manner born,--it is a custom
- More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
- This heavy-headed revel east and west
- Makes us traduc'd and tax'd of other nations:
- They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
- Soil our addition; and, indeed, it takes
- From our achievements, though perform'd at height,
- The pith and marrow of our attribute.
- So oft it chances in particular men
- That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,
- As in their birth,--wherein they are not guilty,
- Since nature cannot choose his origin,--
- By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,
- Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason;
- Or by some habit, that too much o'er-leavens
- The form of plausive manners;--that these men,--
- Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
- Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,--
- Their virtues else,--be they as pure as grace,
- As infinite as man may undergo,--
- Shall in the general censure take corruption
- From that particular fault: the dram of eale
- Doth all the noble substance often doubt
- To his own scandal.
- Hor.
- Look, my lord, it comes!
- [Enter Ghost.]
- Ham.
- Angels and ministers of grace defend us!--
- Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
- Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
- Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
- Thou com'st in such a questionable shape
- That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,
- King, father, royal Dane; O, answer me!
- Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
- Why thy canoniz'd bones, hearsed in death,
- Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
- Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urn'd,
- Hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws
- To cast thee up again! What may this mean,
- That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel,
- Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
- Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
- So horridly to shake our disposition
- With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
- Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?
- [Ghost beckons Hamlet.]
- Hor.
- It beckons you to go away with it,
- As if it some impartment did desire
- To you alone.
- Mar.
- Look with what courteous action
- It waves you to a more removed ground:
- But do not go with it!
- Hor.
- No, by no means.
- Ham.
- It will not speak; then will I follow it.
- Hor.
- Do not, my lord.
- Ham.
- Why, what should be the fear?
- I do not set my life at a pin's fee;
- And for my soul, what can it do to that,
- Being a thing immortal as itself?
- It waves me forth again;--I'll follow it.
- Hor.
- What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
- Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
- That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
- And there assume some other horrible form
- Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,
- And draw you into madness? think of it:
- The very place puts toys of desperation,
- Without more motive, into every brain
- That looks so many fadoms to the sea
- And hears it roar beneath.
- Ham.
- It waves me still.--
- Go on; I'll follow thee.
- Mar.
- You shall not go, my lord.
- Ham.
- Hold off your hands.
- Hor.
- Be rul'd; you shall not go.
- Ham.
- My fate cries out,
- And makes each petty artery in this body
- As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.--
- [Ghost beckons.]
- Still am I call'd;--unhand me, gentlemen;--
- [Breaking free from them.]
- By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me!--
- I say, away!--Go on; I'll follow thee.
- [Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet.]
- Hor.
- He waxes desperate with imagination.
- Mar.
- Let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey him.
- Hor.
- Have after.--To what issue will this come?
- Mar.
- Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
- Hor.
- Heaven will direct it.
- Mar.
- Nay, let's follow him.
- [Exeunt.]
- Scene V. A more remote part of the Castle.
- [Enter Ghost and Hamlet.]
- Ham.
- Whither wilt thou lead me? speak! I'll go no further.
- Ghost.
- Mark me.
- Ham.
- I will.
- Ghost.
- My hour is almost come,
- When I to sulph'uous and tormenting flames
- Must render up myself.
- Ham.
- Alas, poor ghost!
- Ghost.
- Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
- To what I shall unfold.
- Ham.
- Speak; I am bound to hear.
- Ghost.
- So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.
- Ham.
- What?
- Ghost.
- I am thy father's spirit;
- Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
- And for the day confin'd to wastein fires,
- Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
- Are burnt and purg'd away. But that I am forbid
- To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
- I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
- Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood;
- Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres;
- Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
- And each particular hair to stand on end
- Like quills upon the fretful porcupine:
- But this eternal blazon must not be
- To ears of flesh and blood.--List, list, O, list!--
- If thou didst ever thy dear father love--
- Ham.
- O God!
- Ghost.
- Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
- Ham.
- Murder!
- Ghost.
- Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
- But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
- Ham.
- Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift
- As meditation or the thoughts of love,
- May sweep to my revenge.
- Ghost.
- I find thee apt;
- And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
- That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
- Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear.
- 'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
- A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
- Is by a forged process of my death
- Rankly abus'd; but know, thou noble youth,
- The serpent that did sting thy father's life
- Now wears his crown.
- Ham.
- O my prophetic soul!
- Mine uncle!
- Ghost.
- Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
- With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,--
- O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
- So to seduce!--won to his shameful lust
- The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen:
- O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!
- From me, whose love was of that dignity
- That it went hand in hand even with the vow
- I made to her in marriage; and to decline
- Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
- To those of mine!
- But virtue, as it never will be mov'd,
- Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven;
- So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
- Will sate itself in a celestial bed
- And prey on garbage.
- But soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
- Brief let me be.--Sleeping within my orchard,
- My custom always of the afternoon,
- Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
- With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
- And in the porches of my ears did pour
- The leperous distilment; whose effect
- Holds such an enmity with blood of man
- That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through
- The natural gates and alleys of the body;
- And with a sudden vigour it doth posset
- And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
- The thin and wholesome blood; so did it mine;
- And a most instant tetter bark'd about,
- Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust
- All my smooth body.
- Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand,
- Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd:
- Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
- Unhous'led, disappointed, unanel'd;
- No reckoning made, but sent to my account
- With all my imperfections on my head:
- O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
- If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
- Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
- A couch for luxury and damned incest.
- But, howsoever thou pursu'st this act,
- Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
- Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven,
- And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
- To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
- The glowworm shows the matin to be near,
- And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire:
- Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.
- [Exit.]
- Ham.
- O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?
- And shall I couple hell? O, fie!--Hold, my heart;
- And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
- But bear me stiffly up.--Remember thee!
- Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
- In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
- Yea, from the table of my memory
- I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
- All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
- That youth and observation copied there;
- And thy commandment all alone shall live
- Within the book and volume of my brain,
- Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven!--
- O most pernicious woman!
- O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
- My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
- That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
- At least, I am sure, it may be so in Denmark:
- [Writing.]
- So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
- It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me:'
- I have sworn't.
- Hor.
- [Within.] My lord, my lord,--
- Mar.
- [Within.] Lord Hamlet,--
- Hor.
- [Within.] Heaven secure him!
- Ham.
- So be it!
- Mar.
- [Within.] Illo, ho, ho, my lord!
- Ham.
- Hillo, ho, ho, boy! Come, bird, come.
- [Enter Horatio and Marcellus.]
- Mar.
- How is't, my noble lord?
- Hor.
- What news, my lord?
- Ham.
- O, wonderful!
- Hor.
- Good my lord, tell it.
- Ham.
- No; you'll reveal it.
- Hor.
- Not I, my lord, by heaven.
- Mar.
- Nor I, my lord.
- Ham.
- How say you then; would heart of man once think it?--
- But you'll be secret?
- Hor. and Mar.
- Ay, by heaven, my lord.
- Ham.
- There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
- But he's an arrant knave.
- Hor.
- There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
- To tell us this.
- Ham.
- Why, right; you are i' the right;
- And so, without more circumstance at all,
- I hold it fit that we shake hands and part:
- You, as your business and desires shall point you,--
- For every man hath business and desire,
- Such as it is;--and for my own poor part,
- Look you, I'll go pray.
- Hor.
- These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.
- Ham.
- I'm sorry they offend you, heartily;
- Yes, faith, heartily.
- Hor.
- There's no offence, my lord.
- Ham.
- Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
- And much offence too. Touching this vision here,--
- It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you:
- For your desire to know what is between us,
- O'ermaster't as you may. And now, good friends,
- As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,
- Give me one poor request.
- Hor.
- What is't, my lord? we will.
- Ham.
- Never make known what you have seen to-night.
- Hor. and Mar.
- My lord, we will not.
- Ham.
- Nay, but swear't.
- Hor.
- In faith,
- My lord, not I.
- Mar.
- Nor I, my lord, in faith.
- Ham.
- Upon my sword.
- Mar.
- We have sworn, my lord, already.
- Ham.
- Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.
- Ghost.
- [Beneath.] Swear.
- Ham.
- Ha, ha boy! say'st thou so? art thou there, truepenny?--
- Come on!--you hear this fellow in the cellarage,--
- Consent to swear.
- Hor.
- Propose the oath, my lord.
- Ham.
- Never to speak of this that you have seen,
- Swear by my sword.
- Ghost.
- [Beneath.] Swear.
- Ham.
- Hic et ubique? then we'll shift our ground.--
- Come hither, gentlemen,
- And lay your hands again upon my sword:
- Never to speak of this that you have heard,
- Swear by my sword.
- Ghost.
- [Beneath.] Swear.
- Ham.
- Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast?
- A worthy pioner!--Once more remove, good friends.
- Hor.
- O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
- Ham.
- And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
- There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
- Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- But come;--
- Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
- How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,--
- As I, perchance, hereafter shall think meet
- To put an antic disposition on,--
- That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
- With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake,
- Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
- As 'Well, well, we know'; or 'We could, an if we would';--
- Or 'If we list to speak'; or 'There be, an if they might';--
- Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
- That you know aught of me:--this is not to do,
- So grace and mercy at your most need help you,
- Swear.
- Ghost.
- [Beneath.] Swear.
- Ham.
- Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!--So, gentlemen,
- With all my love I do commend me to you:
- And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
- May do, to express his love and friending to you,
- God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;
- And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
- The time is out of joint:--O cursed spite,
- That ever I was born to set it right!--
- Nay, come, let's go together.
- [Exeunt.]
- Act II.
- Scene I. A room in Polonius's house.
- [Enter Polonius and Reynaldo.]
- Pol.
- Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.
- Rey.
- I will, my lord.
- Pol.
- You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo,
- Before You visit him, to make inquiry
- Of his behaviour.
- Rey.
- My lord, I did intend it.
- Pol.
- Marry, well said; very well said. Look you, sir,
- Enquire me first what Danskers are in Paris;
- And how, and who, what means, and where they keep,
- What company, at what expense; and finding,
- By this encompassment and drift of question,
- That they do know my son, come you more nearer
- Than your particular demands will touch it:
- Take you, as 'twere, some distant knowledge of him;
- As thus, 'I know his father and his friends,
- And in part him;--do you mark this, Reynaldo?
- Rey.
- Ay, very well, my lord.
- Pol.
- 'And in part him;--but,' you may say, 'not well:
- But if't be he I mean, he's very wild;
- Addicted so and so;' and there put on him
- What forgeries you please; marry, none so rank
- As may dishonour him; take heed of that;
- But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips
- As are companions noted and most known
- To youth and liberty.
- Rey.
- As gaming, my lord.
- Pol.
- Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling,
- Drabbing:--you may go so far.
- Rey.
- My lord, that would dishonour him.
- Pol.
- Faith, no; as you may season it in the charge.
- You must not put another scandal on him,
- That he is open to incontinency;
- That's not my meaning: but breathe his faults so quaintly
- That they may seem the taints of liberty;
- The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind;
- A savageness in unreclaimed blood,
- Of general assault.
- Rey.
- But, my good lord,--
- Pol.
- Wherefore should you do this?
- Rey.
- Ay, my lord,
- I would know that.
- Pol.
- Marry, sir, here's my drift;
- And I believe it is a fetch of warrant:
- You laying these slight sullies on my son
- As 'twere a thing a little soil'd i' the working,
- Mark you,
- Your party in converse, him you would sound,
- Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes
- The youth you breathe of guilty, be assur'd
- He closes with you in this consequence;
- 'Good sir,' or so; or 'friend,' or 'gentleman'--
- According to the phrase or the addition
- Of man and country.
- Rey.
- Very good, my lord.
- Pol.
- And then, sir, does he this,--he does--What was I about to say?--
- By the mass, I was about to say something:--Where did I leave?
- Rey.
- At 'closes in the consequence,' at 'friend or so,' and
- gentleman.'
- Pol.
- At--closes in the consequence'--ay, marry!
- He closes with you thus:--'I know the gentleman;
- I saw him yesterday, or t'other day,
- Or then, or then; with such, or such; and, as you say,
- There was he gaming; there o'ertook in's rouse;
- There falling out at tennis': or perchance,
- 'I saw him enter such a house of sale,'--
- Videlicet, a brothel,--or so forth.--
- See you now;
- Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
- And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
- With windlaces, and with assays of bias,
- By indirections find directions out:
- So, by my former lecture and advice,
- Shall you my son. You have me, have you not?
- Rey.
- My lord, I have.
- Pol.
- God b' wi' you, fare you well.
- Rey.
- Good my lord!
- Pol.
- Observe his inclination in yourself.
- Rey.
- I shall, my lord.
- Pol.
- And let him ply his music.
- Rey.
- Well, my lord.
- Pol.
- Farewell!
- [Exit Reynaldo.]
- [Enter Ophelia.]
- How now, Ophelia! what's the matter?
- Oph.
- Alas, my lord, I have been so affrighted!
- Pol.
- With what, i' the name of God?
- Oph.
- My lord, as I was sewing in my chamber,
- Lord Hamlet,--with his doublet all unbrac'd;
- No hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd,
- Ungart'red, and down-gyved to his ankle;
- Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
- And with a look so piteous in purport
- As if he had been loosed out of hell
- To speak of horrors,--he comes before me.
- Pol.
- Mad for thy love?
- Oph.
- My lord, I do not know;
- But truly I do fear it.
- Pol.
- What said he?
- Oph.
- He took me by the wrist, and held me hard;
- Then goes he to the length of all his arm;
- And with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
- He falls to such perusal of my face
- As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so;
- At last,--a little shaking of mine arm,
- And thrice his head thus waving up and down,--
- He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound
- As it did seem to shatter all his bulk
- And end his being: that done, he lets me go:
- And, with his head over his shoulder turn'd
- He seem'd to find his way without his eyes;
- For out o' doors he went without their help,
- And to the last bended their light on me.
- Pol.
- Come, go with me: I will go seek the king.
- This is the very ecstasy of love;
- Whose violent property fordoes itself,
- And leads the will to desperate undertakings,
- As oft as any passion under heaven
- That does afflict our natures. I am sorry,--
- What, have you given him any hard words of late?
- Oph.
- No, my good lord; but, as you did command,
- I did repel his letters and denied
- His access to me.
- Pol.
- That hath made him mad.
- I am sorry that with better heed and judgment
- I had not quoted him: I fear'd he did but trifle,
- And meant to wreck thee; but beshrew my jealousy!
- It seems it as proper to our age
- To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
- As it is common for the younger sort
- To lack discretion. Come, go we to the king:
- This must be known; which, being kept close, might move
- More grief to hide than hate to utter love.
- [Exeunt.]
- Scene II. A room in the Castle.
- [Enter King, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Attendants.]
- King.
- Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!
- Moreover that we much did long to see you,
- The need we have to use you did provoke
- Our hasty sending. Something have you heard
- Of Hamlet's transformation; so I call it,
- Since nor the exterior nor the inward man
- Resembles that it was. What it should be,
- More than his father's death, that thus hath put him
- So much from the understanding of himself,
- I cannot dream of: I entreat you both
- That, being of so young days brought up with him,
- And since so neighbour'd to his youth and humour,
- That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court
- Some little time: so by your companies
- To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather,
- So much as from occasion you may glean,
- Whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus,
- That, open'd, lies within our remedy.
- Queen.
- Good gentlemen, he hath much talk'd of you,
- And sure I am two men there are not living
- To whom he more adheres. If it will please you
- To show us so much gentry and good-will
- As to expend your time with us awhile,
- For the supply and profit of our hope,
- Your visitation shall receive such thanks
- As fits a king's remembrance.
- Ros.
- Both your majesties
- Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,
- Put your dread pleasures more into command
- Than to entreaty.
- Guil.
- We both obey,
- And here give up ourselves, in the full bent,
- To lay our service freely at your feet,
- To be commanded.
- King.
- Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.
- Queen.
- Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz:
- And I beseech you instantly to visit
- My too-much-changed son.--Go, some of you,
- And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.
- Guil.
- Heavens make our presence and our practices
- Pleasant and helpful to him!
- Queen.
- Ay, amen!
- [Exeunt Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and some Attendants].
- [Enter Polonius.]
- Pol.
- Th' ambassadors from Norway, my good lord,
- Are joyfully return'd.
- King.
- Thou still hast been the father of good news.
- Pol.
- Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege,
- I hold my duty, as I hold my soul,
- Both to my God and to my gracious king:
- And I do think,--or else this brain of mine
- Hunts not the trail of policy so sure
- As it hath us'd to do,--that I have found
- The very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.
- King.
- O, speak of that; that do I long to hear.
- Pol.
- Give first admittance to the ambassadors;
- My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.
- King.
- Thyself do grace to them, and bring them in.
- [Exit Polonius.]
- He tells me, my sweet queen, he hath found
- The head and source of all your son's distemper.
- Queen.
- I doubt it is no other but the main,--
- His father's death and our o'erhasty marriage.
- King.
- Well, we shall sift him.
- [Enter Polonius, with Voltimand and Cornelius.]
- Welcome, my good friends!
- Say, Voltimand, what from our brother Norway?
- Volt.
- Most fair return of greetings and desires.
- Upon our first, he sent out to suppress
- His nephew's levies; which to him appear'd
- To be a preparation 'gainst the Polack;
- But, better look'd into, he truly found
- It was against your highness; whereat griev'd,--
- That so his sickness, age, and impotence
- Was falsely borne in hand,--sends out arrests
- On Fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys;
- Receives rebuke from Norway; and, in fine,
- Makes vow before his uncle never more
- To give th' assay of arms against your majesty.
- Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,
- Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee;
- And his commission to employ those soldiers,
- So levied as before, against the Polack:
- With an entreaty, herein further shown,
- [Gives a paper.]
- That it might please you to give quiet pass
- Through your dominions for this enterprise,
- On such regards of safety and allowance
- As therein are set down.
- King.
- It likes us well;
- And at our more consider'd time we'll read,
- Answer, and think upon this business.
- Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour:
- Go to your rest; at night we'll feast together:
- Most welcome home!
- [Exeunt Voltimand and Cornelius.]
- Pol.
- This business is well ended.--
- My liege, and madam,--to expostulate
- What majesty should be, what duty is,
- Why day is day, night is night, and time is time.
- Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time.
- Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
- And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
- I will be brief:--your noble son is mad:
- Mad call I it; for to define true madness,
- What is't but to be nothing else but mad?
- But let that go.
- Queen.
- More matter, with less art.
- Pol.
- Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
- That he is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity;
- And pity 'tis 'tis true: a foolish figure;
- But farewell it, for I will use no art.
- Mad let us grant him then: and now remains
- That we find out the cause of this effect;
- Or rather say, the cause of this defect,
- For this effect defective comes by cause:
- Thus it remains, and the remainder thus.
- Perpend.
- I have a daughter,--have whilst she is mine,--
- Who, in her duty and obedience, mark,
- Hath given me this: now gather, and surmise.
- [Reads.]
- 'To the celestial, and my soul's idol, the most beautified
- Ophelia,'--
- That's an ill phrase, a vile phrase; 'beautified' is a vile
- phrase: but you shall hear. Thus:
- [Reads.]
- 'In her excellent white bosom, these, &c.'
- Queen.
- Came this from Hamlet to her?
- Pol.
- Good madam, stay awhile; I will be faithful.
- [Reads.]
- 'Doubt thou the stars are fire;
- Doubt that the sun doth move;
- Doubt truth to be a liar;
- But never doubt I love.
- 'O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers; I have not art to
- reckon my groans: but that I love thee best, O most best, believe
- it. Adieu.
- 'Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him,
- HAMLET.'
- This, in obedience, hath my daughter show'd me;
- And more above, hath his solicitings,
- As they fell out by time, by means, and place,
- All given to mine ear.
- King.
- But how hath she
- Receiv'd his love?
- Pol.
- What do you think of me?
- King.
- As of a man faithful and honourable.
- Pol.
- I would fain prove so. But what might you think,
- When I had seen this hot love on the wing,--
- As I perceiv'd it, I must tell you that,
- Before my daughter told me,-- what might you,
- Or my dear majesty your queen here, think,
- If I had play'd the desk or table-book,
- Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb;
- Or look'd upon this love with idle sight;--
- What might you think? No, I went round to work,
- And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:
- 'Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy sphere;
- This must not be:' and then I precepts gave her,
- That she should lock herself from his resort,
- Admit no messengers, receive no tokens.
- Which done, she took the fruits of my advice;
- And he, repulsed,--a short tale to make,--
- Fell into a sadness; then into a fast;
- Thence to a watch; thence into a weakness;
- Thence to a lightness; and, by this declension,
- Into the madness wherein now he raves,
- And all we wail for.
- King.
- Do you think 'tis this?
- Queen.
- It may be, very likely.
- Pol.
- Hath there been such a time,--I'd fain know that--
- That I have positively said ''Tis so,'
- When it prov'd otherwise?
- King.
- Not that I know.
- Pol.
- Take this from this, if this be otherwise:
- [Points to his head and shoulder.]
- If circumstances lead me, I will find
- Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
- Within the centre.
- King.
- How may we try it further?
- Pol.
- You know sometimes he walks for hours together
- Here in the lobby.
- Queen.
- So he does indeed.
- Pol.
- At such a time I'll loose my daughter to him:
- Be you and I behind an arras then;
- Mark the encounter: if he love her not,
- And he not from his reason fall'n thereon
- Let me be no assistant for a state,
- But keep a farm and carters.
- King.
- We will try it.
- Queen.
- But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.
- Pol.
- Away, I do beseech you, both away
- I'll board him presently:--O, give me leave.
- [Exeunt King, Queen, and Attendants.]
- [Enter Hamlet, reading.]
- How does my good Lord Hamlet?
- Ham.
- Well, God-a-mercy.
- Pol.
- Do you know me, my lord?
- Ham.
- Excellent well; you're a fishmonger.
- Pol.
- Not I, my lord.
- Ham.
- Then I would you were so honest a man.
- Pol.
- Honest, my lord!
- Ham.
- Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man
- picked out of ten thousand.
- Pol.
- That's very true, my lord.
- Ham.
- For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god-kissing
- carrion,--Have you a daughter?
- Pol.
- I have, my lord.
- Ham.
- Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing, but not
- as your daughter may conceive:--friend, look to't.
- Pol.
- How say you by that?--[Aside.] Still harping on my daughter:--yet
- he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far
- gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity
- for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again.--What do you
- read, my lord?
- Ham.
- Words, words, words.
- Pol.
- What is the matter, my lord?
- Ham.
- Between who?
- Pol.
- I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
- Ham.
- Slanders, sir: for the satirical slave says here that old men
- have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes
- purging thick amber and plum-tree gum; and that they have a
- plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which,
- sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it
- not honesty to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir,
- should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward.
- Pol.
- [Aside.] Though this be madness, yet there is a method in't.--
- Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
- Ham.
- Into my grave?
- Pol.
- Indeed, that is out o' the air. [Aside.] How pregnant sometimes
- his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which
- reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I
- will leave him and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between
- him and my daughter.--My honourable lord, I will most humbly take
- my leave of you.
- Ham.
- You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more
- willingly part withal,--except my life, except my life, except my
- life.
- Pol.
- Fare you well, my lord.
- Ham.
- These tedious old fools!
- [Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]
- Pol.
- You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.
- Ros.
- [To Polonius.] God save you, sir!
- [Exit Polonius.]
- Guil.
- My honoured lord!
- Ros.
- My most dear lord!
- Ham.
- My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah,
- Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?
- Ros.
- As the indifferent children of the earth.
- Guil.
- Happy in that we are not over-happy;
- On fortune's cap we are not the very button.
- Ham.
- Nor the soles of her shoe?
- Ros.
- Neither, my lord.
- Ham.
- Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her
- favours?
- Guil.
- Faith, her privates we.
- Ham.
- In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a
- strumpet. What's the news?
- Ros.
- None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.
- Ham.
- Then is doomsday near; but your news is not true. Let me
- question more in particular: what have you, my good friends,
- deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison
- hither?
- Guil.
- Prison, my lord!
- Ham.
- Denmark's a prison.
- Ros.
- Then is the world one.
- Ham.
- A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and
- dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.
- Ros.
- We think not so, my lord.
- Ham.
- Why, then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good
- or bad but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.
- Ros.
- Why, then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your
- mind.
- Ham.
- O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a
- king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
- Guil.
- Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of
- the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
- Ham.
- A dream itself is but a shadow.
- Ros.
- Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that
- it is but a shadow's shadow.
- Ham.
- Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretch'd
- heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we to the court? for, by my
- fay, I cannot reason.
- Ros. and Guild.
- We'll wait upon you.
- Ham.
- No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest of my
- servants; for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most
- dreadfully attended. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what
- make you at Elsinore?
- Ros.
- To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.
- Ham.
- Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you:
- and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were
- you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free
- visitation? Come, deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak.
- Guil.
- What should we say, my lord?
- Ham.
- Why, anything--but to the purpose. You were sent for; and
- there is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties
- have not craft enough to colour: I know the good king and queen
- have sent for you.
- Ros.
- To what end, my lord?
- Ham.
- That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights
- of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the
- obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a
- better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with
- me, whether you were sent for or no.
- Ros.
- [To Guildenstern.] What say you?
- Ham.
- [Aside.] Nay, then, I have an eye of you.--If you love me, hold
- not off.
- Guil.
- My lord, we were sent for.
- Ham.
- I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your
- discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no
- feather. I have of late,--but wherefore I know not,--lost all my
- mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so
- heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth,
- seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the
- air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical
- roof fretted with golden fire,--why, it appears no other thing
- to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a
- piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in
- faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in
- action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the
- beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what
- is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman
- neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
- Ros.
- My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.
- Ham.
- Why did you laugh then, when I said 'Man delights not me'?
- Ros.
- To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten
- entertainment the players shall receive from you: we coted them
- on the way; and hither are they coming to offer you service.
- Ham.
- He that plays the king shall be welcome,--his majesty shall
- have tribute of me; the adventurous knight shall use his foil and
- target; the lover shall not sigh gratis; the humorous man shall
- end his part in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose
- lungs are tickle o' the sere; and the lady shall say her mind
- freely, or the blank verse shall halt for't. What players are
- they?
- Ros.
- Even those you were wont to take such delight in,--the
- tragedians of the city.
- Ham.
- How chances it they travel? their residence, both in
- reputation and profit, was better both ways.
- Ros.
- I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late
- innovation.
- Ham.
- Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the
- city? Are they so followed?
- Ros.
- No, indeed, are they not.
- Ham.
- How comes it? do they grow rusty?
- Ros.
- Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace: but there is,
- sir, an aery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top
- of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for't: these are
- now the fashion; and so berattle the common stages,--so they call
- them,--that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and
- dare scarce come thither.
- Ham.
- What, are they children? who maintains 'em? How are they
- escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can
- sing? will they not say afterwards, if they should grow
- themselves to common players,--as it is most like, if their means
- are no better,--their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim
- against their own succession?
- Ros.
- Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the nation
- holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy: there was, for
- awhile, no money bid for argument unless the poet and the player
- went to cuffs in the question.
- Ham.
- Is't possible?
- Guil.
- O, there has been much throwing about of brains.
- Ham.
- Do the boys carry it away?
- Ros.
- Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load too.
- Ham.
- It is not very strange; for my uncle is king of Denmark, and
- those that would make mouths at him while my father lived, give
- twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in
- little. 'Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if
- philosophy could find it out.
- [Flourish of trumpets within.]
- Guil.
- There are the players.
- Ham.
- Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come: the
- appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony: let me comply
- with you in this garb; lest my extent to the players, which I
- tell you must show fairly outward, should more appear like
- entertainment than yours. You are welcome: but my uncle-father
- and aunt-mother are deceived.
- Guil.
- In what, my dear lord?
- Ham.
- I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I
- know a hawk from a handsaw.
- [Enter Polonius.]
- Pol.
- Well be with you, gentlemen!
- Ham.
- Hark you, Guildenstern;--and you too;--at each ear a hearer: that
- great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts.
- Ros.
- Happily he's the second time come to them; for they say an old
- man is twice a child.
- Ham.
- I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players; mark it.--You
- say right, sir: o' Monday morning; 'twas so indeed.
- Pol.
- My lord, I have news to tell you.
- Ham.
- My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in
- Rome,--
- Pol.
- The actors are come hither, my lord.
- Ham.
- Buzz, buzz!
- Pol.
- Upon my honour,--
- Ham.
- Then came each actor on his ass,--
- Pol.
- The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy,
- history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral,
- tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene
- individable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy nor
- Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are
- the only men.
- Ham.
- O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!
- Pol.
- What treasure had he, my lord?
- Ham.
- Why--
- 'One fair daughter, and no more,
- The which he loved passing well.'
- Pol.
- [Aside.] Still on my daughter.
- Ham.
- Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah?
- Pol.
- If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I
- love passing well.
- Ham.
- Nay, that follows not.
- Pol.
- What follows, then, my lord?
- Ham.
- Why--
- 'As by lot, God wot,'
- and then, you know,
- 'It came to pass, as most like it was--'
- The first row of the pious chanson will show you more; for look
- where my abridgment comes.
- [Enter four or five Players.]
- You are welcome, masters; welcome, all:--I am glad to see thee
- well.--welcome, good friends.--O, my old friend! Thy face is
- valanc'd since I saw thee last; comest thou to beard me in
- Denmark?--What, my young lady and mistress! By'r lady, your
- ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the
- altitude of a chopine. Pray God, your voice, like a piece of
- uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.--Masters, you are
- all welcome. We'll e'en to't like French falconers, fly at
- anything we see: we'll have a speech straight: come, give us a
- taste of your quality: come, a passionate speech.
- I Play.
- What speech, my lord?
- Ham.
- I heard thee speak me a speech once,--but it was never acted;
- or if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleased
- not the million, 'twas caviare to the general; but it was,--as I
- received it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in
- the top of mine,--an excellent play, well digested in the scenes,
- set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said
- there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury,
- nor no matter in the phrase that might indite the author of
- affectation; but called it an honest method, as wholesome as
- sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it
- I chiefly loved: 'twas AEneas' tale to Dido, and thereabout of it
- especially where he speaks of Priam's slaughter: if it live in
- your memory, begin at this line;--let me see, let me see:--
- The rugged Pyrrhus, like th' Hyrcanian beast,--
- it is not so:-- it begins with Pyrrhus:--
- 'The rugged Pyrrhus,--he whose sable arms,
- Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
- When he lay couched in the ominous horse,--
- Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
- With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
- Now is he total gules; horridly trick'd
- With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
- Bak'd and impasted with the parching streets,
- That lend a tyrannous and a damned light
- To their vile murders: roasted in wrath and fire,
- And thus o'ersized with coagulate gore,
- With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
- Old grandsire Priam seeks.'
- So, proceed you.
- Pol.
- 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good
- discretion.
- I Play.
- Anon he finds him,
- Striking too short at Greeks: his antique sword,
- Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
- Repugnant to command: unequal match'd,
- Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
- But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
- The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
- Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
- Stoops to his base; and with a hideous crash
- Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for lo! his sword,
- Which was declining on the milky head
- Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick:
- So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood;
- And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
- Did nothing.
- But as we often see, against some storm,
- A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
- The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
- As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
- Doth rend the region; so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
- A roused vengeance sets him new a-work;
- And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
- On Mars's armour, forg'd for proof eterne,
- With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
- Now falls on Priam.--
- Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
- In general synod, take away her power;
- Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
- And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
- As low as to the fiends!
- Pol.
- This is too long.
- Ham.
- It shall to the barber's, with your beard.--Pr'ythee say on.--
- He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps:--say on; come
- to Hecuba.
- I Play.
- But who, O who, had seen the mobled queen,--
- Ham.
- 'The mobled queen'?
- Pol.
- That's good! 'Mobled queen' is good.
- I Play.
- Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
- With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
- Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
- About her lank and all o'erteemed loins,
- A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;--
- Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
- 'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounc'd:
- But if the gods themselves did see her then,
- When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
- In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
- The instant burst of clamour that she made,--
- Unless things mortal move them not at all,--
- Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
- And passion in the gods.
- Pol.
- Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in's
- eyes.--Pray you, no more!
- Ham.
- 'Tis well. I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.--
- Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you
- hear? Let them be well used; for they are the abstracts and brief
- chronicles of the time; after your death you were better have a
- bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.
- Pol.
- My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
- Ham.
- Odd's bodikin, man, better: use every man after his
- desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own
- honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in
- your bounty. Take them in.
- Pol.
- Come, sirs.
- Ham.
- Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow.
- [Exeunt Polonius with all the Players but the First.]
- Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play 'The Murder of
- Gonzago'?
- I Play.
- Ay, my lord.
- Ham.
- We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a
- speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and
- insert in't? could you not?
- I Play.
- Ay, my lord.
- Ham.
- Very well.--Follow that lord; and look you mock him not.
- [Exit First Player.]
- --My good friends [to Ros. and Guild.], I'll leave you till
- night: you are welcome to Elsinore.
- Ros.
- Good my lord!
- [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]
- Ham.
- Ay, so, God b' wi' ye!
- Now I am alone.
- O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
- Is it not monstrous that this player here,
- But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
- Could force his soul so to his own conceit
- That from her working all his visage wan'd;
- Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
- A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
- With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
- For Hecuba?
- What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
- That he should weep for her? What would he do,
- Had he the motive and the cue for passion
- That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
- And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
- Make mad the guilty, and appal the free;
- Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed,
- The very faculties of eyes and ears.
- Yet I,
- A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
- Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
- And can say nothing; no, not for a king
- Upon whose property and most dear life
- A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
- Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
- Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
- Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat
- As deep as to the lungs? who does me this, ha?
- 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
- But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall
- To make oppression bitter; or ere this
- I should have fatted all the region kites
- With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
- Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
- O, vengeance!
- Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
- That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
- Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
- Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words
- And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
- A scullion!
- Fie upon't! foh!--About, my brain! I have heard
- That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
- Have by the very cunning of the scene
- Been struck so to the soul that presently
- They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
- For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
- With most miraculous organ, I'll have these players
- Play something like the murder of my father
- Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
- I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
- I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
- May be the devil: and the devil hath power
- To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
- Out of my weakness and my melancholy,--
- As he is very potent with such spirits,--
- Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
- More relative than this.--the play's the thing
- Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
- [Exit.]
- ACT III.
- Scene I. A room in the Castle.
- [Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and
- Guildenstern.]
- King.
- And can you, by no drift of circumstance,
- Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
- Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
- With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
- Ros.
- He does confess he feels himself distracted,
- But from what cause he will by no means speak.
- Guil.
- Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
- But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof
- When we would bring him on to some confession
- Of his true state.
- Queen.
- Did he receive you well?
- Ros.
- Most like a gentleman.
- Guil.
- But with much forcing of his disposition.
- Ros.
- Niggard of question; but, of our demands,
- Most free in his reply.
- Queen.
- Did you assay him
- To any pastime?
- Ros.
- Madam, it so fell out that certain players
- We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him,
- And there did seem in him a kind of joy
- To hear of it: they are about the court,
- And, as I think, they have already order
- This night to play before him.
- Pol.
- 'Tis most true;
- And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties
- To hear and see the matter.
- King.
- With all my heart; and it doth much content me
- To hear him so inclin'd.--
- Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
- And drive his purpose on to these delights.
- Ros.
- We shall, my lord.
- [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]
- King.
- Sweet Gertrude, leave us too;
- For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
- That he, as 'twere by accident, may here
- Affront Ophelia:
- Her father and myself,--lawful espials,--
- Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen,
- We may of their encounter frankly judge;
- And gather by him, as he is behav'd,
- If't be the affliction of his love or no
- That thus he suffers for.
- Queen.
- I shall obey you:--
- And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
- That your good beauties be the happy cause
- Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
- Will bring him to his wonted way again,
- To both your honours.
- Oph.
- Madam, I wish it may.
- [Exit Queen.]
- Pol.
- Ophelia, walk you here.--Gracious, so please you,
- We will bestow ourselves.--[To Ophelia.] Read on this book;
- That show of such an exercise may colour
- Your loneliness.--We are oft to blame in this,--
- 'Tis too much prov'd,--that with devotion's visage
- And pious action we do sugar o'er
- The Devil himself.
- King.
- [Aside.] O, 'tis too true!
- How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
- The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,
- Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
- Than is my deed to my most painted word:
- O heavy burden!
- Pol.
- I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord.
- [Exeunt King and Polonius.]
- [Enter Hamlet.]
- Ham.
- To be, or not to be,--that is the question:--
- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
- The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
- Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
- And by opposing end them?--To die,--to sleep,--
- No more; and by a sleep to say we end
- The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
- That flesh is heir to,--'tis a consummation
- Devoutly to be wish'd. To die,--to sleep;--
- To sleep! perchance to dream:--ay, there's the rub;
- For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
- When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
- Must give us pause: there's the respect
- That makes calamity of so long life;
- For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
- The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
- The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
- The insolence of office, and the spurns
- That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
- When he himself might his quietus make
- With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
- To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
- But that the dread of something after death,--
- The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
- No traveller returns,--puzzles the will,
- And makes us rather bear those ills we have
- Than fly to others that we know not of?
- Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
- And thus the native hue of resolution
- Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
- And enterprises of great pith and moment,
- With this regard, their currents turn awry,
- And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
- The fair Ophelia!--Nymph, in thy orisons
- Be all my sins remember'd.
- Oph.
- Good my lord,
- How does your honour for this many a day?
- Ham.
- I humbly thank you; well, well, well.
- Oph.
- My lord, I have remembrances of yours
- That I have longed long to re-deliver.
- I pray you, now receive them.
- Ham.
- No, not I;
- I never gave you aught.
- Oph.
- My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
- And with them words of so sweet breath compos'd
- As made the things more rich; their perfume lost,
- Take these again; for to the noble mind
- Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
- There, my lord.
- Ham.
- Ha, ha! are you honest?
- Oph.
- My lord?
- Ham.
- Are you fair?
- Oph.
- What means your lordship?
- Ham.
- That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no
- discourse to your beauty.
- Oph.
- Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
- Ham.
- Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform
- honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can
- translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox,
- but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.
- Oph.
- Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
- Ham.
- You should not have believ'd me; for virtue cannot so
- inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you
- not.
- Oph.
- I was the more deceived.
- Ham.
- Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of
- sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse
- me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me:
- I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my
- beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give
- them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I
- do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all;
- believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your
- father?
- Oph.
- At home, my lord.
- Ham.
- Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool
- nowhere but in's own house. Farewell.
- Oph.
- O, help him, you sweet heavens!
- Ham.
- If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry,--
- be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape
- calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt
- needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what
- monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too.
- Farewell.
- Oph.
- O heavenly powers, restore him!
- Ham.
- I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath
- given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you
- amble, and you lisp, and nickname God's creatures, and make your
- wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made
- me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are
- married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as
- they are. To a nunnery, go.
- [Exit.]
- Oph.
- O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
- The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword,
- The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
- The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
- The observ'd of all observers,--quite, quite down!
- And I, of ladies most deject and wretched
- That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
- Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
- Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
- That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth
- Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,
- To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
- [Re-enter King and Polonius.]
- King.
- Love! his affections do not that way tend;
- Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,
- Was not like madness. There's something in his soul
- O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;
- And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
- Will be some danger: which for to prevent,
- I have in quick determination
- Thus set it down:--he shall with speed to England
- For the demand of our neglected tribute:
- Haply the seas, and countries different,
- With variable objects, shall expel
- This something-settled matter in his heart;
- Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
- From fashion of himself. What think you on't?
- Pol.
- It shall do well: but yet do I believe
- The origin and commencement of his grief
- Sprung from neglected love.--How now, Ophelia!
- You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said;
- We heard it all.--My lord, do as you please;
- But if you hold it fit, after the play,
- Let his queen mother all alone entreat him
- To show his grief: let her be round with him;
- And I'll be plac'd, so please you, in the ear
- Of all their conference. If she find him not,
- To England send him; or confine him where
- Your wisdom best shall think.
- King.
- It shall be so:
- Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.
- [Exeunt.]
- Scene II. A hall in the Castle.
- [Enter Hamlet and certain Players.]
- Ham.
- Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
- trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your
- players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do
- not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all
- gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
- whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a
- temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the
- soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to
- tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who,
- for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb
- shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing
- Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you avoid it.
- I Player.
- I warrant your honour.
- Ham.
- Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your
- tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with
- this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of
- nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing,
- whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as
- 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own image,
- scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his
- form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though
- it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious
- grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance,
- o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I
- have seen play,--and heard others praise, and that highly,--not
- to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of
- Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
- strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's
- journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated
- humanity so abominably.
- I Player.
- I hope we have reform'd that indifferently with us, sir.
- Ham.
- O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns
- speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them
- that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren
- spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary
- question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous
- and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go
- make you ready.
- [Exeunt Players.]
- [Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.]
- How now, my lord! will the king hear this piece of work?
- Pol.
- And the queen too, and that presently.
- Ham.
- Bid the players make haste.
- [Exit Polonius.]
- Will you two help to hasten them?
- Ros. and Guil.
- We will, my lord.
- [Exeunt Ros. and Guil.]
- Ham.
- What, ho, Horatio!
- [Enter Horatio.]
- Hor.
- Here, sweet lord, at your service.
- Ham.
- Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
- As e'er my conversation cop'd withal.
- Hor.
- O, my dear lord,--
- Ham.
- Nay, do not think I flatter;
- For what advancement may I hope from thee,
- That no revenue hast, but thy good spirits,
- To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?
- No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp;
- And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
- Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
- Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,
- And could of men distinguish, her election
- Hath seal'd thee for herself: for thou hast been
- As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
- A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards
- Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and bles'd are those
- Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled
- That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger
- To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
- That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
- In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
- As I do thee.--Something too much of this.--
- There is a play to-night before the king;
- One scene of it comes near the circumstance,
- Which I have told thee, of my father's death:
- I pr'ythee, when thou see'st that act a-foot,
- Even with the very comment of thy soul
- Observe mine uncle: if his occulted guilt
- Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
- It is a damned ghost that we have seen;
- And my imaginations are as foul
- As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note;
- For I mine eyes will rivet to his face;
- And, after, we will both our judgments join
- In censure of his seeming.
- Hor.
- Well, my lord:
- If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,
- And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.
- Ham.
- They are coming to the play. I must be idle:
- Get you a place.
- [Danish march. A flourish. Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia,
- Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and others.]
- King.
- How fares our cousin Hamlet?
- Ham.
- Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish: I eat the air,
- promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.
- King.
- I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not
- mine.
- Ham.
- No, nor mine now. My lord, you play'd once i' the university, you
- say? [To Polonius.]
- Pol.
- That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.
- Ham.
- What did you enact?
- Pol.
- I did enact Julius Caesar; I was kill'd i' the Capitol; Brutus
- killed me.
- Ham.
- It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.--Be
- the players ready?
- Ros.
- Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.
- Queen.
- Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
- Ham.
- No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.
- Pol.
- O, ho! do you mark that? [To the King.]
- Ham.
- Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
- [Lying down at Ophelia's feet.]
- Oph.
- No, my lord.
- Ham.
- I mean, my head upon your lap?
- Oph.
- Ay, my lord.
- Ham.
- Do you think I meant country matters?
- Oph.
- I think nothing, my lord.
- Ham.
- That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
- Oph.
- What is, my lord?
- Ham.
- Nothing.
- Oph.
- You are merry, my lord.
- Ham.
- Who, I?
- Oph.
- Ay, my lord.
- Ham.
- O, your only jig-maker! What should a man do but be merry?
- for look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died
- within 's two hours.
- Oph.
- Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.
- Ham.
- So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a
- suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten
- yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life
- half a year: but, by'r lady, he must build churches then; or else
- shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose
- epitaph is 'For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot!'
- [Trumpets sound. The dumb show enters.]
- [Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing
- him and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation
- unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her
- neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers: she, seeing
- him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his
- crown, kisses it, pours poison in the king's ears, and exit. The
- Queen returns, finds the King dead, and makes passionate action.
- The Poisoner with some three or four Mutes, comes in again,
- seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The
- Poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts; she seems loth and unwilling
- awhile, but in the end accepts his love.]
- [Exeunt.]
- Oph.
- What means this, my lord?
- Ham.
- Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.
- Oph.
- Belike this show imports the argument of the play.
- [Enter Prologue.]
- Ham.
- We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel;
- they'll tell all.
- Oph.
- Will he tell us what this show meant?
- Ham.
- Ay, or any show that you'll show him: be not you ashamed to
- show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means.
- Oph.
- You are naught, you are naught: I'll mark the play.
- Pro.
- For us, and for our tragedy,
- Here stooping to your clemency,
- We beg your hearing patiently.
- Ham.
- Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
- Oph.
- 'Tis brief, my lord.
- Ham.
- As woman's love.
- [Enter a King and a Queen.]
- P. King.
- Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
- Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,
- And thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen
- About the world have times twelve thirties been,
- Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands,
- Unite commutual in most sacred bands.
- P. Queen.
- So many journeys may the sun and moon
- Make us again count o'er ere love be done!
- But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,
- So far from cheer and from your former state.
- That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
- Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must:
- For women's fear and love holds quantity;
- In neither aught, or in extremity.
- Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
- And as my love is siz'd, my fear is so:
- Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
- Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.
- P. King.
- Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
- My operant powers their functions leave to do:
- And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
- Honour'd, belov'd, and haply one as kind
- For husband shalt thou,--
- P. Queen.
- O, confound the rest!
- Such love must needs be treason in my breast:
- In second husband let me be accurst!
- None wed the second but who kill'd the first.
- Ham.
- [Aside.] Wormwood, wormwood!
- P. Queen.
- The instances that second marriage move
- Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.
- A second time I kill my husband dead
- When second husband kisses me in bed.
- P. King.
- I do believe you think what now you speak;
- But what we do determine oft we break.
- Purpose is but the slave to memory;
- Of violent birth, but poor validity:
- Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree;
- But fall unshaken when they mellow be.
- Most necessary 'tis that we forget
- To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt:
- What to ourselves in passion we propose,
- The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
- The violence of either grief or joy
- Their own enactures with themselves destroy:
- Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;
- Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
- This world is not for aye; nor 'tis not strange
- That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
- For 'tis a question left us yet to prove,
- Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
- The great man down, you mark his favourite flies,
- The poor advanc'd makes friends of enemies;
- And hitherto doth love on fortune tend:
- For who not needs shall never lack a friend;
- And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
- Directly seasons him his enemy.
- But, orderly to end where I begun,--
- Our wills and fates do so contrary run
- That our devices still are overthrown;
- Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own:
- So think thou wilt no second husband wed;
- But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.
- P. Queen.
- Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light!
- Sport and repose lock from me day and night!
- To desperation turn my trust and hope!
- An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope!
- Each opposite that blanks the face of joy
- Meet what I would have well, and it destroy!
- Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
- If, once a widow, ever I be wife!
- Ham.
- If she should break it now! [To Ophelia.]
- P. King.
- 'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile;
- My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
- The tedious day with sleep.
- [Sleeps.]
- P. Queen.
- Sleep rock thy brain,
- And never come mischance between us twain!
- [Exit.]
- Ham.
- Madam, how like you this play?
- Queen.
- The lady protests too much, methinks.
- Ham.
- O, but she'll keep her word.
- King.
- Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in't?
- Ham.
- No, no! They do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i' the
- world.
- King.
- What do you call the play?
- Ham.
- The Mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the
- image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is the duke's name;
- his wife, Baptista: you shall see anon; 'tis a knavish piece of
- work: but what o' that? your majesty, and we that have free
- souls, it touches us not: let the gall'd jade wince; our withers
- are unwrung.
- [Enter Lucianus.]
- This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.
- Oph.
- You are a good chorus, my lord.
- Ham.
- I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see
- the puppets dallying.
- Oph.
- You are keen, my lord, you are keen.
- Ham.
- It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.
- Oph.
- Still better, and worse.
- Ham.
- So you must take your husbands.--Begin, murderer; pox, leave
- thy damnable faces, and begin. Come:--'The croaking raven doth
- bellow for revenge.'
- Luc.
- Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;
- Confederate season, else no creature seeing;
- Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
- With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
- Thy natural magic and dire property
- On wholesome life usurp immediately.
- [Pours the poison into the sleeper's ears.]
- Ham.
- He poisons him i' the garden for's estate. His name's Gonzago:
- The story is extant, and written in very choice Italian; you
- shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
- Oph.
- The King rises.
- Ham.
- What, frighted with false fire!
- Queen.
- How fares my lord?
- Pol.
- Give o'er the play.
- King.
- Give me some light:--away!
- All.
- Lights, lights, lights!
- [Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio.]
- Ham.
- Why, let the strucken deer go weep,
- The hart ungalled play;
- For some must watch, while some must sleep:
- So runs the world away.--
- Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers--if the rest of my
- fortunes turn Turk with me,--with two Provincial roses on my
- razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?
- Hor.
- Half a share.
- Ham.
- A whole one, I.
- For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
- This realm dismantled was
- Of Jove himself; and now reigns here
- A very, very--pajock.
- Hor.
- You might have rhymed.
- Ham.
- O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand
- pound! Didst perceive?
- Hor.
- Very well, my lord.
- Ham.
- Upon the talk of the poisoning?--
- Hor.
- I did very well note him.
- Ham.
- Ah, ha!--Come, some music! Come, the recorders!--
- For if the king like not the comedy,
- Why then, belike he likes it not, perdy.
- Come, some music!
- [Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]
- Guil.
- Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.
- Ham.
- Sir, a whole history.
- Guil.
- The king, sir--
- Ham.
- Ay, sir, what of him?
- Guil.
- Is, in his retirement, marvellous distempered.
- Ham.
- With drink, sir?
- Guil.
- No, my lord; rather with choler.
- Ham.
- Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to
- the doctor; for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps
- plunge him into far more choler.
- Guil.
- Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start
- not so wildly from my affair.
- Ham.
- I am tame, sir:--pronounce.
- Guil.
- The queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit,
- hath sent me to you.
- Ham.
- You are welcome.
- Guil.
- Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed.
- If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do
- your mother's commandment: if not, your pardon and my return
- shall be the end of my business.
- Ham.
- Sir, I cannot.
- Guil.
- What, my lord?
- Ham.
- Make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseased: but, sir, such
- answer as I can make, you shall command; or rather, as you say,
- my mother: therefore no more, but to the matter: my mother, you
- say,--
- Ros.
- Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into
- amazement and admiration.
- Ham.
- O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother!--But is there no
- sequel at the heels of this mother's admiration?
- Ros.
- She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed.
- Ham.
- We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any
- further trade with us?
- Ros.
- My lord, you once did love me.
- Ham.
- And so I do still, by these pickers and stealers.
- Ros.
- Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? you do, surely,
- bar the door upon your own liberty if you deny your griefs to
- your friend.
- Ham.
- Sir, I lack advancement.
- Ros.
- How can that be, when you have the voice of the king himself
- for your succession in Denmark?
- Ham.
- Ay, sir, but 'While the grass grows'--the proverb is something
- musty.
- [Re-enter the Players, with recorders.]
- O, the recorders:--let me see one.--To withdraw with you:--why do
- you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me
- into a toil?
- Guil.
- O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.
- Ham.
- I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?
- Guil.
- My lord, I cannot.
- Ham.
- I pray you.
- Guil.
- Believe me, I cannot.
- Ham.
- I do beseech you.
- Guil.
- I know, no touch of it, my lord.
- Ham.
- 'Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your
- finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will
- discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.
- Guil.
- But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony; I
- have not the skill.
- Ham.
- Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You
- would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would
- pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my
- lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music,
- excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it
- speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a
- pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me,
- you cannot play upon me.
- [Enter Polonius.]
- God bless you, sir!
- Pol.
- My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently.
- Ham.
- Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
- Pol.
- By the mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed.
- Ham.
- Methinks it is like a weasel.
- Pol.
- It is backed like a weasel.
- Ham.
- Or like a whale.
- Pol.
- Very like a whale.
- Ham.
- Then will I come to my mother by and by.--They fool me to the
- top of my bent.--I will come by and by.
- Pol.
- I will say so.
- [Exit.]
- Ham.
- By-and-by is easily said.
- [Exit Polonius.]
- --Leave me, friends.
- [Exeunt Ros, Guil., Hor., and Players.]
- 'Tis now the very witching time of night,
- When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
- Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
- And do such bitter business as the day
- Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother.--
- O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
- The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:
- Let me be cruel, not unnatural;
- I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
- My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites,--
- How in my words somever she be shent,
- To give them seals never, my soul, consent!
- [Exit.]
- Scene III. A room in the Castle.
- [Enter King, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.]
- King.
- I like him not; nor stands it safe with us
- To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you;
- I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
- And he to England shall along with you:
- The terms of our estate may not endure
- Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow
- Out of his lunacies.
- Guil.
- We will ourselves provide:
- Most holy and religious fear it is
- To keep those many many bodies safe
- That live and feed upon your majesty.
- Ros.
- The single and peculiar life is bound,
- With all the strength and armour of the mind,
- To keep itself from 'noyance; but much more
- That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest
- The lives of many. The cease of majesty
- Dies not alone; but like a gulf doth draw
- What's near it with it: it is a massy wheel,
- Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
- To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
- Are mortis'd and adjoin'd; which, when it falls,
- Each small annexment, petty consequence,
- Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
- Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.
- King.
- Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage;
- For we will fetters put upon this fear,
- Which now goes too free-footed.
- Ros and Guil.
- We will haste us.
- [Exeunt Ros. and Guil.]
- [Enter Polonius.]
- Pol.
- My lord, he's going to his mother's closet:
- Behind the arras I'll convey myself
- To hear the process; I'll warrant she'll tax him home:
- And, as you said, and wisely was it said,
- 'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
- Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear
- The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege:
- I'll call upon you ere you go to bed,
- And tell you what I know.
- King.
- Thanks, dear my lord.
- [Exit Polonius.]
- O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
- It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,--
- A brother's murder!--Pray can I not,
- Though inclination be as sharp as will:
- My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
- And, like a man to double business bound,
- I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
- And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
- Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,--
- Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
- To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
- But to confront the visage of offence?
- And what's in prayer but this twofold force,--
- To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
- Or pardon'd being down? Then I'll look up;
- My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
- Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder!--
- That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
- Of those effects for which I did the murder,--
- My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
- May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
- In the corrupted currents of this world
- Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice;
- And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
- Buys out the law; but 'tis not so above;
- There is no shuffling;--there the action lies
- In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
- Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
- To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
- Try what repentance can: what can it not?
- Yet what can it when one cannot repent?
- O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
- O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
- Art more engag'd! 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.
- [Retires and kneels.]
- [Enter Hamlet.]
- Ham.
- Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
- And now I'll do't;--and so he goes to heaven;
- And so am I reveng'd.--that would be scann'd:
- A villain kills my father; and for that,
- I, his sole son, do this same villain send
- To heaven.
- O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
- He took my father grossly, full of bread;
- With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
- And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?
- But in our circumstance and course of thought,
- 'Tis heavy with him: and am I, then, reveng'd,
- To take him in the purging of his soul,
- When he is fit and season'd for his passage?
- No.
- Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent:
- When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage;
- Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
- At gaming, swearing; or about some act
- That has no relish of salvation in't;--
- Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven;
- And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
- As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
- This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
- [Exit.]
- [The King rises and advances.]
- King.
- My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
- Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
- [Exit.]
- Scene IV. Another room in the castle.
- [Enter Queen and Polonius.]
- Pol.
- He will come straight. Look you lay home to him:
- Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
- And that your grace hath screen'd and stood between
- Much heat and him. I'll silence me e'en here.
- Pray you, be round with him.
- Ham.
- [Within.] Mother, mother, mother!
- Queen.
- I'll warrant you:
- Fear me not:--withdraw; I hear him coming.
- [Polonius goes behind the arras.]
- [Enter Hamlet.]
- Ham.
- Now, mother, what's the matter?
- Queen.
- Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
- Ham.
- Mother, you have my father much offended.
- Queen.
- Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
- Ham.
- Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
- Queen.
- Why, how now, Hamlet!
- Ham.
- What's the matter now?
- Queen.
- Have you forgot me?
- Ham.
- No, by the rood, not so:
- You are the Queen, your husband's brother's wife,
- And,--would it were not so!--you are my mother.
- Queen.
- Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.
- Ham.
- Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
- You go not till I set you up a glass
- Where you may see the inmost part of you.
- Queen.
- What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?--
- Help, help, ho!
- Pol.
- [Behind.] What, ho! help, help, help!
- Ham.
- How now? a rat? [Draws.]
- Dead for a ducat, dead!
- [Makes a pass through the arras.]
- Pol.
- [Behind.] O, I am slain!
- [Falls and dies.]
- Queen.
- O me, what hast thou done?
- Ham.
- Nay, I know not: is it the king?
- [Draws forth Polonius.]
- Queen.
- O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
- Ham.
- A bloody deed!--almost as bad, good mother,
- As kill a king and marry with his brother.
- Queen.
- As kill a king!
- Ham.
- Ay, lady, 'twas my word.--
- Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
- [To Polonius.]
- I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;
- Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger.--
- Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down,
- And let me wring your heart: for so I shall,
- If it be made of penetrable stuff;
- If damned custom have not braz'd it so
- That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
- Queen.
- What have I done, that thou dar'st wag thy tongue
- In noise so rude against me?
- Ham.
- Such an act
- That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;
- Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose
- From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
- And sets a blister there; makes marriage-vows
- As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed
- As from the body of contraction plucks
- The very soul, and sweet religion makes
- A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow;
- Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
- With tristful visage, as against the doom,
- Is thought-sick at the act.
- Queen.
- Ah me, what act,
- That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
- Ham.
- Look here upon this picture, and on this,--
- The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
- See what a grace was seated on this brow;
- Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
- An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
- A station like the herald Mercury
- New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill:
- A combination and a form, indeed,
- Where every god did seem to set his seal,
- To give the world assurance of a man;
- This was your husband.--Look you now what follows:
- Here is your husband, like a milldew'd ear
- Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
- Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
- And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
- You cannot call it love; for at your age
- The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble,
- And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment
- Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have,
- Else could you not have motion: but sure that sense
- Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err;
- Nor sense to ecstacy was ne'er so thrall'd
- But it reserv'd some quantity of choice
- To serve in such a difference. What devil was't
- That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?
- Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
- Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
- Or but a sickly part of one true sense
- Could not so mope.
- O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
- If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,
- To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
- And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame
- When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
- Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
- And reason panders will.
- Queen.
- O Hamlet, speak no more:
- Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
- And there I see such black and grained spots
- As will not leave their tinct.
- Ham.
- Nay, but to live
- In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
- Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
- Over the nasty sty,--
- Queen.
- O, speak to me no more;
- These words like daggers enter in mine ears;
- No more, sweet Hamlet.
- Ham.
- A murderer and a villain;
- A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
- Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
- A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
- That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
- And put it in his pocket!
- Queen.
- No more.
- Ham.
- A king of shreds and patches!--
- [Enter Ghost.]
- Save me and hover o'er me with your wings,
- You heavenly guards!--What would your gracious figure?
- Queen.
- Alas, he's mad!
- Ham.
- Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
- That, laps'd in time and passion, lets go by
- The important acting of your dread command?
- O, say!
- Ghost.
- Do not forget. This visitation
- Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
- But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
- O, step between her and her fighting soul,--
- Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works,--
- Speak to her, Hamlet.
- Ham.
- How is it with you, lady?
- Queen.
- Alas, how is't with you,
- That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
- And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
- Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
- And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
- Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,
- Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,
- Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
- Sprinkle cool patience! Whereon do you look?
- Ham.
- On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares!
- His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones,
- Would make them capable.--Do not look upon me;
- Lest with this piteous action you convert
- My stern effects: then what I have to do
- Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.
- Queen.
- To whom do you speak this?
- Ham.
- Do you see nothing there?
- Queen.
- Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
- Ham.
- Nor did you nothing hear?
- Queen.
- No, nothing but ourselves.
- Ham.
- Why, look you there! look how it steals away!
- My father, in his habit as he liv'd!
- Look, where he goes, even now out at the portal!
- [Exit Ghost.]
- Queen.
- This is the very coinage of your brain:
- This bodiless creation ecstasy
- Is very cunning in.
- Ham.
- Ecstasy!
- My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
- And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
- That I have utter'd: bring me to the test,
- And I the matter will re-word; which madness
- Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
- Lay not that flattering unction to your soul
- That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
- It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
- Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
- Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
- Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
- And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
- To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;
- For in the fatness of these pursy times
- Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
- Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
- Queen.
- O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
- Ham.
- O, throw away the worser part of it,
- And live the purer with the other half.
- Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed;
- Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
- That monster custom, who all sense doth eat,
- Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,--
- That to the use of actions fair and good
- He likewise gives a frock or livery
- That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night;
- And that shall lend a kind of easiness
- To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
- For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
- And either curb the devil, or throw him out
- With wondrous potency. Once more, good-night:
- And when you are desirous to be bles'd,
- I'll blessing beg of you.--For this same lord
- [Pointing to Polonius.]
- 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.--
- One word more, good lady.
- Queen.
- What shall I do?
- Ham.
- Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
- Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed;
- Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;
- And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
- Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,
- Make you to ravel all this matter out,
- That I essentially am not in madness,
- But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know;
- For who that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
- Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
- Such dear concernings hide? who would do so?
- No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
- Unpeg the basket on the house's top,
- Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape,
- To try conclusions, in the basket creep
- And break your own neck down.
- Queen.
- Be thou assur'd, if words be made of breath,
- And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
- What thou hast said to me.
- Ham.
- I must to England; you know that?
- Queen.
- Alack,
- I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on.
- Ham.
- There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows,--
- Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,--
- They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
- And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
- For 'tis the sport to have the enginer
- Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard
- But I will delve one yard below their mines
- And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet,
- When in one line two crafts directly meet.--
- This man shall set me packing:
- I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.--
- Mother, good-night.--Indeed, this counsellor
- Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
- Who was in life a foolish peating knave.
- Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you:--
- Good night, mother.
- [Exeunt severally; Hamlet, dragging out Polonius.]
- ACT IV.
- Scene I. A room in the Castle.
- [Enter King, Queen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]
- King.
- There's matter in these sighs. These profound heaves
- You must translate: 'tis fit we understand them.
- Where is your son?
- Queen.
- Bestow this place on us a little while.
- [To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who go out.]
- Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night!
- King.
- What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?
- Queen.
- Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend
- Which is the mightier: in his lawless fit
- Behind the arras hearing something stir,
- Whips out his rapier, cries 'A rat, a rat!'
- And in this brainish apprehension, kills
- The unseen good old man.
- King.
- O heavy deed!
- It had been so with us, had we been there:
- His liberty is full of threats to all;
- To you yourself, to us, to every one.
- Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd?
- It will be laid to us, whose providence
- Should have kept short, restrain'd, and out of haunt
- This mad young man. But so much was our love
- We would not understand what was most fit;
- But, like the owner of a foul disease,
- To keep it from divulging, let it feed
- Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?
- Queen.
- To draw apart the body he hath kill'd:
- O'er whom his very madness, like some ore
- Among a mineral of metals base,
- Shows itself pure: he weeps for what is done.
- King.
- O Gertrude, come away!
- The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch
- But we will ship him hence: and this vile deed
- We must with all our majesty and skill
- Both countenance and excuse.--Ho, Guildenstern!
- [Re-enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]
- Friends both, go join you with some further aid:
- Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
- And from his mother's closet hath he dragg'd him:
- Go seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body
- Into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this.
- [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]
- Come, Gertrude, we'll call up our wisest friends;
- And let them know both what we mean to do
- And what's untimely done: so haply slander,--
- Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter,
- As level as the cannon to his blank,
- Transports his poison'd shot,--may miss our name,
- And hit the woundless air.--O, come away!
- My soul is full of discord and dismay.
- [Exeunt.]
- Scene II. Another room in the Castle.
- [Enter Hamlet.]
- Ham.
- Safely stowed.
- Ros. and Guil.
- [Within.] Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!
- Ham.
- What noise? who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come.
- [Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]
- Ros.
- What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?
- Ham.
- Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.
- Ros.
- Tell us where 'tis, that we may take it thence,
- And bear it to the chapel.
- Ham.
- Do not believe it.
- Ros.
- Believe what?
- Ham.
- That I can keep your counsel, and not mine own. Besides, to be
- demanded of a sponge!--what replication should be made by the son
- of a king?
- Ros.
- Take you me for a sponge, my lord?
- Ham.
- Ay, sir; that soaks up the King's countenance, his rewards,
- his authorities. But such officers do the king best service in
- the end: he keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw;
- first mouthed, to be last swallowed: when he needs what you have
- gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry
- again.
- Ros.
- I understand you not, my lord.
- Ham.
- I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.
- Ros.
- My lord, you must tell us where the body is and go with us to
- the king.
- Ham.
- The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body.
- The king is a thing,--
- Guil.
- A thing, my lord!
- Ham.
- Of nothing: bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.
- [Exeunt.]
- Scene III. Another room in the Castle.
- [Enter King,attended.]
- King.
- I have sent to seek him and to find the body.
- How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!
- Yet must not we put the strong law on him:
- He's lov'd of the distracted multitude,
- Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes;
- And where 'tis so, the offender's scourge is weigh'd,
- But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,
- This sudden sending him away must seem
- Deliberate pause: diseases desperate grown
- By desperate appliance are reliev'd,
- Or not at all.
- [Enter Rosencrantz.]
- How now! what hath befall'n?
- Ros.
- Where the dead body is bestow'd, my lord,
- We cannot get from him.
- King.
- But where is he?
- Ros.
- Without, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure.
- King.
- Bring him before us.
- Ros.
- Ho, Guildenstern! bring in my lord.
- [Enter Hamlet and Guildenstern.]
- King.
- Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?
- Ham.
- At supper.
- King.
- At supper! where?
- Ham.
- Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain
- convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your
- only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and
- we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar
- is but variable service,--two dishes, but to one table: that's
- the end.
- King.
- Alas, alas!
- Ham.
- A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat
- of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
- King.
- What dost thou mean by this?
- Ham.
- Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through
- the guts of a beggar.
- King.
- Where is Polonius?
- Ham.
- In heaven: send thither to see: if your messenger find him not
- there, seek him i' the other place yourself. But, indeed, if you
- find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up
- the stairs into the lobby.
- King.
- Go seek him there. [To some Attendants.]
- Ham.
- He will stay till you come.
- [Exeunt Attendants.]
- King.
- Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,--
- Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve
- For that which thou hast done,--must send thee hence
- With fiery quickness: therefore prepare thyself;
- The bark is ready, and the wind at help,
- The associates tend, and everything is bent
- For England.
- Ham.
- For England!
- King.
- Ay, Hamlet.
- Ham.
- Good.
- King.
- So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.
- Ham.
- I see a cherub that sees them.--But, come; for England!--
- Farewell, dear mother.
- King.
- Thy loving father, Hamlet.
- Ham.
- My mother: father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is
- one flesh; and so, my mother.--Come, for England!
- [Exit.]
- King.
- Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard;
- Delay it not; I'll have him hence to-night:
- Away! for everything is seal'd and done
- That else leans on the affair: pray you, make haste.
- [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]
- And, England, if my love thou hold'st at aught,--
- As my great power thereof may give thee sense,
- Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red
- After the Danish sword, and thy free awe
- Pays homage to us,--thou mayst not coldly set
- Our sovereign process; which imports at full,
- By letters conjuring to that effect,
- The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England;
- For like the hectic in my blood he rages,
- And thou must cure me: till I know 'tis done,
- Howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun.
- [Exit.]
- Scene IV. A plain in Denmark.
- [Enter Fortinbras, and Forces marching.]
- For.
- Go, Captain, from me greet the Danish king:
- Tell him that, by his license, Fortinbras
- Craves the conveyance of a promis'd march
- Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.
- If that his majesty would aught with us,
- We shall express our duty in his eye;
- And let him know so.
- Capt.
- I will do't, my lord.
- For.
- Go softly on.
- [Exeunt all For. and Forces.]
- [Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, &c.]
- Ham.
- Good sir, whose powers are these?
- Capt.
- They are of Norway, sir.
- Ham.
- How purpos'd, sir, I pray you?
- Capt.
- Against some part of Poland.
- Ham.
- Who commands them, sir?
- Capt.
- The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.
- Ham.
- Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
- Or for some frontier?
- Capt.
- Truly to speak, and with no addition,
- We go to gain a little patch of ground
- That hath in it no profit but the name.
- To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
- Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
- A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.
- Ham.
- Why, then the Polack never will defend it.
- Capt.
- Yes, it is already garrison'd.
- Ham.
- Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
- Will not debate the question of this straw:
- This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
- That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
- Why the man dies.--I humbly thank you, sir.
- Capt.
- God b' wi' you, sir.
- [Exit.]
- Ros.
- Will't please you go, my lord?
- Ham.
- I'll be with you straight. Go a little before.
- [Exeunt all but Hamlet.]
- How all occasions do inform against me
- And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
- If his chief good and market of his time
- Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
- Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
- Looking before and after, gave us not
- That capability and godlike reason
- To fust in us unus'd. Now, whether it be
- Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
- Of thinking too precisely on the event,--
- A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
- And ever three parts coward,--I do not know
- Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
- Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
- To do't. Examples, gross as earth, exhort me:
- Witness this army, of such mass and charge,
- Led by a delicate and tender prince;
- Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff'd,
- Makes mouths at the invisible event;
- Exposing what is mortal and unsure
- To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
- Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
- Is not to stir without great argument,
- But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
- When honour's at the stake. How stand I, then,
- That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
- Excitements of my reason and my blood,
- And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
- The imminent death of twenty thousand men
- That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
- Go to their graves like beds; fight for a plot
- Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
- Which is not tomb enough and continent
- To hide the slain?--O, from this time forth,
- My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
- [Exit.]
- Scene V. Elsinore. A room in the Castle.
- [Enter Queen and Horatio.]
- Queen.
- I will not speak with her.
- Gent.
- She is importunate; indeed distract:
- Her mood will needs be pitied.
- Queen.
- What would she have?
- Gent.
- She speaks much of her father; says she hears
- There's tricks i' the world, and hems, and beats her heart;
- Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,
- That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing,
- Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
- The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
- And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
- Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures yield them,
- Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
- Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
- 'Twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew
- Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
- Queen.
- Let her come in.
- [Exit Horatio.]
- To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is,
- Each toy seems Prologue to some great amiss:
- So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
- It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
- [Re-enter Horatio with Ophelia.]
- Oph.
- Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?
- Queen.
- How now, Ophelia?
- Oph. [Sings.]
- How should I your true love know
- From another one?
- By his cockle bat and' staff
- And his sandal shoon.
- Queen.
- Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
- Oph.
- Say you? nay, pray you, mark.
- [Sings.]
- He is dead and gone, lady,
- He is dead and gone;
- At his head a grass green turf,
- At his heels a stone.
- Queen.
- Nay, but Ophelia--
- Oph.
- Pray you, mark.
- [Sings.]
- White his shroud as the mountain snow,
- [Enter King.]
- Queen.
- Alas, look here, my lord!
- Oph.
- [Sings.]
- Larded all with sweet flowers;
- Which bewept to the grave did go
- With true-love showers.
- King.
- How do you, pretty lady?
- Oph.
- Well, God dild you! They say the owl was a baker's daughter.
- Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at
- your table!
- King.
- Conceit upon her father.
- Oph.
- Pray you, let's have no words of this; but when they ask you what
- it means, say you this:
- [Sings.]
- To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day
- All in the morning bedtime,
- And I a maid at your window,
- To be your Valentine.
- Then up he rose and donn'd his clothes,
- And dupp'd the chamber door,
- Let in the maid, that out a maid
- Never departed more.
- King.
- Pretty Ophelia!
- Oph.
- Indeed, la, without an oath, I'll make an end on't:
- [Sings.]
- By Gis and by Saint Charity,
- Alack, and fie for shame!
- Young men will do't if they come to't;
- By cock, they are to blame.
- Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
- You promis'd me to wed.
- So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
- An thou hadst not come to my bed.
- King.
- How long hath she been thus?
- Oph.
- I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I cannot
- choose but weep, to think they would lay him i' the cold ground.
- My brother shall know of it: and so I thank you for your good
- counsel.--Come, my coach!--Good night, ladies; good night, sweet
- ladies; good night, good night.
- [Exit.]
- King.
- Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.
- [Exit Horatio.]
- O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
- All from her father's death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
- When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
- But in battalions! First, her father slain:
- Next, your son gone; and he most violent author
- Of his own just remove: the people muddied,
- Thick and and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers
- For good Polonius' death; and we have done but greenly
- In hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Ophelia
- Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
- Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts:
- Last, and as much containing as all these,
- Her brother is in secret come from France;
- Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
- And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
- With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
- Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
- Will nothing stick our person to arraign
- In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
- Like to a murdering piece, in many places
- Give, me superfluous death.
- [A noise within.]
- Queen.
- Alack, what noise is this?
- King.
- Where are my Switzers? let them guard the door.
- [Enter a Gentleman.]
- What is the matter?
- Gent.
- Save yourself, my lord:
- The ocean, overpeering of his list,
- Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
- Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
- O'erbears your offices. The rabble call him lord;
- And, as the world were now but to begin,
- Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
- The ratifiers and props of every word,
- They cry 'Choose we! Laertes shall be king!'
- Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,
- 'Laertes shall be king! Laertes king!'
- Queen.
- How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
- O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!
- [A noise within.]
- King.
- The doors are broke.
- [Enter Laertes, armed; Danes following.]
- Laer.
- Where is this king?--Sirs, stand you all without.
- Danes.
- No, let's come in.
- Laer.
- I pray you, give me leave.
- Danes.
- We will, we will.
- [They retire without the door.]
- Laer.
- I thank you:--keep the door.--O thou vile king,
- Give me my father!
- Queen.
- Calmly, good Laertes.
- Laer.
- That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard;
- Cries cuckold to my father; brands the harlot
- Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow
- Of my true mother.
- King.
- What is the cause, Laertes,
- That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?--
- Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person:
- There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
- That treason can but peep to what it would,
- Acts little of his will.--Tell me, Laertes,
- Why thou art thus incens'd.--Let him go, Gertrude:--
- Speak, man.
- Laer.
- Where is my father?
- King.
- Dead.
- Queen.
- But not by him.
- King.
- Let him demand his fill.
- Laer.
- How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
- To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
- Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
- I dare damnation:--to this point I stand,--
- That both the worlds, I give to negligence,
- Let come what comes; only I'll be reveng'd
- Most throughly for my father.
- King.
- Who shall stay you?
- Laer.
- My will, not all the world:
- And for my means, I'll husband them so well,
- They shall go far with little.
- King.
- Good Laertes,
- If you desire to know the certainty
- Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge
- That, sweepstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
- Winner and loser?
- Laer.
- None but his enemies.
- King.
- Will you know them then?
- Laer.
- To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
- And, like the kind life-rendering pelican,
- Repast them with my blood.
- King.
- Why, now you speak
- Like a good child and a true gentleman.
- That I am guiltless of your father's death,
- And am most sensibly in grief for it,
- It shall as level to your judgment pierce
- As day does to your eye.
- Danes.
- [Within] Let her come in.
- Laer.
- How now! What noise is that?
- [Re-enter Ophelia, fantastically dressed with straws and
- flowers.]
- O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
- Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!--
- By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
- Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
- Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!--
- O heavens! is't possible a young maid's wits
- Should be as mortal as an old man's life?
- Nature is fine in love; and where 'tis fine,
- It sends some precious instance of itself
- After the thing it loves.
- Oph.
- [Sings.]
- They bore him barefac'd on the bier
- Hey no nonny, nonny, hey nonny
- And on his grave rain'd many a tear.--
- Fare you well, my dove!
- Laer.
- Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
- It could not move thus.
- Oph.
- You must sing 'Down a-down, an you call him a-down-a.' O,
- how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that stole his
- master's daughter.
- Laer.
- This nothing's more than matter.
- Oph.
- There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love,
- remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.
- Laer.
- A document in madness,--thoughts and remembrance fitted.
- Oph.
- There's fennel for you, and columbines:--there's rue for you;
- and here's some for me:--we may call it herb of grace o'
- Sundays:--O, you must wear your rue with a difference.--There's a
- daisy:--I would give you some violets, but they wither'd all when
- my father died:--they say he made a good end,--
- [Sings.]
- For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy,--
- Laer.
- Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
- She turns to favour and to prettiness.
- Oph.
- [Sings.]
- And will he not come again?
- And will he not come again?
- No, no, he is dead,
- Go to thy death-bed,
- He never will come again.
- His beard was as white as snow,
- All flaxen was his poll:
- He is gone, he is gone,
- And we cast away moan:
- God ha' mercy on his soul!
- And of all Christian souls, I pray God.--God b' wi' ye.
- [Exit.]
- Laer.
- Do you see this, O God?
- King.
- Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
- Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
- Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
- And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me.
- If by direct or by collateral hand
- They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give,
- Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
- To you in satisfaction; but if not,
- Be you content to lend your patience to us,
- And we shall jointly labour with your soul
- To give it due content.
- Laer.
- Let this be so;
- His means of death, his obscure burial,--
- No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
- No noble rite nor formal ostentation,--
- Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
- That I must call't in question.
- King.
- So you shall;
- And where the offence is let the great axe fall.
- I pray you go with me.
- [Exeunt.]
- Scene VI. Another room in the Castle.
- [Enter Horatio and a Servant.]
- Hor.
- What are they that would speak with me?
- Servant.
- Sailors, sir: they say they have letters for you.
- Hor.
- Let them come in.
- [Exit Servant.]
- I do not know from what part of the world
- I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.
- [Enter Sailors.]
- I Sailor.
- God bless you, sir.
- Hor.
- Let him bless thee too.
- Sailor.
- He shall, sir, an't please him. There's a letter for you,
- sir,--it comes from the ambassador that was bound for England; if
- your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is.
- Hor.
- [Reads.] 'Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked
- this, give these fellows some means to the king: they have
- letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of
- very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too
- slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour, and in the grapple I
- boarded them: on the instant they got clear of our ship; so I
- alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves
- of mercy: but they knew what they did; I am to do a good turn for
- them. Let the king have the letters I have sent; and repair thou
- to me with as much haste as thou wouldst fly death. I have words
- to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are they much too
- light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows will bring
- thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course
- for England: of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell.
- He that thou knowest thine, HAMLET.'
- Come, I will give you way for these your letters;
- And do't the speedier, that you may direct me
- To him from whom you brought them.
- [Exeunt.]
- Scene VII. Another room in the Castle.
- [Enter King and Laertes.]
- King.
- Now must your conscience my acquittance seal,
- And you must put me in your heart for friend,
- Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
- That he which hath your noble father slain
- Pursu'd my life.
- Laer.
- It well appears:--but tell me
- Why you proceeded not against these feats,
- So crimeful and so capital in nature,
- As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
- You mainly were stirr'd up.
- King.
- O, for two special reasons;
- Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew'd,
- 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's 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,
- Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
- Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows,
- Too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind,
- Would have reverted to my bow again,
- And not where I had aim'd them.
- Laer.
- And so have I a noble father lost;
- A sister driven into desperate terms,--
- Whose worth, if praises may go back again,
- Stood challenger on mount of all the age
- For her perfections:--but my revenge will come.
- King.
- Break not your sleeps for that:--you must not think
- That we are made of stuff so flat and dull
- That we can let our beard be shook with danger,
- And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more:
- I lov'd your father, and we love ourself;
- And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine,--
- [Enter a Messenger.]
- How now! What news?
- Mess.
- Letters, my lord, from Hamlet:
- This to your majesty; this to the queen.
- King.
- From Hamlet! Who brought them?
- Mess.
- Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not:
- They were given me by Claudio:--he receiv'd them
- Of him that brought them.
- King.
- Laertes, you shall hear them.
- Leave us.
- [Exit Messenger.]
- [Reads]'High and mighty,--You shall know I am set naked on your
- kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes:
- when I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the
- occasions of my sudden and more strange return. HAMLET.'
- What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
- Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?
- Laer.
- Know you the hand?
- King.
- 'Tis Hamlet's character:--'Naked!'--
- And in a postscript here, he says 'alone.'
- Can you advise me?
- Laer.
- I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come;
- It warms the very sickness in my heart
- That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,
- 'Thus didest thou.'
- King.
- If it be so, Laertes,--
- As how should it be so? how otherwise?--
- Will you be rul'd by me?
- Laer.
- Ay, my lord;
- So you will not o'errule me to a peace.
- King.
- To thine own peace. If he be now return'd--
- As checking at his voyage, and that he means
- No more to undertake it,--I will work him
- To exploit, now ripe in my device,
- Under the which he shall not choose but fall:
- And for his death no wind shall breathe;
- But even his mother shall uncharge the practice
- And call it accident.
- Laer.
- My lord, I will be rul'd;
- The rather if you could devise it so
- That I might be the organ.
- King.
- It falls right.
- You have been talk'd of since your travel much,
- And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality
- Wherein they say you shine: your sum of parts
- Did not together pluck such envy from him
- As did that one; and that, in my regard,
- Of the unworthiest siege.
- Laer.
- What part is that, my lord?
- King.
- A very riband in the cap of youth,
- Yet needful too; for youth no less becomes
- The light and careless livery that it wears
- Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
- Importing health and graveness.--Two months since,
- Here was a gentleman of Normandy,--
- I've seen myself, and serv'd against, the French,
- And they can well on horseback: but this gallant
- Had witchcraft in't: he grew unto his seat;
- And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
- As had he been incorps'd and demi-natur'd
- With the brave beast: so far he topp'd my thought
- That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,
- Come short of what he did.
- Laer.
- A Norman was't?
- King.
- A Norman.
- Laer.
- Upon my life, Lamond.
- King.
- The very same.
- Laer.
- I know him well: he is the brooch indeed
- And gem of all the nation.
- King.
- He made confession of you;
- And gave you such a masterly report
- For art and exercise in your defence,
- And for your rapier most especially,
- That he cried out, 'twould be a sight indeed
- If one could match you: the scrimers of their nation
- He swore, had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
- If you oppos'd them. Sir, this report of his
- Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy
- That he could nothing do but wish and beg
- Your sudden coming o'er, to play with him.
- Now, out of this,--
- Laer.
- What out of this, my lord?
- King.
- Laertes, was your father dear to you?
- Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
- A face without a heart?
- Laer.
- Why ask you this?
- King.
- Not that I think you did not love your father;
- But that I know love is begun by time,
- And that I see, in passages of proof,
- Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
- There lives within the very flame of love
- A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
- And nothing is at a like goodness still;
- For goodness, growing to a plurisy,
- Dies in his own too much: that we would do,
- We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes,
- And hath abatements and delays as many
- As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
- And then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh,
- That hurts by easing. But to the quick o' the ulcer:--
- Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake
- To show yourself your father's son in deed
- More than in words?
- Laer.
- To cut his throat i' the church.
- King.
- No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize;
- Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,
- Will you do this, keep close within your chamber.
- Hamlet return'd shall know you are come home:
- We'll put on those shall praise your excellence
- And set a double varnish on the fame
- The Frenchman gave you; bring you in fine together
- And wager on your heads: he, being remiss,
- Most generous, and free from all contriving,
- Will not peruse the foils; so that with ease,
- Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
- A sword unbated, and, in a pass of practice,
- Requite him for your father.
- Laer.
- I will do't:
- And for that purpose I'll anoint my sword.
- I bought an unction of a mountebank,
- So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
- Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
- Collected from all simples that have virtue
- Under the moon, can save the thing from death
- This is but scratch'd withal: I'll touch my point
- With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
- It may be death.
- King.
- Let's further think of this;
- Weigh what convenience both of time and means
- May fit us to our shape: if this should fail,
- And that our drift look through our bad performance.
- 'Twere better not assay'd: therefore this project
- Should have a back or second, that might hold
- If this did blast in proof. Soft! let me see:--
- We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings,--
- I ha't:
- When in your motion you are hot and dry,--
- As make your bouts more violent to that end,--
- And that he calls for drink, I'll have prepar'd him
- A chalice for the nonce; whereon but sipping,
- If he by chance escape your venom'd stuck,
- Our purpose may hold there.
- [Enter Queen.]
- How now, sweet queen!
- Queen.
- One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
- So fast they follow:--your sister's drown'd, Laertes.
- Laer.
- Drown'd! O, where?
- Queen.
- There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
- That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
- There with fantastic garlands did she come
- Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
- That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
- But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
- There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
- Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke;
- When down her weedy trophies and herself
- Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
- And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;
- Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes;
- As one incapable of her own distress,
- Or like a creature native and indu'd
- Unto that element: but long it could not be
- Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
- Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
- To muddy death.
- Laer.
- Alas, then she is drown'd?
- Queen.
- Drown'd, drown'd.
- Laer.
- Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
- And therefore I forbid my tears: but yet
- It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
- Let shame say what it will: when these are gone,
- The woman will be out.--Adieu, my lord:
- I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
- But that this folly douts it.
- [Exit.]
- King.
- Let's follow, Gertrude;
- How much I had to do to calm his rage!
- Now fear I this will give it start again;
- Therefore let's follow.
- [Exeunt.]
- ACT V.
- Scene I. A churchyard.
- [Enter two Clowns, with spades, &c.]
- 1 Clown.
- Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she wilfully
- seeks her own salvation?
- 2 Clown.
- I tell thee she is; and therefore make her grave straight: the
- crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial.
- 1 Clown.
- How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence?
- 2 Clown.
- Why, 'tis found so.
- 1 Clown.
- It must be se offendendo; it cannot be else. For here lies
- the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act: and an
- act hath three branches; it is to act, to do, and to perform:
- argal, she drowned herself wittingly.
- 2 Clown.
- Nay, but hear you, goodman delver,--
- 1 Clown.
- Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here stands the
- man; good: if the man go to this water and drown himself, it is,
- will he, nill he, he goes,--mark you that: but if the water come
- to him and drown him, he drowns not himself; argal, he that is
- not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.
- 2 Clown.
- But is this law?
- 1 Clown.
- Ay, marry, is't--crowner's quest law.
- 2 Clown.
- Will you ha' the truth on't? If this had not been a
- gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o' Christian burial.
- 1 Clown.
- Why, there thou say'st: and the more pity that great folk
- should have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves
- more than their even Christian.--Come, my spade. There is no
- ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers: they
- hold up Adam's profession.
- 2 Clown.
- Was he a gentleman?
- 1 Clown.
- He was the first that ever bore arms.
- 2 Clown.
- Why, he had none.
- 1 Clown.
- What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture?
- The Scripture says Adam digg'd: could he dig without arms? I'll
- put another question to thee: if thou answerest me not to the
- purpose, confess thyself,--
- 2 Clown.
- Go to.
- 1 Clown.
- What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the
- shipwright, or the carpenter?
- 2 Clown.
- The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.
- 1 Clown.
- I like thy wit well, in good faith: the gallows does well;
- but how does it well? it does well to those that do ill: now,
- thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the
- church; argal, the gallows may do well to thee. To't again, come.
- 2 Clown.
- Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?
- 1 Clown.
- Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.
- 2 Clown.
- Marry, now I can tell.
- 1 Clown.
- To't.
- 2 Clown.
- Mass, I cannot tell.
- [Enter Hamlet and Horatio, at a distance.]
- 1 Clown.
- Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will
- not mend his pace with beating; and when you are asked this
- question next, say 'a grave-maker;' the houses he makes last
- till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan; fetch me a stoup of
- liquor.
- [Exit Second Clown.]
- [Digs and sings.]
- In youth when I did love, did love,
- Methought it was very sweet;
- To contract, O, the time for, ah, my behove,
- O, methought there was nothing meet.
- Ham.
- Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at
- grave-making?
- Hor.
- Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.
- Ham.
- 'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier
- sense.
- 1 Clown.
- [Sings.]
- But age, with his stealing steps,
- Hath claw'd me in his clutch,
- And hath shipp'd me into the land,
- As if I had never been such.
- [Throws up a skull.]
- Ham.
- That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the
- knave jowls it to the ground,as if 'twere Cain's jawbone, that
- did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician,
- which this ass now o'erreaches; one that would circumvent God,
- might it not?
- Hor.
- It might, my lord.
- Ham.
- Or of a courtier, which could say 'Good morrow, sweet lord!
- How dost thou, good lord?' This might be my lord such-a-one, that
- praised my lord such-a-one's horse when he meant to beg
- it,--might it not?
- Hor.
- Ay, my lord.
- Ham.
- Why, e'en so: and now my Lady Worm's; chapless, and knocked
- about the mazard with a sexton's spade: here's fine revolution,
- an we had the trick to see't. Did these bones cost no more the
- breeding but to play at loggets with 'em? mine ache to think
- on't.
- 1 Clown.
- [Sings.]
- A pickaxe and a spade, a spade,
- For and a shrouding sheet;
- O, a pit of clay for to be made
- For such a guest is meet.
- [Throws up another skull].
- Ham.
- There's another: why may not that be the skull of a lawyer?
- Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures,
- and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock
- him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him
- of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in's time a
- great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his
- fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of
- his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine
- pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him no more of
- his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth
- of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will
- scarcely lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no
- more, ha?
- Hor.
- Not a jot more, my lord.
- Ham.
- Is not parchment made of sheep-skins?
- Hor.
- Ay, my lord, And of calf-skins too.
- Ham.
- They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I
- will speak to this fellow.--Whose grave's this, sir?
- 1 Clown.
- Mine, sir.
- [Sings.]
- O, a pit of clay for to be made
- For such a guest is meet.
- Ham.
- I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in't.
- 1 Clown.
- You lie out on't, sir, and therefore 'tis not yours: for my part,
- I do not lie in't, yet it is mine.
- Ham.
- Thou dost lie in't, to be in't and say it is thine: 'tis for
- the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.
- 1 Clown.
- 'Tis a quick lie, sir; 't will away again from me to you.
- Ham.
- What man dost thou dig it for?
- 1 Clown.
- For no man, sir.
- Ham.
- What woman then?
- 1 Clown.
- For none neither.
- Ham.
- Who is to be buried in't?
- 1 Clown.
- One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she's dead.
- Ham.
- How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or
- equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, these three
- years I have taken note of it, the age is grown so picked that
- the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he
- galls his kibe.--How long hast thou been a grave-maker?
- 1 Clown.
- Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day that our
- last King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.
- Ham.
- How long is that since?
- 1 Clown.
- Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it was the
- very day that young Hamlet was born,--he that is mad, and sent
- into England.
- Ham.
- Ay, marry, why was be sent into England?
- 1 Clown.
- Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there;
- or, if he do not, it's no great matter there.
- Ham.
- Why?
- 1 Clown.
- 'Twill not he seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he.
- Ham.
- How came he mad?
- 1 Clown.
- Very strangely, they say.
- Ham.
- How strangely?
- 1 Clown.
- Faith, e'en with losing his wits.
- Ham.
- Upon what ground?
- 1 Clown.
- Why, here in Denmark: I have been sexton here, man and boy,
- thirty years.
- Ham.
- How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot?
- 1 Clown.
- Faith, if he be not rotten before he die,--as we have many
- pocky corses now-a-days that will scarce hold the laying in,--he
- will last you some eight year or nine year: a tanner will last
- you nine year.
- Ham.
- Why he more than another?
- 1 Clown.
- Why, sir, his hide is so tann'd with his trade that he will
- keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of
- your whoreson dead body. Here's a skull now; this skull hath lain
- in the earth three-and-twenty years.
- Ham.
- Whose was it?
- 1 Clown.
- A whoreson, mad fellow's it was: whose do you think it was?
- Ham.
- Nay, I know not.
- 1 Clown.
- A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! 'a pour'd a flagon of
- Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick's
- skull, the king's jester.
- Ham.
- This?
- 1 Clown.
- E'en that.
- Ham.
- Let me see. [Takes the skull.] Alas, poor Yorick!--I knew him,
- Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he
- hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred
- in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those
- lips that I have kiss'd I know not how oft. Where be your gibes
- now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that
- were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your
- own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now, get you to my lady's
- chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this
- favour she must come; make her laugh at that.--Pr'ythee, Horatio,
- tell me one thing.
- Hor.
- What's that, my lord?
- Ham.
- Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth?
- Hor.
- E'en so.
- Ham.
- And smelt so? Pah!
- [Throws down the skull.]
- Hor.
- E'en so, my lord.
- Ham.
- To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not
- imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it
- stopping a bung-hole?
- Hor.
- 'Twere to consider too curiously to consider so.
- Ham.
- No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty
- enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus: Alexander died,
- Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is
- earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he
- was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel?
- Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
- Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
- O, that that earth which kept the world in awe
- Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!
- But soft! but soft! aside!--Here comes the king.
- [Enter priests, &c, in procession; the corpse of Ophelia,
- Laertes, and Mourners following; King, Queen, their Trains, &c.]
- The queen, the courtiers: who is that they follow?
- And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken
- The corse they follow did with desperate hand
- Fordo it own life: 'twas of some estate.
- Couch we awhile and mark.
- [Retiring with Horatio.]
- Laer.
- What ceremony else?
- Ham.
- That is Laertes,
- A very noble youth: mark.
- Laer.
- What ceremony else?
- 1 Priest.
- Her obsequies have been as far enlarg'd
- As we have warranties: her death was doubtful;
- And, but that great command o'ersways the order,
- She should in ground unsanctified have lodg'd
- Till the last trumpet; for charitable prayers,
- Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her,
- Yet here she is allowed her virgin rites,
- Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home
- Of bell and burial.
- Laer.
- Must there no more be done?
- 1 Priest.
- No more be done;
- We should profane the service of the dead
- To sing a requiem and such rest to her
- As to peace-parted souls.
- Laer.
- Lay her i' the earth;--
- And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
- May violets spring!--I tell thee, churlish priest,
- A ministering angel shall my sister be
- When thou liest howling.
- Ham.
- What, the fair Ophelia?
- Queen.
- Sweets to the sweet: farewell.
- [Scattering flowers.]
- I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;
- I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
- And not have strew'd thy grave.
- Laer.
- O, treble woe
- Fall ten times treble on that cursed head
- Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense
- Depriv'd thee of!--Hold off the earth awhile,
- Till I have caught her once more in mine arms:
- [Leaps into the grave.]
- Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
- Till of this flat a mountain you have made,
- To o'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head
- Of blue Olympus.
- Ham.
- [Advancing.]
- What is he whose grief
- Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow
- Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand
- Like wonder-wounded hearers? this is I,
- Hamlet the Dane.
- [Leaps into the grave.]
- Laer.
- The devil take thy soul!
- [Grappling with him.]
- Ham.
- Thou pray'st not well.
- I pr'ythee, take thy fingers from my throat;
- For, though I am not splenetive and rash,
- Yet have I in me something dangerous,
- Which let thy wiseness fear: away thy hand!
- King.
- Pluck them asunder.
- Queen.
- Hamlet! Hamlet!
- All.
- Gentlemen!--
- Hor.
- Good my lord, be quiet.
- [The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave.]
- Ham.
- Why, I will fight with him upon this theme
- Until my eyelids will no longer wag.
- Queen.
- O my son, what theme?
- Ham.
- I lov'd Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
- Could not, with all their quantity of love,
- Make up my sum.--What wilt thou do for her?
- King.
- O, he is mad, Laertes.
- Queen.
- For love of God, forbear him!
- Ham.
- 'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do:
- Woul't weep? woul't fight? woul't fast? woul't tear thyself?
- Woul't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile?
- I'll do't.--Dost thou come here to whine?
- To outface me with leaping in her grave?
- Be buried quick with her, and so will I:
- And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
- Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
- Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
- Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
- I'll rant as well as thou.
- Queen.
- This is mere madness:
- And thus a while the fit will work on him;
- Anon, as patient as the female dove,
- When that her golden couplets are disclos'd,
- His silence will sit drooping.
- Ham.
- Hear you, sir;
- What is the reason that you use me thus?
- I lov'd you ever: but it is no matter;
- Let Hercules himself do what he may,
- The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.
- [Exit.]
- King.
- I pray thee, good Horatio, wait upon him.--
- [Exit Horatio.]
- [To Laertes]
- Strengthen your patience in our last night's speech;
- We'll put the matter to the present push.--
- Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.--
- This grave shall have a living monument:
- An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;
- Till then in patience our proceeding be.
- [Exeunt.]
- Scene II. A hall in the Castle.
- [Enter Hamlet and Horatio.]
- Ham.
- So much for this, sir: now let me see the other;
- You do remember all the circumstance?
- Hor.
- Remember it, my lord!
- Ham.
- Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
- That would not let me sleep: methought I lay
- Worse than the mutinies in the bilboes. Rashly,
- And prais'd be rashness for it,--let us know,
- Our indiscretion sometime serves us well,
- When our deep plots do fail; and that should teach us
- There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
- Rough-hew them how we will.
- Hor.
- That is most certain.
- Ham.
- Up from my cabin,
- My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark
- Grop'd I to find out them: had my desire;
- Finger'd their packet; and, in fine, withdrew
- To mine own room again: making so bold,
- My fears forgetting manners, to unseal
- Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio,
- O royal knavery! an exact command,--
- Larded with many several sorts of reasons,
- Importing Denmark's health, and England's too,
- With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life,--
- That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,
- No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
- My head should be struck off.
- Hor.
- Is't possible?
- Ham.
- Here's the commission: read it at more leisure.
- But wilt thou bear me how I did proceed?
- Hor.
- I beseech you.
- Ham.
- Being thus benetted round with villanies,--
- Or I could make a prologue to my brains,
- They had begun the play,--I sat me down;
- Devis'd a new commission; wrote it fair:
- I once did hold it, as our statists do,
- A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much
- How to forget that learning; but, sir, now
- It did me yeoman's service. Wilt thou know
- The effect of what I wrote?
- Hor.
- Ay, good my lord.
- Ham.
- An earnest conjuration from the king,--
- As England was his faithful tributary;
- As love between them like the palm might flourish;
- As peace should still her wheaten garland wear
- And stand a comma 'tween their amities;
- And many such-like as's of great charge,--
- That, on the view and know of these contents,
- Without debatement further, more or less,
- He should the bearers put to sudden death,
- Not shriving-time allow'd.
- Hor.
- How was this seal'd?
- Ham.
- Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.
- I had my father's signet in my purse,
- Which was the model of that Danish seal:
- Folded the writ up in the form of the other;
- Subscrib'd it: gave't the impression; plac'd it safely,
- The changeling never known. Now, the next day
- Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent
- Thou know'st already.
- Hor.
- So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to't.
- Ham.
- Why, man, they did make love to this employment;
- They are not near my conscience; their defeat
- Does by their own insinuation grow:
- 'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
- Between the pass and fell incensed points
- Of mighty opposites.
- Hor.
- Why, what a king is this!
- Ham.
- Does it not, thinks't thee, stand me now upon,--
- He that hath kill'd my king, and whor'd my mother;
- Popp'd in between the election and my hopes;
- Thrown out his angle for my proper life,
- And with such cozenage--is't not perfect conscience
- To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd
- To let this canker of our nature come
- In further evil?
- Hor.
- It must be shortly known to him from England
- What is the issue of the business there.
- Ham.
- It will be short: the interim is mine;
- And a man's life is no more than to say One.
- But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
- That to Laertes I forgot myself;
- For by the image of my cause I see
- The portraiture of his: I'll court his favours:
- But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me
- Into a towering passion.
- Hor.
- Peace; who comes here?
- [Enter Osric.]
- Osr.
- Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.
- Ham.
- I humbly thank you, sir. Dost know this water-fly?
- Hor.
- No, my good lord.
- Ham.
- Thy state is the more gracious; for 'tis a vice to know him. He
- hath much land, and fertile: let a beast be lord of beasts, and
- his crib shall stand at the king's mess; 'tis a chough; but, as I
- say, spacious in the possession of dirt.
- Osr.
- Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should
- impart a thing to you from his majesty.
- Ham.
- I will receive it with all diligence of spirit. Put your
- bonnet to his right use; 'tis for the head.
- Osr.
- I thank your lordship, t'is very hot.
- Ham.
- No, believe me, 'tis very cold; the wind is northerly.
- Osr.
- It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.
- Ham.
- Methinks it is very sultry and hot for my complexion.
- Osr.
- Exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry,--as 'twere--I cannot
- tell how. But, my lord, his majesty bade me signify to you that
- he has laid a great wager on your head. Sir, this is the
- matter,--
- Ham.
- I beseech you, remember,--
- [Hamlet moves him to put on his hat.]
- Osr.
- Nay, in good faith; for mine ease, in good faith. Sir, here
- is newly come to court Laertes; believe me, an absolute
- gentleman, full of most excellent differences, of very soft
- society and great showing: indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he
- is the card or calendar of gentry; for you shall find in him the
- continent of what part a gentleman would see.
- Ham.
- Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you;--though, I
- know, to divide him inventorially would dizzy the arithmetic of
- memory, and yet but yaw neither, in respect of his quick sail.
- But, in the verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great
- article, and his infusion of such dearth and rareness as, to make
- true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror, and who else
- would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more.
- Osr.
- Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him.
- Ham.
- The concernancy, sir? why do we wrap the gentleman in our more
- rawer breath?
- Osr.
- Sir?
- Hor.
- Is't not possible to understand in another tongue? You will do't,
- sir, really.
- Ham.
- What imports the nomination of this gentleman?
- Osr.
- Of Laertes?
- Hor.
- His purse is empty already; all's golden words are spent.
- Ham.
- Of him, sir.
- Osr.
- I know, you are not ignorant,--
- Ham.
- I would you did, sir; yet, in faith, if you did, it would not
- much approve me.--Well, sir.
- Osr.
- You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is,--
- Ham.
- I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with him in
- excellence; but to know a man well were to know himself.
- Osr.
- I mean, sir, for his weapon; but in the imputation laid on
- him by them, in his meed he's unfellowed.
- Ham.
- What's his weapon?
- Osr.
- Rapier and dagger.
- Ham.
- That's two of his weapons:--but well.
- Osr.
- The king, sir, hath wager'd with him six Barbary horses:
- against the which he has imponed, as I take it, six French
- rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdle, hangers, and
- so: three of the carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy,
- very responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and of
- very liberal conceit.
- Ham.
- What call you the carriages?
- Hor.
- I knew you must be edified by the margent ere you had done.
- Osr.
- The carriages, sir, are the hangers.
- Ham.
- The phrase would be more german to the matter if we could
- carry cannon by our sides. I would it might be hangers till then.
- But, on: six Barbary horses against six French swords, their
- assigns, and three liberal conceited carriages: that's the French
- bet against the Danish: why is this all imponed, as you call it?
- Osr.
- The king, sir, hath laid that, in a dozen passes between
- your and him, he shall not exceed you three hits: he hath
- laid on twelve for nine; and it would come to immediate trial
- if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer.
- Ham.
- How if I answer no?
- Osr.
- I mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in trial.
- Ham.
- Sir, I will walk here in the hall: if it please his majesty,
- it is the breathing time of day with me: let the foils be
- brought, the gentleman willing, and the king hold his purpose,
- I will win for him if I can; if not, I will gain nothing but my
- shame and the odd hits.
- Osr.
- Shall I re-deliver you e'en so?
- Ham.
- To this effect, sir; after what flourish your nature will.
- Osr.
- I commend my duty to your lordship.
- Ham.
- Yours, yours.
- [Exit Osric.]
- He does well to commend it himself; there are no tongues else
- for's turn.
- Hor.
- This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.
- Ham.
- He did comply with his dug before he suck'd it. Thus has he,--and
- many more of the same bevy that I know the drossy age dotes on,--
- only got the tune of the time and outward habit of encounter;
- a kind of yesty collection, which carries them through and
- through the most fanned and winnowed opinions; and do but blow
- them to their trial, the bubbles are out,
- [Enter a Lord.]
- Lord.
- My lord, his majesty commended him to you by young Osric,
- who brings back to him that you attend him in the hall: he sends
- to know if your pleasure hold to play with Laertes, or that you
- will take longer time.
- Ham.
- I am constant to my purposes; they follow the king's pleasure:
- if his fitness speaks, mine is ready; now or whensoever, provided
- I be so able as now.
- Lord.
- The King and Queen and all are coming down.
- Ham.
- In happy time.
- Lord.
- The queen desires you to use some gentle entertainment to
- Laertes before you fall to play.
- Ham.
- She well instructs me.
- [Exit Lord.]
- Hor.
- You will lose this wager, my lord.
- Ham.
- I do not think so; since he went into France I have been in
- continual practice: I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not
- think how ill all's here about my heart: but it is no matter.
- Hor.
- Nay, good my lord,--
- Ham.
- It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as
- would perhaps trouble a woman.
- Hor.
- If your mind dislike anything, obey it: I will forestall their
- repair hither, and say you are not fit.
- Ham.
- Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special providence in
- the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be
- not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come:
- the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves,
- what is't to leave betimes?
- [Enter King, Queen, Laertes, Lords, Osric, and Attendants with
- foils &c.]
- King.
- Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.
- [The King puts Laertes' hand into Hamlet's.]
- Ham.
- Give me your pardon, sir: I have done you wrong:
- But pardon't, as you are a gentleman.
- This presence knows, and you must needs have heard,
- How I am punish'd with sore distraction.
- What I have done
- That might your nature, honour, and exception
- Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
- Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet:
- If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,
- And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes,
- Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
- Who does it, then? His madness: if't be so,
- Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd;
- His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy.
- Sir, in this audience,
- Let my disclaiming from a purpos'd evil
- Free me so far in your most generous thoughts
- That I have shot my arrow o'er the house
- And hurt my brother.
- Laer.
- I am satisfied in nature,
- Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most
- To my revenge. But in my terms of honour
- I stand aloof; and will no reconcilement
- Till by some elder masters of known honour
- I have a voice and precedent of peace
- To keep my name ungor'd. But till that time
- I do receive your offer'd love like love,
- And will not wrong it.
- Ham.
- I embrace it freely;
- And will this brother's wager frankly play.--
- Give us the foils; come on.
- Laer.
- Come, one for me.
- Ham.
- I'll be your foil, Laertes; in mine ignorance
- Your skill shall, like a star in the darkest night,
- Stick fiery off indeed.
- Laer.
- You mock me, sir.
- Ham.
- No, by this hand.
- King.
- Give them the foils, young Osric. Cousin Hamlet,
- You know the wager?
- Ham.
- Very well, my lord;
- Your grace has laid the odds o' the weaker side.
- King.
- I do not fear it; I have seen you both;
- But since he's better'd, we have therefore odds.
- Laer.
- This is too heavy, let me see another.
- Ham.
- This likes me well. These foils have all a length?
- [They prepare to play.]
- Osr.
- Ay, my good lord.
- King.
- Set me the stoups of wine upon that table,--
- If Hamlet give the first or second hit,
- Or quit in answer of the third exchange,
- Let all the battlements their ordnance fire;
- The king shall drink to Hamlet's better breath;
- And in the cup an union shall he throw,
- Richer than that which four successive kings
- In Denmark's crown have worn. Give me the cups;
- And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
- The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
- The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth,
- 'Now the king drinks to Hamlet.'--Come, begin:--
- And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.
- Ham.
- Come on, sir.
- Laer.
- Come, my lord.
- [They play.]
- Ham.
- One.
- Laer.
- No.
- Ham.
- Judgment!
- Osr.
- A hit, a very palpable hit.
- Laer.
- Well;--again.
- King.
- Stay, give me drink.--Hamlet, this pearl is thine;
- Here's to thy health.--
- [Trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within.]
- Give him the cup.
- Ham.
- I'll play this bout first; set it by awhile.--
- Come.--Another hit; what say you?
- [They play.]
- Laer.
- A touch, a touch, I do confess.
- King.
- Our son shall win.
- Queen.
- He's fat, and scant of breath.--
- Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows:
- The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.
- Ham.
- Good madam!
- King.
- Gertrude, do not drink.
- Queen.
- I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me.
- King.
- [Aside.] It is the poison'd cup; it is too late.
- Ham.
- I dare not drink yet, madam; by-and-by.
- Queen.
- Come, let me wipe thy face.
- Laer.
- My lord, I'll hit him now.
- King.
- I do not think't.
- Laer.
- [Aside.] And yet 'tis almost 'gainst my conscience.
- Ham.
- Come, for the third, Laertes: you but dally;
- I pray you pass with your best violence:
- I am afeard you make a wanton of me.
- Laer.
- Say you so? come on.
- [They play.]
- Osr.
- Nothing, neither way.
- Laer.
- Have at you now!
- [Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling, they
- change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes.]
- King.
- Part them; they are incens'd.
- Ham.
- Nay, come again!
- [The Queen falls.]
- Osr.
- Look to the queen there, ho!
- Hor.
- They bleed on both sides.--How is it, my lord?
- Osr.
- How is't, Laertes?
- Laer.
- Why, as a woodcock to my own springe, Osric;
- I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery.
- Ham.
- How does the Queen?
- King.
- She swoons to see them bleed.
- Queen.
- No, no! the drink, the drink!--O my dear Hamlet!--
- The drink, the drink!--I am poison'd.
- [Dies.]
- Ham.
- O villany!--Ho! let the door be lock'd:
- Treachery! seek it out.
- [Laertes falls.]
- Laer.
- It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art slain;
- No medicine in the world can do thee good;
- In thee there is not half an hour of life;
- The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
- Unbated and envenom'd: the foul practice
- Hath turn'd itself on me; lo, here I lie,
- Never to rise again: thy mother's poison'd:
- I can no more:--the king, the king's to blame.
- Ham.
- The point envenom'd too!--
- Then, venom, to thy work.
- [Stabs the King.]
- Osric and Lords.
- Treason! treason!
- King.
- O, yet defend me, friends! I am but hurt.
- Ham.
- Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
- Drink off this potion.--Is thy union here?
- Follow my mother.
- [King dies.]
- Laer.
- He is justly serv'd;
- It is a poison temper'd by himself.--
- Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet:
- Mine and my father's death come not upon thee,
- Nor thine on me!
- [Dies.]
- Ham.
- Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.--
- I am dead, Horatio.--Wretched queen, adieu!--
- You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
- That are but mutes or audience to this act,
- Had I but time,--as this fell sergeant, death,
- Is strict in his arrest,--O, I could tell you,--
- But let it be.--Horatio, I am dead;
- Thou liv'st; report me and my cause aright
- To the unsatisfied.
- Hor.
- Never believe it:
- I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.--
- Here's yet some liquor left.
- Ham.
- As thou'rt a man,
- Give me the cup; let go; by heaven, I'll have't.--
- O good Horatio, what a wounded name,
- Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
- If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
- Absent thee from felicity awhile,
- And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
- To tell my story.--
- [March afar off, and shot within.]
- What warlike noise is this?
- Osr.
- Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,
- To the ambassadors of England gives
- This warlike volley.
- Ham.
- O, I die, Horatio;
- The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit:
- I cannot live to hear the news from England;
- But I do prophesy the election lights
- On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
- So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
- Which have solicited.--the rest is silence.
- [Dies.]
- Hor.
- Now cracks a noble heart.--Good night, sweet prince,
- And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
- Why does the drum come hither?
- [March within.]
- [Enter Fortinbras, the English Ambassadors, and others.]
- Fort.
- Where is this sight?
- Hor.
- What is it you will see?
- If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.
- Fort.
- This quarry cries on havoc.--O proud death,
- What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
- That thou so many princes at a shot
- So bloodily hast struck?
- 1 Ambassador.
- The sight is dismal;
- And our affairs from England come too late:
- The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
- To tell him his commandment is fulfill'd
- That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead:
- Where should we have our thanks?
- Hor.
- Not from his mouth,
- Had it the ability of life to thank you:
- He never gave commandment for their death.
- But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
- You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
- Are here arriv'd, give order that these bodies
- High on a stage be placed to the view;
- And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
- How these things came about: so shall you hear
- Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts;
- Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;
- Of deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause;
- And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
- Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I
- Truly deliver.
- Fort.
- Let us haste to hear it,
- And call the noblest to the audience.
- For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune:
- I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
- Which now, to claim my vantage doth invite me.
- Hor.
- Of that I shall have also cause to speak,
- And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more:
- But let this same be presently perform'd,
- Even while men's minds are wild: lest more mischance
- On plots and errors happen.
- Fort.
- Let four captains
- Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage;
- For he was likely, had he been put on,
- To have prov'd most royally: and, for his passage,
- The soldiers' music and the rites of war
- Speak loudly for him.--
- Take up the bodies.--Such a sight as this
- Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
- Go, bid the soldiers shoot.
- [A dead march.]
- [Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after the which a peal of
- ordnance is shot off.]
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