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The Tragedy of
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
ACT
I
SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle.
FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him
BERNARDO
BERNARDO
Who's there?
FRANCISCO
Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold
yourself.
BERNARDO
Long live
the king!
FRANCISCO
Bernardo?
BERNARDO
He.
FRANCISCO
You come most
carefully upon your hour.
BERNARDO
'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed,
Francisco.
FRANCISCO
For this
relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.
BERNARDO
Have you had quiet
guard?
FRANCISCO
Not a mouse stirring.
BERNARDO
Well, good night.
If you do
meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The
rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
FRANCISCO
I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who's
there?
Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS
HORATIO
Friends to this
ground.
MARCELLUS
And liegemen to the Dane.
FRANCISCO
Give
you good night.
MARCELLUS
O, farewell, honest soldier:
Who hath relieved
you?
FRANCISCO
Bernardo has my place.
Give you good
night.
Exit
MARCELLUS
Holla! Bernardo!
BERNARDO
Say,
What,
is Horatio there?
HORATIO
A piece of him.
BERNARDO
Welcome, Horatio: welcome, good
Marcellus.
MARCELLUS
What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?
BERNARDO
I have
seen nothing.
MARCELLUS
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.
HORATIO
Tush, tush, 'twill
not appear.
BERNARDO
Sit down awhile;
And let us once again assail your ears,
That
are so fortified against
our story
What we have two nights seen.
HORATIO
Well, sit we down,
And let us hear
Bernardo speak of this.
BERNARDO
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,--
Enter Ghost
MARCELLUS
Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes
again!
BERNARDO
In
the same figure, like the king that's dead.
MARCELLUS
Thou art a scholar; speak to it,
Horatio.
BERNARDO
Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.
HORATIO
Most like:
it harrows me with fear and wonder.
BERNARDO
It
would be spoke to.
MARCELLUS
Question it, Horatio.
HORATIO
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!
MARCELLUS
It is offended.
BERNARDO
See, it
stalks away!
HORATIO
Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!
Exit
Ghost
MARCELLUS
'Tis gone, and
will not answer.
BERNARDO
How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:
Is not this
something more than fantasy?
What think you on't?
HORATIO
Before my God, I might not this
believe
Without the sensible
and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
MARCELLUS
Is it not like the
king?
HORATIO
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.
MARCELLUS
Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath
he gone by our watch.
HORATIO
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.
MARCELLUS
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?
HORATIO
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,
Dared 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 seized 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 covenant,
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.
BERNARDO
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.
HORATIO
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 climatures 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 grace to
me,
Speak to me:
Cock crows
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,
Speak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it,
Marcellus.
MARCELLUS
Shall I strike at it
with my partisan?
HORATIO
Do, if it will not stand.
BERNARDO
'Tis
here!
HORATIO
'Tis here!
MARCELLUS
'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.
BERNARDO
It was about to speak, when the cock crew.
HORATIO
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.
MARCELLUS
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 dares 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.
HORATIO
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?
MARCELLUS
Let's do't, I pray; and I this morning know
Where
we shall find him most conveniently.
Exeunt
SCENE II. A room of state in the castle.
Enter
KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN
GERTRUDE, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants
KING
CLAUDIUS
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,
The imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as 'twere with a defeated
joy,--
With an auspicious and a 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. For 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 the 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 delated articles allow.
Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.
CORNELIUS
VOLTIMAND
In that and all things will we show our duty.
KING CLAUDIUS
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 loose 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?
LAERTES
My
dread 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 CLAUDIUS
Have you
your father's leave? What says Polonius?
LORD POLONIUS
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 CLAUDIUS
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,--
HAMLET
[Aside] A little more than kin, and less than
kind.
KING CLAUDIUS
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
HAMLET
Not so, my
lord; I am too much i' the sun.
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
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.
HAMLET
Ay, madam, it is
common.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
If it be,
Why seems it so particular with
thee?
HAMLET
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 forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor
the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together
with all forms, moods, shapes 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
CLAUDIUS
'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 persever
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 GERTRUDE
Let not thy
mother lose her prayers, Hamlet:
I pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.
HAMLET
I
shall in all my best
obey you, madam.
KING CLAUDIUS
Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply:
Be as ourself in
Denmark. Madam, come;
This gentle and unforced 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 heavens all bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.
Exeunt all but
HAMLET
HAMLET
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! God!
How weary, stale, flat and
unprofitable,
Seem to
me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah 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 follow'd
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 my 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
HORATIO
Hail to your lordship!
HAMLET
I am glad to see you
well:
Horatio,--or I
do forget myself.
HORATIO
The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
HAMLET
Sir,
my good friend; I'll change that name with you:
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?
Marcellus?
MARCELLUS
My
good lord--
HAMLET
I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir.
But what, in faith, make you
from Wittenberg?
HORATIO
A truant disposition, good my lord.
HAMLET
I would not hear
your enemy say so,
Nor
shall you do mine 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.
HORATIO
My
lord, I came to see your father's funeral.
HAMLET
I pray thee, do not mock me,
fellow-student;
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
HORATIO
Indeed, my lord, it
follow'd hard upon.
HAMLET
Thrift,
thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked 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.
HORATIO
Where,
my lord?
HAMLET
In my mind's eye, Horatio.
HORATIO
I saw him once; he was a goodly
king.
HAMLET
He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like
again.
HORATIO
My
lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
HAMLET
Saw? who?
HORATIO
My lord, the king your
father.
HAMLET
The king my father!
HORATIO
Season your admiration for
awhile
With an attent ear,
till I may deliver,
Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
This marvel to
you.
HAMLET
For God's love, let me hear.
HORATIO
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,
distilled
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.
HAMLET
But where was this?
MARCELLUS
My lord, upon the platform
where we watch'd.
HAMLET
Did you not speak to it?
HORATIO
My lord, I did;
But
answer made it none:
yet once methought
It lifted up its 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.
HAMLET
'Tis
very strange.
HORATIO
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.
HAMLET
Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles
me.
Hold you the
watch to-night?
MARCELLUS BERNARDO
We do, my lord.
HAMLET
Arm'd, say
you?
MARCELLUS BERNARDO
Arm'd, my lord.
HAMLET
From top to toe?
MARCELLUS
BERNARDO
My lord, from head to
foot.
HAMLET
Then saw you not his face?
HORATIO
O, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver
up.
HAMLET
What, look'd he frowningly?
HORATIO
A countenance more in sorrow than in
anger.
HAMLET
Pale
or red?
HORATIO
Nay, very pale.
HAMLET
And fix'd his eyes upon
you?
HORATIO
Most constantly.
HAMLET
I would I had been
there.
HORATIO
It would have much amazed you.
HAMLET
Very
like, very like. Stay'd it long?
HORATIO
While one with moderate haste might tell a
hundred.
MARCELLUS BERNARDO
Longer, longer.
HORATIO
Not when I
saw't.
HAMLET
His beard was grizzled--no?
HORATIO
It
was, as I have seen it in his life,
A sable silver'd.
HAMLET
I will watch
to-night;
Perchance 'twill walk again.
HORATIO
I warrant it will.
HAMLET
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 you well:
Upon the
platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve,
I'll visit you.
All
Our duty to your
honour.
HAMLET
Your loves, as
mine to you: farewell.
Exeunt all but HAMLET
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' house.
Enter
LAERTES and OPHELIA
LAERTES
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.
OPHELIA
Do you doubt
that?
LAERTES
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.
OPHELIA
No more but so?
LAERTES
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 unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself; for on his choice depends
The
safety and health of this
whole state;
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
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 'scapes not
calumnious strokes:
The canker galls the infants of the spring,
Too oft before their buttons be
disclosed,
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.
OPHELIA
I shall the 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;
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose
path of dalliance treads,
And
recks not his own rede.
LAERTES
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.
LORD POLONIUS
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!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character.
Give thy thoughts
no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means
vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of
steel;
But do not dull thy
palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel,
but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy 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
of a 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
ownself 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!
LAERTES
Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
LORD
POLONIUS
The time invites
you; go; your servants tend.
LAERTES
Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well
What I have said
to you.
OPHELIA
'Tis in my memory lock'd,
And you yourself shall keep the key of
it.
LAERTES
Farewell.
Exit
LORD
POLONIUS
What is't, Ophelia, be hath said to you?
OPHELIA
So please you, something touching
the Lord Hamlet.
LORD POLONIUS
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
behoves my daughter and your honour.
What is between you? give me up the truth.
OPHELIA
He
hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.
LORD POLONIUS
Affection!
pooh! you speak like
a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call
them?
OPHELIA
I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
LORD POLONIUS
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,
Running it thus--you'll tender me a
fool.
OPHELIA
My
lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honourable fashion.
LORD POLONIUS
Ay, fashion you
may call it; go to, go to.
OPHELIA
And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With
almost all the holy
vows of heaven.
LORD POLONIUS
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 somewhat
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.
OPHELIA
I
shall obey, my lord.
Exeunt
SCENE IV. The platform.
Enter HAMLET, HORATIO, and
MARCELLUS
HAMLET
The
air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
HORATIO
It is a nipping and an eager
air.
HAMLET
What hour now?
HORATIO
I think it lacks of
twelve.
HAMLET
No, it is struck.
HORATIO
Indeed?
I heard it not: then it 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?
HAMLET
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.
HORATIO
Is it a
custom?
HAMLET
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 traduced 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
of a doubt
To his
own scandal.
HORATIO
Look, my lord, it comes!
Enter Ghost
HAMLET
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 comest 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 canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the
sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
Hath oped 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
HORATIO
It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did
desire
To you alone.
MARCELLUS
Look,
with what courteous action
It waves you to a more removed ground:
But do not go with
it.
HORATIO
No, by no means.
HAMLET
It will not speak; then I will follow
it.
HORATIO
Do not, my lord.
HAMLET
Why,
what should be the fear?
I do not set my life in 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.
HORATIO
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 fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar
beneath.
HAMLET
It waves me still.
Go
on; I'll follow thee.
MARCELLUS
You shall not go, my lord.
HAMLET
Hold off your
hands.
HORATIO
Be ruled; you shall not go.
HAMLET
My fate cries out,
And
makes each petty artery in
this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.
Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen.
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
HORATIO
He
waxes desperate with imagination.
MARCELLUS
Let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey
him.
HORATIO
Have after. To what issue will this come?
MARCELLUS
Something is rotten
in the state of Denmark.
HORATIO
Heaven
will direct it.
MARCELLUS
Nay, let's follow him.
Exeunt
SCENE V. Another part of the
platform.
Enter GHOST and HAMLET
HAMLET
Where wilt thou lead me? speak; I'll go no
further.
Ghost
Mark
me.
HAMLET
I will.
Ghost
My hour is almost come,
When I to sulphurous and
tormenting flames
Must render up myself.
HAMLET
Alas, poor ghost!
Ghost
Pity
me not, but lend thy serious
hearing
To what I shall unfold.
HAMLET
Speak; I am bound to hear.
Ghost
So
art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.
HAMLET
What?
Ghost
I am thy father's
spirit,
Doom'd for
a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes
done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged 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 porpentine:
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--
HAMLET
O God!
Ghost
Revenge
his foul and most unnatural murder.
HAMLET
Murder!
Ghost
Murder most foul, as in the
best it is;
But this most foul, strange and unnatural.
HAMLET
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 roots 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 abused: but know, thou noble
youth,
The serpent that did
sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown.
HAMLET
O my prophetic soul! My
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 moved,
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 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,
Unhousel'd, 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 pursuest 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 glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual
fire:
Adieu, adieu! Hamlet,
remember me.
Exit
HAMLET
O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?
And shall I
couple hell? O, fie! Hold, 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'm 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.
MARCELLUS HORATIO
[Within]
My lord, my lord,--
MARCELLUS
[Within] Lord Hamlet,--
HORATIO
[Within] Heaven secure
him!
HAMLET
So
be it!
HORATIO
[Within] Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!
HAMLET
Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come,
bird, come.
Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS
MARCELLUS
How is't, my noble
lord?
HORATIO
What news, my lord?
HAMLET
O,
wonderful!
HORATIO
Good my lord, tell it.
HAMLET
No; you'll reveal
it.
HORATIO
Not I, my lord, by heaven.
MARCELLUS
Nor I, my
lord.
HAMLET
How say you, then; would heart of
man once think it?
But you'll be secret?
HORATIO MARCELLUS
Ay, by heaven, my
lord.
HAMLET
There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he's an arrant
knave.
HORATIO
There needs no
ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this.
HAMLET
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 desire shall point you;
For every man has business and desire,
Such as it is; and for mine own
poor part,
Look you, I'll go pray.
HORATIO
These are but wild and whirling words, my
lord.
HAMLET
I'm
sorry they offend you, heartily;
Yes, 'faith heartily.
HORATIO
There's no offence, my
lord.
HAMLET
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.
HORATIO
What
is't, my lord? we will.
HAMLET
Never make known what you have seen to-night.
HORATIO
MARCELLUS
My lord, we will not.
HAMLET
Nay, but swear't.
HORATIO
In
faith,
My lord, not I.
MARCELLUS
Nor
I, my lord, in faith.
HAMLET
Upon my sword.
MARCELLUS
We have sworn, my lord,
already.
HAMLET
Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.
Ghost
[Beneath]
Swear.
HAMLET
Ah, ha, boy! say'st
thou so? art thou there,
truepenny?
Come on--you hear this fellow in the
cellarage--
Consent to swear.
HORATIO
Propose the oath, my lord.
HAMLET
Never
to speak of this that you have seen,
Swear
by my sword.
Ghost
[Beneath] Swear.
HAMLET
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.
HAMLET
Well said, old mole! canst work i' the
earth so fast?
A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends.
HORATIO
O day and night,
but this is wondrous strange!
HAMLET
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 headshake,
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 not to do,
So
grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.
Ghost
[Beneath]
Swear.
HAMLET
Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!
They swear
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' house.
Enter POLONIUS and REYNALDO
LORD POLONIUS
Give him this money
and these notes, Reynaldo.
REYNALDO
I
will, my lord.
LORD POLONIUS
You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo,
Before you
visit him, to make inquire
Of his behavior.
REYNALDO
My lord, I did intend it.
LORD
POLONIUS
Marry,
well said; very well said. Look you, sir,
Inquire 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?
REYNALDO
Ay, very well, my lord.
LORD
POLONIUS
'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.
REYNALDO
As
gaming, my lord.
LORD POLONIUS
Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling,
Drabbing:
you may go so far.
REYNALDO
My lord, that would dishonour him.
LORD POLONIUS
'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.
REYNALDO
But, my good lord,--
LORD POLONIUS
Wherefore should you do
this?
REYNALDO
Ay, my lord,
I would know
that.
LORD POLONIUS
Marry, sir, here's my drift;
And I believe, it is a fetch of
wit:
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 assured
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.
REYNALDO
Very good, my lord.
LORD
POLONIUS
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?
REYNALDO
At 'closes in the consequence,' at 'friend or so,'
and
'gentleman.'
LORD POLONIUS
At 'closes in the consequence,' ay, marry;
He closes 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 a' 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 windlasses 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?
REYNALDO
My lord, I have.
LORD POLONIUS
God be wi' you; fare you
well.
REYNALDO
Good my lord!
LORD
POLONIUS
Observe his inclination in yourself.
REYNALDO
I shall, my lord.
LORD
POLONIUS
And let him ply his music.
REYNALDO
Well, my lord.
LORD
POLONIUS
Farewell!
Exit REYNALDO
Enter
OPHELIA
How now, Ophelia! what's the matter?
OPHELIA
O, my lord, my lord, I have been so
affrighted!
LORD POLONIUS
With what, i' the name of God?
OPHELIA
My lord, as I was
sewing in my closet,
Lord
Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
No hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd,
Ungarter'd, and
down-gyved to his ancle;
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.
LORD
POLONIUS
Mad for thy love?
OPHELIA
My lord, I do not know;
But truly, I do fear
it.
LORD POLONIUS
What said
he?
OPHELIA
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 raised 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 helps,
And, to the last, bended their light on
me.
LORD POLONIUS
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?
OPHELIA
No, my good
lord, but, as you did command,
I did repel his fetters and denied
His access to me.
LORD
POLONIUS
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!
By heaven, it is 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 CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and
Attendants
KING CLAUDIUS
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 call it,
Sith 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 sith so
neighbour'd to his youth
and havior,
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 GERTRUDE
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.
ROSENCRANTZ
Both
your majesties
Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,
Put your dread pleasures more into
command
Than to entreaty.
GUILDENSTERN
But we both obey,
And here give up ourselves,
in the full bent
To
lay our service freely at your feet,
To be commanded.
KING CLAUDIUS
Thanks, Rosencrantz and
gentle Guildenstern.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
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.
GUILDENSTERN
Heavens make our presence and our practises
Pleasant and helpful to
him!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Ay,
amen!
Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and some Attendants
Enter POLONIUS
LORD
POLONIUS
The ambassadors from Norway, my good lord,
Are joyfully return'd.
KING
CLAUDIUS
Thou still hast been the
father of good news.
LORD POLONIUS
Have I, my lord? I assure 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 used to do, that I have found
The very cause of Hamlet's
lunacy.
KING CLAUDIUS
O, speak of that; that do I long to hear.
LORD POLONIUS
Give
first admittance to the
ambassadors;
My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.
KING CLAUDIUS
Thyself do grace
to them, and bring them in.
Exit POLONIUS
He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found
The
head and source of
all your son's distemper.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
I doubt it is no other but the main;
His father's
death, and our o'erhasty marriage.
KING CLAUDIUS
Well, we shall sift him.
Re-enter
POLONIUS, with VOLTIMAND and
CORNELIUS
Welcome, my good friends!
Say, Voltimand, what from our brother
Norway?
VOLTIMAND
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 grieved,
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 the 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,
Giving 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 CLAUDIUS
It likes us well;
And
at our more consider'd
time well 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
LORD
POLONIUS
This business is well ended.
My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty
should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night 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 GERTRUDE
More matter, with less art.
LORD POLONIUS
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 while 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 GERTRUDE
Came
this from Hamlet to her?
LORD POLONIUS
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 shown me,
And more above, hath his
solicitings,
As they fell out by time, by means and place,
All given to mine ear.
KING
CLAUDIUS
But how hath she
Received
his love?
LORD POLONIUS
What do you think of me?
KING CLAUDIUS
As of a man faithful
and honourable.
LORD POLONIUS
I would fain prove so. But what might you think,
When I had
seen this hot love on
the wing--
As I perceived 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
star;
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 mourn
for.
KING CLAUDIUS
Do
you think 'tis this?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
It may be, very likely.
LORD POLONIUS
Hath there
been such a time--I'd fain know that--
That I have positively said 'Tis so,'
When it proved
otherwise?
KING CLAUDIUS
Not
that I know.
LORD POLONIUS
[Pointing to his head and shoulder]
Take this from this, if this
be otherwise:
If circumstances lead me, I will find
Where truth is hid, though it were hid
indeed
Within the
centre.
KING CLAUDIUS
How may we try it further?
LORD POLONIUS
You know, sometimes
he walks four hours together
Here in the lobby.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
So he does
indeed.
LORD POLONIUS
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 be not from his reason fall'n thereon,
Let me be no assistant for a
state,
But keep a farm
and carters.
KING CLAUDIUS
We will try it.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
But, look, where sadly the
poor wretch comes reading.
LORD POLONIUS
Away, I do beseech you, both away:
I'll board him
presently.
Exeunt
KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, and Attendants
Enter HAMLET, reading
O, give me leave:
How
does my good Lord Hamlet?
HAMLET
Well, God-a-mercy.
LORD POLONIUS
Do you know me, my
lord?
HAMLET
Excellent
well; you are a fishmonger.
LORD POLONIUS
Not I, my lord.
HAMLET
Then I would you
were so honest a man.
LORD POLONIUS
Honest, my lord!
HAMLET
Ay, sir; to be honest,
as this world goes, is
to be
one man picked out of ten thousand.
LORD POLONIUS
That's very true, my
lord.
HAMLET
For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a
god kissing carrion,--Have
you a daughter?
LORD POLONIUS
I
have, my lord.
HAMLET
Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a
blessing: but not as
your daughter may conceive.
Friend, look to 't.
LORD POLONIUS
[Aside] How say you by that?
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?
HAMLET
Words,
words, words.
LORD POLONIUS
What is the matter, my lord?
HAMLET
Between
who?
LORD POLONIUS
I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
HAMLET
Slanders, sir:
for the satirical rogue 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
yourself, sir,
should be old as I am, if like a crab
you could go backward.
LORD POLONIUS
[Aside] Though
this be madness, yet there
is method
in 't. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
HAMLET
Into my grave.
LORD
POLONIUS
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.
HAMLET
You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will
more
willingly part withal: except my life, except
my life, except my life.
LORD POLONIUS
Fare
you well, my lord.
HAMLET
These
tedious old fools!
Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
LORD POLONIUS
You go to seek the Lord
Hamlet; there he is.
ROSENCRANTZ
[To POLONIUS] God save you, sir!
Exit
POLONIUS
GUILDENSTERN
My
honoured lord!
ROSENCRANTZ
My most dear lord!
HAMLET
My excellent good friends! How
dost thou,
Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?
ROSENCRANTZ
As the
indifferent children of
the earth.
GUILDENSTERN
Happy, in that we are not over-happy;
On fortune's cap we are not
the very button.
HAMLET
Nor the soles of her shoe?
ROSENCRANTZ
Neither, my
lord.
HAMLET
Then
you live about her waist, or in the middle of
her favours?
GUILDENSTERN
'Faith, her
privates we.
HAMLET
In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she
is a strumpet. What's
the news?
ROSENCRANTZ
None,
my lord, but that the world's grown honest.
HAMLET
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?
GUILDENSTERN
Prison, my lord!
HAMLET
Denmark's a
prison.
ROSENCRANTZ
Then is the world one.
HAMLET
A goodly one; in which there are
many confines,
wards
and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.
ROSENCRANTZ
We think not so, my
lord.
HAMLET
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.
ROSENCRANTZ
Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too
narrow for your
mind.
HAMLET
O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite
space, were it not that I
have
bad dreams.
GUILDENSTERN
Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very
substance of the
ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
HAMLET
A dream itself is but a
shadow.
ROSENCRANTZ
Truly, and
I hold ambition of so airy and light a
quality that it is but a shadow's
shadow.
HAMLET
Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and
outstretched heroes the
beggars' shadows. Shall we
to the court? for,
by my fay, I cannot reason.
ROSENCRANTZ GUILDENSTERN
We'll wait upon you.
HAMLET
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?
ROSENCRANTZ
To
visit you, my lord; no other occasion.
HAMLET
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.
GUILDENSTERN
What should we
say, my lord?
HAMLET
Why, any thing, 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.
ROSENCRANTZ
To what end, my lord?
HAMLET
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?
ROSENCRANTZ
[Aside to GUILDENSTERN] What say
you?
HAMLET
[Aside] Nay, then,
I have an eye of you.--If you
love me, hold not off.
GUILDENSTERN
My lord, we were sent
for.
HAMLET
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 a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! 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.
ROSENCRANTZ
My lord,
there was no such stuff in
my thoughts.
HAMLET
Why did you laugh then, when I said 'man delights not
me'?
ROSENCRANTZ
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.
HAMLET
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 humourous man shall end his part
in peace; the clown shall
make those laugh whose
lungs are tickled o' the sere; and the lady shall
say her mind freely, or
the blank verse shall
halt
for't. What players are they?
ROSENCRANTZ
Even those you were wont to take delight in,
the
tragedians of the city.
HAMLET
How chances it they travel? their residence,
both
in reputation and
profit, was better both ways.
ROSENCRANTZ
I think their inhibition comes by the means of
the
late innovation.
HAMLET
Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was
in
the city? are they so followed?
ROSENCRANTZ
No,
indeed, are they not.
HAMLET
How comes it? do they grow rusty?
ROSENCRANTZ
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.
HAMLET
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?
ROSENCRANTZ
'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 a while, no money bid
for argument, unless the poet and the
player went to
cuffs in the question.
HAMLET
Is't possible?
GUILDENSTERN
O,
there has been much throwing
about of brains.
HAMLET
Do the boys carry it away?
ROSENCRANTZ
Ay, that they do, my
lord; Hercules and his load too.
HAMLET
It is not very strange; for mine uncle is king
of
Denmark, and those that
would make mows at him while
my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, an
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
GUILDENSTERN
There are the players.
HAMLET
Gentlemen, you are
welcome to Elsinore. Your hands,
come then: 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.
GUILDENSTERN
In
what, my dear lord?
HAMLET
I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is
southerly I know
a hawk from a handsaw.
Enter POLONIUS
LORD POLONIUS
Well be with you,
gentlemen!
HAMLET
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.
ROSENCRANTZ
Happily he's the second time come to them; for they
say
an old man is twice a
child.
HAMLET
I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players;
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 CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA,
ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN
KING CLAUDIUS
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?
ROSENCRANTZ
He does confess he feels himself distracted;
But from what cause he
will by no means speak.
GUILDENSTERN
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 GERTRUDE
Did he receive you
well?
ROSENCRANTZ
Most
like a gentleman.
GUILDENSTERN
But with much forcing of his
disposition.
ROSENCRANTZ
Niggard of question; but, of our demands,
Most free in his
reply.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Did you assay him?
To
any pastime?
ROSENCRANTZ
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.
LORD POLONIUS
'Tis most
true:
And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties
To hear and see the matter.
KING
CLAUDIUS
With all
my heart; and it doth much content me
To hear him so inclined.
Good gentlemen, give him a further
edge,
And drive his purpose on to these delights.
ROSENCRANTZ
We shall, my
lord.
Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and
GUILDENSTERN
KING CLAUDIUS
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 behaved,
If 't be the affliction of his love or no
That thus he suffers
for.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
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.
OPHELIA
Madam,
I wish it may.
Exit QUEEN GERTRUDE
LORD POLONIUS
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 proved--that with devotion's visage
And
pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
KING CLAUDIUS
[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
burthen!
LORD POLONIUS
I
hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord.
Exeunt KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS
Enter
HAMLET
HAMLET
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 heart-ache 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 despised
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 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.
OPHELIA
Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a
day?
HAMLET
I humbly thank you; well,
well, well.
OPHELIA
My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to
re-deliver;
I pray you, now receive them.
HAMLET
No, not I;
I never gave you
aught.
OPHELIA
My
honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
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.
HAMLET
Ha, ha! are you honest?
OPHELIA
My
lord?
HAMLET
Are you fair?
OPHELIA
What means your
lordship?
HAMLET
That if you be honest and
fair, your honesty should
admit no discourse to your beauty.
OPHELIA
Could beauty, my lord,
have better commerce than
with honesty?
HAMLET
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.
OPHELIA
Indeed, my lord,
you made me believe so.
HAMLET
You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
so
inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of
it: I loved you not.
OPHELIA
I was the more
deceived.
HAMLET
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?
OPHELIA
At home, my
lord.
HAMLET
Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
fool no where but in's
own house. Farewell.
OPHELIA
O,
help him, you sweet heavens!
HAMLET
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.
OPHELIA
O heavenly powers, restore
him!
HAMLET
I
have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God
has given you one face, and you make
yourselves
another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
nick-name 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
OPHELIA
O,
what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue,
sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of
form,
The observed 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 CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS
KING CLAUDIUS
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?
LORD POLONIUS
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 placed, 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 CLAUDIUS
It shall be so:
Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd
go.
Exeunt
SCENE II. A hall in the castle.
Enter HAMLET and
Players
HAMLET
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,
the 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 dumbshows and noise: I would have such
a fellow
whipped for o'erdoing
Termagant; it
out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.
First Player
I warrant your
honour.
HAMLET
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 o'erstep not
the modesty of nature: for any thing 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 feature,
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.
First Player
I hope we have reformed that indifferently with
us,
sir.
HAMLET
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 mean time, 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! I will the king hear this piece of
work?
LORD POLONIUS
And
the queen too, and that presently.
HAMLET
Bid the players make haste.
Exit
POLONIUS
Will you two help to hasten them?
ROSENCRANTZ GUILDENSTERN
We will, my
lord.
Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET
What
ho! Horatio!
Enter HORATIO
HORATIO
Here, sweet lord, at your
service.
HAMLET
Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
As e'er my conversation coped
withal.
HORATIO
O, my dear lord,--
HAMLET
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 blest 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 prithee, when thou seest that act
afoot,
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.
HORATIO
Well, my lord:
If he steal aught the whilst this play is
playing,
And 'scape detecting,
I will pay the theft.
HAMLET
They are coming to the play; I must be idle:
Get you a
place.
Danish march. A flourish. Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ,
GUILDENSTERN, and others
KING
CLAUDIUS
How fares our cousin Hamlet?
HAMLET
Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish:
I eat
the air, promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.
KING CLAUDIUS
I have nothing
with this answer, Hamlet;
these words
are not mine.
HAMLET
No, nor mine now.
To POLONIUS
My lord, you
played once i' the university, you say?
LORD POLONIUS
That did I, my lord; and was accounted a
good actor.
HAMLET
What
did you enact?
LORD POLONIUS
I did enact Julius Caesar: I was killed i' the
Capitol; Brutus
killed me.
HAMLET
It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf
there. Be the
players ready?
ROSENCRANTZ
Ay,
my lord; they stay upon your patience.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by
me.
HAMLET
No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.
LORD POLONIUS
[To KING
CLAUDIUS] O, ho! do you mark that?
HAMLET
Lady,
shall I lie in your lap?
Lying down at OPHELIA's feet
OPHELIA
No, my
lord.
HAMLET
I mean, my head upon your lap?
OPHELIA
Ay, my
lord.
HAMLET
Do you think I meant country matters?
OPHELIA
I
think nothing, my lord.
HAMLET
That's a fair thought to lie between maids'
legs.
OPHELIA
What is, my lord?
HAMLET
Nothing.
OPHELIA
You are merry,
my lord.
HAMLET
Who, I?
OPHELIA
Ay,
my lord.
HAMLET
O God, 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 these two
hours.
OPHELIA
Nay, 'tis twice two months,
my lord.
HAMLET
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.'
Hautboys play. 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, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The
Queen returns; finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The Poisoner, with some two or three Mutes,
comes in again, seeming
to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts: she seems loath and
unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love
Exeunt
OPHELIA
What means this, my
lord?
HAMLET
Marry,
this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.
OPHELIA
Belike this show imports the argument of the
play.
Enter Prologue
HAMLET
We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot
keep
counsel; they'll tell
all.
OPHELIA
Will he tell us what this show meant?
HAMLET
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.
OPHELIA
You are naught, you
are naught: I'll mark the play.
Prologue
For us, and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your
clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently.
Exit
HAMLET
Is this a prologue, or the posy
of a ring?
OPHELIA
'Tis
brief, my lord.
HAMLET
As woman's love.
Enter two Players, King and Queen
Player
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.
Player 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 sized, my fear is so:
Where love is great, the
littlest doubts are fear;
Where
little fears grow great, great love grows there.
Player 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,
beloved; and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou--
Player 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.
HAMLET
[Aside] Wormwood, wormwood.
Player 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.
Player 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 advanced 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.
Player 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!
HAMLET
If
she should break it now!
Player King
'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile;
My
spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.
Sleeps
Player
Queen
Sleep rock thy
brain,
And never come mischance between us twain!
Exit
HAMLET
Madam, how like you
this play?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
The lady protests too much, methinks.
HAMLET
O, but she'll
keep her word.
KING
CLAUDIUS
Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in 't?
HAMLET
No, no, they do but
jest, poison in jest; no offence
i' the world.
KING CLAUDIUS
What do you call the
play?
HAMLET
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 galled jade wince, our
withers are
unwrung.
Enter LUCIANUS
This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.
OPHELIA
You are as
good as a chorus, my lord.
HAMLET
I
could interpret between you and your love, if I
could see the puppets dallying.
OPHELIA
You
are keen, my lord, you are keen.
HAMLET
It would cost you a groaning to take off my
edge.
OPHELIA
Still
better, and worse.
HAMLET
So you must take your husbands. Begin, murderer;
pox, leave thy
damnable faces, and begin. Come:
'the croaking raven doth bellow for
revenge.'
LUCIANUS
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
HAMLET
He
poisons him i' the garden for's estate. His
name's Gonzago: the story is extant, and writ
in
choice Italian: you shall see
anon how the murderer
gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
OPHELIA
The king
rises.
HAMLET
What, frighted with false fire!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
How fares my
lord?
LORD POLONIUS
Give o'er the
play.
KING CLAUDIUS
Give me some light: away!
All
Lights, lights,
lights!
Exeunt all but HAMLET and HORATIO
HAMLET
Why, let the stricken 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?
HORATIO
Half a share.
HAMLET
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.
HORATIO
You
might have rhymed.
HAMLET
O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a
thousand pound.
Didst perceive?
HORATIO
Very well, my lord.
HAMLET
Upon the talk of the
poisoning?
HORATIO
I
did very well note him.
HAMLET
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!
Re-enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
GUILDENSTERN
Good
my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.
HAMLET
Sir, a whole history.
GUILDENSTERN
The
king, sir,--
HAMLET
Ay, sir, what of him?
GUILDENSTERN
Is in his retirement
marvellous distempered.
HAMLET
With
drink, sir?
GUILDENSTERN
No, my lord, rather with choler.
HAMLET
Your wisdom should
show itself more richer to
signify this to his doctor; for, for me to put him
to his purgation
would perhaps plunge him
into far
more choler.
GUILDENSTERN
Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame
and
start not so wildly from my affair.
HAMLET
I am tame, sir:
pronounce.
GUILDENSTERN
The queen, your
mother, in most great affliction of
spirit, hath sent me to you.
HAMLET
You are
welcome.
GUILDENSTERN
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.
HAMLET
Sir, I cannot.
GUILDENSTERN
What, my
lord?
HAMLET
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,--
ROSENCRANTZ
Then thus she says;
your behavior hath struck her
into amazement and admiration.
HAMLET
O wonderful son, that
can so astonish a mother! But
is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's
admiration?
Impart.
ROSENCRANTZ
She
desires to speak with you in her closet, ere you
go to bed.
HAMLET
We shall obey, were she
ten times our mother. Have
you any further trade with us?
ROSENCRANTZ
My lord, you once did
love me.
HAMLET
So
I do still, by these pickers and stealers.
ROSENCRANTZ
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.
HAMLET
Sir,
I lack advancement.
ROSENCRANTZ
How can that be, when you have the voice of the
king
himself for your succession in Denmark?
HAMLET
Ay, but sir, 'While the grass
grows,'--the proverb
is something musty.
Re-enter
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?
GUILDENSTERN
O, my
lord, if my duty be too
bold, my love is too
unmannerly.
HAMLET
I do not well understand that. Will you play
upon
this pipe?
GUILDENSTERN
My lord, I cannot.
HAMLET
I pray
you.
GUILDENSTERN
Believe
me, I cannot.
HAMLET
I do beseech you.
GUILDENSTERN
I know no touch of it, my
lord.
HAMLET
'Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with
your lingers and thumb, give
it breath with your
mouth,
and it will discourse most eloquent music.
Look you, these are the stops.
GUILDENSTERN
But
these cannot I command to any utterance of
harmony; I have not the skill.
HAMLET
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, yet you
cannot
play upon me.
Enter
POLONIUS
God bless you, sir!
LORD POLONIUS
My lord, the queen would speak with you,
and
presently.
HAMLET
Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a
camel?
LORD POLONIUS
By the mass,
and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
HAMLET
Methinks it is like a weasel.
LORD POLONIUS
It
is backed like a weasel.
HAMLET
Or like a whale?
LORD POLONIUS
Very like a
whale.
HAMLET
Then
I will come to my mother by and by. They fool
me to the top of my bent. I will come by and
by.
LORD POLONIUS
I will say so.
HAMLET
By and by is easily said.
Exit
POLONIUS
Leave me, friends.
Exeunt
all but HAMLET
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 soever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my
soul, consent!
Exit
SCENE III. A room in the castle.
Enter KING CLAUDIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and
GUILDENSTERN
KING
CLAUDIUS
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 dangerous as doth hourly grow
Out of his
lunacies.
GUILDENSTERN
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.
ROSENCRANTZ
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
mortised 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 CLAUDIUS
Arm
you, I pray you, to
this speedy voyage;
For we will fetters put upon this fear,
Which now goes too
free-footed.
ROSENCRANTZ GUILDENSTERN
We will haste us.
Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and
GUILDENSTERN
Enter POLONIUS
LORD POLONIUS
My
lord, he's going to his mother's closet:
Behind the arras I'll convey myself,
To hear the process;
and 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
CLAUDIUS
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 two-fold 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 can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that,
struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart
with strings of steel,
Be
soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well.
Retires and kneels
Enter
HAMLET
HAMLET
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 revenged.
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 revenged,
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
KING CLAUDIUS
[Rising] My words fly up, my thoughts remain
below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
Exit
SCENE IV. The Queen's
closet.
Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE
and POLONIUS
LORD POLONIUS
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 sconce
me even here.
Pray you, be round with him.
HAMLET
[Within] Mother, mother,
mother!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
I'll warrant you,
Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him
coming.
POLONIUS hides behind the arras
Enter
HAMLET
HAMLET
Now, mother, what's the matter?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Hamlet, thou hast thy
father much offended.
HAMLET
Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
Come, come, you answer
with an idle tongue.
HAMLET
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
Why, how now, Hamlet!
HAMLET
What's the matter now?
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
Have you forgot me?
HAMLET
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 GERTRUDE
Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can
speak.
HAMLET
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 GERTRUDE
What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help,
ho!
LORD POLONIUS
[Behind]
What, ho! help, help, help!
HAMLET
[Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
Makes
a pass through the arras
LORD POLONIUS
[Behind] O, I am slain!
Falls and dies
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
O
me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not:
Is it the king?
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
HAMLET
A bloody deed! almost as bad, good
mother,
As kill a king, and
marry with his brother.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
As kill a king!
HAMLET
Ay, lady, 'twas my
word.
Lifts up the array and discovers POLONIUS
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool,
farewell!
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 brass'd it so
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against
me?
HAMLET
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 GERTRUDE
Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the
index?
HAMLET
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 mildew'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 ecstasy was ne'er
so thrall'd
But it reserved 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
GERTRUDE
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.
HAMLET
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 GERTRUDE
O, speak to me no more;
These
words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet!
HAMLET
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 GERTRUDE
No
more!
HAMLET
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 GERTRUDE
Alas,
he's mad!
HAMLET
Do
you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, lapsed 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.
HAMLET
How is it with you, lady?
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
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 hair,
like life in excrements,
Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of
thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?
HAMLET
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 GERTRUDE
To whom do you speak this?
HAMLET
Do you see nothing
there?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
HAMLET
Nor did you
nothing hear?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
No,
nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! look, how it steals away!
My father, in
his habit as he lived!
Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!
Exit Ghost
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
This
the very coinage of your brain:
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning
in.
HAMLET
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 mattering 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 GERTRUDE
O
Hamlet, thou hast cleft
my heart in twain.
HAMLET
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 devil, 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 [ ] the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good
night:
And when you are
desirous to be bless'd,
I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,
Pointing to
POLONIUS
I do repent: but heaven hath pleased 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
GERTRUDE
What shall I do?
HAMLET
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 GERTRUDE
Be thou assured, if words
be made of breath,
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to
me.
HAMLET
I must
to England; you know that?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alack,
I had forgot: 'tis so concluded
on.
HAMLET
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 engineer
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 prating knave.
Come, sir, to
draw toward an end with you.
Good night, mother.
Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in
POLONIUS
ACT IV
SCENE
I. A room in the castle.
Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN
KING
CLAUDIUS
There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves:
You must translate: 'tis fit we
understand them.
Where
is your son?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Bestow this place on us a little while.
Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and
GUILDENSTERN
Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night!
KING CLAUDIUS
What, Gertrude? How
does Hamlet?
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
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 CLAUDIUS
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 GERTRUDE
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
CLAUDIUS
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. O, come away!
My soul is full of discord and dismay.
Exeunt
SCENE II. Another room in
the castle.
Enter
HAMLET
HAMLET
Safely stowed.
ROSENCRANTZ: GUILDENSTERN:
[Within] Hamlet! Lord
Hamlet!
HAMLET
What noise? who calls on Hamlet?
O, here they come.
Enter ROSENCRANTZ
and GUILDENSTERN
ROSENCRANTZ
What
have you done, my lord, with the dead body?
HAMLET
Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis
kin.
ROSENCRANTZ
Tell us where 'tis, that we may take it thence
And bear it to the
chapel.
HAMLET
Do not
believe it.
ROSENCRANTZ
Believe what?
HAMLET
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?
ROSENCRANTZ
Take
you me for a sponge, my lord?
HAMLET
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.
ROSENCRANTZ
I understand you not, my
lord.
HAMLET
I
am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a
foolish ear.
ROSENCRANTZ
My lord, you must tell
us where the body is, and go
with us to the king.
HAMLET
The body is with the king, but the
king is not with
the
body. The king is a thing--
GUILDENSTERN
A thing, my lord!
HAMLET
Of nothing: bring
me to him. Hide fox, and all after.
Exeunt
SCENE III. Another room in the castle.
Enter
KING CLAUDIUS, attended
KING
CLAUDIUS
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 loved 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 relieved,
Or not at all.
Enter ROSENCRANTZ
How now! what hath
befall'n?
ROSENCRANTZ
Where the dead body is bestow'd, my lord,
We cannot get from
him.
KING CLAUDIUS
But where
is he?
ROSENCRANTZ
Without, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure.
KING
CLAUDIUS
Bring him before us.
ROSENCRANTZ
Ho, Guildenstern! bring in my lord.
Enter
HAMLET and GUILDENSTERN
KING
CLAUDIUS
Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?
HAMLET
At supper.
KING CLAUDIUS
At
supper! where?
HAMLET
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 CLAUDIUS
Alas, alas!
HAMLET
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 CLAUDIUS
What dost you mean
by this?
HAMLET
Nothing
but to show you how a king may go a
progress through the guts of a beggar.
KING
CLAUDIUS
Where is Polonius?
HAMLET
In heaven; send hither 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 CLAUDIUS
Go seek him there.
To some
Attendants
HAMLET
He
will stay till ye come.
Exeunt Attendants
KING CLAUDIUS
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 every thing is bent
For England.
HAMLET
For England!
KING
CLAUDIUS
Ay, Hamlet.
HAMLET
Good.
KING
CLAUDIUS
So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.
HAMLET
I see a cherub that sees them. But,
come; for
England! Farewell, dear mother.
KING CLAUDIUS
Thy loving father,
Hamlet.
HAMLET
My mother:
father and mother is man and wife; man
and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for
England!
Exit
KING CLAUDIUS
Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard;
Delay
it not; I'll have him hence to-night:
Away!
for every thing 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 congruing
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, a Captain, and Soldiers, marching
PRINCE FORTINBRAS
Go, captain, from me greet the
Danish king;
Tell him that, by his licence, Fortinbras
Craves the conveyance of a promised
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.
Captain
I will do't, my lord.
PRINCE FORTINBRAS
Go
softly on.
Exeunt
FORTINBRAS and Soldiers
Enter HAMLET, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and others
HAMLET
Good
sir, whose powers are these?
Captain
They are of Norway, sir.
HAMLET
How purposed,
sir, I pray you?
Captain
Against
some part of Poland.
HAMLET
Who commands them, sir?
Captain
The nephews to old
Norway, Fortinbras.
HAMLET
Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
Or for some
frontier?
Captain
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.
HAMLET
Why, then the Polack never will defend
it.
Captain
Yes, it is already garrison'd.
HAMLET
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.
Captain
God be wi' you,
sir.
Exit
ROSENCRANTZ
Wilt
please you go, my lord?
HAMLET
I'll be with you straight go a little before.
Exeunt all
except 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 god-like
reason
To fust in us unused.
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 GERTRUDE, HORATIO,
and a Gentleman
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
I will not speak with her.
Gentleman
She is importunate, indeed
distract:
Her mood will needs be pitied.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
What would she
have?
Gentleman
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.
HORATIO
'Twere good she were spoken with; for she may
strew
Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
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
OPHELIA
Where is the beauteous
majesty of Denmark?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
How now, Ophelia!
OPHELIA
[Sings]
How
should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal
shoon.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alas,
sweet lady, what imports this song?
OPHELIA
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
GERTRUDE
Nay, but, Ophelia,--
OPHELIA
Pray you, mark.
Sings
White his shroud
as the mountain snow,--
Enter KING CLAUDIUS
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alas, look here, my
lord.
OPHELIA
[Sings]
Larded
with sweet flowers
Which bewept to the grave did go
With true-love showers.
KING
CLAUDIUS
How do you, pretty lady?
OPHELIA
Well, God 'ild 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 CLAUDIUS
Conceit upon
her father.
OPHELIA
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 betime,
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 CLAUDIUS
Pretty Ophelia!
OPHELIA
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 promised me to wed.
So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to
my bed.
KING CLAUDIUS
How
long hath she been thus?
OPHELIA
I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I
cannot
choose but weep, to think they should 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 CLAUDIUS
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 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
Gives me superfluous death.
A noise within
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
Alack, what noise is this?
KING CLAUDIUS
Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the
door.
Enter another
Gentleman
What is the matter?
Gentleman
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 officers. 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
GERTRUDE
How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
O, this is counter, you false Danish
dogs!
KING CLAUDIUS
The
doors are broke.
Noise within
Enter LAERTES, armed; Danes following
LAERTES
Where is
this king? Sirs, stand you all without.
Danes
No, let's come in.
LAERTES
I pray you,
give me leave.
Danes
We
will, we will.
They retire without the door
LAERTES
I thank you: keep the door. O thou vile
king,
Give me my father!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Calmly, good Laertes.
LAERTES
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 CLAUDIUS
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 incensed.
Let him go, Gertrude.
Speak, man.
LAERTES
Where is my father?
KING
CLAUDIUS
Dead.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
But not by him.
KING CLAUDIUS
Let him demand
his fill.
LAERTES
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 revenged
Most thoroughly for my father.
KING CLAUDIUS
Who
shall stay you?
LAERTES
My will, not all the world:
And for my means, I'll husband them so
well,
They shall
go far with little.
KING CLAUDIUS
Good Laertes,
If you desire to know the
certainty
Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge,
That, swoopstake, you will draw
both friend and foe,
Winner and
loser?
LAERTES
None but his enemies.
KING CLAUDIUS
Will you know them
then?
LAERTES
To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
And like the kind
life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with
my blood.
KING CLAUDIUS
Why, now you speak
Like a good child and a true
gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father's death,
And am most sensible in grief for
it,
It shall as level to your judgment pierce
As
day does to your eye.
Danes
[Within] Let her come in.
LAERTES
How now! what noise is
that?
Re-enter OPHELIA
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 moral 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.
OPHELIA
[Sings]
They bore him barefaced on the
bier;
Hey non nonny,
nonny, hey nonny;
And in his grave rain'd many a tear:--
Fare you well, my
dove!
LAERTES
Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move
thus.
OPHELIA
[Sings]
You must
sing a-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.
LAERTES
This nothing's more than
matter.
OPHELIA
There's rosemary,
that's for remembrance; pray,
love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for
thoughts.
LAERTES
A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance
fitted.
OPHELIA
There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's
rue
for you; and here's some for me: we may call it
herb-grace o' Sundays: O you must wear your
rue with
a difference. There's a daisy: I would give you
some violets, but they withered all when
my father
died:
they say he made a good end,--
Sings
For bonny sweet Robin is all my
joy.
LAERTES
Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
She turns to favour and to
prettiness.
OPHELIA
[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 be wi' ye.
Exit
LAERTES
Do you see this, O God?
KING
CLAUDIUS
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 can 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.
LAERTES
Let
this be so;
His means of death, his obscure funeral--
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 CLAUDIUS
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
HORATIO
What
are they that would speak with me?
Servant
Sailors, sir: they say they have letters for
you.
HORATIO
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
First Sailor
God bless you,
sir.
HORATIO
Let him bless thee too.
First 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.
HORATIO
[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 speed 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 make 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 CLAUDIUS and LAERTES
KING CLAUDIUS
Now must
your conscience my acquaintance
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
Pursued my life.
LAERTES
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 CLAUDIUS
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.
LAERTES
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 CLAUDIUS
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 loved your father, and we love ourself;
And that, I hope, will teach you to
imagine--
Enter a Messenger
How now! what news?
Messenger
Letters, my lord, from
Hamlet:
This to your
majesty; this to the queen.
KING CLAUDIUS
From Hamlet! who brought
them?
Messenger
Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not:
They were given me by Claudio;
he received them
Of him that brought them.
KING
CLAUDIUS
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 occasion 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?
LAERTES
Know
you the hand?
KING CLAUDIUS
'Tis Hamlets character. 'Naked!
And in a postscript here, he
says 'alone.'
Can you advise me?
LAERTES
I'm 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
CLAUDIUS
If it be so, Laertes--
As how should it be so? how otherwise?--
Will you be ruled
by me?
LAERTES
Ay,
my lord;
So you will not o'errule me to a peace.
KING CLAUDIUS
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 an exploit,
now ripe in my device,
Under the which he shall not choose but fall:
And for his death no wind of
blame shall breathe,
But even his mother shall uncharge the practise
And call it
accident.
LAERTES
My lord,
I will be ruled;
The rather, if you could devise it so
That I might be the organ.
KING
CLAUDIUS
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.
LAERTES
What part is that, my
lord?
KING CLAUDIUS
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 served 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
he had been incorpsed and demi-natured
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.
LAERTES
A Norman
was't?
KING CLAUDIUS
A
Norman.
LAERTES
Upon my life, Lamond.
KING CLAUDIUS
The very
same.
LAERTES
I know him well: he is the brooch indeed
And gem of all the
nation.
KING CLAUDIUS
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 had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
If you opposed 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,--
LAERTES
What out of this, my lord?
KING CLAUDIUS
Laertes, was your
father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a
heart?
LAERTES
Why ask you
this?
KING CLAUDIUS
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?
LAERTES
To cut his throat i' the church.
KING
CLAUDIUS
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 practise
Requite him for
your father.
LAERTES
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
That is but scratch'd
withal: I'll touch my point
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
It may be
death.
KING CLAUDIUS
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 should
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
prepared 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 GERTRUDE
How now, sweet queen!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
One woe doth
tread upon another's heel,
So
fast they follow; your sister's drown'd, Laertes.
LAERTES
Drown'd! O, where?
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
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 crow-flowers, 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 pendent
boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering
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 chanted
snatches of old tunes;
As
one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
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.
LAERTES
Alas, then, she is drown'd?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Drown'd,
drown'd.
LAERTES
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
CLAUDIUS
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
First Clown
Is she to be buried in Christian burial that
wilfully seeks
her own salvation?
Second Clown
I tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave
straight:
the crowner hath sat
on her, and finds it
Christian burial.
First Clown
How can that be, unless she drowned
herself in her
own defence?
Second Clown
Why, 'tis found so.
First 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, to perform: argal, she drowned
herself
wittingly.
Second Clown
Nay,
but hear you, goodman delver,--
First 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.
Second Clown
But is this law?
First
Clown
Ay, marry, is't; crowner's
quest law.
Second Clown
Will you ha' the truth on't? If this had not been
a gentlewoman,
she should have been buried out o'
Christian burial.
First 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
gentleman but gardeners, ditchers, and
grave-makers:
they hold up Adam's profession.
Second
Clown
Was he a gentleman?
First Clown
He was the first that ever bore arms.
Second
Clown
Why, he had none.
First Clown
What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand
the
Scripture? The Scripture
says 'Adam digged:'
could he dig without arms? I'll put another
question to thee: if thou
answerest me not to the
purpose, confess thyself--
Second Clown
Go to.
First
Clown
What is he that builds
stronger than either the
mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?
Second Clown
The
gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a
thousand tenants.
First 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 in: 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.
Second Clown
'Who
builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or
a carpenter?'
First Clown
Ay, tell me that,
and unyoke.
Second Clown
Marry, now I can tell.
First Clown
To't.
Second
Clown
Mass, I cannot
tell.
Enter HAMLET and HORATIO, at a distance
First 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 that he makes last till
doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan: fetch me a
stoup of
liquor.
Exit Second Clown
He 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.
HAMLET
Has
this fellow no feeling of his business, that he
sings at grave-making?
HORATIO
Custom hath
made it in him a property
of easiness.
HAMLET
'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath
the daintier
sense.
First Clown
[Sings]
But age, with his stealing steps,
Hath claw'd me in his
clutch,
And hath shipped
me intil the land,
As if I had never been such.
Throws up a skull
HAMLET
That skull
had a tongue in it, and could sing once:
how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it
were
Cain's jaw-bone, that did
the first murder! It
might be the pate of a politician, which this ass
now o'er-reaches; one that
would circumvent God,
might it not?
HORATIO
It might, my lord.
HAMLET
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?
HORATIO
Ay, my
lord.
HAMLET
Why,
e'en so: and now my Lady Worm's; chapless, and
knocked about the mazzard 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 loggats
with 'em? mine ache to think on't.
First Clown
[Sings]
A pick-axe, 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
HAMLET
There's
another: why may not that be the skull of a
lawyer? Where be his quiddities 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 hardly lie in
this box; and must the inheritor himself have
no more, ha?
HORATIO
Not a jot more, my lord.
HAMLET
Is not parchment made of
sheepskins?
HORATIO
Ay,
my lord, and of calf-skins too.
HAMLET
They are sheep and calves which seek out
assurance
in that. I will speak to this fellow. Whose
grave's this, sirrah?
First
Clown
Mine, sir.
Sings
O,
a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet.
HAMLET
I think it be thine, indeed;
for thou liest in't.
First Clown
You lie out on't, sir, and therefore it is not
yours: for
my part, I do not lie
in't, and yet it is mine.
HAMLET
'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.
First Clown
'Tis a quick lie, sir; 'twill
away gain, from me to
you.
HAMLET
What
man dost thou dig it for?
First Clown
For no man, sir.
HAMLET
What woman,
then?
First Clown
For none, neither.
HAMLET
Who is to be buried in't?
First
Clown
One that was a woman,
sir; but, rest her soul, she's dead.
HAMLET
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 a
note of
it; the age is grown
so picked that the toe of the
peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he
gaffs his kibe.
How long hast thou been a
grave-maker?
First Clown
Of all the days i' the year, I came to't
that day
that
our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.
HAMLET
How long is that since?
First
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.
HAMLET
Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?
First Clown
Why,
because he was mad: he shall recover his wits
there; or, if he do not, it's no great matter
there.
HAMLET
Why?
First
Clown
'Twill, a not be seen in him there; there the men
are as mad as he.
HAMLET
How
came he mad?
First Clown
Very strangely, they say.
HAMLET
How
strangely?
First Clown
Faith,
e'en with losing his wits.
HAMLET
Upon what ground?
First Clown
Why, here in
Denmark: I have been sexton here, man
and boy, thirty years.
HAMLET
How long will a man lie
i' the earth ere he rot?
First
Clown
I' 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.
HAMLET
Why
he more than another?
First Clown
Why, sir, his hide is so tanned 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 has lain in the earth
three and twenty years.
HAMLET
Whose was it?
First
Clown
A whoreson mad fellow's it was: whose do you think it was?
HAMLET
Nay, I know
not.
First Clown
A
pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a' poured a
flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same
skull,
sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester.
HAMLET
This?
First
Clown
E'en that.
HAMLET
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 rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed 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. Prithee,
Horatio, tell
me one thing.
HORATIO
What's
that, my lord?
HAMLET
Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i'
the
earth?
HORATIO
E'en so.
HAMLET
And smelt so? pah!
Puts down the
skull
HORATIO
E'en so, my lord.
HAMLET
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?
HORATIO
'Twere to consider too curiously,
to consider so.
HAMLET
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 flaw!
But soft! but soft! aside: here comes the king.
Enter
Priest, & c. in procession; the Corpse of OPHELIA, LAERTES and Mourners following; KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN
GERTRUDE, their trains, & c
The
queen, the courtiers: who is this they follow?
And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken
The
corse they follow did with desperate hand
Fordo its own life: 'twas of some estate.
Couch we
awhile, and mark.
Retiring
with HORATIO
LAERTES
What ceremony else?
HAMLET
That is Laertes,
A very noble
youth: mark.
LAERTES
What ceremony else?
First Priest
Her obsequies have been as far
enlarged
As
we have warrantise: her death was doubtful;
And, but that great command o'ersways the order,
She
should in ground unsanctified have lodged
Till the last trumpet: for charitable prayers,
Shards,
flints and pebbles should
be thrown on her;
Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants,
Her maiden strewments and the
bringing home
Of bell and burial.
LAERTES
Must there no more be done?
First
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.
LAERTES
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.
HAMLET
What, the fair Ophelia!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Sweets to the sweet:
farewell!
Scattering flowers
I hoped 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.
LAERTES
O, treble woe
Fall ten times treble on that cursed
head,
Whose wicked deed
thy most ingenious sense
Deprived 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.
HAMLET
[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
LAERTES
The devil take thy soul!
Grappling with him
HAMLET
Thou pray'st
not well.
I prithee,
take thy fingers from my throat;
For, though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I something in
me dangerous,
Which let thy wiseness fear: hold off thy hand.
KING CLAUDIUS
Pluck them
asunder.
QUEEN
GERTRUDE
Hamlet, Hamlet!
All
Gentlemen,--
HORATIO
Good my lord, be
quiet.
The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave