{"id":1206,"date":"2015-04-19T12:16:52","date_gmt":"2015-04-19T12:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/englishhistory.net\/?p=1206"},"modified":"2022-02-24T12:05:41","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T12:05:41","slug":"hamlet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/shakespeare\/plays\/hamlet\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamlet Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tragic History of HAMLET,
\nPrince of Denmark<\/h2>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s story of the Danish prince driven nearly mad by a need to avenge his father\u2019s murder is one of the most popular and influential plays of all time. There are passages of pure poetry in the work which, taken from their context, gain even more power to move and enlighten. It was very popular during Shakespeare\u2019s lifetime and continues to be performed and adapted over four hundred years later. Any synopsis of Hamlet must fail; the complexity of its title character can never be completely explored. He is perhaps the most analyzed and discussed character in all of Shakespeare\u2019s works<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The date of its composition is unknown. Scholars use contemporary sources to estimate sometime between 1599-1602. Like many of Shakespeare\u2019s works, variants exist of Hamlet, some of which contain significant differences from others. The first quarto was published in 1603 and the second a year later; however, certain excisions were made to the second quarto because of the recent ascension of James I of England his wife, Anne of Denmark. Hamlet was included in the First Folio of 1623. Scholars did not know of the existence of the first quarto until its discovery in 1823. The variants in this quarto are most famously noted in the famous \u201cTo be or not to be\u201d soliloquy. It is also much shorter than the second quarto and First Folio editions, which has led some scholars to believe it was a \u2018traveling quarto\u2019, intended to be used by touring theater companies.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s inspiration for this famous tale most probably came from a translation by Francois de Belleforest of a 13th century story by Saxo Grammaticus. Some scholars also posit the theory of an Ur-Hamlet, an earlier play (now lost) written by either Thomas Kyd or Shakespeare himself, which The Lord Chamberlain\u2019s Men purchased and performed, and which Shakespeare later reworked into the Hamlet we know today. But there is little evidence for this theory. Likewise, the idea that Shakespeare<\/a> was inspired by the death of his own son, Hamnet, remains controversial.<\/p>\n

Plot Synopsis<\/h2>\n

Hamlet is the prince of Denmark, son of the late King Hamlet and his wife, Queen Gertrude. His uncle Claudius is now king, and has married Hamlet\u2019s mother. The kingdom of Denmark is almost at war with Norway, and an invasion (led by the Norwegian prince Fortinbras) is probable. Hamlet is alerted by three sentries that the ghost of his father was seen. Hamlet is already troubled by the hasty marriage of his uncle and mother. They, too, are troubled \u2013 by Hamlet\u2019s melancholy – and send two of his friends to him to discover its cause. Hamlet quickly realizes his friends are now spies. He resolves to find his father\u2019s ghost. He does so; the ghost tells him that he was murdered by Claudius and orders Hamlet to avenge him. Hamlet agrees, though he is not certain whether to believe the ghost. He begins to feign madness in order to discover the truth. His resulting interactions with other characters are based upon this feigned madness and result in various misunderstandings and deaths. In the end, Hamlet and the royal court (including his uncle and mother) are dead and Fortinbras arrives from Norway to seize the crown.<\/p>\n

ACT I
\nSCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle.
\nFRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO
\nBERNARDO
\nWho’s there?
\nFRANCISCO
\nNay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.
\nBERNARDO
\nLong live the king!
\nFRANCISCO
\nBernardo?
\nBERNARDO
\nHe.
\nFRANCISCO
\nYou come most carefully upon your hour.
\nBERNARDO
\n‘Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.
\nFRANCISCO
\nFor this relief much thanks: ’tis bitter cold,
\nAnd I am sick at heart.
\nBERNARDO
\nHave you had quiet guard?
\nFRANCISCO
\nNot a mouse stirring.
\nBERNARDO
\nWell, good night.
\nIf you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
\nThe rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
\nFRANCISCO
\nI think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who’s there?
\nEnter HORATIO and MARCELLUS
\nHORATIO
\nFriends to this ground.
\nMARCELLUS
\nAnd liegemen to the Dane.
\nFRANCISCO
\nGive you good night.
\nMARCELLUS
\nO, farewell, honest soldier:
\nWho hath relieved you?
\nFRANCISCO
\nBernardo has my place.
\nGive you good night.
\nExit
\nMARCELLUS
\nHolla! Bernardo!
\nBERNARDO
\nSay,
\nWhat, is Horatio there?
\nHORATIO
\nA piece of him.
\nBERNARDO
\nWelcome, Horatio: welcome, good Marcellus.
\nMARCELLUS
\nWhat, has this thing appear’d again to-night?
\nBERNARDO
\nI have seen nothing.
\nMARCELLUS
\nHoratio says ’tis but our fantasy,
\nAnd will not let belief take hold of him
\nTouching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us:
\nTherefore I have entreated him along
\nWith us to watch the minutes of this night;
\nThat if again this apparition come,
\nHe may approve our eyes and speak to it.
\nHORATIO
\nTush, tush, ’twill not appear.
\nBERNARDO
\nSit down awhile;
\nAnd let us once again assail your ears,
\nThat are so fortified against our story
\nWhat we have two nights seen.
\nHORATIO
\nWell, sit we down,
\nAnd let us hear Bernardo speak of this.
\nBERNARDO
\nLast night of all,
\nWhen yond same star that’s westward from the pole
\nHad made his course to illume that part of heaven
\nWhere now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
\nThe bell then beating one,–
\nEnter Ghost
\nMARCELLUS
\nPeace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!
\nBERNARDO
\nIn the same figure, like the king that’s dead.
\nMARCELLUS
\nThou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.
\nBERNARDO
\nLooks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.
\nHORATIO
\nMost like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.
\nBERNARDO
\nIt would be spoke to.
\nMARCELLUS
\nQuestion it, Horatio.
\nHORATIO
\nWhat art thou that usurp’st this time of night,
\nTogether with that fair and warlike form
\nIn which the majesty of buried Denmark
\nDid sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!
\nMARCELLUS
\nIt is offended.
\nBERNARDO
\nSee, it stalks away!
\nHORATIO
\nStay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!
\nExit Ghost
\nMARCELLUS
\n‘Tis gone, and will not answer.
\nBERNARDO
\nHow now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:
\nIs not this something more than fantasy?
\nWhat think you on’t?
\nHORATIO
\nBefore my God, I might not this believe
\nWithout the sensible and true avouch
\nOf mine own eyes.
\nMARCELLUS
\nIs it not like the king?
\nHORATIO
\nAs thou art to thyself:
\nSuch was the very armour he had on
\nWhen he the ambitious Norway combated;
\nSo frown’d he once, when, in an angry parle,
\nHe smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
\n‘Tis strange.
\nMARCELLUS
\nThus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
\nWith martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
\nHORATIO
\nIn what particular thought to work I know not;
\nBut in the gross and scope of my opinion,
\nThis bodes some strange eruption to our state.
\nMARCELLUS
\nGood now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
\nWhy this same strict and most observant watch
\nSo nightly toils the subject of the land,
\nAnd why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
\nAnd foreign mart for implements of war;
\nWhy such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
\nDoes not divide the Sunday from the week;
\nWhat might be toward, that this sweaty haste
\nDoth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
\nWho is’t that can inform me?
\nHORATIO
\nThat can I;
\nAt least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,
\nWhose image even but now appear’d to us,
\nWas, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
\nThereto prick’d on by a most emulate pride,
\nDared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet–
\nFor so this side of our known world esteem’d him–
\nDid slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal’d compact,
\nWell ratified by law and heraldry,
\nDid forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
\nWhich he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
\nAgainst the which, a moiety competent
\nWas gaged by our king; which had return’d
\nTo the inheritance of Fortinbras,
\nHad he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
\nAnd carriage of the article design’d,
\nHis fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
\nOf unimproved mettle hot and full,
\nHath in the skirts of Norway here and there
\nShark’d up a list of lawless resolutes,
\nFor food and diet, to some enterprise
\nThat hath a stomach in’t; which is no other–
\nAs it doth well appear unto our state–
\nBut to recover of us, by strong hand
\nAnd terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
\nSo by his father lost: and this, I take it,
\nIs the main motive of our preparations,
\nThe source of this our watch and the chief head
\nOf this post-haste and romage in the land.
\nBERNARDO
\nI think it be no other but e’en so:
\nWell may it sort that this portentous figure
\nComes armed through our watch; so like the king
\nThat was and is the question of these wars.
\nHORATIO
\nA mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.
\nIn the most high and palmy state of Rome,
\nA little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
\nThe graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
\nDid squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
\nAs stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
\nDisasters in the sun; and the moist star
\nUpon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands
\nWas sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
\nAnd even the like precurse of fierce events,
\nAs harbingers preceding still the fates
\nAnd prologue to the omen coming on,
\nHave heaven and earth together demonstrated
\nUnto our climatures and countrymen.–
\nBut soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
\nRe-enter Ghost
\nI’ll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion!
\nIf thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
\nSpeak to me:
\nIf there be any good thing to be done,
\nThat may to thee do ease and grace to me,
\nSpeak to me:
\nCock crows
\nIf thou art privy to thy country’s fate,
\nWhich, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!
\nOr if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
\nExtorted treasure in the womb of earth,
\nFor which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
\nSpeak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it, Marcellus.
\nMARCELLUS
\nShall I strike at it with my partisan?
\nHORATIO
\nDo, if it will not stand.
\nBERNARDO
\n‘Tis here!
\nHORATIO
\n‘Tis here!
\nMARCELLUS
\n‘Tis gone!
\nExit Ghost
\nWe do it wrong, being so majestical,
\nTo offer it the show of violence;
\nFor it is, as the air, invulnerable,
\nAnd our vain blows malicious mockery.
\nBERNARDO
\nIt was about to speak, when the cock crew.
\nHORATIO
\nAnd then it started like a guilty thing
\nUpon a fearful summons. I have heard,
\nThe cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
\nDoth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
\nAwake the god of day; and, at his warning,
\nWhether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
\nThe extravagant and erring spirit hies
\nTo his confine: and of the truth herein
\nThis present object made probation.
\nMARCELLUS
\nIt faded on the crowing of the cock.
\nSome say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
\nWherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
\nThe bird of dawning singeth all night long:
\nAnd then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
\nThe nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
\nNo fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
\nSo hallow’d and so gracious is the time.
\nHORATIO
\nSo have I heard and do in part believe it.
\nBut, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
\nWalks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill:
\nBreak we our watch up; and by my advice,
\nLet us impart what we have seen to-night
\nUnto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
\nThis spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
\nDo you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
\nAs needful in our loves, fitting our duty?
\nMARCELLUS
\nLet’s do’t, I pray; and I this morning know
\nWhere we shall find him most conveniently.
\nExeunt
\nSCENE II. A room of state in the castle.
\nEnter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nThough yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
\nThe memory be green, and that it us befitted
\nTo bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
\nTo be contracted in one brow of woe,
\nYet so far hath discretion fought with nature
\nThat we with wisest sorrow think on him,
\nTogether with remembrance of ourselves.
\nTherefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
\nThe imperial jointress to this warlike state,
\nHave we, as ’twere with a defeated joy,–
\nWith an auspicious and a dropping eye,
\nWith mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
\nIn equal scale weighing delight and dole,–
\nTaken to wife: nor have we herein barr’d
\nYour better wisdoms, which have freely gone
\nWith this affair along. For all, our thanks.
\nNow follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,
\nHolding a weak supposal of our worth,
\nOr thinking by our late dear brother’s death
\nOur state to be disjoint and out of frame,
\nColleagued with the dream of his advantage,
\nHe hath not fail’d to pester us with message,
\nImporting the surrender of those lands
\nLost by his father, with all bonds of law,
\nTo our most valiant brother. So much for him.
\nNow for ourself and for this time of meeting:
\nThus much the business is: we have here writ
\nTo Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,–
\nWho, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears
\nOf this his nephew’s purpose,–to suppress
\nHis further gait herein; in that the levies,
\nThe lists and full proportions, are all made
\nOut of his subject: and we here dispatch
\nYou, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand,
\nFor bearers of this greeting to old Norway;
\nGiving to you no further personal power
\nTo business with the king, more than the scope
\nOf these delated articles allow.
\nFarewell, and let your haste commend your duty.
\nCORNELIUS VOLTIMAND
\nIn that and all things will we show our duty.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWe doubt it nothing: heartily farewell.
\nExeunt VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS
\nAnd now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?
\nYou told us of some suit; what is’t, Laertes?
\nYou cannot speak of reason to the Dane,
\nAnd loose your voice: what wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
\nThat shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
\nThe head is not more native to the heart,
\nThe hand more instrumental to the mouth,
\nThan is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
\nWhat wouldst thou have, Laertes?
\nLAERTES<\/a>
\nMy dread lord,
\nYour leave and favour to return to France;
\nFrom whence though willingly I came to Denmark,
\nTo show my duty in your coronation,
\nYet now, I must confess, that duty done,
\nMy thoughts and wishes bend again toward France
\nAnd bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nHave you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nHe hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
\nBy laboursome petition, and at last
\nUpon his will I seal’d my hard consent:
\nI do beseech you, give him leave to go.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nTake thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine,
\nAnd thy best graces spend it at thy will!
\nBut now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,–
\nHAMLET
\n[Aside] A little more than kin, and less than kind.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nHow is it that the clouds still hang on you?
\nHAMLET
\nNot so, my lord; I am too much i’ the sun.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nGood Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
\nAnd let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
\nDo not for ever with thy vailed lids
\nSeek for thy noble father in the dust:
\nThou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die,
\nPassing through nature to eternity.
\nHAMLET
\nAy, madam, it is common.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nIf it be,
\nWhy seems it so particular with thee?
\nHAMLET
\nSeems, madam! nay it is; I know not ‘seems.’
\n‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
\nNor customary suits of solemn black,
\nNor windy suspiration of forced breath,
\nNo, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
\nNor the dejected ‘havior of the visage,
\nTogether with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
\nThat can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
\nFor they are actions that a man might play:
\nBut I have that within which passeth show;
\nThese but the trappings and the suits of woe.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\n‘Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
\nTo give these mourning duties to your father:
\nBut, you must know, your father lost a father;
\nThat father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
\nIn filial obligation for some term
\nTo do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
\nIn obstinate condolement is a course
\nOf impious stubbornness; ’tis unmanly grief;
\nIt shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
\nA heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
\nAn understanding simple and unschool’d:
\nFor what we know must be and is as common
\nAs any the most vulgar thing to sense,
\nWhy should we in our peevish opposition
\nTake it to heart? Fie! ’tis a fault to heaven,
\nA fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
\nTo reason most absurd: whose common theme
\nIs death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
\nFrom the first corse till he that died to-day,
\n‘This must be so.’ We pray you, throw to earth
\nThis unprevailing woe, and think of us
\nAs of a father: for let the world take note,
\nYou are the most immediate to our throne;
\nAnd with no less nobility of love
\nThan that which dearest father bears his son,
\nDo I impart toward you. For your intent
\nIn going back to school in Wittenberg,
\nIt is most retrograde to our desire:
\nAnd we beseech you, bend you to remain
\nHere, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
\nOur chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nLet not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet:
\nI pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.
\nHAMLET
\nI shall in all my best obey you, madam.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWhy, ’tis a loving and a fair reply:
\nBe as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come;
\nThis gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
\nSits smiling to my heart: in grace whereof,
\nNo jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
\nBut the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
\nAnd the king’s rouse the heavens all bruit again,
\nRe-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.
\nExeunt all but HAMLET
\nHAMLET
\nO, that this too too solid flesh would melt
\nThaw and resolve itself into a dew!
\nOr that the Everlasting had not fix’d
\nHis canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
\nHow weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
\nSeem to me all the uses of this world!
\nFie on’t! ah fie! ’tis an unweeded garden,
\nThat grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
\nPossess it merely. That it should come to this!
\nBut two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
\nSo excellent a king; that was, to this,
\nHyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
\nThat he might not beteem the winds of heaven
\nVisit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
\nMust I remember? why, she would hang on him,
\nAs if increase of appetite had grown
\nBy what it fed on: and yet, within a month–
\nLet me not think on’t–Frailty, thy name is woman!–
\nA little month, or ere those shoes were old
\nWith which she follow’d my poor father’s body,
\nLike Niobe, all tears:–why she, even she–
\nO, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
\nWould have mourn’d longer–married with my uncle,
\nMy father’s brother, but no more like my father
\nThan I to Hercules: within a month:
\nEre yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
\nHad left the flushing in her galled eyes,
\nShe married. O, most wicked speed, to post
\nWith such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
\nIt is not nor it cannot come to good:
\nBut break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.
\nEnter HORATIO, MARCELLUS, and BERNARDO
\nHORATIO
\nHail to your lordship!
\nHAMLET
\nI am glad to see you well:
\nHoratio,–or I do forget myself.
\nHORATIO
\nThe same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
\nHAMLET
\nSir, my good friend; I’ll change that name with you:
\nAnd what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? Marcellus?
\nMARCELLUS
\nMy good lord–
\nHAMLET
\nI am very glad to see you. Good even, sir.
\nBut what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
\nHORATIO
\nA truant disposition, good my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nI would not hear your enemy say so,
\nNor shall you do mine ear that violence,
\nTo make it truster of your own report
\nAgainst yourself: I know you are no truant.
\nBut what is your affair in Elsinore?
\nWe’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
\nHORATIO
\nMy lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.
\nHAMLET
\nI pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student;
\nI think it was to see my mother’s wedding.
\nHORATIO
\nIndeed, my lord, it follow’d hard upon.
\nHAMLET
\nThrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
\nDid coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
\nWould I had met my dearest foe in heaven
\nOr ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
\nMy father!–methinks I see my father.
\nHORATIO
\nWhere, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nIn my mind’s eye, Horatio.
\nHORATIO
\nI saw him once; he was a goodly king.
\nHAMLET
\nHe was a man, take him for all in all,
\nI shall not look upon his like again.
\nHORATIO
\nMy lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
\nHAMLET
\nSaw? who?
\nHORATIO
\nMy lord, the king your father.
\nHAMLET
\nThe king my father!
\nHORATIO
\nSeason your admiration for awhile
\nWith an attent ear, till I may deliver,
\nUpon the witness of these gentlemen,
\nThis marvel to you.
\nHAMLET
\nFor God’s love, let me hear.
\nHORATIO
\nTwo nights together had these gentlemen,
\nMarcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,
\nIn the dead vast and middle of the night,
\nBeen thus encounter’d. A figure like your father,
\nArmed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,
\nAppears before them, and with solemn march
\nGoes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk’d
\nBy their oppress’d and fear-surprised eyes,
\nWithin his truncheon’s length; whilst they, distilled
\nAlmost to jelly with the act of fear,
\nStand dumb and speak not to him. This to me
\nIn dreadful secrecy impart they did;
\nAnd I with them the third night kept the watch;
\nWhere, as they had deliver’d, both in time,
\nForm of the thing, each word made true and good,
\nThe apparition comes: I knew your father;
\nThese hands are not more like.
\nHAMLET
\nBut where was this?
\nMARCELLUS
\nMy lord, upon the platform where we watch’d.
\nHAMLET
\nDid you not speak to it?
\nHORATIO
\nMy lord, I did;
\nBut answer made it none: yet once methought
\nIt lifted up its head and did address
\nItself to motion, like as it would speak;
\nBut even then the morning cock crew loud,
\nAnd at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
\nAnd vanish’d from our sight.
\nHAMLET
\n‘Tis very strange.
\nHORATIO
\nAs I do live, my honour’d lord, ’tis true;
\nAnd we did think it writ down in our duty
\nTo let you know of it.
\nHAMLET
\nIndeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
\nHold you the watch to-night?
\nMARCELLUS BERNARDO
\nWe do, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nArm’d, say you?
\nMARCELLUS BERNARDO
\nArm’d, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nFrom top to toe?
\nMARCELLUS BERNARDO
\nMy lord, from head to foot.
\nHAMLET
\nThen saw you not his face?
\nHORATIO
\nO, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver up.
\nHAMLET
\nWhat, look’d he frowningly?
\nHORATIO
\nA countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
\nHAMLET
\nPale or red?
\nHORATIO
\nNay, very pale.
\nHAMLET
\nAnd fix’d his eyes upon you?
\nHORATIO
\nMost constantly.
\nHAMLET
\nI would I had been there.
\nHORATIO
\nIt would have much amazed you.
\nHAMLET
\nVery like, very like. Stay’d it long?
\nHORATIO
\nWhile one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.
\nMARCELLUS BERNARDO
\nLonger, longer.
\nHORATIO
\nNot when I saw’t.
\nHAMLET
\nHis beard was grizzled–no?
\nHORATIO
\nIt was, as I have seen it in his life,
\nA sable silver’d.
\nHAMLET
\nI will watch to-night;
\nPerchance ’twill walk again.
\nHORATIO
\nI warrant it will.
\nHAMLET
\nIf it assume my noble father’s person,
\nI’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape
\nAnd bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
\nIf you have hitherto conceal’d this sight,
\nLet it be tenable in your silence still;
\nAnd whatsoever else shall hap to-night,
\nGive it an understanding, but no tongue:
\nI will requite your loves. So, fare you well:
\nUpon the platform, ‘twixt eleven and twelve,
\nI’ll visit you.
\nAll
\nOur duty to your honour.
\nHAMLET
\nYour loves, as mine to you: farewell.
\nExeunt all but HAMLET
\nMy father’s spirit in arms! all is not well;
\nI doubt some foul play: would the night were come!
\nTill then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise,
\nThough all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.
\nExit
\nSCENE III. A room in Polonius’ house.
\nEnter LAERTES and OPHELIA
\nLAERTES
\nMy necessaries are embark’d: farewell:
\nAnd, sister, as the winds give benefit
\nAnd convoy is assistant, do not sleep,
\nBut let me hear from you.
\nOPHELIA<\/a>
\nDo you doubt that?
\nLAERTES
\nFor Hamlet and the trifling of his favour,
\nHold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
\nA violet in the youth of primy nature,
\nForward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
\nThe perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more.
\nOPHELIA
\nNo more but so?
\nLAERTES
\nThink it no more;
\nFor nature, crescent, does not grow alone
\nIn thews and bulk, but, as this temple waxes,
\nThe inward service of the mind and soul
\nGrows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
\nAnd now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
\nThe virtue of his will: but you must fear,
\nHis greatness weigh’d, his will is not his own;
\nFor he himself is subject to his birth:
\nHe may not, as unvalued persons do,
\nCarve for himself; for on his choice depends
\nThe safety and health of this whole state;
\nAnd therefore must his choice be circumscribed
\nUnto the voice and yielding of that body
\nWhereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,
\nIt fits your wisdom so far to believe it
\nAs he in his particular act and place
\nMay give his saying deed; which is no further
\nThan the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
\nThen weigh what loss your honour may sustain,
\nIf with too credent ear you list his songs,
\nOr lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
\nTo his unmaster’d importunity.
\nFear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
\nAnd keep you in the rear of your affection,
\nOut of the shot and danger of desire.
\nThe chariest maid is prodigal enough,
\nIf she unmask her beauty to the moon:
\nVirtue itself ‘scapes not calumnious strokes:
\nThe canker galls the infants of the spring,
\nToo oft before their buttons be disclosed,
\nAnd in the morn and liquid dew of youth
\nContagious blastments are most imminent.
\nBe wary then; best safety lies in fear:
\nYouth to itself rebels, though none else near.
\nOPHELIA
\nI shall the effect of this good lesson keep,
\nAs watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
\nDo not, as some ungracious pastors do,
\nShow me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
\nWhiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine,
\nHimself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
\nAnd recks not his own rede.
\nLAERTES
\nO, fear me not.
\nI stay too long: but here my father comes.
\nEnter POLONIUS
\nA double blessing is a double grace,
\nOccasion smiles upon a second leave.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nYet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
\nThe wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
\nAnd you are stay’d for. There; my blessing with thee!
\nAnd these few precepts in thy memory
\nSee thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
\nNor any unproportioned thought his act.
\nBe thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
\nThose friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
\nGrapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
\nBut do not dull thy palm with entertainment
\nOf each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware
\nOf entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
\nBear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
\nGive every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
\nTake each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
\nCostly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
\nBut not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
\nFor the apparel oft proclaims the man,
\nAnd they in France of the best rank and station
\nAre of a most select and generous chief in that.
\nNeither a borrower nor a lender be;
\nFor loan oft loses both itself and friend,
\nAnd borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
\nThis above all: to thine ownself be true,
\nAnd it must follow, as the night the day,
\nThou canst not then be false to any man.
\nFarewell: my blessing season this in thee!
\nLAERTES
\nMost humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nThe time invites you; go; your servants tend.
\nLAERTES
\nFarewell, Ophelia; and remember well
\nWhat I have said to you.
\nOPHELIA
\n‘Tis in my memory lock’d,
\nAnd you yourself shall keep the key of it.
\nLAERTES
\nFarewell.
\nExit
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nWhat is’t, Ophelia, be hath said to you?
\nOPHELIA
\nSo please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nMarry, well bethought:
\n‘Tis told me, he hath very oft of late
\nGiven private time to you; and you yourself
\nHave of your audience been most free and bounteous:
\nIf it be so, as so ’tis put on me,
\nAnd that in way of caution, I must tell you,
\nYou do not understand yourself so clearly
\nAs it behoves my daughter and your honour.
\nWhat is between you? give me up the truth.
\nOPHELIA
\nHe hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
\nOf his affection to me.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nAffection! pooh! you speak like a green girl,
\nUnsifted in such perilous circumstance.
\nDo you believe his tenders, as you call them?
\nOPHELIA
\nI do not know, my lord, what I should think.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nMarry, I’ll teach you: think yourself a baby;
\nThat you have ta’en these tenders for true pay,
\nWhich are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly;
\nOr–not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
\nRunning it thus–you’ll tender me a fool.
\nOPHELIA
\nMy lord, he hath importuned me with love
\nIn honourable fashion.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nAy, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.
\nOPHELIA
\nAnd hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
\nWith almost all the holy vows of heaven.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nAy, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
\nWhen the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
\nLends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter,
\nGiving more light than heat, extinct in both,
\nEven in their promise, as it is a-making,
\nYou must not take for fire. From this time
\nBe somewhat scanter of your maiden presence;
\nSet your entreatments at a higher rate
\nThan a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
\nBelieve so much in him, that he is young
\nAnd with a larger tether may he walk
\nThan may be given you: in few, Ophelia,
\nDo not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
\nNot of that dye which their investments show,
\nBut mere implorators of unholy suits,
\nBreathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
\nThe better to beguile. This is for all:
\nI would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,
\nHave you so slander any moment leisure,
\nAs to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
\nLook to’t, I charge you: come your ways.
\nOPHELIA
\nI shall obey, my lord.
\nExeunt
\nSCENE IV. The platform.
\nEnter HAMLET, HORATIO, and MARCELLUS
\nHAMLET
\nThe air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
\nHORATIO
\nIt is a nipping and an eager air.
\nHAMLET
\nWhat hour now?
\nHORATIO
\nI think it lacks of twelve.
\nHAMLET
\nNo, it is struck.
\nHORATIO
\nIndeed? I heard it not: then it draws near the season
\nWherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
\nA flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off, within
\nWhat does this mean, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nThe king doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
\nKeeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;
\nAnd, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
\nThe kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
\nThe triumph of his pledge.
\nHORATIO
\nIs it a custom?
\nHAMLET
\nAy, marry, is’t:
\nBut to my mind, though I am native here
\nAnd to the manner born, it is a custom
\nMore honour’d in the breach than the observance.
\nThis heavy-headed revel east and west
\nMakes us traduced and tax’d of other nations:
\nThey clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
\nSoil our addition; and indeed it takes
\nFrom our achievements, though perform’d at height,
\nThe pith and marrow of our attribute.
\nSo, oft it chances in particular men,
\nThat for some vicious mole of nature in them,
\nAs, in their birth–wherein they are not guilty,
\nSince nature cannot choose his origin–
\nBy the o’ergrowth of some complexion,
\nOft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
\nOr by some habit that too much o’er-leavens
\nThe form of plausive manners, that these men,
\nCarrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
\nBeing nature’s livery, or fortune’s star,–
\nTheir virtues else–be they as pure as grace,
\nAs infinite as man may undergo–
\nShall in the general censure take corruption
\nFrom that particular fault: the dram of eale
\nDoth all the noble substance of a doubt
\nTo his own scandal.
\nHORATIO
\nLook, my lord, it comes!
\nEnter Ghost
\nHAMLET
\nAngels and ministers of grace defend us!
\nBe thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,
\nBring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
\nBe thy intents wicked or charitable,
\nThou comest in such a questionable shape
\nThat I will speak to thee: I’ll call thee Hamlet,
\nKing, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
\nLet me not burst in ignorance; but tell
\nWhy thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
\nHave burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
\nWherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d,
\nHath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
\nTo cast thee up again. What may this mean,
\nThat thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
\nRevisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,
\nMaking night hideous; and we fools of nature
\nSo horridly to shake our disposition
\nWith thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
\nSay, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?
\nGhost beckons HAMLET
\nHORATIO
\nIt beckons you to go away with it,
\nAs if it some impartment did desire
\nTo you alone.
\nMARCELLUS
\nLook, with what courteous action
\nIt waves you to a more removed ground:
\nBut do not go with it.
\nHORATIO
\nNo, by no means.
\nHAMLET
\nIt will not speak; then I will follow it.
\nHORATIO
\nDo not, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nWhy, what should be the fear?
\nI do not set my life in a pin’s fee;
\nAnd for my soul, what can it do to that,
\nBeing a thing immortal as itself?
\nIt waves me forth again: I’ll follow it.
\nHORATIO
\nWhat if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
\nOr to the dreadful summit of the cliff
\nThat beetles o’er his base into the sea,
\nAnd there assume some other horrible form,
\nWhich might deprive your sovereignty of reason
\nAnd draw you into madness? think of it:
\nThe very place puts toys of desperation,
\nWithout more motive, into every brain
\nThat looks so many fathoms to the sea
\nAnd hears it roar beneath.
\nHAMLET
\nIt waves me still.
\nGo on; I’ll follow thee.
\nMARCELLUS
\nYou shall not go, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nHold off your hands.
\nHORATIO
\nBe ruled; you shall not go.
\nHAMLET
\nMy fate cries out,
\nAnd makes each petty artery in this body
\nAs hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.
\nStill am I call’d. Unhand me, gentlemen.
\nBy heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me!
\nI say, away! Go on; I’ll follow thee.
\nExeunt Ghost and HAMLET
\nHORATIO
\nHe waxes desperate with imagination.
\nMARCELLUS
\nLet’s follow; ’tis not fit thus to obey him.
\nHORATIO
\nHave after. To what issue will this come?
\nMARCELLUS
\nSomething is rotten in the state of Denmark.
\nHORATIO
\nHeaven will direct it.
\nMARCELLUS
\nNay, let’s follow him.
\nExeunt
\nSCENE V. Another part of the platform.
\nEnter GHOST and HAMLET
\nHAMLET
\nWhere wilt thou lead me? speak; I’ll go no further.
\nGhost
\nMark me.
\nHAMLET
\nI will.
\nGhost
\nMy hour is almost come,
\nWhen I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
\nMust render up myself.
\nHAMLET
\nAlas, poor ghost!
\nGhost
\nPity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
\nTo what I shall unfold.
\nHAMLET
\nSpeak; I am bound to hear.
\nGhost
\nSo art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.
\nHAMLET
\nWhat?
\nGhost
\nI am thy father’s spirit,
\nDoom’d for a certain term to walk the night,
\nAnd for the day confined to fast in fires,
\nTill the foul crimes done in my days of nature
\nAre burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
\nTo tell the secrets of my prison-house,
\nI could a tale unfold whose lightest word
\nWould harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
\nMake thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
\nThy knotted and combined locks to part
\nAnd each particular hair to stand on end,
\nLike quills upon the fretful porpentine:
\nBut this eternal blazon must not be
\nTo ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
\nIf thou didst ever thy dear father love–
\nHAMLET
\nO God!
\nGhost
\nRevenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
\nHAMLET
\nMurder!
\nGhost
\nMurder most foul, as in the best it is;
\nBut this most foul, strange and unnatural.
\nHAMLET
\nHaste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift
\nAs meditation or the thoughts of love,
\nMay sweep to my revenge.
\nGhost
\nI find thee apt;
\nAnd duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
\nThat roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
\nWouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear:
\n‘Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
\nA serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
\nIs by a forged process of my death
\nRankly abused: but know, thou noble youth,
\nThe serpent that did sting thy father’s life
\nNow wears his crown.
\nHAMLET
\nO my prophetic soul! My uncle!
\nGhost
\nAy, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
\nWith witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,–
\nO wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
\nSo to seduce!–won to his shameful lust
\nThe will of my most seeming-virtuous queen:
\nO Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!
\nFrom me, whose love was of that dignity
\nThat it went hand in hand even with the vow
\nI made to her in marriage, and to decline
\nUpon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
\nTo those of mine!
\nBut virtue, as it never will be moved,
\nThough lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
\nSo lust, though to a radiant angel link’d,
\nWill sate itself in a celestial bed,
\nAnd prey on garbage.
\nBut, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
\nBrief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
\nMy custom always of the afternoon,
\nUpon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
\nWith juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
\nAnd in the porches of my ears did pour
\nThe leperous distilment; whose effect
\nHolds such an enmity with blood of man
\nThat swift as quicksilver it courses through
\nThe natural gates and alleys of the body,
\nAnd with a sudden vigour doth posset
\nAnd curd, like eager droppings into milk,
\nThe thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine;
\nAnd a most instant tetter bark’d about,
\nMost lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
\nAll my smooth body.
\nThus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand
\nOf life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch’d:
\nCut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
\nUnhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d,
\nNo reckoning made, but sent to my account
\nWith all my imperfections on my head:
\nO, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
\nIf thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
\nLet not the royal bed of Denmark be
\nA couch for luxury and damned incest.
\nBut, howsoever thou pursuest this act,
\nTaint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
\nAgainst thy mother aught: leave her to heaven
\nAnd to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
\nTo prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
\nThe glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
\nAnd ‘gins to pale his uneffectual fire:
\nAdieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.
\nExit
\nHAMLET
\nO all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?
\nAnd shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart;
\nAnd you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
\nBut bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!
\nAy, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
\nIn this distracted globe. Remember thee!
\nYea, from the table of my memory
\nI’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
\nAll saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
\nThat youth and observation copied there;
\nAnd thy commandment all alone shall live
\nWithin the book and volume of my brain,
\nUnmix’d with baser matter: yes, by heaven!
\nO most pernicious woman!
\nO villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
\nMy tables,–meet it is I set it down,
\nThat one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
\nAt least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark:
\nWriting
\nSo, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
\nIt is ‘Adieu, adieu! remember me.’
\nI have sworn ‘t.
\nMARCELLUS HORATIO
\n[Within] My lord, my lord,–
\nMARCELLUS
\n[Within] Lord Hamlet,–
\nHORATIO
\n[Within] Heaven secure him!
\nHAMLET
\nSo be it!
\nHORATIO
\n[Within] Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!
\nHAMLET
\nHillo, ho, ho, boy! come, bird, come.
\nEnter HORATIO and MARCELLUS
\nMARCELLUS
\nHow is’t, my noble lord?
\nHORATIO
\nWhat news, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nO, wonderful!
\nHORATIO
\nGood my lord, tell it.
\nHAMLET
\nNo; you’ll reveal it.
\nHORATIO
\nNot I, my lord, by heaven.
\nMARCELLUS
\nNor I, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nHow say you, then; would heart of man once think it?
\nBut you’ll be secret?
\nHORATIO MARCELLUS
\nAy, by heaven, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nThere’s ne’er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
\nBut he’s an arrant knave.
\nHORATIO
\nThere needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
\nTo tell us this.
\nHAMLET
\nWhy, right; you are i’ the right;
\nAnd so, without more circumstance at all,
\nI hold it fit that we shake hands and part:
\nYou, as your business and desire shall point you;
\nFor every man has business and desire,
\nSuch as it is; and for mine own poor part,
\nLook you, I’ll go pray.
\nHORATIO
\nThese are but wild and whirling words, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nI’m sorry they offend you, heartily;
\nYes, ‘faith heartily.
\nHORATIO
\nThere’s no offence, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nYes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
\nAnd much offence too. Touching this vision here,
\nIt is an honest ghost, that let me tell you:
\nFor your desire to know what is between us,
\nO’ermaster ‘t as you may. And now, good friends,
\nAs you are friends, scholars and soldiers,
\nGive me one poor request.
\nHORATIO
\nWhat is’t, my lord? we will.
\nHAMLET
\nNever make known what you have seen to-night.
\nHORATIO & MARCELLUS
\nMy lord, we will not.
\nHAMLET
\nNay, but swear’t.
\nHORATIO
\nIn faith,
\nMy lord, not I.
\nMARCELLUS
\nNor I, my lord, in faith.
\nHAMLET
\nUpon my sword.
\nMARCELLUS
\nWe have sworn, my lord, already.
\nHAMLET
\nIndeed, upon my sword, indeed.
\nGhost
\n[Beneath] Swear.
\nHAMLET
\nAh, ha, boy! say’st thou so? art thou there,
\ntruepenny?
\nCome on–you hear this fellow in the cellarage–
\nConsent to swear.
\nHORATIO
\nPropose the oath, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nNever to speak of this that you have seen,
\nSwear by my sword.
\nGhost
\n[Beneath] Swear.
\nHAMLET
\nHic et ubique? then we’ll shift our ground.
\nCome hither, gentlemen,
\nAnd lay your hands again upon my sword:
\nNever to speak of this that you have heard,
\nSwear by my sword.
\nGhost
\n[Beneath] Swear.
\nHAMLET
\nWell said, old mole! canst work i’ the earth so fast?
\nA worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends.
\nHORATIO
\nO day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
\nHAMLET
\nAnd therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
\nThere are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
\nThan are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come;
\nHere, as before, never, so help you mercy,
\nHow strange or odd soe’er I bear myself,
\nAs I perchance hereafter shall think meet
\nTo put an antic disposition on,
\nThat you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
\nWith arms encumber’d thus, or this headshake,
\nOr by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
\nAs ‘Well, well, we know,’ or ‘We could, an if we would,’
\nOr ‘If we list to speak,’ or ‘There be, an if they might,’
\nOr such ambiguous giving out, to note
\nThat you know aught of me: this not to do,
\nSo grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.
\nGhost
\n[Beneath] Swear.
\nHAMLET
\nRest, rest, perturbed spirit!
\nThey swear
\nSo, gentlemen,
\nWith all my love I do commend me to you:
\nAnd what so poor a man as Hamlet is
\nMay do, to express his love and friending to you,
\nGod willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;
\nAnd still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
\nThe time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
\nThat ever I was born to set it right!
\nNay, come, let’s go together.
\nExeunt
\nACT II
\nSCENE I. A room in POLONIUS’ house.
\nEnter POLONIUS and REYNALDO
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nGive him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.
\nREYNALDO
\nI will, my lord.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nYou shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo,
\nBefore you visit him, to make inquire
\nOf his behavior.
\nREYNALDO
\nMy lord, I did intend it.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nMarry, well said; very well said. Look you, sir,
\nInquire me first what Danskers are in Paris;
\nAnd how, and who, what means, and where they keep,
\nWhat company, at what expense; and finding
\nBy this encompassment and drift of question
\nThat they do know my son, come you more nearer
\nThan your particular demands will touch it:
\nTake you, as ’twere, some distant knowledge of him;
\nAs thus, ‘I know his father and his friends,
\nAnd in part him: ‘ do you mark this, Reynaldo?
\nREYNALDO
\nAy, very well, my lord.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\n‘And in part him; but’ you may say ‘not well:
\nBut, if’t be he I mean, he’s very wild;
\nAddicted so and so:’ and there put on him
\nWhat forgeries you please; marry, none so rank
\nAs may dishonour him; take heed of that;
\nBut, sir, such wanton, wild and usual slips
\nAs are companions noted and most known
\nTo youth and liberty.
\nREYNALDO
\nAs gaming, my lord.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nAy, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling,
\nDrabbing: you may go so far.
\nREYNALDO
\nMy lord, that would dishonour him.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\n‘Faith, no; as you may season it in the charge
\nYou must not put another scandal on him,
\nThat he is open to incontinency;
\nThat’s not my meaning: but breathe his faults so quaintly
\nThat they may seem the taints of liberty,
\nThe flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,
\nA savageness in unreclaimed blood,
\nOf general assault.
\nREYNALDO
\nBut, my good lord,–
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nWherefore should you do this?
\nREYNALDO
\nAy, my lord,
\nI would know that.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nMarry, sir, here’s my drift;
\nAnd I believe, it is a fetch of wit:
\nYou laying these slight sullies on my son,
\nAs ’twere a thing a little soil’d i’ the working, Mark you,
\nYour party in converse, him you would sound,
\nHaving ever seen in the prenominate crimes
\nThe youth you breathe of guilty, be assured
\nHe closes with you in this consequence;
\n‘Good sir,’ or so, or ‘friend,’ or ‘gentleman,’
\nAccording to the phrase or the addition
\nOf man and country.
\nREYNALDO
\nVery good, my lord.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nAnd then, sir, does he this–he does–what was I
\nabout to say? By the mass, I was about to say
\nsomething: where did I leave?
\nREYNALDO
\nAt ‘closes in the consequence,’ at ‘friend or so,’
\nand ‘gentleman.’
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nAt ‘closes in the consequence,’ ay, marry;
\nHe closes thus: ‘I know the gentleman;
\nI saw him yesterday, or t’ other day,
\nOr then, or then; with such, or such; and, as you say,
\nThere was a’ gaming; there o’ertook in’s rouse;
\nThere falling out at tennis:’ or perchance,
\n‘I saw him enter such a house of sale,’
\nVidelicet, a brothel, or so forth.
\nSee you now;
\nYour bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
\nAnd thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
\nWith windlasses and with assays of bias,
\nBy indirections find directions out:
\nSo by my former lecture and advice,
\nShall you my son. You have me, have you not?
\nREYNALDO
\nMy lord, I have.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nGod be wi’ you; fare you well.
\nREYNALDO
\nGood my lord!
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nObserve his inclination in yourself.
\nREYNALDO
\nI shall, my lord.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nAnd let him ply his music.
\nREYNALDO
\nWell, my lord.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nFarewell!
\nExit REYNALDO
\nEnter OPHELIA
\nHow now, Ophelia! what’s the matter?
\nOPHELIA
\nO, my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted!
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nWith what, i’ the name of God?
\nOPHELIA
\nMy lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
\nLord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
\nNo hat upon his head; his stockings foul’d,
\nUngarter’d, and down-gyved to his ancle;
\nPale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
\nAnd with a look so piteous in purport
\nAs if he had been loosed out of hell
\nTo speak of horrors,–he comes before me.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nMad for thy love?
\nOPHELIA
\nMy lord, I do not know;
\nBut truly, I do fear it.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nWhat said he?
\nOPHELIA
\nHe took me by the wrist and held me hard;
\nThen goes he to the length of all his arm;
\nAnd, with his other hand thus o’er his brow,
\nHe falls to such perusal of my face
\nAs he would draw it. Long stay’d he so;
\nAt last, a little shaking of mine arm
\nAnd thrice his head thus waving up and down,
\nHe raised a sigh so piteous and profound
\nAs it did seem to shatter all his bulk
\nAnd end his being: that done, he lets me go:
\nAnd, with his head over his shoulder turn’d,
\nHe seem’d to find his way without his eyes;
\nFor out o’ doors he went without their helps,
\nAnd, to the last, bended their light on me.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nCome, go with me: I will go seek the king.
\nThis is the very ecstasy of love,
\nWhose violent property fordoes itself
\nAnd leads the will to desperate undertakings
\nAs oft as any passion under heaven
\nThat does afflict our natures. I am sorry.
\nWhat, have you given him any hard words of late?
\nOPHELIA
\nNo, my good lord, but, as you did command,
\nI did repel his fetters and denied
\nHis access to me.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nThat hath made him mad.
\nI am sorry that with better heed and judgment
\nI had not quoted him: I fear’d he did but trifle,
\nAnd meant to wreck thee; but, beshrew my jealousy!
\nBy heaven, it is as proper to our age
\nTo cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
\nAs it is common for the younger sort
\nTo lack discretion. Come, go we to the king:
\nThis must be known; which, being kept close, might
\nmove
\nMore grief to hide than hate to utter love.
\nExeunt
\nSCENE II. A room in the castle.
\nEnter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and Attendants
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWelcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!
\nMoreover that we much did long to see you,
\nThe need we have to use you did provoke
\nOur hasty sending. Something have you heard
\nOf Hamlet’s transformation; so call it,
\nSith nor the exterior nor the inward man
\nResembles that it was. What it should be,
\nMore than his father’s death, that thus hath put him
\nSo much from the understanding of himself,
\nI cannot dream of: I entreat you both,
\nThat, being of so young days brought up with him,
\nAnd sith so neighbour’d to his youth and havior,
\nThat you vouchsafe your rest here in our court
\nSome little time: so by your companies
\nTo draw him on to pleasures, and to gather,
\nSo much as from occasion you may glean,
\nWhether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus,
\nThat, open’d, lies within our remedy.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nGood gentlemen, he hath much talk’d of you;
\nAnd sure I am two men there are not living
\nTo whom he more adheres. If it will please you
\nTo show us so much gentry and good will
\nAs to expend your time with us awhile,
\nFor the supply and profit of our hope,
\nYour visitation shall receive such thanks
\nAs fits a king’s remembrance.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nBoth your majesties
\nMight, by the sovereign power you have of us,
\nPut your dread pleasures more into command
\nThan to entreaty.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nBut we both obey,
\nAnd here give up ourselves, in the full bent
\nTo lay our service freely at your feet,
\nTo be commanded.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nThanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nThanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz:
\nAnd I beseech you instantly to visit
\nMy too much changed son. Go, some of you,
\nAnd bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nHeavens make our presence and our practises
\nPleasant and helpful to him!
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nAy, amen!
\nExeunt ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and some Attendants
\nEnter POLONIUS
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nThe ambassadors from Norway, my good lord,
\nAre joyfully return’d.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nThou still hast been the father of good news.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nHave I, my lord? I assure my good liege,
\nI hold my duty, as I hold my soul,
\nBoth to my God and to my gracious king:
\nAnd I do think, or else this brain of mine
\nHunts not the trail of policy so sure
\nAs it hath used to do, that I have found
\nThe very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nO, speak of that; that do I long to hear.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nGive first admittance to the ambassadors;
\nMy news shall be the fruit to that great feast.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nThyself do grace to them, and bring them in.
\nExit POLONIUS
\nHe tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found
\nThe head and source of all your son’s distemper.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nI doubt it is no other but the main;
\nHis father’s death, and our o’erhasty marriage.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWell, we shall sift him.
\nRe-enter POLONIUS, with VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS
\nWelcome, my good friends!
\nSay, Voltimand, what from our brother Norway?
\nVOLTIMAND
\nMost fair return of greetings and desires.
\nUpon our first, he sent out to suppress
\nHis nephew’s levies; which to him appear’d
\nTo be a preparation ‘gainst the Polack;
\nBut, better look’d into, he truly found
\nIt was against your highness: whereat grieved,
\nThat so his sickness, age and impotence
\nWas falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests
\nOn Fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys;
\nReceives rebuke from Norway, and in fine
\nMakes vow before his uncle never more
\nTo give the assay of arms against your majesty.
\nWhereon old Norway, overcome with joy,
\nGives him three thousand crowns in annual fee,
\nAnd his commission to employ those soldiers,
\nSo levied as before, against the Polack:
\nWith an entreaty, herein further shown,
\nGiving a paper
\nThat it might please you to give quiet pass
\nThrough your dominions for this enterprise,
\nOn such regards of safety and allowance
\nAs therein are set down.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nIt likes us well;
\nAnd at our more consider’d time well read,
\nAnswer, and think upon this business.
\nMeantime we thank you for your well-took labour:
\nGo to your rest; at night we’ll feast together:
\nMost welcome home!
\nExeunt VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nThis business is well ended.
\nMy liege, and madam, to expostulate
\nWhat majesty should be, what duty is,
\nWhy day is day, night night, and time is time,
\nWere nothing but to waste night, day and time.
\nTherefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
\nAnd tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
\nI will be brief: your noble son is mad:
\nMad call I it; for, to define true madness,
\nWhat is’t but to be nothing else but mad?
\nBut let that go.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nMore matter, with less art.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nMadam, I swear I use no art at all.
\nThat he is mad, ’tis true: ’tis true ’tis pity;
\nAnd pity ’tis ’tis true: a foolish figure;
\nBut farewell it, for I will use no art.
\nMad let us grant him, then: and now remains
\nThat we find out the cause of this effect,
\nOr rather say, the cause of this defect,
\nFor this effect defective comes by cause:
\nThus it remains, and the remainder thus. Perpend.
\nI have a daughter–have while she is mine–
\nWho, in her duty and obedience, mark,
\nHath given me this: now gather, and surmise.
\nReads
\n‘To the celestial and my soul’s idol, the most
\nbeautified Ophelia,’–
\nThat’s an ill phrase, a vile phrase; ‘beautified’ is
\na vile phrase: but you shall hear. Thus:
\nReads
\n‘In her excellent white bosom, these, & c.’
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nCame this from Hamlet to her?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nGood madam, stay awhile; I will be faithful.
\nReads
\n‘Doubt thou the stars are fire;
\nDoubt that the sun doth move;
\nDoubt truth to be a liar;
\nBut never doubt I love.
\n‘O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers;
\nI have not art to reckon my groans: but that
\nI love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu.
\n‘Thine evermore most dear lady, whilst
\nthis machine is to him, HAMLET.’
\nThis, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me,
\nAnd more above, hath his solicitings,
\nAs they fell out by time, by means and place,
\nAll given to mine ear.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nBut how hath she
\nReceived his love?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nWhat do you think of me?
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nAs of a man faithful and honourable.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nI would fain prove so. But what might you think,
\nWhen I had seen this hot love on the wing–
\nAs I perceived it, I must tell you that,
\nBefore my daughter told me–what might you,
\nOr my dear majesty your queen here, think,
\nIf I had play’d the desk or table-book,
\nOr given my heart a winking, mute and dumb,
\nOr look’d upon this love with idle sight;
\nWhat might you think? No, I went round to work,
\nAnd my young mistress thus I did bespeak:
\n‘Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star;
\nThis must not be:’ and then I precepts gave her,
\nThat she should lock herself from his resort,
\nAdmit no messengers, receive no tokens.
\nWhich done, she took the fruits of my advice;
\nAnd he, repulsed–a short tale to make–
\nFell into a sadness, then into a fast,
\nThence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
\nThence to a lightness, and, by this declension,
\nInto the madness wherein now he raves,
\nAnd all we mourn for.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nDo you think ’tis this?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nIt may be, very likely.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nHath there been such a time–I’d fain know that–
\nThat I have positively said ‘Tis so,’
\nWhen it proved otherwise?
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nNot that I know.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\n[Pointing to his head and shoulder]
\nTake this from this, if this be otherwise:
\nIf circumstances lead me, I will find
\nWhere truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
\nWithin the centre.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nHow may we try it further?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nYou know, sometimes he walks four hours together
\nHere in the lobby.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nSo he does indeed.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nAt such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him:
\nBe you and I behind an arras then;
\nMark the encounter: if he love her not
\nAnd be not from his reason fall’n thereon,
\nLet me be no assistant for a state,
\nBut keep a farm and carters.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWe will try it.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nBut, look, where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nAway, I do beseech you, both away:
\nI’ll board him presently.
\nExeunt KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, and Attendants
\nEnter HAMLET, reading
\nO, give me leave:
\nHow does my good Lord Hamlet?
\nHAMLET
\nWell, God-a-mercy.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nDo you know me, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nExcellent well; you are a fishmonger.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nNot I, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nThen I would you were so honest a man.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nHonest, my lord!
\nHAMLET
\nAy, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be
\none man picked out of ten thousand.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nThat’s very true, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nFor if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a
\ngod kissing carrion,–Have you a daughter?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nI have, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nLet her not walk i’ the sun: conception is a
\nblessing: but not as your daughter may conceive.
\nFriend, look to ‘t.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\n[Aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my
\ndaughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I
\nwas a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and
\ntruly in my youth I suffered much extremity for
\nlove; very near this. I’ll speak to him again.
\nWhat do you read, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nWords, words, words.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nWhat is the matter, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nBetween who?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nI mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nSlanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here
\nthat old men have grey beards, that their faces are
\nwrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and
\nplum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of
\nwit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir,
\nthough I most powerfully and potently believe, yet
\nI hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for
\nyourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab
\nyou could go backward.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\n[Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method
\nin ‘t. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nInto my grave.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nIndeed, that is out o’ the air.
\nAside
\nHow pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness
\nthat often madness hits on, which reason and sanity
\ncould not so prosperously be delivered of. I will
\nleave him, and suddenly contrive the means of
\nmeeting between him and my daughter.–My honourable
\nlord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.
\nHAMLET
\nYou cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will
\nmore willingly part withal: except my life, except
\nmy life, except my life.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nFare you well, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nThese tedious old fools!
\nEnter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nYou go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\n[To POLONIUS] God save you, sir!
\nExit POLONIUS
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nMy honoured lord!
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nMy most dear lord!
\nHAMLET
\nMy excellent good friends! How dost thou,
\nGuildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nAs the indifferent children of the earth.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nHappy, in that we are not over-happy;
\nOn fortune’s cap we are not the very button.
\nHAMLET
\nNor the soles of her shoe?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nNeither, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nThen you live about her waist, or in the middle of
\nher favours?
\nGUILDENSTERN
\n‘Faith, her privates we.
\nHAMLET
\nIn the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she
\nis a strumpet. What’s the news?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nNone, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest.
\nHAMLET
\nThen is doomsday near: but your news is not true.
\nLet me question more in particular: what have you,
\nmy good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune,
\nthat she sends you to prison hither?
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nPrison, my lord!
\nHAMLET
\nDenmark’s a prison.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nThen is the world one.
\nHAMLET
\nA goodly one; in which there are many confines,
\nwards and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ the worst.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nWe think not so, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nWhy, then, ’tis none to you; for there is nothing
\neither good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me
\nit is a prison.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nWhy then, your ambition makes it one; ’tis too
\nnarrow for your mind.
\nHAMLET
\nO God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
\nmyself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
\nhave bad dreams.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nWhich dreams indeed are ambition, for the very
\nsubstance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
\nHAMLET
\nA dream itself is but a shadow.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nTruly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a
\nquality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
\nHAMLET
\nThen are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and
\noutstretched heroes the beggars’ shadows. Shall we
\nto the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.
\nROSENCRANTZ GUILDENSTERN
\nWe’ll wait upon you.
\nHAMLET
\nNo such matter: I will not sort you with the rest
\nof my servants, for, to speak to you like an honest
\nman, I am most dreadfully attended. But, in the
\nbeaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nTo visit you, my lord; no other occasion.
\nHAMLET
\nBeggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I
\nthank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are
\ntoo dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it
\nyour own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come,
\ndeal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nWhat should we say, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nWhy, any thing, but to the purpose. You were sent
\nfor; and there is a kind of confession in your looks
\nwhich your modesties have not craft enough to colour:
\nI know the good king and queen have sent for you.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nTo what end, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nThat you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by
\nthe rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of
\nour youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved
\nlove, and by what more dear a better proposer could
\ncharge you withal, be even and direct with me,
\nwhether you were sent for, or no?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\n[Aside to GUILDENSTERN] What say you?
\nHAMLET
\n[Aside] Nay, then, I have an eye of you.–If you
\nlove me, hold not off.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nMy lord, we were sent for.
\nHAMLET
\nI will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
\nprevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king
\nand queen moult no feather. I have of late–but
\nwherefore I know not–lost all my mirth, forgone all
\ncustom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
\nwith my disposition that this goodly frame, the
\nearth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
\nexcellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
\no’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
\nwith golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
\nme than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
\nWhat a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
\nhow infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
\nexpress and admirable! in action how like an angel!
\nin apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
\nworld! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
\nwhat is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
\nme: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
\nyou seem to say so.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nMy lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.
\nHAMLET
\nWhy did you laugh then, when I said ‘man delights not me’?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nTo think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what
\nlenten entertainment the players shall receive from
\nyou: we coted them on the way; and hither are they
\ncoming, to offer you service.
\nHAMLET
\nHe that plays the king shall be welcome; his majesty
\nshall have tribute of me; the adventurous knight
\nshall use his foil and target; the lover shall not
\nsigh gratis; the humourous man shall end his part
\nin peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose
\nlungs are tickled o’ the sere; and the lady shall
\nsay her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt
\nfor’t. What players are they?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nEven those you were wont to take delight in, the
\ntragedians of the city.
\nHAMLET
\nHow chances it they travel? their residence, both
\nin reputation and profit, was better both ways.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nI think their inhibition comes by the means of the
\nlate innovation.
\nHAMLET
\nDo they hold the same estimation they did when I was
\nin the city? are they so followed?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nNo, indeed, are they not.
\nHAMLET
\nHow comes it? do they grow rusty?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nNay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace: but
\nthere is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases,
\nthat cry out on the top of question, and are most
\ntyrannically clapped for’t: these are now the
\nfashion, and so berattle the common stages–so they
\ncall them–that many wearing rapiers are afraid of
\ngoose-quills and dare scarce come thither.
\nHAMLET
\nWhat, are they children? who maintains ’em? how are
\nthey escoted? Will they pursue the quality no
\nlonger than they can sing? will they not say
\nafterwards, if they should grow themselves to common
\nplayers–as it is most like, if their means are no
\nbetter–their writers do them wrong, to make them
\nexclaim against their own succession?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\n‘Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and
\nthe nation holds it no sin to tarre them to
\ncontroversy: there was, for a while, no money bid
\nfor argument, unless the poet and the player went to
\ncuffs in the question.
\nHAMLET
\nIs’t possible?
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nO, there has been much throwing about of brains.
\nHAMLET
\nDo the boys carry it away?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nAy, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load too.
\nHAMLET
\nIt is not very strange; for mine uncle is king of
\nDenmark, and those that would make mows at him while
\nmy father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, an
\nhundred ducats a-piece for his picture in little.
\n‘Sblood, there is something in this more than
\nnatural, if philosophy could find it out.
\nFlourish of trumpets within
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nThere are the players.
\nHAMLET
\nGentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands,
\ncome then: the appurtenance of welcome is fashion
\nand ceremony: let me comply with you in this garb,
\nlest my extent to the players, which, I tell you,
\nmust show fairly outward, should more appear like
\nentertainment than yours. You are welcome: but my
\nuncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nIn what, my dear lord?
\nHAMLET
\nI am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is
\nsoutherly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
\nEnter POLONIUS
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nWell be with you, gentlemen!
\nHAMLET
\nHark you, Guildenstern; and you too: at each ear a
\nhearer: that great baby you see there is not yet
\nout of his swaddling-clouts.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nHappily he’s the second time come to them; for they
\nsay an old man is twice a child.
\nHAMLET
\nI will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players;
\nmark it. You say right, sir: o’ Monday morning;
\n’twas so indeed.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nMy lord, I have news to tell you.
\nHAMLET
\nMy lord, I have news to tell you.
\nWhen Roscius was an actor in Rome,–
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nThe actors are come hither, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nBuz, buz!
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nUpon mine honour,–
\nHAMLET
\nThen came each actor on his ass,–
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nThe best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
\ncomedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
\nhistorical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-
\ncomical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or
\npoem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor
\nPlautus too light. For the law of writ and the
\nliberty, these are the only men.
\nHAMLET
\nO Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nWhat a treasure had he, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nWhy,
\n‘One fair daughter and no more,
\nThe which he loved passing well.’
\nLORD POLONIUS
\n[Aside] Still on my daughter.
\nHAMLET
\nAm I not i’ the right, old Jephthah?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nIf you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter
\nthat I love passing well.
\nHAMLET
\nNay, that follows not.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nWhat follows, then, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nWhy,
\n‘As by lot, God wot,’
\nand then, you know,
\n‘It came to pass, as most like it was,’–
\nthe first row of the pious chanson will show you
\nmore; for look, where my abridgement comes.
\nEnter four or five Players
\nYou are welcome, masters; welcome, all. I am glad
\nto see thee well. Welcome, good friends. O, my old
\nfriend! thy face is valenced since I saw thee last:
\ncomest thou to beard me in Denmark? What, my young
\nlady and mistress! By’r lady, your ladyship is
\nnearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the
\naltitude of a chopine. Pray God, your voice, like
\napiece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the
\nring. Masters, you are all welcome. We’ll e’en
\nto’t like French falconers, fly at any thing we see:
\nwe’ll have a speech straight: come, give us a taste
\nof your quality; come, a passionate speech.
\nFirst Player
\nWhat speech, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nI heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was
\nnever acted; or, if it was, not above once; for the
\nplay, I remember, pleased not the million; ’twas
\ncaviare to the general: but it was–as I received
\nit, and others, whose judgments in such matters
\ncried in the top of mine–an excellent play, well
\ndigested in the scenes, set down with as much
\nmodesty as cunning. I remember, one said there
\nwere no sallets in the lines to make the matter
\nsavoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might
\nindict the author of affectation; but called it an
\nhonest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very
\nmuch more handsome than fine. One speech in it I
\nchiefly loved: ’twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido; and
\nthereabout of it especially, where he speaks of
\nPriam’s slaughter: if it live in your memory, begin
\nat this line: let me see, let me see–
\n‘The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,’–
\nit is not so:–it begins with Pyrrhus:–
\n‘The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
\nBlack as his purpose, did the night resemble
\nWhen he lay couched in the ominous horse,
\nHath now this dread and black complexion smear’d
\nWith heraldry more dismal; head to foot
\nNow is he total gules; horridly trick’d
\nWith blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
\nBaked and impasted with the parching streets,
\nThat lend a tyrannous and damned light
\nTo their lord’s murder: roasted in wrath and fire,
\nAnd thus o’er-sized with coagulate gore,
\nWith eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
\nOld grandsire Priam seeks.’
\nSo, proceed you.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\n‘Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and
\ngood discretion.
\nFirst Player
\n‘Anon he finds him
\nStriking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
\nRebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
\nRepugnant to command: unequal match’d,
\nPyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
\nBut with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
\nThe unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
\nSeeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
\nStoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
\nTakes prisoner Pyrrhus’ ear: for, lo! his sword,
\nWhich was declining on the milky head
\nOf reverend Priam, seem’d i’ the air to stick:
\nSo, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
\nAnd like a neutral to his will and matter,
\nDid nothing.
\nBut, as we often see, against some storm,
\nA silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
\nThe bold winds speechless and the orb below
\nAs hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
\nDoth rend the region, so, after Pyrrhus’ pause,
\nAroused vengeance sets him new a-work;
\nAnd never did the Cyclops’ hammers fall
\nOn Mars’s armour forged for proof eterne
\nWith less remorse than Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword
\nNow falls on Priam.
\nOut, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
\nIn general synod ‘take away her power;
\nBreak all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
\nAnd bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
\nAs low as to the fiends!’
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nThis is too long.
\nHAMLET
\nIt shall to the barber’s, with your beard. Prithee,
\nsay on: he’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he
\nsleeps: say on: come to Hecuba.
\nFirst Player
\n‘But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen–‘
\nHAMLET
\n‘The mobled queen?’
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nThat’s good; ‘mobled queen’ is good.
\nFirst Player
\n‘Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
\nWith bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
\nWhere late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
\nAbout her lank and all o’er-teemed loins,
\nA blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
\nWho this had seen, with tongue in venom steep’d,
\n‘Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have
\npronounced:
\nBut if the gods themselves did see her then
\nWhen she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
\nIn mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs,
\nThe instant burst of clamour that she made,
\nUnless things mortal move them not at all,
\nWould have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
\nAnd passion in the gods.’
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nLook, whether he has not turned his colour and has
\ntears in’s eyes. Pray you, no more.
\nHAMLET
\n‘Tis well: I’ll have thee speak out the rest soon.
\nGood my lord, will you see the players well
\nbestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for
\nthey are the abstract and brief chronicles of the
\ntime: after your death you were better have a bad
\nepitaph than their ill report while you live.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nMy lord, I will use them according to their desert.
\nHAMLET
\nGod’s bodykins, man, much better: use every man
\nafter his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping?
\nUse them after your own honour and dignity: the less
\nthey deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
\nTake them in.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nCome, sirs.
\nHAMLET
\nFollow him, friends: we’ll hear a play to-morrow.
\nExit POLONIUS with all the Players but the First
\nDost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the
\nMurder of Gonzago?
\nFirst Player
\nAy, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nWe’ll ha’t to-morrow night. You could, for a need,
\nstudy a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which
\nI would set down and insert in’t, could you not?
\nFirst Player
\nAy, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nVery well. Follow that lord; and look you mock him
\nnot.
\nExit First Player
\nMy good friends, I’ll leave you till night: you are
\nwelcome to Elsinore.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nGood my lord!
\nHAMLET
\nAy, so, God be wi’ ye;
\nExeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
\nNow I am alone.
\nO, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
\nIs it not monstrous that this player here,
\nBut in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
\nCould force his soul so to his own conceit
\nThat from her working all his visage wann’d,
\nTears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,
\nA broken voice, and his whole function suiting
\nWith forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
\nFor Hecuba!
\nWhat’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
\nThat he should weep for her? What would he do,
\nHad he the motive and the cue for passion
\nThat I have? He would drown the stage with tears
\nAnd cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
\nMake mad the guilty and appal the free,
\nConfound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
\nThe very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
\nA dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
\nLike John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
\nAnd can say nothing; no, not for a king,
\nUpon whose property and most dear life
\nA damn’d defeat was made. Am I a coward?
\nWho calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
\nPlucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
\nTweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i’ the throat,
\nAs deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
\nHa!
\n‘Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
\nBut I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall
\nTo make oppression bitter, or ere this
\nI should have fatted all the region kites
\nWith this slave’s offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
\nRemorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
\nO, vengeance!
\nWhy, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
\nThat I, the son of a dear father murder’d,
\nPrompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
\nMust, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
\nAnd fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
\nA scullion!
\nFie upon’t! foh! About, my brain! I have heard
\nThat guilty creatures sitting at a play
\nHave by the very cunning of the scene
\nBeen struck so to the soul that presently
\nThey have proclaim’d their malefactions;
\nFor murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
\nWith most miraculous organ. I’ll have these players
\nPlay something like the murder of my father
\nBefore mine uncle: I’ll observe his looks;
\nI’ll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
\nI know my course. The spirit that I have seen
\nMay be the devil: and the devil hath power
\nTo assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
\nOut of my weakness and my melancholy,
\nAs he is very potent with such spirits,
\nAbuses me to damn me: I’ll have grounds
\nMore relative than this: the play ‘s the thing
\nWherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.
\nExit
\nACT III
\nSCENE I. A room in the castle.
\nEnter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nAnd can you, by no drift of circumstance,
\nGet from him why he puts on this confusion,
\nGrating so harshly all his days of quiet
\nWith turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nHe does confess he feels himself distracted;
\nBut from what cause he will by no means speak.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nNor do we find him forward to be sounded,
\nBut, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,
\nWhen we would bring him on to some confession
\nOf his true state.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nDid he receive you well?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nMost like a gentleman.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nBut with much forcing of his disposition.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nNiggard of question; but, of our demands,
\nMost free in his reply.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nDid you assay him?
\nTo any pastime?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nMadam, it so fell out, that certain players
\nWe o’er-raught on the way: of these we told him;
\nAnd there did seem in him a kind of joy
\nTo hear of it: they are about the court,
\nAnd, as I think, they have already order
\nThis night to play before him.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\n‘Tis most true:
\nAnd he beseech’d me to entreat your majesties
\nTo hear and see the matter.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWith all my heart; and it doth much content me
\nTo hear him so inclined.
\nGood gentlemen, give him a further edge,
\nAnd drive his purpose on to these delights.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nWe shall, my lord.
\nExeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nSweet Gertrude, leave us too;
\nFor we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
\nThat he, as ’twere by accident, may here
\nAffront Ophelia:
\nHer father and myself, lawful espials,
\nWill so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen,
\nWe may of their encounter frankly judge,
\nAnd gather by him, as he is behaved,
\nIf ‘t be the affliction of his love or no
\nThat thus he suffers for.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nI shall obey you.
\nAnd for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
\nThat your good beauties be the happy cause
\nOf Hamlet’s wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
\nWill bring him to his wonted way again,
\nTo both your honours.
\nOPHELIA
\nMadam, I wish it may.
\nExit QUEEN GERTRUDE
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nOphelia, walk you here. Gracious, so please you,
\nWe will bestow ourselves.
\nTo OPHELIA
\nRead on this book;
\nThat show of such an exercise may colour
\nYour loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,–
\n‘Tis too much proved–that with devotion’s visage
\nAnd pious action we do sugar o’er
\nThe devil himself.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\n[Aside] O, ’tis too true!
\nHow smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
\nThe harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering art,
\nIs not more ugly to the thing that helps it
\nThan is my deed to my most painted word:
\nO heavy burthen!
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nI hear him coming: let’s withdraw, my lord.
\nExeunt KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS
\nEnter HAMLET
\nHAMLET
\nTo be, or not to be: that is the question:
\nWhether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
\nThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
\nOr to take arms against a sea of troubles,
\nAnd by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
\nNo more; and by a sleep to say we end
\nThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
\nThat flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
\nDevoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
\nTo sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
\nFor in that sleep of death what dreams may come
\nWhen we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
\nMust give us pause: there’s the respect
\nThat makes calamity of so long life;
\nFor who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
\nThe oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
\nThe pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
\nThe insolence of office and the spurns
\nThat patient merit of the unworthy takes,
\nWhen he himself might his quietus make
\nWith a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
\nTo grunt and sweat under a weary life,
\nBut that the dread of something after death,
\nThe undiscover’d country from whose bourn
\nNo traveller returns, puzzles the will
\nAnd makes us rather bear those ills we have
\nThan fly to others that we know not of?
\nThus conscience does make cowards of us all;
\nAnd thus the native hue of resolution
\nIs sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
\nAnd enterprises of great pith and moment
\nWith this regard their currents turn awry,
\nAnd lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
\nThe fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
\nBe all my sins remember’d.
\nOPHELIA
\nGood my lord,
\nHow does your honour for this many a day?
\nHAMLET
\nI humbly thank you; well, well, well.
\nOPHELIA
\nMy lord, I have remembrances of yours,
\nThat I have longed long to re-deliver;
\nI pray you, now receive them.
\nHAMLET
\nNo, not I;
\nI never gave you aught.
\nOPHELIA
\nMy honour’d lord, you know right well you did;
\nAnd, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
\nAs made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
\nTake these again; for to the noble mind
\nRich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
\nThere, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nHa, ha! are you honest?
\nOPHELIA
\nMy lord?
\nHAMLET
\nAre you fair?
\nOPHELIA
\nWhat means your lordship?
\nHAMLET
\nThat if you be honest and fair, your honesty should
\nadmit no discourse to your beauty.
\nOPHELIA
\nCould beauty, my lord, have better commerce than
\nwith honesty?
\nHAMLET
\nAy, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
\ntransform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
\nforce of honesty can translate beauty into his
\nlikeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the
\ntime gives it proof. I did love you once.
\nOPHELIA
\nIndeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
\nHAMLET
\nYou should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
\nso inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of
\nit: I loved you not.
\nOPHELIA
\nI was the more deceived.
\nHAMLET
\nGet thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
\nbreeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
\nbut yet I could accuse me of such things that it
\nwere better my mother had not borne me: I am very
\nproud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
\nmy beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
\nimagination to give them shape, or time to act them
\nin. What should such fellows as I do crawling
\nbetween earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
\nall; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
\nWhere’s your father?
\nOPHELIA
\nAt home, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nLet the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
\nfool no where but in’s own house. Farewell.
\nOPHELIA
\nO, help him, you sweet heavens!
\nHAMLET
\nIf thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for
\nthy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
\nsnow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a
\nnunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs
\nmarry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough
\nwhat monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go,
\nand quickly too. Farewell.
\nOPHELIA
\nO heavenly powers, restore him!
\nHAMLET
\nI have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God
\nhas given you one face, and you make yourselves
\nanother: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
\nnick-name God’s creatures, and make your wantonness
\nyour ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t; it hath
\nmade me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages:
\nthose that are married already, all but one, shall
\nlive; the rest shall keep as they are. To a
\nnunnery, go.
\nExit
\nOPHELIA
\nO, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
\nThe courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword;
\nThe expectancy and rose of the fair state,
\nThe glass of fashion and the mould of form,
\nThe observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
\nAnd I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
\nThat suck’d the honey of his music vows,
\nNow see that noble and most sovereign reason,
\nLike sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
\nThat unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth
\nBlasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,
\nTo have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
\nRe-enter KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nLove! his affections do not that way tend;
\nNor what he spake, though it lack’d form a little,
\nWas not like madness. There’s something in his soul,
\nO’er which his melancholy sits on brood;
\nAnd I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
\nWill be some danger: which for to prevent,
\nI have in quick determination
\nThus set it down: he shall with speed to England,
\nFor the demand of our neglected tribute
\nHaply the seas and countries different
\nWith variable objects shall expel
\nThis something-settled matter in his heart,
\nWhereon his brains still beating puts him thus
\nFrom fashion of himself. What think you on’t?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nIt shall do well: but yet do I believe
\nThe origin and commencement of his grief
\nSprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia!
\nYou need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said;
\nWe heard it all. My lord, do as you please;
\nBut, if you hold it fit, after the play
\nLet his queen mother all alone entreat him
\nTo show his grief: let her be round with him;
\nAnd I’ll be placed, so please you, in the ear
\nOf all their conference. If she find him not,
\nTo England send him, or confine him where
\nYour wisdom best shall think.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nIt shall be so:
\nMadness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.
\nExeunt
\nSCENE II. A hall in the castle.
\nEnter HAMLET and Players
\nHAMLET
\nSpeak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
\nyou, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
\nas many of your players do, I had as lief the
\ntown-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
\ntoo much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;
\nfor in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
\nthe whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
\na temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
\noffends me to the soul to hear a robustious
\nperiwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to
\nvery rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who
\nfor the most part are capable of nothing but
\ninexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such
\na fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant; it
\nout-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.
\nFirst Player
\nI warrant your honour.
\nHAMLET
\nBe not too tame neither, but let your own discretion
\nbe your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
\nword to the action; with this special o’erstep not
\nthe modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is
\nfrom the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
\nfirst and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the
\nmirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
\nscorn her own image, and the very age and body of
\nthe time his form and pressure. Now this overdone,
\nor come tardy off, though it make the unskilful
\nlaugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the
\ncensure of the which one must in your allowance
\no’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be
\nplayers that I have seen play, and heard others
\npraise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely,
\nthat, neither having the accent of Christians nor
\nthe gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
\nstrutted and bellowed that I have thought some of
\nnature’s journeymen had made men and not made them
\nwell, they imitated humanity so abominably.
\nFirst Player
\nI hope we have reformed that indifferently with us,
\nsir.
\nHAMLET
\nO, reform it altogether. And let those that play
\nyour clowns speak no more than is set down for them;
\nfor there be of them that will themselves laugh, to
\nset on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh
\ntoo; though, in the mean time, some necessary
\nquestion of the play be then to be considered:
\nthat’s villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition
\nin the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.
\nExeunt Players
\nEnter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN
\nHow now, my lord! I will the king hear this piece of work?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nAnd the queen too, and that presently.
\nHAMLET
\nBid the players make haste.
\nExit POLONIUS
\nWill you two help to hasten them?
\nROSENCRANTZ GUILDENSTERN
\nWe will, my lord.
\nExeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
\nHAMLET
\nWhat ho! Horatio!
\nEnter HORATIO
\nHORATIO
\nHere, sweet lord, at your service.
\nHAMLET
\nHoratio, thou art e’en as just a man
\nAs e’er my conversation coped withal.
\nHORATIO
\nO, my dear lord,–
\nHAMLET
\nNay, do not think I flatter;
\nFor what advancement may I hope from thee
\nThat no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
\nTo feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter’d?
\nNo, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
\nAnd crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
\nWhere thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
\nSince my dear soul was mistress of her choice
\nAnd could of men distinguish, her election
\nHath seal’d thee for herself; for thou hast been
\nAs one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
\nA man that fortune’s buffets and rewards
\nHast ta’en with equal thanks: and blest are those
\nWhose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
\nThat they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger
\nTo sound what stop she please. Give me that man
\nThat is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
\nIn my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,
\nAs I do thee.–Something too much of this.–
\nThere is a play to-night before the king;
\nOne scene of it comes near the circumstance
\nWhich I have told thee of my father’s death:
\nI prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,
\nEven with the very comment of thy soul
\nObserve mine uncle: if his occulted guilt
\nDo not itself unkennel in one speech,
\nIt is a damned ghost that we have seen,
\nAnd my imaginations are as foul
\nAs Vulcan’s stithy. Give him heedful note;
\nFor I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
\nAnd after we will both our judgments join
\nIn censure of his seeming.
\nHORATIO
\nWell, my lord:
\nIf he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,
\nAnd ‘scape detecting, I will pay the theft.
\nHAMLET
\nThey are coming to the play; I must be idle:
\nGet you a place.
\nDanish march. A flourish. Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and others
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nHow fares our cousin Hamlet?
\nHAMLET
\nExcellent, i’ faith; of the chameleon’s dish: I eat
\nthe air, promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nI have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words
\nare not mine.
\nHAMLET
\nNo, nor mine now.
\nTo POLONIUS
\nMy lord, you played once i’ the university, you say?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nThat did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.
\nHAMLET
\nWhat did you enact?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nI did enact Julius Caesar<\/a>: I was killed i’ the
\nCapitol; Brutus killed me.
\nHAMLET
\nIt was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf
\nthere. Be the players ready?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nAy, my lord; they stay upon your patience.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nCome hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
\nHAMLET
\nNo, good mother, here’s metal more attractive.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\n[To KING CLAUDIUS] O, ho! do you mark that?
\nHAMLET
\nLady, shall I lie in your lap?
\nLying down at OPHELIA’s feet
\nOPHELIA
\nNo, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nI mean, my head upon your lap?
\nOPHELIA
\nAy, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nDo you think I meant country matters?
\nOPHELIA
\nI think nothing, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nThat’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.
\nOPHELIA
\nWhat is, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nNothing.
\nOPHELIA
\nYou are merry, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nWho, I?
\nOPHELIA
\nAy, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nO God, your only jig-maker. What should a man do
\nbut be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my
\nmother looks, and my father died within these two hours.
\nOPHELIA
\nNay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nSo long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for
\nI’ll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two
\nmonths ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there’s
\nhope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half
\na year: but, by’r lady, he must build churches,
\nthen; or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with
\nthe hobby-horse, whose epitaph is ‘For, O, for, O,
\nthe hobby-horse is forgot.’
\nHautboys play. The dumb-show enters
\nEnter 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
\nExeunt
\nOPHELIA
\nWhat means this, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nMarry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.
\nOPHELIA
\nBelike this show imports the argument of the play.
\nEnter Prologue
\nHAMLET
\nWe shall know by this fellow: the players cannot
\nkeep counsel; they’ll tell all.
\nOPHELIA
\nWill he tell us what this show meant?
\nHAMLET
\nAy, or any show that you’ll show him: be not you
\nashamed to show, he’ll not shame to tell you what it means.
\nOPHELIA
\nYou are naught, you are naught: I’ll mark the play.
\nPrologue
\nFor us, and for our tragedy,
\nHere stooping to your clemency,
\nWe beg your hearing patiently.
\nExit
\nHAMLET
\nIs this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
\nOPHELIA
\n‘Tis brief, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nAs woman’s love.
\nEnter two Players, King and Queen
\nPlayer King
\nFull thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round
\nNeptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground,
\nAnd thirty dozen moons with borrow’d sheen
\nAbout the world have times twelve thirties been,
\nSince love our hearts and Hymen did our hands
\nUnite commutual in most sacred bands.
\nPlayer Queen
\nSo many journeys may the sun and moon
\nMake us again count o’er ere love be done!
\nBut, woe is me, you are so sick of late,
\nSo far from cheer and from your former state,
\nThat I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
\nDiscomfort you, my lord, it nothing must:
\nFor women’s fear and love holds quantity;
\nIn neither aught, or in extremity.
\nNow, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
\nAnd as my love is sized, my fear is so:
\nWhere love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
\nWhere little fears grow great, great love grows there.
\nPlayer King
\n‘Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
\nMy operant powers their functions leave to do:
\nAnd thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
\nHonour’d, beloved; and haply one as kind
\nFor husband shalt thou–
\nPlayer Queen
\nO, confound the rest!
\nSuch love must needs be treason in my breast:
\nIn second husband let me be accurst!
\nNone wed the second but who kill’d the first.
\nHAMLET
\n[Aside] Wormwood, wormwood.
\nPlayer Queen
\nThe instances that second marriage move
\nAre base respects of thrift, but none of love:
\nA second time I kill my husband dead,
\nWhen second husband kisses me in bed.
\nPlayer King
\nI do believe you think what now you speak;
\nBut what we do determine oft we break.
\nPurpose is but the slave to memory,
\nOf violent birth, but poor validity;
\nWhich now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree;
\nBut fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.
\nMost necessary ’tis that we forget
\nTo pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt:
\nWhat to ourselves in passion we propose,
\nThe passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
\nThe violence of either grief or joy
\nTheir own enactures with themselves destroy:
\nWhere joy most revels, grief doth most lament;
\nGrief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
\nThis world is not for aye, nor ’tis not strange
\nThat even our loves should with our fortunes change;
\nFor ’tis a question left us yet to prove,
\nWhether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
\nThe great man down, you mark his favourite flies;
\nThe poor advanced makes friends of enemies.
\nAnd hitherto doth love on fortune tend;
\nFor who not needs shall never lack a friend,
\nAnd who in want a hollow friend doth try,
\nDirectly seasons him his enemy.
\nBut, orderly to end where I begun,
\nOur wills and fates do so contrary run
\nThat our devices still are overthrown;
\nOur thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own:
\nSo think thou wilt no second husband wed;
\nBut die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.
\nPlayer Queen
\nNor earth to me give food, nor heaven light!
\nSport and repose lock from me day and night!
\nTo desperation turn my trust and hope!
\nAn anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope!
\nEach opposite that blanks the face of joy
\nMeet what I would have well and it destroy!
\nBoth here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
\nIf, once a widow, ever I be wife!
\nHAMLET
\nIf she should break it now!
\nPlayer King
\n‘Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile;
\nMy spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
\nThe tedious day with sleep.
\nSleeps
\nPlayer Queen
\nSleep rock thy brain,
\nAnd never come mischance between us twain!
\nExit
\nHAMLET
\nMadam, how like you this play?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nThe lady protests too much, methinks.
\nHAMLET
\nO, but she’ll keep her word.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nHave you heard the argument? Is there no offence in ‘t?
\nHAMLET
\nNo, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence
\ni’ the world.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWhat do you call the play?
\nHAMLET
\nThe Mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play
\nis the image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is
\nthe duke’s name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see
\nanon; ’tis a knavish piece of work: but what o’
\nthat? your majesty and we that have free souls, it
\ntouches us not: let the galled jade wince, our
\nwithers are unwrung.
\nEnter LUCIANUS
\nThis is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.
\nOPHELIA
\nYou are as good as a chorus, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nI could interpret between you and your love, if I
\ncould see the puppets dallying.
\nOPHELIA
\nYou are keen, my lord, you are keen.
\nHAMLET
\nIt would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.
\nOPHELIA
\nStill better, and worse.
\nHAMLET
\nSo you must take your husbands. Begin, murderer;
\npox, leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come:
\n‘the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.’
\nLUCIANUS
\nThoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;
\nConfederate season, else no creature seeing;
\nThou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
\nWith Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
\nThy natural magic and dire property,
\nOn wholesome life usurp immediately.
\nPours the poison into the sleeper’s ears
\nHAMLET
\nHe poisons him i’ the garden for’s estate. His
\nname’s Gonzago: the story is extant, and writ in
\nchoice Italian: you shall see anon how the murderer
\ngets the love of Gonzago’s wife.
\nOPHELIA
\nThe king rises.
\nHAMLET
\nWhat, frighted with false fire!
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nHow fares my lord?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nGive o’er the play.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nGive me some light: away!
\nAll
\nLights, lights, lights!
\nExeunt all but HAMLET and HORATIO
\nHAMLET
\nWhy, let the stricken deer go weep,
\nThe hart ungalled play;
\nFor some must watch, while some must sleep:
\nSo runs the world away.
\nWould not this, sir, and a forest of feathers– if
\nthe rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me–with two
\nProvincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a
\nfellowship in a cry of players, sir?
\nHORATIO
\nHalf a share.
\nHAMLET
\nA whole one, I.
\nFor thou dost know, O Damon dear,
\nThis realm dismantled was
\nOf Jove himself; and now reigns here
\nA very, very–pajock.
\nHORATIO
\nYou might have rhymed.
\nHAMLET
\nO good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for a
\nthousand pound. Didst perceive?
\nHORATIO
\nVery well, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nUpon the talk of the poisoning?
\nHORATIO
\nI did very well note him.
\nHAMLET
\nAh, ha! Come, some music! come, the recorders!
\nFor if the king like not the comedy,
\nWhy then, belike, he likes it not, perdy.
\nCome, some music!
\nRe-enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nGood my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.
\nHAMLET
\nSir, a whole history.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nThe king, sir,–
\nHAMLET
\nAy, sir, what of him?
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nIs in his retirement marvellous distempered.
\nHAMLET
\nWith drink, sir?
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nNo, my lord, rather with choler.
\nHAMLET
\nYour wisdom should show itself more richer to
\nsignify this to his doctor; for, for me to put him
\nto his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far
\nmore choler.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nGood my lord, put your discourse into some frame and
\nstart not so wildly from my affair.
\nHAMLET
\nI am tame, sir: pronounce.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nThe queen, your mother, in most great affliction of
\nspirit, hath sent me to you.
\nHAMLET
\nYou are welcome.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nNay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right
\nbreed. If it shall please you to make me a
\nwholesome answer, I will do your mother’s
\ncommandment: if not, your pardon and my return
\nshall be the end of my business.
\nHAMLET
\nSir, I cannot.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nWhat, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nMake you a wholesome answer; my wit’s diseased: but,
\nsir, such answer as I can make, you shall command;
\nor, rather, as you say, my mother: therefore no
\nmore, but to the matter: my mother, you say,–
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nThen thus she says; your behavior hath struck her
\ninto amazement and admiration.
\nHAMLET
\nO wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother! But
\nis there no sequel at the heels of this mother’s
\nadmiration? Impart.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nShe desires to speak with you in her closet, ere you
\ngo to bed.
\nHAMLET
\nWe shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have
\nyou any further trade with us?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nMy lord, you once did love me.
\nHAMLET
\nSo I do still, by these pickers and stealers.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nGood my lord, what is your cause of distemper? you
\ndo, surely, bar the door upon your own liberty, if
\nyou deny your griefs to your friend.
\nHAMLET
\nSir, I lack advancement.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nHow can that be, when you have the voice of the king
\nhimself for your succession in Denmark?
\nHAMLET
\nAy, but sir, ‘While the grass grows,’–the proverb
\nis something musty.
\nRe-enter Players with recorders
\nO, the recorders! let me see one. To withdraw with
\nyou:–why do you go about to recover the wind of me,
\nas if you would drive me into a toil?
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nO, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too
\nunmannerly.
\nHAMLET
\nI do not well understand that. Will you play upon
\nthis pipe?
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nMy lord, I cannot.
\nHAMLET
\nI pray you.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nBelieve me, I cannot.
\nHAMLET
\nI do beseech you.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nI know no touch of it, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\n‘Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with
\nyour lingers and thumb, give it breath with your
\nmouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music.
\nLook you, these are the stops.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nBut these cannot I command to any utterance of
\nharmony; I have not the skill.
\nHAMLET
\nWhy, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
\nme! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
\nmy stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
\nmystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
\nthe top of my compass: and there is much music,
\nexcellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot
\nyou make it speak. ‘Sblood, do you think I am
\neasier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
\ninstrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
\ncannot play upon me.
\nEnter POLONIUS
\nGod bless you, sir!
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nMy lord, the queen would speak with you, and
\npresently.
\nHAMLET
\nDo you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nBy the mass, and ’tis like a camel, indeed.
\nHAMLET
\nMethinks it is like a weasel.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nIt is backed like a weasel.
\nHAMLET
\nOr like a whale?
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nVery like a whale.
\nHAMLET
\nThen I will come to my mother by and by. They fool
\nme to the top of my bent. I will come by and by.
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nI will say so.
\nHAMLET
\nBy and by is easily said.
\nExit POLONIUS
\nLeave me, friends.
\nExeunt all but HAMLET
\nTis now the very witching time of night,
\nWhen churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
\nContagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
\nAnd do such bitter business as the day
\nWould quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother.
\nO heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
\nThe soul of Nero<\/a> enter this firm bosom:
\nLet me be cruel, not unnatural:
\nI will speak daggers to her, but use none;
\nMy tongue and soul in this be hypocrites;
\nHow in my words soever she be shent,
\nTo give them seals never, my soul, consent!
\nExit
\nSCENE III. A room in the castle.
\nEnter KING CLAUDIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nI like him not, nor stands it safe with us
\nTo let his madness range. Therefore prepare you;
\nI your commission will forthwith dispatch,
\nAnd he to England shall along with you:
\nThe terms of our estate may not endure
\nHazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow
\nOut of his lunacies.
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nWe will ourselves provide:
\nMost holy and religious fear it is
\nTo keep those many many bodies safe
\nThat live and feed upon your majesty.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nThe single and peculiar life is bound,
\nWith all the strength and armour of the mind,
\nTo keep itself from noyance; but much more
\nThat spirit upon whose weal depend and rest
\nThe lives of many. The cease of majesty
\nDies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
\nWhat’s near it with it: it is a massy wheel,
\nFix’d on the summit of the highest mount,
\nTo whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
\nAre mortised and adjoin’d; which, when it falls,
\nEach small annexment, petty consequence,
\nAttends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
\nDid the king sigh, but with a general groan.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nArm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage;
\nFor we will fetters put upon this fear,
\nWhich now goes too free-footed.
\nROSENCRANTZ GUILDENSTERN
\nWe will haste us.
\nExeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
\nEnter POLONIUS
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nMy lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet:
\nBehind the arras I’ll convey myself,
\nTo hear the process; and warrant she’ll tax him home:
\nAnd, as you said, and wisely was it said,
\n‘Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
\nSince nature makes them partial, should o’erhear
\nThe speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege:
\nI’ll call upon you ere you go to bed,
\nAnd tell you what I know.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nThanks, dear my lord.
\nExit POLONIUS
\nO, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
\nIt hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
\nA brother’s murder. Pray can I not,
\nThough inclination be as sharp as will:
\nMy stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
\nAnd, like a man to double business bound,
\nI stand in pause where I shall first begin,
\nAnd both neglect. What if this cursed hand
\nWere thicker than itself with brother’s blood,
\nIs there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
\nTo wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
\nBut to confront the visage of offence?
\nAnd what’s in prayer but this two-fold force,
\nTo be forestalled ere we come to fall,
\nOr pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up;
\nMy fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
\nCan serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’?
\nThat cannot be; since I am still possess’d
\nOf those effects for which I did the murder,
\nMy crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
\nMay one be pardon’d and retain the offence?
\nIn the corrupted currents of this world
\nOffence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
\nAnd oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
\nBuys out the law: but ’tis not so above;
\nThere is no shuffling, there the action lies
\nIn his true nature; and we ourselves compell’d,
\nEven to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
\nTo give in evidence. What then? what rests?
\nTry what repentance can: what can it not?
\nYet what can it when one can not repent?
\nO wretched state! O bosom black as death!
\nO limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
\nArt more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
\nBow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
\nBe soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
\nAll may be well.
\nRetires and kneels
\nEnter HAMLET
\nHAMLET
\nNow might I do it pat, now he is praying;
\nAnd now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven;
\nAnd so am I revenged. That would be scann’d:
\nA villain kills my father; and for that,
\nI, his sole son, do this same villain send
\nTo heaven.
\nO, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
\nHe took my father grossly, full of bread;
\nWith all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
\nAnd how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
\nBut in our circumstance and course of thought,
\n‘Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,
\nTo take him in the purging of his soul,
\nWhen he is fit and season’d for his passage?
\nNo!
\nUp, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
\nWhen he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
\nOr in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
\nAt gaming, swearing, or about some act
\nThat has no relish of salvation in’t;
\nThen trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
\nAnd that his soul may be as damn’d and black
\nAs hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
\nThis physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
\nExit
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\n[Rising] My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
\nWords without thoughts never to heaven go.
\nExit
\nSCENE IV. The Queen’s closet.
\nEnter QUEEN GERTRUDE and POLONIUS
\nLORD POLONIUS
\nHe will come straight. Look you lay home to him:
\nTell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
\nAnd that your grace hath screen’d and stood between
\nMuch heat and him. I’ll sconce me even here.
\nPray you, be round with him.
\nHAMLET
\n[Within] Mother, mother, mother!
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nI’ll warrant you,
\nFear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.
\nPOLONIUS hides behind the arras
\nEnter HAMLET
\nHAMLET
\nNow, mother, what’s the matter?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nHamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
\nHAMLET
\nMother, you have my father much offended.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nCome, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
\nHAMLET
\nGo, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nWhy, how now, Hamlet!
\nHAMLET
\nWhat’s the matter now?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nHave you forgot me?
\nHAMLET
\nNo, by the rood, not so:
\nYou are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife;
\nAnd–would it were not so!–you are my mother.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nNay, then, I’ll set those to you that can speak.
\nHAMLET
\nCome, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
\nYou go not till I set you up a glass
\nWhere you may see the inmost part of you.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nWhat wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
\nHelp, help, ho!
\nLORD POLONIUS
\n[Behind] What, ho! help, help, help!
\nHAMLET
\n[Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
\nMakes a pass through the arras
\nLORD POLONIUS
\n[Behind] O, I am slain!
\nFalls and dies
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nO me, what hast thou done?
\nHAMLET
\nNay, I know not:
\nIs it the king?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nO, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
\nHAMLET
\nA bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
\nAs kill a king, and marry with his brother.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nAs kill a king!
\nHAMLET
\nAy, lady, ’twas my word.
\nLifts up the array and discovers POLONIUS
\nThou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
\nI took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;
\nThou find’st to be too busy is some danger.
\nLeave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down,
\nAnd let me wring your heart; for so I shall,
\nIf it be made of penetrable stuff,
\nIf damned custom have not brass’d it so
\nThat it is proof and bulwark against sense.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nWhat have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
\nIn noise so rude against me?
\nHAMLET
\nSuch an act
\nThat blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
\nCalls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
\nFrom the fair forehead of an innocent love
\nAnd sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
\nAs false as dicers’ oaths: O, such a deed
\nAs from the body of contraction plucks
\nThe very soul, and sweet religion makes
\nA rhapsody of words: heaven’s face doth glow:
\nYea, this solidity and compound mass,
\nWith tristful visage, as against the doom,
\nIs thought-sick at the act.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nAy me, what act,
\nThat roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
\nHAMLET
\nLook here, upon this picture, and on this,
\nThe counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
\nSee, what a grace was seated on this brow;
\nHyperion’s curls; the front of Jove himself;
\nAn eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
\nA station like the herald Mercury
\nNew-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
\nA combination and a form indeed,
\nWhere every god did seem to set his seal,
\nTo give the world assurance of a man:
\nThis was your husband. Look you now, what follows:
\nHere is your husband; like a mildew’d ear,
\nBlasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
\nCould you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
\nAnd batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
\nYou cannot call it love; for at your age
\nThe hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,
\nAnd waits upon the judgment: and what judgment
\nWould step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have,
\nElse could you not have motion; but sure, that sense
\nIs apoplex’d; for madness would not err,
\nNor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thrall’d
\nBut it reserved some quantity of choice,
\nTo serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
\nThat thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?
\nEyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
\nEars without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
\nOr but a sickly part of one true sense
\nCould not so mope.
\nO shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
\nIf thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
\nTo flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
\nAnd melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame
\nWhen the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
\nSince frost itself as actively doth burn
\nAnd reason panders will.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nO Hamlet, speak no more:
\nThou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul;
\nAnd there I see such black and grained spots
\nAs will not leave their tinct.
\nHAMLET
\nNay, but to live
\nIn the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
\nStew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
\nOver the nasty sty,–
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nO, speak to me no more;
\nThese words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
\nNo more, sweet Hamlet!
\nHAMLET
\nA murderer and a villain;
\nA slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
\nOf your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
\nA cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
\nThat from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
\nAnd put it in his pocket!
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nNo more!
\nHAMLET
\nA king of shreds and patches,–
\nEnter Ghost
\nSave me, and hover o’er me with your wings,
\nYou heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nAlas, he’s mad!
\nHAMLET
\nDo you not come your tardy son to chide,
\nThat, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
\nThe important acting of your dread command? O, say!
\nGhost
\nDo not forget: this visitation
\nIs but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
\nBut, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
\nO, step between her and her fighting soul:
\nConceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
\nSpeak to her, Hamlet.
\nHAMLET
\nHow is it with you, lady?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nAlas, how is’t with you,
\nThat you do bend your eye on vacancy
\nAnd with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
\nForth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
\nAnd, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
\nYour bedded hair, like life in excrements,
\nStarts up, and stands on end. O gentle son,
\nUpon the heat and flame of thy distemper
\nSprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?
\nHAMLET
\nOn him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares!
\nHis form and cause conjoin’d, preaching to stones,
\nWould make them capable. Do not look upon me;
\nLest with this piteous action you convert
\nMy stern effects: then what I have to do
\nWill want true colour; tears perchance for blood.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nTo whom do you speak this?
\nHAMLET
\nDo you see nothing there?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nNothing at all; yet all that is I see.
\nHAMLET
\nNor did you nothing hear?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nNo, nothing but ourselves.
\nHAMLET
\nWhy, look you there! look, how it steals away!
\nMy father, in his habit as he lived!
\nLook, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!
\nExit Ghost
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nThis the very coinage of your brain:
\nThis bodiless creation ecstasy
\nIs very cunning in.
\nHAMLET
\nEcstasy!
\nMy pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
\nAnd makes as healthful music: it is not madness
\nThat I have utter’d: bring me to the test,
\nAnd I the matter will re-word; which madness
\nWould gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
\nLay not that mattering unction to your soul,
\nThat not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
\nIt will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
\nWhilst rank corruption, mining all within,
\nInfects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
\nRepent what’s past; avoid what is to come;
\nAnd do not spread the compost on the weeds,
\nTo make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;
\nFor in the fatness of these pursy times
\nVirtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
\nYea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nO Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
\nHAMLET
\nO, throw away the worser part of it,
\nAnd live the purer with the other half.
\nGood night: but go not to mine uncle’s bed;
\nAssume a virtue, if you have it not.
\nThat monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
\nOf habits devil, is angel yet in this,
\nThat to the use of actions fair and good
\nHe likewise gives a frock or livery,
\nThat aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
\nAnd that shall lend a kind of easiness
\nTo the next abstinence: the next more easy;
\nFor use almost can change the stamp of nature,
\nAnd either [ ] the devil, or throw him out
\nWith wondrous potency. Once more, good night:
\nAnd when you are desirous to be bless’d,
\nI’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,
\nPointing to POLONIUS
\nI do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,
\nTo punish me with this and this with me,
\nThat I must be their scourge and minister.
\nI will bestow him, and will answer well
\nThe death I gave him. So, again, good night.
\nI must be cruel, only to be kind:
\nThus bad begins and worse remains behind.
\nOne word more, good lady.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nWhat shall I do?
\nHAMLET
\nNot this, by no means, that I bid you do:
\nLet the bloat king tempt you again to bed;
\nPinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;
\nAnd let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
\nOr paddling in your neck with his damn’d fingers,
\nMake you to ravel all this matter out,
\nThat I essentially am not in madness,
\nBut mad in craft. ‘Twere good you let him know;
\nFor who, that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
\nWould from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
\nSuch dear concernings hide? who would do so?
\nNo, in despite of sense and secrecy,
\nUnpeg the basket on the house’s top.
\nLet the birds fly, and, like the famous ape,
\nTo try conclusions, in the basket creep,
\nAnd break your own neck down.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nBe thou assured, if words be made of breath,
\nAnd breath of life, I have no life to breathe
\nWhat thou hast said to me.
\nHAMLET
\nI must to England; you know that?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nAlack,
\nI had forgot: ’tis so concluded on.
\nHAMLET
\nThere’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows,
\nWhom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,
\nThey bear the mandate; they must sweep my way,
\nAnd marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
\nFor ’tis the sport to have the engineer
\nHoist with his own petard: and ‘t shall go hard
\nBut I will delve one yard below their mines,
\nAnd blow them at the moon: O, ’tis most sweet,
\nWhen in one line two crafts directly meet.
\nThis man shall set me packing:
\nI’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.
\nMother, good night. Indeed this counsellor
\nIs now most still, most secret and most grave,
\nWho was in life a foolish prating knave.
\nCome, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
\nGood night, mother.
\nExeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in POLONIUS
\nACT IV
\nSCENE I. A room in the castle.
\nEnter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nThere’s matter in these sighs, these profound heaves:
\nYou must translate: ’tis fit we understand them.
\nWhere is your son?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nBestow this place on us a little while.
\nExeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
\nAh, my good lord, what have I seen to-night!
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWhat, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nMad as the sea and wind, when both contend
\nWhich is the mightier: in his lawless fit,
\nBehind the arras hearing something stir,
\nWhips out his rapier, cries, ‘A rat, a rat!’
\nAnd, in this brainish apprehension, kills
\nThe unseen good old man.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nO heavy deed!
\nIt had been so with us, had we been there:
\nHis liberty is full of threats to all;
\nTo you yourself, to us, to every one.
\nAlas, how shall this bloody deed be answer’d?
\nIt will be laid to us, whose providence
\nShould have kept short, restrain’d and out of haunt,
\nThis mad young man: but so much was our love,
\nWe would not understand what was most fit;
\nBut, like the owner of a foul disease,
\nTo keep it from divulging, let it feed
\nEven on the pith of Life. Where is he gone?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nTo draw apart the body he hath kill’d:
\nO’er whom his very madness, like some ore
\nAmong a mineral of metals base,
\nShows itself pure; he weeps for what is done.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nO Gertrude, come away!
\nThe sun no sooner shall the mountains touch,
\nBut we will ship him hence: and this vile deed
\nWe must, with all our majesty and skill,
\nBoth countenance and excuse. Ho, Guildenstern!
\nRe-enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
\nFriends both, go join you with some further aid:
\nHamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
\nAnd from his mother’s closet hath he dragg’d him:
\nGo seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body
\nInto the chapel. I pray you, haste in this.
\nExeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
\nCome, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends;
\nAnd let them know, both what we mean to do,
\nAnd what’s untimely done. O, come away!
\nMy soul is full of discord and dismay.
\nExeunt
\nSCENE II. Another room in the castle.
\nEnter HAMLET
\nHAMLET
\nSafely stowed.
\nROSENCRANTZ: GUILDENSTERN:
\n[Within] Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!
\nHAMLET
\nWhat noise? who calls on Hamlet?
\nO, here they come.
\nEnter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nWhat have you done, my lord, with the dead body?
\nHAMLET
\nCompounded it with dust, whereto ’tis kin.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nTell us where ’tis, that we may take it thence
\nAnd bear it to the chapel.
\nHAMLET
\nDo not believe it.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nBelieve what?
\nHAMLET
\nThat I can keep your counsel and not mine own.
\nBesides, to be demanded of a sponge! what
\nreplication should be made by the son of a king?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nTake you me for a sponge, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nAy, sir, that soaks up the king’s countenance, his
\nrewards, his authorities. But such officers do the
\nking best service in the end: he keeps them, like
\nan ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to
\nbe last swallowed: when he needs what you have
\ngleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you
\nshall be dry again.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nI understand you not, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nI am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a
\nfoolish ear.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nMy lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go
\nwith us to the king.
\nHAMLET
\nThe body is with the king, but the king is not with
\nthe body. The king is a thing–
\nGUILDENSTERN
\nA thing, my lord!
\nHAMLET
\nOf nothing: bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.
\nExeunt
\nSCENE III. Another room in the castle.
\nEnter KING CLAUDIUS, attended
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nI have sent to seek him, and to find the body.
\nHow dangerous is it that this man goes loose!
\nYet must not we put the strong law on him:
\nHe’s loved of the distracted multitude,
\nWho like not in their judgment, but their eyes;
\nAnd where tis so, the offender’s scourge is weigh’d,
\nBut never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,
\nThis sudden sending him away must seem
\nDeliberate pause: diseases desperate grown
\nBy desperate appliance are relieved,
\nOr not at all.
\nEnter ROSENCRANTZ
\nHow now! what hath befall’n?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nWhere the dead body is bestow’d, my lord,
\nWe cannot get from him.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nBut where is he?
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nWithout, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nBring him before us.
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nHo, Guildenstern! bring in my lord.
\nEnter HAMLET and GUILDENSTERN
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nNow, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?
\nHAMLET
\nAt supper.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nAt supper! where?
\nHAMLET
\nNot where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain
\nconvocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your
\nworm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all
\ncreatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for
\nmaggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but
\nvariable service, two dishes, but to one table:
\nthat’s the end.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nAlas, alas!
\nHAMLET
\nA man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a
\nking, and cat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWhat dost you mean by this?
\nHAMLET
\nNothing but to show you how a king may go a
\nprogress through the guts of a beggar.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWhere is Polonius?
\nHAMLET
\nIn heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger
\nfind him not there, seek him i’ the other place
\nyourself. But indeed, if you find him not within
\nthis month, you shall nose him as you go up the
\nstairs into the lobby.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nGo seek him there.
\nTo some Attendants
\nHAMLET
\nHe will stay till ye come.
\nExeunt Attendants
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nHamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,–
\nWhich we do tender, as we dearly grieve
\nFor that which thou hast done,–must send thee hence
\nWith fiery quickness: therefore prepare thyself;
\nThe bark is ready, and the wind at help,
\nThe associates tend, and every thing is bent
\nFor England.
\nHAMLET
\nFor England!
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nAy, Hamlet.
\nHAMLET
\nGood.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nSo is it, if thou knew’st our purposes.
\nHAMLET
\nI see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for
\nEngland! Farewell, dear mother.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nThy loving father, Hamlet.
\nHAMLET
\nMy mother: father and mother is man and wife; man
\nand wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England!
\nExit
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nFollow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard;
\nDelay it not; I’ll have him hence to-night:
\nAway! for every thing is seal’d and done
\nThat else leans on the affair: pray you, make haste.
\nExeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN
\nAnd, England, if my love thou hold’st at aught–
\nAs my great power thereof may give thee sense,
\nSince yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red
\nAfter the Danish sword, and thy free awe
\nPays homage to us–thou mayst not coldly set
\nOur sovereign process; which imports at full,
\nBy letters congruing to that effect,
\nThe present death of Hamlet. Do it, England;
\nFor like the hectic in my blood he rages,
\nAnd thou must cure me: till I know ’tis done,
\nHowe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.
\nExit
\nSCENE IV. A plain in Denmark.
\nEnter FORTINBRAS, a Captain, and Soldiers, marching
\nPRINCE FORTINBRAS
\nGo, captain, from me greet the Danish king;
\nTell him that, by his licence, Fortinbras
\nCraves the conveyance of a promised march
\nOver his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.
\nIf that his majesty would aught with us,
\nWe shall express our duty in his eye;
\nAnd let him know so.
\nCaptain
\nI will do’t, my lord.
\nPRINCE FORTINBRAS
\nGo softly on.
\nExeunt FORTINBRAS and Soldiers
\nEnter HAMLET, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and others
\nHAMLET
\nGood sir, whose powers are these?
\nCaptain
\nThey are of Norway, sir.
\nHAMLET
\nHow purposed, sir, I pray you?
\nCaptain
\nAgainst some part of Poland.
\nHAMLET
\nWho commands them, sir?
\nCaptain
\nThe nephews to old Norway, Fortinbras.
\nHAMLET
\nGoes it against the main of Poland, sir,
\nOr for some frontier?
\nCaptain
\nTruly to speak, and with no addition,
\nWe go to gain a little patch of ground
\nThat hath in it no profit but the name.
\nTo pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
\nNor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
\nA ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.
\nHAMLET
\nWhy, then the Polack never will defend it.
\nCaptain
\nYes, it is already garrison’d.
\nHAMLET
\nTwo thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
\nWill not debate the question of this straw:
\nThis is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
\nThat inward breaks, and shows no cause without
\nWhy the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.
\nCaptain
\nGod be wi’ you, sir.
\nExit
\nROSENCRANTZ
\nWilt please you go, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nI’ll be with you straight go a little before.
\nExeunt all except HAMLET
\nHow all occasions do inform against me,
\nAnd spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
\nIf his chief good and market of his time
\nBe but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
\nSure, he that made us with such large discourse,
\nLooking before and after, gave us not
\nThat capability and god-like reason
\nTo fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
\nBestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
\nOf thinking too precisely on the event,
\nA thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom
\nAnd ever three parts coward, I do not know
\nWhy yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do;’
\nSith I have cause and will and strength and means
\nTo do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
\nWitness this army of such mass and charge
\nLed by a delicate and tender prince,
\nWhose spirit with divine ambition puff’d
\nMakes mouths at the invisible event,
\nExposing what is mortal and unsure
\nTo all that fortune, death and danger dare,
\nEven for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
\nIs not to stir without great argument,
\nBut greatly to find quarrel in a straw
\nWhen honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,
\nThat have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,
\nExcitements of my reason and my blood,
\nAnd let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
\nThe imminent death of twenty thousand men,
\nThat, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
\nGo to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
\nWhereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
\nWhich is not tomb enough and continent
\nTo hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
\nMy thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
\nExit
\nSCENE V. Elsinore. A room in the castle.
\nEnter QUEEN GERTRUDE, HORATIO, and a Gentleman
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nI will not speak with her.
\nGentleman
\nShe is importunate, indeed distract:
\nHer mood will needs be pitied.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nWhat would she have?
\nGentleman
\nShe speaks much of her father; says she hears
\nThere’s tricks i’ the world; and hems, and beats her heart;
\nSpurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,
\nThat carry but half sense: her speech is nothing,
\nYet the unshaped use of it doth move
\nThe hearers to collection; they aim at it,
\nAnd botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
\nWhich, as her winks, and nods, and gestures
\nyield them,
\nIndeed would make one think there might be thought,
\nThough nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
\nHORATIO
\n‘Twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew
\nDangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nLet her come in.
\nExit HORATIO
\nTo my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is,
\nEach toy seems prologue to some great amiss:
\nSo full of artless jealousy is guilt,
\nIt spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
\nRe-enter HORATIO, with OPHELIA
\nOPHELIA
\nWhere is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nHow now, Ophelia!
\nOPHELIA
\n[Sings]
\nHow should I your true love know
\nFrom another one?
\nBy his cockle hat and staff,
\nAnd his sandal shoon.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nAlas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
\nOPHELIA
\nSay you? nay, pray you, mark.
\nSings
\nHe is dead and gone, lady,
\nHe is dead and gone;
\nAt his head a grass-green turf,
\nAt his heels a stone.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nNay, but, Ophelia,–
\nOPHELIA
\nPray you, mark.
\nSings
\nWhite his shroud as the mountain snow,–
\nEnter KING CLAUDIUS
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nAlas, look here, my lord.
\nOPHELIA
\n[Sings]
\nLarded with sweet flowers
\nWhich bewept to the grave did go
\nWith true-love showers.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nHow do you, pretty lady?
\nOPHELIA
\nWell, God ‘ild you! They say the owl was a baker’s
\ndaughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not
\nwhat we may be. God be at your table!
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nConceit upon her father.
\nOPHELIA
\nPray you, let’s have no words of this; but when they
\nask you what it means, say you this:
\nSings
\nTo-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
\nAll in the morning betime,
\nAnd I a maid at your window,
\nTo be your Valentine.
\nThen up he rose, and donn’d his clothes,
\nAnd dupp’d the chamber-door;
\nLet in the maid, that out a maid
\nNever departed more.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nPretty Ophelia!
\nOPHELIA
\nIndeed, la, without an oath, I’ll make an end on’t:
\nSings
\nBy Gis and by Saint Charity,
\nAlack, and fie for shame!
\nYoung men will do’t, if they come to’t;
\nBy cock, they are to blame.
\nQuoth she, before you tumbled me,
\nYou promised me to wed.
\nSo would I ha’ done, by yonder sun,
\nAn thou hadst not come to my bed.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nHow long hath she been thus?
\nOPHELIA
\nI hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I
\ncannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him
\ni’ the cold ground. My brother shall know of it:
\nand so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my
\ncoach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies;
\ngood night, good night.
\nExit
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nFollow her close; give her good watch,
\nI pray you.
\nExit HORATIO
\nO, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
\nAll from her father’s death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
\nWhen sorrows come, they come not single spies
\nBut in battalions. First, her father slain:
\nNext, your son gone; and he most violent author
\nOf his own just remove: the people muddied,
\nThick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers,
\nFor good Polonius’ death; and we have done but greenly,
\nIn hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Ophelia
\nDivided from herself and her fair judgment,
\nWithout the which we are pictures, or mere beasts:
\nLast, and as much containing as all these,
\nHer brother is in secret come from France;
\nFeeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
\nAnd wants not buzzers to infect his ear
\nWith pestilent speeches of his father’s death;
\nWherein necessity, of matter beggar’d,
\nWill nothing stick our person to arraign
\nIn ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
\nLike to a murdering-piece, in many places
\nGives me superfluous death.
\nA noise within
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nAlack, what noise is this?
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWhere are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.
\nEnter another Gentleman
\nWhat is the matter?
\nGentleman
\nSave yourself, my lord:
\nThe ocean, overpeering of his list,
\nEats not the flats with more impetuous haste
\nThan young Laertes, in a riotous head,
\nO’erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord;
\nAnd, as the world were now but to begin,
\nAntiquity forgot, custom not known,
\nThe ratifiers and props of every word,
\nThey cry ‘Choose we: Laertes shall be king:’
\nCaps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds:
\n‘Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!’
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nHow cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
\nO, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nThe doors are broke.
\nNoise within
\nEnter LAERTES, armed; Danes following
\nLAERTES
\nWhere is this king? Sirs, stand you all without.
\nDanes
\nNo, let’s come in.
\nLAERTES
\nI pray you, give me leave.
\nDanes
\nWe will, we will.
\nThey retire without the door
\nLAERTES
\nI thank you: keep the door. O thou vile king,
\nGive me my father!
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nCalmly, good Laertes.
\nLAERTES
\nThat drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard,
\nCries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
\nEven here, between the chaste unsmirched brow
\nOf my true mother.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWhat is the cause, Laertes,
\nThat thy rebellion looks so giant-like?
\nLet him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person:
\nThere’s such divinity doth hedge a king,
\nThat treason can but peep to what it would,
\nActs little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,
\nWhy thou art thus incensed. Let him go, Gertrude.
\nSpeak, man.
\nLAERTES
\nWhere is my father?
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nDead.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nBut not by him.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nLet him demand his fill.
\nLAERTES
\nHow came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with:
\nTo hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
\nConscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
\nI dare damnation. To this point I stand,
\nThat both the worlds I give to negligence,
\nLet come what comes; only I’ll be revenged
\nMost thoroughly for my father.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWho shall stay you?
\nLAERTES
\nMy will, not all the world:
\nAnd for my means, I’ll husband them so well,
\nThey shall go far with little.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nGood Laertes,
\nIf you desire to know the certainty
\nOf your dear father’s death, is’t writ in your revenge,
\nThat, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
\nWinner and loser?
\nLAERTES
\nNone but his enemies.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWill you know them then?
\nLAERTES
\nTo his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms;
\nAnd like the kind life-rendering pelican,
\nRepast them with my blood.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nWhy, now you speak
\nLike a good child and a true gentleman.
\nThat I am guiltless of your father’s death,
\nAnd am most sensible in grief for it,
\nIt shall as level to your judgment pierce
\nAs day does to your eye.
\nDanes
\n[Within] Let her come in.
\nLAERTES
\nHow now! what noise is that?
\nRe-enter OPHELIA
\nO heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
\nBurn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
\nBy heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
\nTill our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
\nDear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
\nO heavens! is’t possible, a young maid’s wits
\nShould be as moral as an old man’s life?
\nNature is fine in love, and where ’tis fine,
\nIt sends some precious instance of itself
\nAfter the thing it loves.
\nOPHELIA
\n[Sings]
\nThey bore him barefaced on the bier;
\nHey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
\nAnd in his grave rain’d many a tear:–
\nFare you well, my dove!
\nLAERTES
\nHadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
\nIt could not move thus.
\nOPHELIA
\n[Sings]
\nYou must sing a-down a-down,
\nAn you call him a-down-a.
\nO, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false
\nsteward, that stole his master’s daughter.
\nLAERTES
\nThis nothing’s more than matter.
\nOPHELIA
\nThere’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray,
\nlove, remember: and there is pansies. that’s for thoughts.
\nLAERTES
\nA document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.
\nOPHELIA
\nThere’s fennel for you, and columbines: there’s rue
\nfor you; and here’s some for me: we may call it
\nherb-grace o’ Sundays: O you must wear your rue with
\na difference. There’s a daisy: I would give you
\nsome violets, but they withered all when my father
\ndied: they say he made a good end,–
\nSings
\nFor bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.
\nLAERTES
\nThought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
\nShe turns to favour and to prettiness.
\nOPHELIA
\n[Sings]
\nAnd will he not come again?
\nAnd will he not come again?
\nNo, no, he is dead:
\nGo to thy death-bed:
\nHe never will come again.
\nHis beard was as white as snow,
\nAll flaxen was his poll:
\nHe is gone, he is gone,
\nAnd we cast away moan:
\nGod ha’ mercy on his soul!
\nAnd of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be wi’ ye.
\nExit
\nLAERTES
\nDo you see this, O God?
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nLaertes, I must commune with your grief,
\nOr you deny me right. Go but apart,
\nMake choice of whom your wisest friends you will.
\nAnd they shall hear and judge ‘twixt you and me:
\nIf by direct or by collateral hand
\nThey find us touch’d, we will our kingdom give,
\nOur crown, our life, and all that we can ours,
\nTo you in satisfaction; but if not,
\nBe you content to lend your patience to us,
\nAnd we shall jointly labour with your soul
\nTo give it due content.
\nLAERTES
\nLet this be so;
\nHis means of death, his obscure funeral–
\nNo trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones,
\nNo noble rite nor formal ostentation–
\nCry to be heard, as ’twere from heaven to earth,
\nThat I must call’t in question.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nSo you shall;
\nAnd where the offence is let the great axe fall.
\nI pray you, go with me.
\nExeunt
\nSCENE VI. Another room in the castle.
\nEnter HORATIO and a Servant
\nHORATIO
\nWhat are they that would speak with me?
\nServant
\nSailors, sir: they say they have letters for you.
\nHORATIO
\nLet them come in.
\nExit Servant
\nI do not know from what part of the world
\nI should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.
\nEnter Sailors
\nFirst Sailor
\nGod bless you, sir.
\nHORATIO
\nLet him bless thee too.
\nFirst Sailor
\nHe shall, sir, an’t please him. There’s a letter for
\nyou, sir; it comes from the ambassador that was
\nbound for England; if your name be Horatio, as I am
\nlet to know it is.
\nHORATIO
\n[Reads] ‘Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked
\nthis, give these fellows some means to the king:
\nthey have letters for him. Ere we were two days old
\nat sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us
\nchase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on
\na compelled valour, and in the grapple I boarded
\nthem: on the instant they got clear of our ship; so
\nI alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with
\nme like thieves of mercy: but they knew what they
\ndid; I am to do a good turn for them. Let the king
\nhave the letters I have sent; and repair thou to me
\nwith as much speed as thou wouldst fly death. I
\nhave words to speak in thine ear will make thee
\ndumb; yet are they much too light for the bore of
\nthe matter. These good fellows will bring thee
\nwhere I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their
\ncourse for England: of them I have much to tell
\nthee. Farewell.
\n‘He that thou knowest thine, HAMLET.’
\nCome, I will make you way for these your letters;
\nAnd do’t the speedier, that you may direct me
\nTo him from whom you brought them.
\nExeunt
\nSCENE VII. Another room in the castle.
\nEnter KING CLAUDIUS and LAERTES
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nNow must your conscience my acquaintance seal,
\nAnd you must put me in your heart for friend,
\nSith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
\nThat he which hath your noble father slain
\nPursued my life.
\nLAERTES
\nIt well appears: but tell me
\nWhy you proceeded not against these feats,
\nSo crimeful and so capital in nature,
\nAs by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
\nYou mainly were stirr’d up.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nO, for two special reasons;
\nWhich may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew’d,
\nBut yet to me they are strong. The queen his mother
\nLives almost by his looks; and for myself–
\nMy virtue or my plague, be it either which–
\nShe’s so conjunctive to my life and soul,
\nThat, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
\nI could not but by her. The other motive,
\nWhy to a public count I might not go,
\nIs the great love the general gender bear him;
\nWho, dipping all his faults in their affection,
\nWould, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
\nConvert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows,
\nToo slightly timber’d for so loud a wind,
\nWould have reverted to my bow again,
\nAnd not where I had aim’d them.
\nLAERTES
\nAnd so have I a noble father lost;
\nA sister driven into desperate terms,
\nWhose worth, if praises may go back again,
\nStood challenger on mount of all the age
\nFor her perfections: but my revenge will come.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nBreak not your sleeps for that: you must not think
\nThat we are made of stuff so flat and dull
\nThat we can let our beard be shook with danger
\nAnd think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more:
\nI loved your father, and we love ourself;
\nAnd that, I hope, will teach you to imagine–
\nEnter a Messenger
\nHow now! what news?
\nMessenger
\nLetters, my lord, from Hamlet:
\nThis to your majesty; this to the queen.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nFrom Hamlet! who brought them?
\nMessenger
\nSailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not:
\nThey were given me by Claudio; he received them
\nOf him that brought them.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nLaertes, you shall hear them. Leave us.
\nExit Messenger
\nReads
\n‘High and mighty, You shall know I am set naked on
\nyour kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see
\nyour kingly eyes: when I shall, first asking your
\npardon thereunto, recount the occasion of my sudden
\nand more strange return. ‘HAMLET.’
\nWhat should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
\nOr is it some abuse, and no such thing?
\nLAERTES
\nKnow you the hand?
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\n‘Tis Hamlets character. ‘Naked!
\nAnd in a postscript here, he says ‘alone.’
\nCan you advise me?
\nLAERTES
\nI’m lost in it, my lord. But let him come;
\nIt warms the very sickness in my heart,
\nThat I shall live and tell him to his teeth,
\n‘Thus didest thou.’
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nIf it be so, Laertes–
\nAs how should it be so? how otherwise?–
\nWill you be ruled by me?
\nLAERTES
\nAy, my lord;
\nSo you will not o’errule me to a peace.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nTo thine own peace. If he be now return’d,
\nAs checking at his voyage, and that he means
\nNo more to undertake it, I will work him
\nTo an exploit, now ripe in my device,
\nUnder the which he shall not choose but fall:
\nAnd for his death no wind of blame shall breathe,
\nBut even his mother shall uncharge the practise
\nAnd call it accident.
\nLAERTES
\nMy lord, I will be ruled;
\nThe rather, if you could devise it so
\nThat I might be the organ.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nIt falls right.
\nYou have been talk’d of since your travel much,
\nAnd that in Hamlet’s hearing, for a quality
\nWherein, they say, you shine: your sum of parts
\nDid not together pluck such envy from him
\nAs did that one, and that, in my regard,
\nOf the unworthiest siege.
\nLAERTES
\nWhat part is that, my lord?
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nA very riband in the cap of youth,
\nYet needful too; for youth no less becomes
\nThe light and careless livery that it wears
\nThan settled age his sables and his weeds,
\nImporting health and graveness. Two months since,
\nHere was a gentleman of Normandy:–
\nI’ve seen myself, and served against, the French,
\nAnd they can well on horseback: but this gallant
\nHad witchcraft in’t; he grew unto his seat;
\nAnd to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
\nAs he had been incorpsed and demi-natured
\nWith the brave beast: so far he topp’d my thought,
\nThat I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,
\nCome short of what he did.
\nLAERTES
\nA Norman was’t?
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nA Norman.
\nLAERTES
\nUpon my life, Lamond.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nThe very same.
\nLAERTES
\nI know him well: he is the brooch indeed
\nAnd gem of all the nation.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nHe made confession of you,
\nAnd gave you such a masterly report
\nFor art and exercise in your defence
\nAnd for your rapier most especially,
\nThat he cried out, ‘twould be a sight indeed,
\nIf one could match you: the scrimers of their nation,
\nHe swore, had had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
\nIf you opposed them. Sir, this report of his
\nDid Hamlet so envenom with his envy
\nThat he could nothing do but wish and beg
\nYour sudden coming o’er, to play with him.
\nNow, out of this,–
\nLAERTES
\nWhat out of this, my lord?
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nLaertes, was your father dear to you?
\nOr are you like the painting of a sorrow,
\nA face without a heart?
\nLAERTES
\nWhy ask you this?
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nNot that I think you did not love your father;
\nBut that I know love is begun by time;
\nAnd that I see, in passages of proof,
\nTime qualifies the spark and fire of it.
\nThere lives within the very flame of love
\nA kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
\nAnd nothing is at a like goodness still;
\nFor goodness, growing to a plurisy,
\nDies in his own too much: that we would do
\nWe should do when we would; for this ‘would’ changes
\nAnd hath abatements and delays as many
\nAs there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
\nAnd then this ‘should’ is like a spendthrift sigh,
\nThat hurts by easing. But, to the quick o’ the ulcer:–
\nHamlet comes back: what would you undertake,
\nTo show yourself your father’s son in deed
\nMore than in words?
\nLAERTES
\nTo cut his throat i’ the church.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nNo place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize;
\nRevenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,
\nWill you do this, keep close within your chamber.
\nHamlet return’d shall know you are come home:
\nWe’ll put on those shall praise your excellence
\nAnd set a double varnish on the fame
\nThe Frenchman gave you, bring you in fine together
\nAnd wager on your heads: he, being remiss,
\nMost generous and free from all contriving,
\nWill not peruse the foils; so that, with ease,
\nOr with a little shuffling, you may choose
\nA sword unbated, and in a pass of practise
\nRequite him for your father.
\nLAERTES
\nI will do’t:
\nAnd, for that purpose, I’ll anoint my sword.
\nI bought an unction of a mountebank,
\nSo mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
\nWhere it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
\nCollected from all simples that have virtue
\nUnder the moon, can save the thing from death
\nThat is but scratch’d withal: I’ll touch my point
\nWith this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
\nIt may be death.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nLet’s further think of this;
\nWeigh what convenience both of time and means
\nMay fit us to our shape: if this should fail,
\nAnd that our drift look through our bad performance,
\n‘Twere better not assay’d: therefore this project
\nShould have a back or second, that might hold,
\nIf this should blast in proof. Soft! let me see:
\nWe’ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings: I ha’t.
\nWhen in your motion you are hot and dry–
\nAs make your bouts more violent to that end–
\nAnd that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepared him
\nA chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
\nIf he by chance escape your venom’d stuck,
\nOur purpose may hold there.
\nEnter QUEEN GERTRUDE
\nHow now, sweet queen!
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nOne woe doth tread upon another’s heel,
\nSo fast they follow; your sister’s drown’d, Laertes.
\nLAERTES
\nDrown’d! O, where?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nThere is a willow grows aslant a brook,
\nThat shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
\nThere with fantastic garlands did she come
\nOf crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
\nThat liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
\nBut our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them:
\nThere, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
\nClambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
\nWhen down her weedy trophies and herself
\nFell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
\nAnd, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
\nWhich time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
\nAs one incapable of her own distress,
\nOr like a creature native and indued
\nUnto that element: but long it could not be
\nTill that her garments, heavy with their drink,
\nPull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
\nTo muddy death.
\nLAERTES
\nAlas, then, she is drown’d?
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nDrown’d, drown’d.
\nLAERTES
\nToo much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
\nAnd therefore I forbid my tears: but yet
\nIt is our trick; nature her custom holds,
\nLet shame say what it will: when these are gone,
\nThe woman will be out. Adieu, my lord:
\nI have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
\nBut that this folly douts it.
\nExit
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nLet’s follow, Gertrude:
\nHow much I had to do to calm his rage!
\nNow fear I this will give it start again;
\nTherefore let’s follow.
\nExeunt
\nACT V
\nSCENE I. A churchyard.
\nEnter two Clowns, with spades, & c
\nFirst Clown
\nIs she to be buried in Christian burial that
\nwilfully seeks her own salvation?
\nSecond Clown
\nI tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave
\nstraight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it
\nChristian burial.
\nFirst Clown
\nHow can that be, unless she drowned herself in her
\nown defence?
\nSecond Clown
\nWhy, ’tis found so.
\nFirst Clown
\nIt must be ‘se offendendo;’ it cannot be else. For
\nhere lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly,
\nit argues an act: and an act hath three branches: it
\nis, to act, to do, to perform: argal, she drowned
\nherself wittingly.
\nSecond Clown
\nNay, but hear you, goodman delver,–
\nFirst Clown
\nGive me leave. Here lies the water; good: here
\nstands the man; good; if the man go to this water,
\nand drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he
\ngoes,–mark you that; but if the water come to him
\nand drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he
\nthat is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.
\nSecond Clown
\nBut is this law?
\nFirst Clown
\nAy, marry, is’t; crowner’s quest law.
\nSecond Clown
\nWill you ha’ the truth on’t? If this had not been
\na gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o’
\nChristian burial.
\nFirst Clown
\nWhy, there thou say’st: and the more pity that
\ngreat folk should have countenance in this world to
\ndrown or hang themselves, more than their even
\nChristian. Come, my spade. There is no ancient
\ngentleman but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers:
\nthey hold up Adam’s profession.
\nSecond Clown
\nWas he a gentleman?
\nFirst Clown
\nHe was the first that ever bore arms.
\nSecond Clown
\nWhy, he had none.
\nFirst Clown
\nWhat, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the
\nScripture? The Scripture says ‘Adam digged:’
\ncould he dig without arms? I’ll put another
\nquestion to thee: if thou answerest me not to the
\npurpose, confess thyself–
\nSecond Clown
\nGo to.
\nFirst Clown
\nWhat is he that builds stronger than either the
\nmason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?
\nSecond Clown
\nThe gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a
\nthousand tenants.
\nFirst Clown
\nI like thy wit well, in good faith: the gallows
\ndoes well; but how does it well? it does well to
\nthose that do in: now thou dost ill to say the
\ngallows is built stronger than the church: argal,
\nthe gallows may do well to thee. To’t again, come.
\nSecond Clown
\n‘Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or
\na carpenter?’
\nFirst Clown
\nAy, tell me that, and unyoke.
\nSecond Clown
\nMarry, now I can tell.
\nFirst Clown
\nTo’t.
\nSecond Clown
\nMass, I cannot tell.
\nEnter HAMLET and HORATIO, at a distance
\nFirst Clown
\nCudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull
\nass will not mend his pace with beating; and, when
\nyou are asked this question next, say ‘a
\ngrave-maker: ‘the houses that he makes last till
\ndoomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan: fetch me a
\nstoup of liquor.
\nExit Second Clown
\nHe digs and sings
\nIn youth, when I did love, did love,
\nMethought it was very sweet,
\nTo contract, O, the time, for, ah, my behove,
\nO, methought, there was nothing meet.
\nHAMLET
\nHas this fellow no feeling of his business, that he
\nsings at grave-making?
\nHORATIO
\nCustom hath made it in him a property of easiness.
\nHAMLET
\n‘Tis e’en so: the hand of little employment hath
\nthe daintier sense.
\nFirst Clown
\n[Sings]
\nBut age, with his stealing steps,
\nHath claw’d me in his clutch,
\nAnd hath shipped me intil the land,
\nAs if I had never been such.
\nThrows up a skull
\nHAMLET
\nThat skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once:
\nhow the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were
\nCain’s jaw-bone, that did the first murder! It
\nmight be the pate of a politician, which this ass
\nnow o’er-reaches; one that would circumvent God,
\nmight it not?
\nHORATIO
\nIt might, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nOr of a courtier; which could say ‘Good morrow,
\nsweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?’ This might
\nbe my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord
\nsuch-a-one’s horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not?
\nHORATIO
\nAy, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nWhy, e’en so: and now my Lady Worm’s; chapless, and
\nknocked about the mazzard with a sexton’s spade:
\nhere’s fine revolution, an we had the trick to
\nsee’t. Did these bones cost no more the breeding,
\nbut to play at loggats with ’em? mine ache to think on’t.
\nFirst Clown
\n[Sings]
\nA pick-axe, and a spade, a spade,
\nFor and a shrouding sheet:
\nO, a pit of clay for to be made
\nFor such a guest is meet.
\nThrows up another skull
\nHAMLET
\nThere’s another: why may not that be the skull of a
\nlawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets,
\nhis cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he
\nsuffer this rude knave now to knock him about the
\nsconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of
\nhis action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be
\nin’s time a great buyer of land, with his statutes,
\nhis recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers,
\nhis recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and
\nthe recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine
\npate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him
\nno more of his purchases, and double ones too, than
\nthe length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The
\nvery conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in
\nthis box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?
\nHORATIO
\nNot a jot more, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nIs not parchment made of sheepskins?
\nHORATIO
\nAy, my lord, and of calf-skins too.
\nHAMLET
\nThey are sheep and calves which seek out assurance
\nin that. I will speak to this fellow. Whose
\ngrave’s this, sirrah?
\nFirst Clown
\nMine, sir.
\nSings
\nO, a pit of clay for to be made
\nFor such a guest is meet.
\nHAMLET
\nI think it be thine, indeed; for thou liest in’t.
\nFirst Clown
\nYou lie out on’t, sir, and therefore it is not
\nyours: for my part, I do not lie in’t, and yet it is mine.
\nHAMLET
\n‘Thou dost lie in’t, to be in’t and say it is thine:
\n’tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.
\nFirst Clown
\n‘Tis a quick lie, sir; ’twill away gain, from me to
\nyou.
\nHAMLET
\nWhat man dost thou dig it for?
\nFirst Clown
\nFor no man, sir.
\nHAMLET
\nWhat woman, then?
\nFirst Clown
\nFor none, neither.
\nHAMLET
\nWho is to be buried in’t?
\nFirst Clown
\nOne that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she’s dead.
\nHAMLET
\nHow absolute the knave is! we must speak by the
\ncard, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord,
\nHoratio, these three years I have taken a note of
\nit; the age is grown so picked that the toe of the
\npeasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he
\ngaffs his kibe. How long hast thou been a
\ngrave-maker?
\nFirst Clown
\nOf all the days i’ the year, I came to’t that day
\nthat our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.
\nHAMLET
\nHow long is that since?
\nFirst Clown
\nCannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it
\nwas the very day that young Hamlet was born; he that
\nis mad, and sent into England.
\nHAMLET
\nAy, marry, why was he sent into England?
\nFirst Clown
\nWhy, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits
\nthere; or, if he do not, it’s no great matter there.
\nHAMLET
\nWhy?
\nFirst Clown
\n‘Twill, a not be seen in him there; there the men
\nare as mad as he.
\nHAMLET
\nHow came he mad?
\nFirst Clown
\nVery strangely, they say.
\nHAMLET
\nHow strangely?
\nFirst Clown
\nFaith, e’en with losing his wits.
\nHAMLET
\nUpon what ground?
\nFirst Clown
\nWhy, here in Denmark: I have been sexton here, man
\nand boy, thirty years.
\nHAMLET
\nHow long will a man lie i’ the earth ere he rot?
\nFirst Clown
\nI’ faith, if he be not rotten before he die–as we
\nhave many pocky corses now-a-days, that will scarce
\nhold the laying in–he will last you some eight year
\nor nine year: a tanner will last you nine year.
\nHAMLET
\nWhy he more than another?
\nFirst Clown
\nWhy, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade, that
\nhe will keep out water a great while; and your water
\nis a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.
\nHere’s a skull now; this skull has lain in the earth
\nthree and twenty years.
\nHAMLET
\nWhose was it?
\nFirst Clown
\nA whoreson mad fellow’s it was: whose do you think it was?
\nHAMLET
\nNay, I know not.
\nFirst Clown
\nA pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a’ poured a
\nflagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull,
\nsir, was Yorick’s skull, the king’s jester.
\nHAMLET
\nThis?
\nFirst Clown
\nE’en that.
\nHAMLET
\nLet me see.
\nTakes the skull
\nAlas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
\nof infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
\nborne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
\nabhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
\nit. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
\nnot how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
\ngambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
\nthat were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
\nnow, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
\nNow get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let
\nher paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
\ncome; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell
\nme one thing.
\nHORATIO
\nWhat’s that, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nDost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’
\nthe earth?
\nHORATIO
\nE’en so.
\nHAMLET
\nAnd smelt so? pah!
\nPuts down the skull
\nHORATIO
\nE’en so, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nTo what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may
\nnot imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander,
\ntill he find it stopping a bung-hole?
\nHORATIO
\n‘Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.
\nHAMLET
\nNo, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with
\nmodesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as
\nthus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
\nAlexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of
\nearth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he
\nwas converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?
\nImperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,
\nMight stop a hole to keep the wind away:
\nO, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
\nShould patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!
\nBut soft! but soft! aside: here comes the king.
\nEnter Priest, & c. in procession; the Corpse of OPHELIA, LAERTES and Mourners following; KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, their trains, & c
\nThe queen, the courtiers: who is this they follow?
\nAnd with such maimed rites? This doth betoken
\nThe corse they follow did with desperate hand
\nFordo its own life: ’twas of some estate.
\nCouch we awhile, and mark.
\nRetiring with HORATIO
\nLAERTES
\nWhat ceremony else?
\nHAMLET
\nThat is Laertes,
\nA very noble youth: mark.
\nLAERTES
\nWhat ceremony else?
\nFirst Priest
\nHer obsequies have been as far enlarged
\nAs we have warrantise: her death was doubtful;
\nAnd, but that great command o’ersways the order,
\nShe should in ground unsanctified have lodged
\nTill the last trumpet: for charitable prayers,
\nShards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her;
\nYet here she is allow’d her virgin crants,
\nHer maiden strewments and the bringing home
\nOf bell and burial.
\nLAERTES
\nMust there no more be done?
\nFirst Priest
\nNo more be done:
\nWe should profane the service of the dead
\nTo sing a requiem and such rest to her
\nAs to peace-parted souls.
\nLAERTES
\nLay her i’ the earth:
\nAnd from her fair and unpolluted flesh
\nMay violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
\nA ministering angel shall my sister be,
\nWhen thou liest howling.
\nHAMLET
\nWhat, the fair Ophelia!
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nSweets to the sweet: farewell!
\nScattering flowers
\nI hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife;
\nI thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d, sweet maid,
\nAnd not have strew’d thy grave.
\nLAERTES
\nO, treble woe
\nFall ten times treble on that cursed head,
\nWhose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense
\nDeprived thee of! Hold off the earth awhile,
\nTill I have caught her once more in mine arms:
\nLeaps into the grave
\nNow pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
\nTill of this flat a mountain you have made,
\nTo o’ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head
\nOf blue Olympus.
\nHAMLET
\n[Advancing] What is he whose grief
\nBears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow
\nConjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand
\nLike wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,
\nHamlet the Dane.
\nLeaps into the grave
\nLAERTES
\nThe devil take thy soul!
\nGrappling with him
\nHAMLET
\nThou pray’st not well.
\nI prithee, take thy fingers from my throat;
\nFor, though I am not splenitive and rash,
\nYet have I something in me dangerous,
\nWhich let thy wiseness fear: hold off thy hand.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nPluck them asunder.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nHamlet, Hamlet!
\nAll
\nGentlemen,–
\nHORATIO
\nGood my lord, be quiet.
\nThe Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave
\nHAMLET
\nWhy I will fight with him upon this theme
\nUntil my eyelids will no longer wag.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nO my son, what theme?
\nHAMLET
\nI loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers
\nCould not, with all their quantity of love,
\nMake up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nO, he is mad, Laertes.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nFor love of God, forbear him.
\nHAMLET
\n‘Swounds, show me what thou’lt do:
\nWoo’t weep? woo’t fight? woo’t fast? woo’t tear thyself?
\nWoo’t drink up eisel? eat a crocodile?
\nI’ll do’t. Dost thou come here to whine?
\nTo outface me with leaping in her grave?
\nBe buried quick with her, and so will I:
\nAnd, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
\nMillions of acres on us, till our ground,
\nSingeing his pate against the burning zone,
\nMake Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou’lt mouth,
\nI’ll rant as well as thou.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nThis is mere madness:
\nAnd thus awhile the fit will work on him;
\nAnon, as patient as the female dove,
\nWhen that her golden couplets are disclosed,
\nHis silence will sit drooping.
\nHAMLET
\nHear you, sir;
\nWhat is the reason that you use me thus?
\nI loved you ever: but it is no matter;
\nLet Hercules himself do what he may,
\nThe cat will mew and dog will have his day.
\nExit
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nI pray you, good Horatio, wait upon him.
\nExit HORATIO
\nTo LAERTES
\nStrengthen your patience in our last night’s speech;
\nWe’ll put the matter to the present push.
\nGood Gertrude, set some watch over your son.
\nThis grave shall have a living monument:
\nAn hour of quiet shortly shall we see;
\nTill then, in patience our proceeding be.
\nExeunt
\nSCENE II. A hall in the castle.
\nEnter HAMLET and HORATIO
\nHAMLET
\nSo much for this, sir: now shall you see the other;
\nYou do remember all the circumstance?
\nHORATIO
\nRemember it, my lord?
\nHAMLET
\nSir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting,
\nThat would not let me sleep: methought I lay
\nWorse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly,
\nAnd praised be rashness for it, let us know,
\nOur indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
\nWhen our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us
\nThere’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
\nRough-hew them how we will,–
\nHORATIO
\nThat is most certain.
\nHAMLET
\nUp from my cabin,
\nMy sea-gown scarf’d about me, in the dark
\nGroped I to find out them; had my desire.
\nFinger’d their packet, and in fine withdrew
\nTo mine own room again; making so bold,
\nMy fears forgetting manners, to unseal
\nTheir grand commission; where I found, Horatio,–
\nO royal knavery!–an exact command,
\nLarded with many several sorts of reasons
\nImporting Denmark’s health and England’s too,
\nWith, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life,
\nThat, on the supervise, no leisure bated,
\nNo, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
\nMy head should be struck off.
\nHORATIO
\nIs’t possible?
\nHAMLET
\nHere’s the commission: read it at more leisure.
\nBut wilt thou hear me how I did proceed?
\nHORATIO
\nI beseech you.
\nHAMLET
\nBeing thus be-netted round with villanies,–
\nEre I could make a prologue to my brains,
\nThey had begun the play–I sat me down,
\nDevised a new commission, wrote it fair:
\nI once did hold it, as our statists do,
\nA baseness to write fair and labour’d much
\nHow to forget that learning, but, sir, now
\nIt did me yeoman’s service: wilt thou know
\nThe effect of what I wrote?
\nHORATIO
\nAy, good my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nAn earnest conjuration from the king,
\nAs England was his faithful tributary,
\nAs love between them like the palm might flourish,
\nAs peace should stiff her wheaten garland wear
\nAnd stand a comma ‘tween their amities,
\nAnd many such-like ‘As’es of great charge,
\nThat, on the view and knowing of these contents,
\nWithout debatement further, more or less,
\nHe should the bearers put to sudden death,
\nNot shriving-time allow’d.
\nHORATIO
\nHow was this seal’d?
\nHAMLET
\nWhy, even in that was heaven ordinant.
\nI had my father’s signet in my purse,
\nWhich was the model of that Danish seal;
\nFolded the writ up in form of the other,
\nSubscribed it, gave’t the impression, placed it safely,
\nThe changeling never known. Now, the next day
\nWas our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent
\nThou know’st already.
\nHORATIO
\nSo Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to’t.
\nHAMLET
\nWhy, man, they did make love to this employment;
\nThey are not near my conscience; their defeat
\nDoes by their own insinuation grow:
\n‘Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
\nBetween the pass and fell incensed points
\nOf mighty opposites.
\nHORATIO
\nWhy, what a king is this!
\nHAMLET
\nDoes it not, think’st thee, stand me now upon–
\nHe that hath kill’d my king and whored my mother,
\nPopp’d in between the election and my hopes,
\nThrown out his angle for my proper life,
\nAnd with such cozenage–is’t not perfect conscience,
\nTo quit him with this arm? and is’t not to be damn’d,
\nTo let this canker of our nature come
\nIn further evil?
\nHORATIO
\nIt must be shortly known to him from England
\nWhat is the issue of the business there.
\nHAMLET
\nIt will be short: the interim is mine;
\nAnd a man’s life’s no more than to say ‘One.’
\nBut I am very sorry, good Horatio,
\nThat to Laertes I forgot myself;
\nFor, by the image of my cause, I see
\nThe portraiture of his: I’ll court his favours.
\nBut, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me
\nInto a towering passion.
\nHORATIO
\nPeace! who comes here?
\nEnter OSRIC
\nOSRIC<\/a>
\nYour lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.
\nHAMLET
\nI humbly thank you, sir. Dost know this water-fly?
\nHORATIO
\nNo, my good lord.
\nHAMLET
\nThy state is the more gracious; for ’tis a vice to
\nknow him. He hath much land, and fertile: let a
\nbeast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at
\nthe king’s mess: ’tis a chough; but, as I say,
\nspacious in the possession of dirt.
\nOSRIC
\nSweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I
\nshould impart a thing to you from his majesty.
\nHAMLET
\nI will receive it, sir, with all diligence of
\nspirit. Put your bonnet to his right use; ’tis for the head.
\nOSRIC
\nI thank your lordship, it is very hot.
\nHAMLET
\nNo, believe me, ’tis very cold; the wind is
\nnortherly.
\nOSRIC
\nIt is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.
\nHAMLET
\nBut yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my
\ncomplexion.
\nOSRIC
\nExceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry,–as
\n’twere,–I cannot tell how. But, my lord, his
\nmajesty bade me signify to you that he has laid a
\ngreat wager on your head: sir, this is the matter,–
\nHAMLET
\nI beseech you, remember–
\nHAMLET moves him to put on his hat
\nOSRIC
\nNay, good my lord; for mine ease, in good faith.
\nSir, here is newly come to court Laertes; believe
\nme, an absolute gentleman, full of most excellent
\ndifferences, of very soft society and great showing:
\nindeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the card or
\ncalendar of gentry, for you shall find in him the
\ncontinent of what part a gentleman would see.
\nHAMLET
\nSir, his definement suffers no perdition in you;
\nthough, I know, to divide him inventorially would
\ndizzy the arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw
\nneither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in the
\nverity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of
\ngreat article; and his infusion of such dearth and
\nrareness, as, to make true diction of him, his
\nsemblable is his mirror; and who else would trace
\nhim, his umbrage, nothing more.
\nOSRIC
\nYour lordship speaks most infallibly of him.
\nHAMLET
\nThe concernancy, sir? why do we wrap the gentleman
\nin our more rawer breath?
\nOSRIC
\nSir?
\nHORATIO
\nIs’t not possible to understand in another tongue?
\nYou will do’t, sir, really.
\nHAMLET
\nWhat imports the nomination of this gentleman?
\nOSRIC
\nOf Laertes?
\nHORATIO
\nHis purse is empty already; all’s golden words are spent.
\nHAMLET
\nOf him, sir.
\nOSRIC
\nI know you are not ignorant–
\nHAMLET
\nI would you did, sir; yet, in faith, if you did,
\nit would not much approve me. Well, sir?
\nOSRIC
\nYou are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is–
\nHAMLET
\nI dare not confess that, lest I should compare with
\nhim in excellence; but, to know a man well, were to
\nknow himself.
\nOSRIC
\nI mean, sir, for his weapon; but in the imputation
\nlaid on him by them, in his meed he’s unfellowed.
\nHAMLET
\nWhat’s his weapon?
\nOSRIC
\nRapier and dagger.
\nHAMLET
\nThat’s two of his weapons: but, well.
\nOSRIC
\nThe king, sir, hath wagered with him six Barbary
\nhorses: against the which he has imponed, as I take
\nit, six French rapiers and poniards, with their
\nassigns, as girdle, hangers, and so: three of the
\ncarriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very
\nresponsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages,
\nand of very liberal conceit.
\nHAMLET
\nWhat call you the carriages?
\nHORATIO
\nI knew you must be edified by the margent ere you had done.
\nOSRIC
\nThe carriages, sir, are the hangers.
\nHAMLET
\nThe phrase would be more german to the matter, if we
\ncould carry cannon by our sides: I would it might
\nbe hangers till then. But, on: six Barbary horses
\nagainst six French swords, their assigns, and three
\nliberal-conceited carriages; that’s the French bet
\nagainst the Danish. Why is this ‘imponed,’ as you call it?
\nOSRIC
\nThe king, sir, hath laid, that in a dozen passes
\nbetween yourself and him, he shall not exceed you
\nthree hits: he hath laid on twelve for nine; and it
\nwould come to immediate trial, if your lordship
\nwould vouchsafe the answer.
\nHAMLET
\nHow if I answer ‘no’?
\nOSRIC
\nI mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in trial.
\nHAMLET
\nSir, I will walk here in the hall: if it please his
\nmajesty, ’tis the breathing time of day with me; let
\nthe foils be brought, the gentleman willing, and the
\nking hold his purpose, I will win for him an I can;
\nif not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.
\nOSRIC
\nShall I re-deliver you e’en so?
\nHAMLET
\nTo this effect, sir; after what flourish your nature will.
\nOSRIC
\nI commend my duty to your lordship.
\nHAMLET
\nYours, yours.
\nExit OSRIC
\nHe does well to commend it himself; there are no
\ntongues else for’s turn.
\nHORATIO
\nThis lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.
\nHAMLET
\nHe did comply with his dug, before he sucked it.
\nThus has he–and many more of the same bevy that I
\nknow the dressy age dotes on–only got the tune of
\nthe time and outward habit of encounter; a kind of
\nyesty collection, which carries them through and
\nthrough the most fond and winnowed opinions; and do
\nbut blow them to their trial, the bubbles are out.
\nEnter a Lord
\nLord
\nMy lord, his majesty commended him to you by young
\nOsric, who brings back to him that you attend him in
\nthe hall: he sends to know if your pleasure hold to
\nplay with Laertes, or that you will take longer time.
\nHAMLET
\nI am constant to my purpose; they follow the king’s
\npleasure: if his fitness speaks, mine is ready; now
\nor whensoever, provided I be so able as now.
\nLord
\nThe king and queen and all are coming down.
\nHAMLET
\nIn happy time.
\nLord
\nThe queen desires you to use some gentle
\nentertainment to Laertes before you fall to play.
\nHAMLET
\nShe well instructs me.
\nExit Lord
\nHORATIO
\nYou will lose this wager, my lord.
\nHAMLET
\nI do not think so: since he went into France, I
\nhave been in continual practise: I shall win at the
\nodds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here
\nabout my heart: but it is no matter.
\nHORATIO
\nNay, good my lord,–
\nHAMLET
\nIt is but foolery; but it is such a kind of
\ngain-giving, as would perhaps trouble a woman.
\nHORATIO
\nIf your mind dislike any thing, obey it: I will
\nforestall their repair hither, and say you are not
\nfit.
\nHAMLET
\nNot a whit, we defy augury: there’s a special
\nprovidence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
\n’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
\nnow; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
\nreadiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
\nleaves, what is’t to leave betimes?
\nEnter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, LAERTES, Lords, OSRIC, and Attendants with foils, & c
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nCome, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.
\nKING CLAUDIUS puts LAERTES’ hand into HAMLET’s
\nHAMLET
\nGive me your pardon, sir: I’ve done you wrong;
\nBut pardon’t, as you are a gentleman.
\nThis presence knows,
\nAnd you must needs have heard, how I am punish’d
\nWith sore distraction. What I have done,
\nThat might your nature, honour and exception
\nRoughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
\nWas’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet:
\nIf Hamlet from himself be ta’en away,
\nAnd when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,
\nThen Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
\nWho does it, then? His madness: if’t be so,
\nHamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d;
\nHis madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy.
\nSir, in this audience,
\nLet my disclaiming from a purposed evil
\nFree me so far in your most generous thoughts,
\nThat I have shot mine arrow o’er the house,
\nAnd hurt my brother.
\nLAERTES
\nI am satisfied in nature,
\nWhose motive, in this case, should stir me most
\nTo my revenge: but in my terms of honour
\nI stand aloof; and will no reconcilement,
\nTill by some elder masters, of known honour,
\nI have a voice and precedent of peace,
\nTo keep my name ungored. But till that time,
\nI do receive your offer’d love like love,
\nAnd will not wrong it.
\nHAMLET
\nI embrace it freely;
\nAnd will this brother’s wager frankly play.
\nGive us the foils. Come on.
\nLAERTES
\nCome, one for me.
\nHAMLET
\nI’ll be your foil, Laertes: in mine ignorance
\nYour skill shall, like a star i’ the darkest night,
\nStick fiery off indeed.
\nLAERTES
\nYou mock me, sir.
\nHAMLET
\nNo, by this hand.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nGive them the foils, young Osric. Cousin Hamlet,
\nYou know the wager?
\nHAMLET
\nVery well, my lord
\nYour grace hath laid the odds o’ the weaker side.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nI do not fear it; I have seen you both:
\nBut since he is better’d, we have therefore odds.
\nLAERTES
\nThis is too heavy, let me see another.
\nHAMLET
\nThis likes me well. These foils have all a length?
\nThey prepare to play
\nOSRIC
\nAy, my good lord.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nSet me the stoops of wine upon that table.
\nIf Hamlet give the first or second hit,
\nOr quit in answer of the third exchange,
\nLet all the battlements their ordnance fire:
\nThe king shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath;
\nAnd in the cup an union shall he throw,
\nRicher than that which four successive kings
\nIn Denmark’s crown have worn. Give me the cups;
\nAnd let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
\nThe trumpet to the cannoneer without,
\nThe cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth,
\n‘Now the king dunks to Hamlet.’ Come, begin:
\nAnd you, the judges, bear a wary eye.
\nHAMLET
\nCome on, sir.
\nLAERTES
\nCome, my lord.
\nThey play
\nHAMLET
\nOne.
\nLAERTES
\nNo.
\nHAMLET
\nJudgment.
\nOSRIC
\nA hit, a very palpable hit.
\nLAERTES
\nWell; again.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nStay; give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine;
\nHere’s to thy health.
\nTrumpets sound, and cannon shot off within
\nGive him the cup.
\nHAMLET
\nI’ll play this bout first; set it by awhile. Come.
\nThey play
\nAnother hit; what say you?
\nLAERTES
\nA touch, a touch, I do confess.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nOur son shall win.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nHe’s fat, and scant of breath.
\nHere, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows;
\nThe queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.
\nHAMLET
\nGood madam!
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nGertrude, do not drink.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nI will, my lord; I pray you, pardon me.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\n[Aside] It is the poison’d cup: it is too late.
\nHAMLET
\nI dare not drink yet, madam; by and by.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nCome, let me wipe thy face.
\nLAERTES
\nMy lord, I’ll hit him now.
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nI do not think’t.
\nLAERTES
\n[Aside] And yet ’tis almost ‘gainst my conscience.
\nHAMLET
\nCome, for the third, Laertes: you but dally;
\nI pray you, pass with your best violence;
\nI am afeard you make a wanton of me.
\nLAERTES
\nSay you so? come on.
\nThey play
\nOSRIC
\nNothing, neither way.
\nLAERTES
\nHave at you now!
\nLAERTES wounds HAMLET; then in scuffling, they change rapiers, and HAMLET wounds LAERTES
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nPart them; they are incensed.
\nHAMLET
\nNay, come, again.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE falls
\nOSRIC
\nLook to the queen there, ho!
\nHORATIO
\nThey bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?
\nOSRIC
\nHow is’t, Laertes?
\nLAERTES
\nWhy, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric;
\nI am justly kill’d with mine own treachery.
\nHAMLET
\nHow does the queen?
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nShe swounds to see them bleed.
\nQUEEN GERTRUDE
\nNo, no, the drink, the drink,–O my dear Hamlet,–
\nThe drink, the drink! I am poison’d.
\nDies
\nHAMLET
\nO villany! Ho! let the door be lock’d:
\nTreachery! Seek it out.
\nLAERTES
\nIt is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art slain;
\nNo medicine in the world can do thee good;
\nIn thee there is not half an hour of life;
\nThe treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
\nUnbated and envenom’d: the foul practise
\nHath turn’d itself on me lo, here I lie,
\nNever to rise again: thy mother’s poison’d:
\nI can no more: the king, the king’s to blame.
\nHAMLET
\nThe point!–envenom’d too!
\nThen, venom, to thy work.
\nStabs KING CLAUDIUS
\nAll
\nTreason! treason!
\nKING CLAUDIUS
\nO, yet defend me, friends; I am but hurt.
\nHAMLET
\nHere, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
\nDrink off this potion. Is thy union here?
\nFollow my mother.
\nKING CLAUDIUS dies
\nLAERTES
\nHe is justly served;
\nIt is a poison temper’d by himself.
\nExchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet:
\nMine and my father’s death come not upon thee,
\nNor thine on me.
\nDies
\nHAMLET
\nHeaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.
\nI am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu!
\nYou that look pale and tremble at this chance,
\nThat are but mutes or audience to this act,
\nHad I but time–as this fell sergeant, death,
\nIs strict in his arrest–O, I could tell you–
\nBut let it be. Horatio, I am dead;
\nThou livest; report me and my cause aright
\nTo the unsatisfied.
\nHORATIO
\nNever believe it:
\nI am more an antique Roman than a Dane:
\nHere’s yet some liquor left.
\nHAMLET
\nAs thou’rt a man,
\nGive me the cup: let go; by heaven, I’ll have’t.
\nO good Horatio, what a wounded name,
\nThings standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
\nIf thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
\nAbsent thee from felicity awhile,
\nAnd in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
\nTo tell my story.
\nMarch afar off, and shot within
\nWhat warlike noise is this?
\nOSRIC
\nYoung Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,
\nTo the ambassadors of England gives
\nThis warlike volley.
\nHAMLET
\nO, I die, Horatio;
\nThe potent poison quite o’er-crows my spirit:
\nI cannot live to hear the news from England;
\nBut I do prophesy the election lights
\nOn Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
\nSo tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
\nWhich have solicited. The rest is silence.
\nDies
\nHORATIO
\nNow cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:
\nAnd flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
\nWhy does the drum come hither?
\nMarch within
\nEnter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambassadors, and others
\nPRINCE FORTINBRAS
\nWhere is this sight?
\nHORATIO
\nWhat is it ye would see?
\nIf aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.
\nPRINCE FORTINBRAS
\nThis quarry cries on havoc. O proud death,
\nWhat feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
\nThat thou so many princes at a shot
\nSo bloodily hast struck?
\nFirst Ambassador
\nThe sight is dismal;
\nAnd our affairs from England come too late:
\nThe ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
\nTo tell him his commandment is fulfill’d,
\nThat Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead:
\nWhere should we have our thanks?
\nHORATIO
\nNot from his mouth,
\nHad it the ability of life to thank you:
\nHe never gave commandment for their death.
\nBut since, so jump upon this bloody question,
\nYou from the Polack wars, and you from England,
\nAre here arrived give order that these bodies
\nHigh on a stage be placed to the view;
\nAnd let me speak to the yet unknowing world
\nHow these things came about: so shall you hear
\nOf carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
\nOf accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
\nOf deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
\nAnd, in this upshot, purposes mistook
\nFall’n on the inventors’ reads: all this can I
\nTruly deliver.
\nPRINCE FORTINBRAS
\nLet us haste to hear it,
\nAnd call the noblest to the audience.
\nFor me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune:
\nI have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
\nWhich now to claim my vantage doth invite me.
\nHORATIO
\nOf that I shall have also cause to speak,
\nAnd from his mouth whose voice will draw on more;
\nBut let this same be presently perform’d,
\nEven while men’s minds are wild; lest more mischance
\nOn plots and errors, happen.
\nPRINCE FORTINBRAS
\nLet four captains
\nBear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
\nFor he was likely, had he been put on,
\nTo have proved most royally: and, for his passage,
\nThe soldiers’ music and the rites of war
\nSpeak loudly for him.
\nTake up the bodies: such a sight as this
\nBecomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
\nGo, bid the soldiers shoot.
\nA dead march. Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after which a peal of ordnance is shot off<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Tragic History of HAMLET, Prince of Denmark Shakespeare\u2019s story of the Danish prince driven nearly mad by a need to avenge his father\u2019s murder is one of the most popular and influential plays of all time. There are passages of pure poetry in the work which, taken from their context, gain even more power […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4770,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions\/4770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishhistory.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}