ACT I
ACT I, SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle.
[FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO]
FRANCISCO:
- Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.
BERNARDO:
- Long live the king!
FRANCISCO:
- You come most carefully upon your hour.
BERNARDO:
- 'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.
FRANCISCO:
- For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,
- And I am sick at heart.
BERNARDO:
- Have you had quiet guard?
FRANCISCO:
- Not a mouse stirring.
BERNARDO:
- Well, good night.
- If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
- The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
HORATIO:
- Friends to this ground.
MARCELLUS:
- And liegemen to the Dane.
FRANCISCO:
- Give you good night.
MARCELLUS:
- O, farewell, honest soldier:
- Who hath relieved you?
FRANCISCO:
- Bernardo has my place.
- Give you good night.
-
[Exit]
MARCELLUS:
- Holla! Bernardo!
BERNARDO:
- Say,
- What, is Horatio there?
BERNARDO:
- Welcome, Horatio: welcome, good Marcellus.
MARCELLUS:
- What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?
BERNARDO:
- I have seen nothing.
MARCELLUS:
- Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,
- And will not let belief take hold of him
- Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us:
- Therefore I have entreated him along
- With us to watch the minutes of this night;
- That if again this apparition come,
- He may approve our eyes and speak to it.
HORATIO:
- Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.
BERNARDO:
- Sit down awhile;
- And let us once again assail your ears,
- That are so fortified against our story
- What we have two nights seen.
HORATIO:
- Well, sit we down,
- And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.
BERNARDO:
- Last night of all,
- When yond same star that's westward from the pole
- Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
- Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
- The bell then beating one,--
-
[Enter Ghost]
MARCELLUS:
- Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!
BERNARDO:
- In the same figure, like the king that's dead.
MARCELLUS:
- Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.
BERNARDO:
- Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.
HORATIO:
- Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.
BERNARDO:
- It would be spoke to.
MARCELLUS:
- Question it, Horatio.
HORATIO:
- What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
- Together with that fair and warlike form
- In which the majesty of buried Denmark
- Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!
MARCELLUS:
- It is offended.
BERNARDO:
- See, it stalks away!
HORATIO:
- Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!
-
[Exit Ghost]
MARCELLUS:
- 'Tis gone, and will not answer.
BERNARDO:
- How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:
- Is not this something more than fantasy?
- What think you on't?
HORATIO:
- Before my God, I might not this believe
- Without the sensible and true avouch
- Of mine own eyes.
MARCELLUS:
- Is it not like the king?
HORATIO:
- As thou art to thyself:
- Such was the very armour he had on
- When he the ambitious Norway combated;
- So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
- He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
- 'Tis strange.
MARCELLUS:
- Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
- With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
HORATIO:
- In what particular thought to work I know not;
- But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
- This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
MARCELLUS:
- Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
- Why this same strict and most observant watch
- So nightly toils the subject of the land,
- And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
- And foreign mart for implements of war;
- Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
- Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
- What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
- Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
- Who is't that can inform me?
HORATIO:
- That can I;
- At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,
- Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
- Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
- Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
- Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet--
- For so this side of our known world esteem'd him--
- Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal'd compact,
- Well ratified by law and heraldry,
- Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
- Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
- Against the which, a moiety competent
- Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
- To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
- Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
- And carriage of the article design'd,
- His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
- Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
- Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
- Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
- For food and diet, to some enterprise
- That hath a stomach in't; which is no other--
- As it doth well appear unto our state--
- But to recover of us, by strong hand
- And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
- So by his father lost: and this, I take it,
- Is the main motive of our preparations,
- The source of this our watch and the chief head
- Of this post-haste and romage in the land.
BERNARDO:
- I think it be no other but e'en so:
- Well may it sort that this portentous figure
- Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
- That was and is the question of these wars.
HORATIO:
- A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
- In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
- A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
- The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
- Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
- As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
- Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
- Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
- Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
- And even the like precurse of fierce events,
- As harbingers preceding still the fates
- And prologue to the omen coming on,
- Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
- Unto our climatures and countrymen.--
- But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
-
[Re-enter Ghost]
- I'll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion!
- If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
- Speak to me:
- If there be any good thing to be done,
- That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
- Speak to me:
-
[Cock crows]
- If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
- Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!
- Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
- Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
- For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
- Speak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it, Marcellus.
MARCELLUS:
- Shall I strike at it with my partisan?
HORATIO:
- Do, if it will not stand.
MARCELLUS:
- 'Tis gone!
-
[Exit Ghost]
- We do it wrong, being so majestical,
- To offer it the show of violence;
- For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
- And our vain blows malicious mockery.
BERNARDO:
- It was about to speak, when the cock crew.
HORATIO:
- And then it started like a guilty thing
- Upon a fearful summons. I have heard,
- The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
- Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
- Awake the god of day; and, at his warning,
- Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
- The extravagant and erring spirit hies
- To his confine: and of the truth herein
- This present object made probation.
MARCELLUS:
- It faded on the crowing of the cock.
- Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
- Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
- The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
- And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
- The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
- No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
- So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
HORATIO:
- So have I heard and do in part believe it.
- But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
- Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill:
- Break we our watch up; and by my advice,
- Let us impart what we have seen to-night
- Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
- This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
- Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
- As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?
MARCELLUS:
- Let's do't, I pray; and I this morning know
- Where we shall find him most conveniently.
-
[Exeunt]
ACT I, SCENE II. A room of state in the castle.
[Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES,
VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants]
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
- The memory be green, and that it us befitted
- To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
- To be contracted in one brow of woe,
- Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
- That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
- Together with remembrance of ourselves.
- Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
- The imperial jointress to this warlike state,
- Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,--
- With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
- With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
- In equal scale weighing delight and dole,--
- Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd
- Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
- With this affair along. For all, our thanks.
- Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,
- Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
- Or thinking by our late dear brother's death
- Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
- Colleagued with the dream of his advantage,
- He hath not fail'd to pester us with message,
- Importing the surrender of those lands
- Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
- To our most valiant brother. So much for him.
- Now for ourself and for this time of meeting:
- Thus much the business is: we have here writ
- To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,--
- Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears
- Of this his nephew's purpose,--to suppress
- His further gait herein; in that the levies,
- The lists and full proportions, are all made
- Out of his subject: and we here dispatch
- You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand,
- For bearers of this greeting to old Norway;
- Giving to you no further personal power
- To business with the king, more than the scope
- Of these delated articles allow.
- Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.
CORNELIUS VOLTIMAND:
- In that and all things will we show our duty.
LAERTES:
- My dread lord,
- Your leave and favour to return to France;
- From whence though willingly I came to Denmark,
- To show my duty in your coronation,
- Yet now, I must confess, that duty done,
- My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France
- And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Have you your father's leave? What says Polonius?
LORD POLONIUS:
- He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
- By laboursome petition, and at last
- Upon his will I seal'd my hard consent:
- I do beseech you, give him leave to go.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine,
- And thy best graces spend it at thy will!
- But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,--
HAMLET:
-
[Aside]
- A little more than kin, and less than kind.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
HAMLET:
- Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
- And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
- Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
- Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
- Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,
- Passing through nature to eternity.
HAMLET:
- Ay, madam, it is common.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- If it be,
- Why seems it so particular with thee?
HAMLET:
- Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
- 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
- Nor customary suits of solemn black,
- Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
- No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
- Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
- Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
- That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
- For they are actions that a man might play:
- But I have that within which passeth show;
- These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
- To give these mourning duties to your father:
- But, you must know, your father lost a father;
- That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
- In filial obligation for some term
- To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
- In obstinate condolement is a course
- Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
- It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
- A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
- An understanding simple and unschool'd:
- For what we know must be and is as common
- As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
- Why should we in our peevish opposition
- Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
- A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
- To reason most absurd: whose common theme
- Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
- From the first corse till he that died to-day,
- 'This must be so.' We pray you, throw to earth
- This unprevailing woe, and think of us
- As of a father: for let the world take note,
- You are the most immediate to our throne;
- And with no less nobility of love
- Than that which dearest father bears his son,
- Do I impart toward you. For your intent
- In going back to school in Wittenberg,
- It is most retrograde to our desire:
- And we beseech you, bend you to remain
- Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
- Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet:
- I pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.
HAMLET:
- I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply:
- Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come;
- This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
- Sits smiling to my heart: in grace whereof,
- No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
- But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
- And the king's rouse the heavens all bruit again,
- Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.
-
[Exeunt all but HAMLET]
HORATIO:
- Hail to your lordship!
HAMLET:
- I am glad to see you well:
- Horatio,--or I do forget myself.
HORATIO:
- The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
HAMLET:
- Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you:
- And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? Marcellus?
MARCELLUS:
- My good lord--
HAMLET:
- I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir.
- But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
HORATIO:
- A truant disposition, good my lord.
HAMLET:
- I would not hear your enemy say so,
- Nor shall you do mine ear that violence,
- To make it truster of your own report
- Against yourself: I know you are no truant.
- But what is your affair in Elsinore?
- We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
HORATIO:
- My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.
HAMLET:
- I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student;
- I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
HORATIO:
- Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon.
HAMLET:
- Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
- Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
- Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
- Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
- My father!--methinks I see my father.
HAMLET:
- In my mind's eye, Horatio.
HORATIO:
- I saw him once; he was a goodly king.
HAMLET:
- He was a man, take him for all in all,
- I shall not look upon his like again.
HORATIO:
- My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
HORATIO:
- My lord, the king your father.
HAMLET:
- The king my father!
HORATIO:
- Season your admiration for awhile
- With an attent ear, till I may deliver,
- Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
- This marvel to you.
HAMLET:
- For God's love, let me hear.
HORATIO:
- Two nights together had these gentlemen,
- Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,
- In the dead vast and middle of the night,
- Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father,
- Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,
- Appears before them, and with solemn march
- Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd
- By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes,
- Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distilled
- Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
- Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me
- In dreadful secrecy impart they did;
- And I with them the third night kept the watch;
- Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,
- Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
- The apparition comes: I knew your father;
- These hands are not more like.
HAMLET:
- But where was this?
MARCELLUS:
- My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd.
HAMLET:
- Did you not speak to it?
HORATIO:
- My lord, I did;
- But answer made it none: yet once methought
- It lifted up its head and did address
- Itself to motion, like as it would speak;
- But even then the morning cock crew loud,
- And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
- And vanish'd from our sight.
HAMLET:
- 'Tis very strange.
HORATIO:
- As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true;
- And we did think it writ down in our duty
- To let you know of it.
HAMLET:
- Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
- Hold you the watch to-night?
MARCELLUS and BERNARDO:
- We do, my lord.
MARCELLUS and BERNARDO:
- Arm'd, my lord.
MARCELLUS and BERNARDO:
- My lord, from head to foot.
HAMLET:
- Then saw you not his face?
HORATIO:
- O, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver up.
HAMLET:
- What, look'd he frowningly?
HORATIO:
- A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
HAMLET:
- And fix'd his eyes upon you?
HORATIO:
- Most constantly.
HAMLET:
- I would I had been there.
HORATIO:
- It would have much amazed you.
HAMLET:
- Very like, very like. Stay'd it long?
HORATIO:
- While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.
MARCELLUS and BERNARDO:
- Longer, longer.
HORATIO:
- Not when I saw't.
HAMLET:
- His beard was grizzled--no?
HORATIO:
- It was, as I have seen it in his life,
- A sable silver'd.
HAMLET:
- I will watch to-night;
- Perchance 'twill walk again.
HORATIO:
- I warrant it will.
HAMLET:
- If it assume my noble father's person,
- I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape
- And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
- If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight,
- Let it be tenable in your silence still;
- And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,
- Give it an understanding, but no tongue:
- I will requite your loves. So, fare you well:
- Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve,
- I'll visit you.
All:
- Our duty to your honour.
HAMLET:
- Your loves, as mine to you: farewell.
-
[Exeunt all but HAMLET]
- My father's spirit in arms! all is not well;
- I doubt some foul play: would the night were come!
- Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise,
- Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
-
[Exit]
ACT I, SCENE III. A room in Polonius' house.
[Enter LAERTES and OPHELIA]
LAERTES:
- My necessaries are embark'd: farewell:
- And, sister, as the winds give benefit
- And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,
- But let me hear from you.
OPHELIA:
- Do you doubt that?
LAERTES:
- For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour,
- Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
- A violet in the youth of primy nature,
- Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
- The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more.
LAERTES:
- Think it no more;
- For nature, crescent, does not grow alone
- In thews and bulk, but, as this temple waxes,
- The inward service of the mind and soul
- Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
- And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
- The virtue of his will: but you must fear,
- His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own;
- For he himself is subject to his birth:
- He may not, as unvalued persons do,
- Carve for himself; for on his choice depends
- The safety and health of this whole state;
- And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
- Unto the voice and yielding of that body
- Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,
- It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
- As he in his particular act and place
- May give his saying deed; which is no further
- Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
- Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain,
- If with too credent ear you list his songs,
- Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
- To his unmaster'd importunity.
- Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
- And keep you in the rear of your affection,
- Out of the shot and danger of desire.
- The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
- If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
- Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes:
- The canker galls the infants of the spring,
- Too oft before their buttons be disclosed,
- And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
- Contagious blastments are most imminent.
- Be wary then; best safety lies in fear:
- Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.
OPHELIA:
- I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,
- As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
- Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
- Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
- Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
- Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
- And recks not his own rede.
LAERTES:
- O, fear me not.
- I stay too long: but here my father comes.
-
[Enter POLONIUS]
- A double blessing is a double grace,
- Occasion smiles upon a second leave.
LORD POLONIUS:
- Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
- The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
- And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee!
- And these few precepts in thy memory
- See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
- Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
- Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
- Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
- Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
- But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
- Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
- Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
- Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
- Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
- Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
- Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
- But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
- For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
- And they in France of the best rank and station
- Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
- Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
- For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
- And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
- This above all: to thine ownself be true,
- And it must follow, as the night the day,
- Thou canst not then be false to any man.
- Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
LAERTES:
- Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
LORD POLONIUS:
- The time invites you; go; your servants tend.
LAERTES:
- Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well
- What I have said to you.
OPHELIA:
- 'Tis in my memory lock'd,
- And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
LAERTES:
- Farewell.
-
[Exit]
LORD POLONIUS:
- What is't, Ophelia, be hath said to you?
OPHELIA:
- So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.
LORD POLONIUS:
- Marry, well bethought:
- 'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late
- Given private time to you; and you yourself
- Have of your audience been most free and bounteous:
- If it be so, as so 'tis put on me,
- And that in way of caution, I must tell you,
- You do not understand yourself so clearly
- As it behoves my daughter and your honour.
- What is between you? give me up the truth.
OPHELIA:
- He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
- Of his affection to me.
LORD POLONIUS:
- Affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl,
- Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
- Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?
OPHELIA:
- I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
LORD POLONIUS:
- Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby;
- That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,
- Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly;
- Or--not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
- Running it thus--you'll tender me a fool.
OPHELIA:
- My lord, he hath importuned me with love
- In honourable fashion.
LORD POLONIUS:
- Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.
OPHELIA:
- And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
- With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
LORD POLONIUS:
- Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
- When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
- Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter,
- Giving more light than heat, extinct in both,
- Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
- You must not take for fire. From this time
- Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence;
- Set your entreatments at a higher rate
- Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
- Believe so much in him, that he is young
- And with a larger tether may he walk
- Than may be given you: in few, Ophelia,
- Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
- Not of that dye which their investments show,
- But mere implorators of unholy suits,
- Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
- The better to beguile. This is for all:
- I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,
- Have you so slander any moment leisure,
- As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
- Look to't, I charge you: come your ways.
OPHELIA:
- I shall obey, my lord.
-
[Exeunt]
ACT I, SCENE IV. The platform.
[Enter HAMLET, HORATIO, and MARCELLUS]
HAMLET:
- The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
HORATIO:
- It is a nipping and an eager air.
HORATIO:
- I think it lacks of twelve.
HAMLET:
- No, it is struck.
HAMLET:
- The king doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
- Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;
- And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
- The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
- The triumph of his pledge.
HAMLET:
- Ay, marry, is't:
- But to my mind, though I am native here
- And to the manner born, it is a custom
- More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
- This heavy-headed revel east and west
- Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations:
- They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
- Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
- From our achievements, though perform'd at height,
- The pith and marrow of our attribute.
- So, oft it chances in particular men,
- That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
- As, in their birth--wherein they are not guilty,
- Since nature cannot choose his origin--
- By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,
- Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
- Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens
- The form of plausive manners, that these men,
- Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
- Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,--
- Their virtues else--be they as pure as grace,
- As infinite as man may undergo--
- Shall in the general censure take corruption
- From that particular fault: the dram of eale
- Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
- To his own scandal.
HORATIO:
- Look, my lord, it comes!
-
[Enter Ghost]
HAMLET:
- Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
- Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
- Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
- Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
- Thou comest in such a questionable shape
- That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,
- King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
- Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
- Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
- Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
- Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
- Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
- To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
- That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
- Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
- Making night hideous; and we fools of nature
- So horridly to shake our disposition
- With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
- Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?
-
[Ghost beckons HAMLET]
HORATIO:
- It beckons you to go away with it,
- As if it some impartment did desire
- To you alone.
MARCELLUS:
- Look, with what courteous action
- It waves you to a more removed ground:
- But do not go with it.
HORATIO:
- No, by no means.
HAMLET:
- It will not speak; then I will follow it.
HORATIO:
- Do not, my lord.
HAMLET:
- Why, what should be the fear?
- I do not set my life in a pin's fee;
- And for my soul, what can it do to that,
- Being a thing immortal as itself?
- It waves me forth again: I'll follow it.
HORATIO:
- What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
- Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
- That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
- And there assume some other horrible form,
- Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
- And draw you into madness? think of it:
- The very place puts toys of desperation,
- Without more motive, into every brain
- That looks so many fathoms to the sea
- And hears it roar beneath.
HAMLET:
- It waves me still.
- Go on; I'll follow thee.
MARCELLUS:
- You shall not go, my lord.
HAMLET:
- Hold off your hands.
HORATIO:
- Be ruled; you shall not go.
HORATIO:
- He waxes desperate with imagination.
MARCELLUS:
- Let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey him.
HORATIO:
- Have after. To what issue will this come?
MARCELLUS:
- Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
HORATIO:
- Heaven will direct it.
MARCELLUS:
- Nay, let's follow him.
-
[Exeunt]
ACT I, SCENE V. Another part of the platform.
[Enter GHOST and HAMLET]
HAMLET:
- Where wilt thou lead me? speak; I'll go no further.
Ghost:
- My hour is almost come,
- When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
- Must render up myself.
HAMLET:
- Alas, poor ghost!
Ghost:
- Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
- To what I shall unfold.
HAMLET:
- Speak; I am bound to hear.
Ghost:
- So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.
Ghost:
- I am thy father's spirit,
- Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
- And for the day confined to fast in fires,
- Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
- Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
- To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
- I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
- Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
- Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
- Thy knotted and combined locks to part
- And each particular hair to stand on end,
- Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
- But this eternal blazon must not be
- To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
- If thou didst ever thy dear father love--
Ghost:
- Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
Ghost:
- Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
- But this most foul, strange and unnatural.
HAMLET:
- Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift
- As meditation or the thoughts of love,
- May sweep to my revenge.
Ghost:
- I find thee apt;
- And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
- That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
- Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear:
- 'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
- A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
- Is by a forged process of my death
- Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth,
- The serpent that did sting thy father's life
- Now wears his crown.
HAMLET:
- O my prophetic soul! My uncle!
Ghost:
- Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
- With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,--
- O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
- So to seduce!--won to his shameful lust
- The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen:
- O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!
- From me, whose love was of that dignity
- That it went hand in hand even with the vow
- I made to her in marriage, and to decline
- Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
- To those of mine!
- But virtue, as it never will be moved,
- Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
- So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
- Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
- And prey on garbage.
- But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
- Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
- My custom always of the afternoon,
- Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
- With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
- And in the porches of my ears did pour
- The leperous distilment; whose effect
- Holds such an enmity with blood of man
- That swift as quicksilver it courses through
- The natural gates and alleys of the body,
- And with a sudden vigour doth posset
- And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
- The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine;
- And a most instant tetter bark'd about,
- Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
- All my smooth body.
- Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand
- Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd:
- Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
- Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,
- No reckoning made, but sent to my account
- With all my imperfections on my head:
- O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
- If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
- Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
- A couch for luxury and damned incest.
- But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,
- Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
- Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven
- And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
- To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
- The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
- And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire:
- Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.
-
[Exit]
HAMLET:
- O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?
- And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart;
- And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
- But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!
- Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
- In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
- Yea, from the table of my memory
- I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
- All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
- That youth and observation copied there;
- And thy commandment all alone shall live
- Within the book and volume of my brain,
- Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven!
- O most pernicious woman!
- O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
- My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
- That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
- At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:
-
[Writing]
- So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
- It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me.'
- I have sworn 't.
MARCELLUS HORATIO:
-
[Within]
- My lord, my lord,--
MARCELLUS:
-
[Within]
- Lord Hamlet,--
HORATIO:
-
[Within]
- Heaven secure him!
HORATIO:
-
[Within]
- Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!
MARCELLUS:
- How is't, my noble lord?
HORATIO:
- What news, my lord?
HORATIO:
- Good my lord, tell it.
HAMLET:
- No; you'll reveal it.
HORATIO:
- Not I, my lord, by heaven.
MARCELLUS:
- Nor I, my lord.
HAMLET:
- How say you, then; would heart of man once think it?
- But you'll be secret?
HORATIO MARCELLUS:
- Ay, by heaven, my lord.
HAMLET:
- There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
- But he's an arrant knave.
HORATIO:
- There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
- To tell us this.
HAMLET:
- Why, right; you are i' the right;
- And so, without more circumstance at all,
- I hold it fit that we shake hands and part:
- You, as your business and desire shall point you;
- For every man has business and desire,
- Such as it is; and for mine own poor part,
- Look you, I'll go pray.
HORATIO:
- These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.
HAMLET:
- I'm sorry they offend you, heartily;
- Yes, 'faith heartily.
HORATIO:
- There's no offence, my lord.
HAMLET:
- Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
- And much offence too. Touching this vision here,
- It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you:
- For your desire to know what is between us,
- O'ermaster 't as you may. And now, good friends,
- As you are friends, scholars and soldiers,
- Give me one poor request.
HORATIO:
- What is't, my lord? we will.
HAMLET:
- Never make known what you have seen to-night.
HORATIO MARCELLUS:
- My lord, we will not.
HAMLET:
- Nay, but swear't.
HORATIO:
- In faith,
- My lord, not I.
MARCELLUS:
- Nor I, my lord, in faith.
MARCELLUS:
- We have sworn, my lord, already.
HAMLET:
- Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.
HAMLET:
- Ah, ha, boy! say'st thou so? art thou there,
- truepenny?
- Come on--you hear this fellow in the cellarage--
- Consent to swear.
HORATIO:
- Propose the oath, my lord.
HAMLET:
- Never to speak of this that you have seen,
- Swear by my sword.
HAMLET:
- Hic et ubique? then we'll shift our ground.
- Come hither, gentlemen,
- And lay your hands again upon my sword:
- Never to speak of this that you have heard,
- Swear by my sword.
HAMLET:
- Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast?
- A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends.
HORATIO:
- O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
HAMLET:
- And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
- There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
- Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come;
- Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
- How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,
- As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
- To put an antic disposition on,
- That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
- With arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake,
- Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
- As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,'
- Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,'
- Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
- That you know aught of me: this not to do,
- So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.
HAMLET:
- Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!
-
[They swear]
- So, gentlemen,
- With all my love I do commend me to you:
- And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
- May do, to express his love and friending to you,
- God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;
- And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
- The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
- That ever I was born to set it right!
- Nay, come, let's go together.
-
[Exeunt]
ACT III
ACT III, SCENE I. A room in the castle.
[Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA,
ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN]
KING CLAUDIUS:
- And can you, by no drift of circumstance,
- Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
- Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
- With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
ROSENCRANTZ:
- He does confess he feels himself distracted;
- But from what cause he will by no means speak.
GUILDENSTERN:
- Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
- But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,
- When we would bring him on to some confession
- Of his true state.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Did he receive you well?
ROSENCRANTZ:
- Most like a gentleman.
GUILDENSTERN:
- But with much forcing of his disposition.
ROSENCRANTZ:
- Niggard of question; but, of our demands,
- Most free in his reply.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Did you assay him?
- To any pastime?
ROSENCRANTZ:
- Madam, it so fell out, that certain players
- We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him;
- And there did seem in him a kind of joy
- To hear of it: they are about the court,
- And, as I think, they have already order
- This night to play before him.
LORD POLONIUS:
- 'Tis most true:
- And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties
- To hear and see the matter.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- With all my heart; and it doth much content me
- To hear him so inclined.
- Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
- And drive his purpose on to these delights.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Sweet Gertrude, leave us too;
- For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
- That he, as 'twere by accident, may here
- Affront Ophelia:
- Her father and myself, lawful espials,
- Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen,
- We may of their encounter frankly judge,
- And gather by him, as he is behaved,
- If 't be the affliction of his love or no
- That thus he suffers for.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- I shall obey you.
- And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
- That your good beauties be the happy cause
- Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
- Will bring him to his wonted way again,
- To both your honours.
OPHELIA:
- Madam, I wish it may.
-
[Exit QUEEN GERTRUDE]
LORD POLONIUS:
- Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious, so please you,
- We will bestow ourselves.
-
[To OPHELIA]
- Read on this book;
- That show of such an exercise may colour
- Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,--
- 'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
- And pious action we do sugar o'er
- The devil himself.
KING CLAUDIUS:
-
[Aside]
- O, 'tis too true!
- How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
- The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,
- Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
- Than is my deed to my most painted word:
- O heavy burthen!
HAMLET:
- To be, or not to be: that is the question:
- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
- The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
- Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
- And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
- No more; and by a sleep to say we end
- The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
- That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
- Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
- To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
- For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
- When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
- Must give us pause: there's the respect
- That makes calamity of so long life;
- For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
- The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
- The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
- The insolence of office and the spurns
- That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
- When he himself might his quietus make
- With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
- To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
- But that the dread of something after death,
- The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
- No traveller returns, puzzles the will
- And makes us rather bear those ills we have
- Than fly to others that we know not of?
- Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
- And thus the native hue of resolution
- Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
- And enterprises of great pith and moment
- With this regard their currents turn awry,
- And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
- The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
- Be all my sins remember'd.
OPHELIA:
- Good my lord,
- How does your honour for this many a day?
HAMLET:
- I humbly thank you; well, well, well.
OPHELIA:
- My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
- That I have longed long to re-deliver;
- I pray you, now receive them.
HAMLET:
- No, not I;
- I never gave you aught.
OPHELIA:
- My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
- And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
- As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
- Take these again; for to the noble mind
- Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
- There, my lord.
HAMLET:
- Ha, ha! are you honest?
OPHELIA:
- What means your lordship?
HAMLET:
- That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should
- admit no discourse to your beauty.
OPHELIA:
- Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than
- with honesty?
HAMLET:
- Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
- transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
- force of honesty can translate beauty into his
- likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the
- time gives it proof. I did love you once.
OPHELIA:
- Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
HAMLET:
- You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
- so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of
- it: I loved you not.
OPHELIA:
- I was the more deceived.
HAMLET:
- Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
- breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
- but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
- were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
- proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
- my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
- imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
- in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
- between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
- all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
- Where's your father?
OPHELIA:
- At home, my lord.
HAMLET:
- Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
- fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.
OPHELIA:
- O, help him, you sweet heavens!
HAMLET:
- If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for
- thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
- snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a
- nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs
- marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough
- what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go,
- and quickly too. Farewell.
OPHELIA:
- O heavenly powers, restore him!
HAMLET:
- I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God
- has given you one face, and you make yourselves
- another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
- nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness
- your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
- made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages:
- those that are married already, all but one, shall
- live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a
- nunnery, go.
-
[Exit]
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Love! his affections do not that way tend;
- Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,
- Was not like madness. There's something in his soul,
- O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;
- And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
- Will be some danger: which for to prevent,
- I have in quick determination
- Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England,
- For the demand of our neglected tribute
- Haply the seas and countries different
- With variable objects shall expel
- This something-settled matter in his heart,
- Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
- From fashion of himself. What think you on't?
LORD POLONIUS:
- It shall do well: but yet do I believe
- The origin and commencement of his grief
- Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia!
- You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said;
- We heard it all. My lord, do as you please;
- But, if you hold it fit, after the play
- Let his queen mother all alone entreat him
- To show his grief: let her be round with him;
- And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear
- Of all their conference. If she find him not,
- To England send him, or confine him where
- Your wisdom best shall think.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- It shall be so:
- Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.
-
[Exeunt]
ACT III, SCENE II. A hall in the castle.
[Enter HAMLET and Players]
HAMLET:
- Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
- you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
- as many of your players do, I had as lief the
- town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
- too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;
- for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
- the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
- a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
- offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
- periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to
- very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who
- for the most part are capable of nothing but
- inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such
- a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it
- out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.
First Player:
- I warrant your honour.
HAMLET:
- Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion
- be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
- word to the action; with this special o'erstep not
- the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is
- from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
- first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
- mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
- scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
- the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone,
- or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful
- laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the
- censure of the which one must in your allowance
- o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be
- players that I have seen play, and heard others
- praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely,
- that, neither having the accent of Christians nor
- the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
- strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of
- nature's journeymen had made men and not made them
- well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
First Player:
- I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us,
- sir.
LORD POLONIUS:
- And the queen too, and that presently.
HAMLET:
- Bid the players make haste.
-
[Exit POLONIUS]
- Will you two help to hasten them?
HAMLET:
- What ho! Horatio!
-
[Enter HORATIO]
HORATIO:
- Here, sweet lord, at your service.
HAMLET:
- Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
- As e'er my conversation coped withal.
HORATIO:
- O, my dear lord,--
HAMLET:
- Nay, do not think I flatter;
- For what advancement may I hope from thee
- That no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
- To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?
- No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
- And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
- Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
- Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
- And could of men distinguish, her election
- Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been
- As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
- A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
- Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those
- Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
- That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
- To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
- That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
- In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
- As I do thee.--Something too much of this.--
- There is a play to-night before the king;
- One scene of it comes near the circumstance
- Which I have told thee of my father's death:
- I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,
- Even with the very comment of thy soul
- Observe mine uncle: if his occulted guilt
- Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
- It is a damned ghost that we have seen,
- And my imaginations are as foul
- As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note;
- For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
- And after we will both our judgments join
- In censure of his seeming.
HORATIO:
- Well, my lord:
- If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,
- And 'scape detecting, I will pay the theft.
HAMLET:
- They are coming to the play; I must be idle:
- Get you a place.
-
[Danish march. A flourish. Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE,
POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and others]
KING CLAUDIUS:
- How fares our cousin Hamlet?
HAMLET:
- Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish: I eat
- the air, promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words
- are not mine.
HAMLET:
- No, nor mine now.
-
[To POLONIUS]
- My lord, you played once i' the university, you say?
LORD POLONIUS:
- That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.
HAMLET:
- What did you enact?
LORD POLONIUS:
- I did enact Julius Caesar: I was killed i' the
- Capitol; Brutus killed me.
HAMLET:
- It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf
- there. Be the players ready?
ROSENCRANTZ:
- Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
HAMLET:
- No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.
LORD POLONIUS:
-
[To KING CLAUDIUS]
- O, ho! do you mark that?
HAMLET:
- Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
- Lying down at OPHELIA's feet
HAMLET:
- I mean, my head upon your lap?
HAMLET:
- Do you think I meant country matters?
OPHELIA:
- I think nothing, my lord.
HAMLET:
- That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
OPHELIA:
- What is, my lord?
OPHELIA:
- You are merry, my lord.
HAMLET:
- O God, your only jig-maker. What should a man do
- but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my
- mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.
OPHELIA:
- Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.
HAMLET:
- So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for
- I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two
- months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's
- hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half
- a year: but, by'r lady, he must build churches,
- then; or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with
- the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is 'For, O, for, O,
- the hobby-horse is forgot.'
-
[Hautboys play. The dumb-show enters]
-
[Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing him, and he her.
She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him.
He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck:
lays him down upon a bank of flowers: she, seeing him asleep, leaves him.
Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it,
and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit.
The Queen returns; finds the King dead, and makes passionate action.
The Poisoner, with some two or three Mutes,
comes in again, seeming to lament with her.
The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts:
she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love]
-
[Exeunt]
OPHELIA:
- What means this, my lord?
HAMLET:
- Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.
OPHELIA:
- Belike this show imports the argument of the play.
-
[Enter Prologue]
HAMLET:
- We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot
- keep counsel; they'll tell all.
OPHELIA:
- Will he tell us what this show meant?
HAMLET:
- Ay, or any show that you'll show him: be not you
- ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means.
OPHELIA:
- You are naught, you are naught: I'll mark the play.
Prologue:
- For us, and for our tragedy,
- Here stooping to your clemency,
- We beg your hearing patiently.
-
[Exit]
HAMLET:
- Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
OPHELIA:
- 'Tis brief, my lord.
Player King:
- Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
- Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,
- And thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen
- About the world have times twelve thirties been,
- Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands
- Unite commutual in most sacred bands.
Player Queen:
- So many journeys may the sun and moon
- Make us again count o'er ere love be done!
- But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,
- So far from cheer and from your former state,
- That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
- Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must:
- For women's fear and love holds quantity;
- In neither aught, or in extremity.
- Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
- And as my love is sized, my fear is so:
- Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
- Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.
Player King:
- 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
- My operant powers their functions leave to do:
- And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
- Honour'd, beloved; and haply one as kind
- For husband shalt thou--
Player Queen:
- O, confound the rest!
- Such love must needs be treason in my breast:
- In second husband let me be accurst!
- None wed the second but who kill'd the first.
HAMLET:
-
[Aside]
- Wormwood, wormwood.
Player Queen:
- The instances that second marriage move
- Are base respects of thrift, but none of love:
- A second time I kill my husband dead,
- When second husband kisses me in bed.
Player King:
- I do believe you think what now you speak;
- But what we do determine oft we break.
- Purpose is but the slave to memory,
- Of violent birth, but poor validity;
- Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree;
- But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.
- Most necessary 'tis that we forget
- To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt:
- What to ourselves in passion we propose,
- The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
- The violence of either grief or joy
- Their own enactures with themselves destroy:
- Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;
- Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
- This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange
- That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
- For 'tis a question left us yet to prove,
- Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
- The great man down, you mark his favourite flies;
- The poor advanced makes friends of enemies.
- And hitherto doth love on fortune tend;
- For who not needs shall never lack a friend,
- And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
- Directly seasons him his enemy.
- But, orderly to end where I begun,
- Our wills and fates do so contrary run
- That our devices still are overthrown;
- Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own:
- So think thou wilt no second husband wed;
- But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.
Player Queen:
- Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light!
- Sport and repose lock from me day and night!
- To desperation turn my trust and hope!
- An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope!
- Each opposite that blanks the face of joy
- Meet what I would have well and it destroy!
- Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
- If, once a widow, ever I be wife!
HAMLET:
- If she should break it now!
Player King:
- 'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile;
- My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
- The tedious day with sleep.
-
[Sleeps]
Player Queen:
- Sleep rock thy brain,
- And never come mischance between us twain!
-
[Exit]
HAMLET:
- Madam, how like you this play?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- The lady protests too much, methinks.
HAMLET:
- O, but she'll keep her word.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in 't?
HAMLET:
- No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence
- i' the world.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- What do you call the play?
HAMLET:
- The Mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play
- is the image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is
- the duke's name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see
- anon; 'tis a knavish piece of work: but what o'
- that? your majesty and we that have free souls, it
- touches us not: let the galled jade wince, our
- withers are unwrung.
-
[Enter LUCIANUS]
- This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.
OPHELIA:
- You are as good as a chorus, my lord.
HAMLET:
- I could interpret between you and your love, if I
- could see the puppets dallying.
OPHELIA:
- You are keen, my lord, you are keen.
HAMLET:
- It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.
OPHELIA:
- Still better, and worse.
HAMLET:
- So you must take your husbands. Begin, murderer;
- pox, leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come:
- 'the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.'
HAMLET:
- He poisons him i' the garden for's estate. His
- name's Gonzago: the story is extant, and writ in
- choice Italian: you shall see anon how the murderer
- gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
HAMLET:
- What, frighted with false fire!
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- How fares my lord?
LORD POLONIUS:
- Give o'er the play.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Give me some light: away!
HAMLET:
- Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
- The hart ungalled play;
- For some must watch, while some must sleep:
- So runs the world away.
- Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers-- if
- the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me--with two
- Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a
- fellowship in a cry of players, sir?
HAMLET:
- A whole one, I.
- For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
- This realm dismantled was
- Of Jove himself; and now reigns here
- A very, very--pajock.
HORATIO:
- You might have rhymed.
HAMLET:
- O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a
- thousand pound. Didst perceive?
HORATIO:
- Very well, my lord.
HAMLET:
- Upon the talk of the poisoning?
HORATIO:
- I did very well note him.
GUILDENSTERN:
- Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.
HAMLET:
- Sir, a whole history.
GUILDENSTERN:
- The king, sir,--
HAMLET:
- Ay, sir, what of him?
GUILDENSTERN:
- Is in his retirement marvellous distempered.
GUILDENSTERN:
- No, my lord, rather with choler.
HAMLET:
- Your wisdom should show itself more richer to
- signify this to his doctor; for, for me to put him
- to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far
- more choler.
GUILDENSTERN:
- Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame and
- start not so wildly from my affair.
HAMLET:
- I am tame, sir: pronounce.
GUILDENSTERN:
- The queen, your mother, in most great affliction of
- spirit, hath sent me to you.
GUILDENSTERN:
- Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right
- breed. If it shall please you to make me a
- wholesome answer, I will do your mother's
- commandment: if not, your pardon and my return
- shall be the end of my business.
GUILDENSTERN:
- What, my lord?
HAMLET:
- Make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseased: but,
- sir, such answer as I can make, you shall command;
- or, rather, as you say, my mother: therefore no
- more, but to the matter: my mother, you say,--
ROSENCRANTZ:
- Then thus she says; your behavior hath struck her
- into amazement and admiration.
HAMLET:
- O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother! But
- is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's
- admiration? Impart.
ROSENCRANTZ:
- She desires to speak with you in her closet, ere you
- go to bed.
HAMLET:
- We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have
- you any further trade with us?
ROSENCRANTZ:
- My lord, you once did love me.
HAMLET:
- So I do still, by these pickers and stealers.
ROSENCRANTZ:
- Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? you
- do, surely, bar the door upon your own liberty, if
- you deny your griefs to your friend.
HAMLET:
- Sir, I lack advancement.
ROSENCRANTZ:
- How can that be, when you have the voice of the king
- himself for your succession in Denmark?
GUILDENSTERN:
- O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too
- unmannerly.
HAMLET:
- I do not well understand that. Will you play upon
- this pipe?
GUILDENSTERN:
- My lord, I cannot.
GUILDENSTERN:
- Believe me, I cannot.
HAMLET:
- I do beseech you.
GUILDENSTERN:
- I know no touch of it, my lord.
HAMLET:
- 'Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with
- your lingers and thumb, give it breath with your
- mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music.
- Look you, these are the stops.
GUILDENSTERN:
- But these cannot I command to any utterance of
- harmony; I have not the skill.
HAMLET:
- Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
- me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
- my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
- mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
- the top of my compass: and there is much music,
- excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot
- you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am
- easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
- instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
- cannot play upon me.
-
[Enter POLONIUS]
- God bless you, sir!
LORD POLONIUS:
- My lord, the queen would speak with you, and
- presently.
HAMLET:
- Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
LORD POLONIUS:
- By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
HAMLET:
- Methinks it is like a weasel.
LORD POLONIUS:
- It is backed like a weasel.
LORD POLONIUS:
- Very like a whale.
HAMLET:
- Then I will come to my mother by and by. They fool
- me to the top of my bent. I will come by and by.
LORD POLONIUS:
- I will say so.
HAMLET:
- By and by is easily said.
-
[Exit POLONIUS]
- Leave me, friends.
-
[Exeunt all but HAMLET]
- Tis now the very witching time of night,
- When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
- Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
- And do such bitter business as the day
- Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother.
- O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
- The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:
- Let me be cruel, not unnatural:
- I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
- My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites;
- How in my words soever she be shent,
- To give them seals never, my soul, consent!
-
[Exit]
ACT III, SCENE III. A room in the castle.
[Enter KING CLAUDIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN]
KING CLAUDIUS:
- I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
- To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you;
- I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
- And he to England shall along with you:
- The terms of our estate may not endure
- Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow
- Out of his lunacies.
GUILDENSTERN:
- We will ourselves provide:
- Most holy and religious fear it is
- To keep those many many bodies safe
- That live and feed upon your majesty.
ROSENCRANTZ:
- The single and peculiar life is bound,
- With all the strength and armour of the mind,
- To keep itself from noyance; but much more
- That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest
- The lives of many. The cease of majesty
- Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
- What's near it with it: it is a massy wheel,
- Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
- To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
- Are mortised and adjoin'd; which, when it falls,
- Each small annexment, petty consequence,
- Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
- Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage;
- For we will fetters put upon this fear,
- Which now goes too free-footed.
LORD POLONIUS:
- My lord, he's going to his mother's closet:
- Behind the arras I'll convey myself,
- To hear the process; and warrant she'll tax him home:
- And, as you said, and wisely was it said,
- 'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
- Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear
- The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege:
- I'll call upon you ere you go to bed,
- And tell you what I know.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Thanks, dear my lord.
-
[Exit POLONIUS]
- O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
- It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,
- A brother's murder. Pray can I not,
- Though inclination be as sharp as will:
- My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
- And, like a man to double business bound,
- I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
- And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
- Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
- Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
- To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
- But to confront the visage of offence?
- And what's in prayer but this two-fold force,
- To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
- Or pardon'd being down? Then I'll look up;
- My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
- Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'?
- That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
- Of those effects for which I did the murder,
- My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
- May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
- In the corrupted currents of this world
- Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
- And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
- Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above;
- There is no shuffling, there the action lies
- In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
- Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
- To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
- Try what repentance can: what can it not?
- Yet what can it when one can not repent?
- O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
- O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
- Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
- Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
- Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
- All may be well.
-
[Retires and kneels]
-
[Enter HAMLET]
HAMLET:
- Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
- And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;
- And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:
- A villain kills my father; and for that,
- I, his sole son, do this same villain send
- To heaven.
- O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
- He took my father grossly, full of bread;
- With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
- And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
- But in our circumstance and course of thought,
- 'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,
- To take him in the purging of his soul,
- When he is fit and season'd for his passage?
- No!
- Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
- When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
- Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
- At gaming, swearing, or about some act
- That has no relish of salvation in't;
- Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
- And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
- As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
- This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
-
[Exit]
KING CLAUDIUS:
-
[Rising]
- My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
- Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
-
[Exit]
ACT III, SCENE IV. The Queen's closet.
[Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE and POLONIUS]
LORD POLONIUS:
- He will come straight. Look you lay home to him:
- Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
- And that your grace hath screen'd and stood between
- Much heat and him. I'll sconce me even here.
- Pray you, be round with him.
HAMLET:
-
[Within]
- Mother, mother, mother!
HAMLET:
- Now, mother, what's the matter?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
HAMLET:
- Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
HAMLET:
- Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Why, how now, Hamlet!
HAMLET:
- What's the matter now?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Have you forgot me?
HAMLET:
- No, by the rood, not so:
- You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife;
- And--would it were not so!--you are my mother.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.
HAMLET:
- Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
- You go not till I set you up a glass
- Where you may see the inmost part of you.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
- Help, help, ho!
LORD POLONIUS:
-
[Behind]
- What, ho! help, help, help!
HAMLET:
-
[Drawing]
- How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
- Makes a pass through the arras
LORD POLONIUS:
-
[Behind]
- O, I am slain!
- Falls and dies
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET:
- Nay, I know not:
- Is it the king?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
HAMLET:
- A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
- As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- As kill a king!
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
- In noise so rude against me?
HAMLET:
- Such an act
- That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
- Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
- From the fair forehead of an innocent love
- And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
- As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed
- As from the body of contraction plucks
- The very soul, and sweet religion makes
- A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow:
- Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
- With tristful visage, as against the doom,
- Is thought-sick at the act.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Ay me, what act,
- That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
HAMLET:
- Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
- The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
- See, what a grace was seated on this brow;
- Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
- An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
- A station like the herald Mercury
- New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
- A combination and a form indeed,
- Where every god did seem to set his seal,
- To give the world assurance of a man:
- This was your husband. Look you now, what follows:
- Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear,
- Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
- Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
- And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
- You cannot call it love; for at your age
- The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble,
- And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment
- Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have,
- Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense
- Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err,
- Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd
- But it reserved some quantity of choice,
- To serve in such a difference. What devil was't
- That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?
- Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
- Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
- Or but a sickly part of one true sense
- Could not so mope.
- O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
- If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,
- To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
- And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame
- When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
- Since frost itself as actively doth burn
- And reason panders will.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- O Hamlet, speak no more:
- Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
- And there I see such black and grained spots
- As will not leave their tinct.
HAMLET:
- Nay, but to live
- In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
- Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
- Over the nasty sty,--
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- O, speak to me no more;
- These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
- No more, sweet Hamlet!
HAMLET:
- A murderer and a villain;
- A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
- Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
- A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
- That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
- And put it in his pocket!
HAMLET:
- A king of shreds and patches,--
-
[Enter Ghost]
- Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
- You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Alas, he's mad!
HAMLET:
- Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
- That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
- The important acting of your dread command? O, say!
Ghost:
- Do not forget: this visitation
- Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
- But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
- O, step between her and her fighting soul:
- Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
- Speak to her, Hamlet.
HAMLET:
- How is it with you, lady?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Alas, how is't with you,
- That you do bend your eye on vacancy
- And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
- Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
- And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
- Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
- Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son,
- Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
- Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?
HAMLET:
- On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares!
- His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones,
- Would make them capable. Do not look upon me;
- Lest with this piteous action you convert
- My stern effects: then what I have to do
- Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- To whom do you speak this?
HAMLET:
- Do you see nothing there?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
HAMLET:
- Nor did you nothing hear?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET:
- Why, look you there! look, how it steals away!
- My father, in his habit as he lived!
- Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!
-
[Exit Ghost]
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- This the very coinage of your brain:
- This bodiless creation ecstasy
- Is very cunning in.
HAMLET:
- Ecstasy!
- My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
- And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
- That I have utter'd: bring me to the test,
- And I the matter will re-word; which madness
- Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
- Lay not that mattering unction to your soul,
- That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
- It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
- Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
- Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
- Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
- And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
- To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;
- For in the fatness of these pursy times
- Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
- Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
HAMLET:
- O, throw away the worser part of it,
- And live the purer with the other half.
- Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed;
- Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
- That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
- Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
- That to the use of actions fair and good
- He likewise gives a frock or livery,
- That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
- And that shall lend a kind of easiness
- To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
- For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
- And either in the devil, or throw him out
- With wondrous potency. Once more, good night:
- And when you are desirous to be bless'd,
- I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,
-
[Pointing to POLONIUS]
- I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,
- To punish me with this and this with me,
- That I must be their scourge and minister.
- I will bestow him, and will answer well
- The death I gave him. So, again, good night.
- I must be cruel, only to be kind:
- Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.
- One word more, good lady.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- What shall I do?
HAMLET:
- Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
- Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed;
- Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;
- And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
- Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,
- Make you to ravel all this matter out,
- That I essentially am not in madness,
- But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know;
- For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
- Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
- Such dear concernings hide? who would do so?
- No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
- Unpeg the basket on the house's top.
- Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape,
- To try conclusions, in the basket creep,
- And break your own neck down.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,
- And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
- What thou hast said to me.
HAMLET:
- I must to England; you know that?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Alack,
- I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on.
ACT IV
ACT IV, SCENE I. A room in the castle.
[Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN]
KING CLAUDIUS:
- There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves:
- You must translate: 'tis fit we understand them.
- Where is your son?
KING CLAUDIUS:
- What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend
- Which is the mightier: in his lawless fit,
- Behind the arras hearing something stir,
- Whips out his rapier, cries, 'A rat, a rat!'
- And, in this brainish apprehension, kills
- The unseen good old man.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- O heavy deed!
- It had been so with us, had we been there:
- His liberty is full of threats to all;
- To you yourself, to us, to every one.
- Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd?
- It will be laid to us, whose providence
- Should have kept short, restrain'd and out of haunt,
- This mad young man: but so much was our love,
- We would not understand what was most fit;
- But, like the owner of a foul disease,
- To keep it from divulging, let it feed
- Even on the pith of Life. Where is he gone?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- To draw apart the body he hath kill'd:
- O'er whom his very madness, like some ore
- Among a mineral of metals base,
- Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done.
ACT IV, SCENE II. Another room in the castle.
[Enter HAMLET]
ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN::
-
[Within]
- Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!
ROSENCRANTZ:
- What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?
HAMLET:
- Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.
ROSENCRANTZ:
- Tell us where 'tis, that we may take it thence
- And bear it to the chapel.
HAMLET:
- Do not believe it.
ROSENCRANTZ:
- Believe what?
HAMLET:
- That I can keep your counsel and not mine own.
- Besides, to be demanded of a sponge! what
- replication should be made by the son of a king?
ROSENCRANTZ:
- Take you me for a sponge, my lord?
HAMLET:
- Ay, sir, that soaks up the king's countenance, his
- rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the
- king best service in the end: he keeps them, like
- an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to
- be last swallowed: when he needs what you have
- gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you
- shall be dry again.
ROSENCRANTZ:
- I understand you not, my lord.
HAMLET:
- I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a
- foolish ear.
ROSENCRANTZ:
- My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go
- with us to the king.
HAMLET:
- The body is with the king, but the king is not with
- the body. The king is a thing--
GUILDENSTERN:
- A thing, my lord!
HAMLET:
- Of nothing: bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.
-
[Exeunt]
ACT IV, SCENE III. Another room in the castle.
[Enter KING CLAUDIUS, attended]
KING CLAUDIUS:
- I have sent to seek him, and to find the body.
- How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!
- Yet must not we put the strong law on him:
- He's loved of the distracted multitude,
- Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes;
- And where tis so, the offender's scourge is weigh'd,
- But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,
- This sudden sending him away must seem
- Deliberate pause: diseases desperate grown
- By desperate appliance are relieved,
- Or not at all.
-
[Enter ROSENCRANTZ]
- How now! what hath befall'n?
ROSENCRANTZ:
- Where the dead body is bestow'd, my lord,
- We cannot get from him.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- But where is he?
ROSENCRANTZ:
- Without, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Bring him before us.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?
KING CLAUDIUS:
- At supper! where?
HAMLET:
- Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain
- convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your
- worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all
- creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for
- maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but
- variable service, two dishes, but to one table:
- that's the end.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Alas, alas!
HAMLET:
- A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a
- king, and cat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- What dost you mean by this?
HAMLET:
- Nothing but to show you how a king may go a
- progress through the guts of a beggar.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Where is Polonius?
HAMLET:
- In heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger
- find him not there, seek him i' the other place
- yourself. But indeed, if you find him not within
- this month, you shall nose him as you go up the
- stairs into the lobby.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Go seek him there.
-
[To some Attendants]
HAMLET:
- He will stay till ye come.
-
[Exeunt Attendants]
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,--
- Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve
- For that which thou hast done,--must send thee hence
- With fiery quickness: therefore prepare thyself;
- The bark is ready, and the wind at help,
- The associates tend, and every thing is bent
- For England.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Ay, Hamlet.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.
HAMLET:
- I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for
- England! Farewell, dear mother.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Thy loving father, Hamlet.
HAMLET:
- My mother: father and mother is man and wife; man
- and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England!
-
[Exit]
ACT IV, SCENE IV. A plain in Denmark.
[Enter FORTINBRAS, a Captain, and Soldiers, marching]
PRINCE FORTINBRAS:
- Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king;
- Tell him that, by his licence, Fortinbras
- Craves the conveyance of a promised march
- Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.
- If that his majesty would aught with us,
- We shall express our duty in his eye;
- And let him know so.
Captain:
- I will do't, my lord.
PRINCE FORTINBRAS:
- Go softly on.
-
[Exeunt FORTINBRAS and Soldiers]
-
[Enter HAMLET, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and others]
HAMLET:
- Good sir, whose powers are these?
Captain:
- They are of Norway, sir.
HAMLET:
- How purposed, sir, I pray you?
Captain:
- Against some part of Poland.
HAMLET:
- Who commands them, sir?
Captain:
- The nephews to old Norway, Fortinbras.
HAMLET:
- Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
- Or for some frontier?
Captain:
- Truly to speak, and with no addition,
- We go to gain a little patch of ground
- That hath in it no profit but the name.
- To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
- Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
- A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.
HAMLET:
- Why, then the Polack never will defend it.
Captain:
- Yes, it is already garrison'd.
HAMLET:
- Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
- Will not debate the question of this straw:
- This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
- That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
- Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.
Captain:
- God be wi' you, sir.
-
[Exit]
ROSENCRANTZ:
- Wilt please you go, my lord?
ACT IV, SCENE V. Elsinore. A room in the castle.
[Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE, HORATIO, and a Gentleman]
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- I will not speak with her.
Gentleman:
- She is importunate, indeed distract:
- Her mood will needs be pitied.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- What would she have?
Gentleman:
- She speaks much of her father; says she hears
- There's tricks i' the world; and hems, and beats her heart;
- Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,
- That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing,
- Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
- The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
- And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
- Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures
- yield them,
- Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
- Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
HORATIO:
- 'Twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew
- Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
OPHELIA:
- Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- How now, Ophelia!
OPHELIA:
-
[Sings]
- How should I your true love know
- From another one?
- By his cockle hat and staff,
- And his sandal shoon.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
OPHELIA:
- Say you? nay, pray you, mark.
-
[Sings]
- He is dead and gone, lady,
- He is dead and gone;
- At his head a grass-green turf,
- At his heels a stone.
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Nay, but, Ophelia,--
OPHELIA:
- Pray you, mark.
-
[Sings]
- White his shroud as the mountain snow,--
-
[Enter KING CLAUDIUS]
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Alas, look here, my lord.
OPHELIA:
-
[Sings]
- Larded with sweet flowers
- Which bewept to the grave did go
- With true-love showers.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- How do you, pretty lady?
OPHELIA:
- Well, God 'ild you! They say the owl was a baker's
- daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not
- what we may be. God be at your table!
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Conceit upon her father.
OPHELIA:
- Pray you, let's have no words of this; but when they
- ask you what it means, say you this:
-
[Sings]
- To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
- All in the morning betime,
- And I a maid at your window,
- To be your Valentine.
- Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
- And dupp'd the chamber-door;
- Let in the maid, that out a maid
- Never departed more.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Pretty Ophelia!
OPHELIA:
- Indeed, la, without an oath, I'll make an end on't:
-
[Sings]
- By Gis and by Saint Charity,
- Alack, and fie for shame!
- Young men will do't, if they come to't;
- By cock, they are to blame.
- Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
- You promised me to wed.
- So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
- An thou hadst not come to my bed.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- How long hath she been thus?
OPHELIA:
- I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I
- cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him
- i' the cold ground. My brother shall know of it:
- and so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my
- coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies;
- good night, good night.
-
[Exit]
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Follow her close; give her good watch,
- I pray you.
-
[Exit HORATIO]
- O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
- All from her father's death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
- When sorrows come, they come not single spies
- But in battalions. First, her father slain:
- Next, your son gone; and he most violent author
- Of his own just remove: the people muddied,
- Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers,
- For good Polonius' death; and we have done but greenly,
- In hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Ophelia
- Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
- Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts:
- Last, and as much containing as all these,
- Her brother is in secret come from France;
- Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
- And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
- With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
- Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
- Will nothing stick our person to arraign
- In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
- Like to a murdering-piece, in many places
- Gives me superfluous death.
-
[A noise within]
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Alack, what noise is this?
Gentleman:
- Save yourself, my lord:
- The ocean, overpeering of his list,
- Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
- Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
- O'erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord;
- And, as the world were now but to begin,
- Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
- The ratifiers and props of every word,
- They cry 'Choose we: Laertes shall be king:'
- Caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds:
- 'Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!'
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
- O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!
LAERTES:
- Where is this king? Sirs, stand you all without.
Danes:
- No, let's come in.
LAERTES:
- I pray you, give me leave.
LAERTES:
- I thank you: keep the door. O thou vile king,
- Give me my father!
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Calmly, good Laertes.
LAERTES:
- That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,
- Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
- Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow
- Of my true mother.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- What is the cause, Laertes,
- That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?
- Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person:
- There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
- That treason can but peep to what it would,
- Acts little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,
- Why thou art thus incensed. Let him go, Gertrude.
- Speak, man.
LAERTES:
- Where is my father?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- But not by him.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Let him demand his fill.
LAERTES:
- How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
- To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
- Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
- I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
- That both the worlds I give to negligence,
- Let come what comes; only I'll be revenged
- Most thoroughly for my father.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Who shall stay you?
LAERTES:
- My will, not all the world:
- And for my means, I'll husband them so well,
- They shall go far with little.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Good Laertes,
- If you desire to know the certainty
- Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge,
- That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
- Winner and loser?
LAERTES:
- None but his enemies.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Will you know them then?
LAERTES:
- To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
- And like the kind life-rendering pelican,
- Repast them with my blood.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Why, now you speak
- Like a good child and a true gentleman.
- That I am guiltless of your father's death,
- And am most sensible in grief for it,
- It shall as level to your judgment pierce
- As day does to your eye.
Danes:
-
[Within]
- Let her come in.
LAERTES:
- How now! what noise is that?
-
[Re-enter OPHELIA]
- O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
- Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
- By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
- Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
- Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
- O heavens! is't possible, a young maid's wits
- Should be as moral as an old man's life?
- Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine,
- It sends some precious instance of itself
- After the thing it loves.
OPHELIA:
-
[Sings]
- They bore him barefaced on the bier;
- Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
- And in his grave rain'd many a tear:--
- Fare you well, my dove!
LAERTES:
- Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
- It could not move thus.
OPHELIA:
-
[Sings]
- You must sing a-down a-down,
- An you call him a-down-a.
- O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false
- steward, that stole his master's daughter.
LAERTES:
- This nothing's more than matter.
OPHELIA:
- There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray,
- love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts.
LAERTES:
- A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.
OPHELIA:
- There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue
- for you; and here's some for me: we may call it
- herb-grace o' Sundays: O you must wear your rue with
- a difference. There's a daisy: I would give you
- some violets, but they withered all when my father
- died: they say he made a good end,--
-
[Sings]
- For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.
LAERTES:
- Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
- She turns to favour and to prettiness.
OPHELIA:
-
[Sings]
- And will he not come again?
- And will he not come again?
- No, no, he is dead:
- Go to thy death-bed:
- He never will come again.
- His beard was as white as snow,
- All flaxen was his poll:
- He is gone, he is gone,
- And we cast away moan:
- God ha' mercy on his soul!
- And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be wi' ye.
-
[Exit]
LAERTES:
- Do you see this, O God?
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
- Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
- Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will.
- And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me:
- If by direct or by collateral hand
- They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give,
- Our crown, our life, and all that we can ours,
- To you in satisfaction; but if not,
- Be you content to lend your patience to us,
- And we shall jointly labour with your soul
- To give it due content.
LAERTES:
- Let this be so;
- His means of death, his obscure funeral--
- No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
- No noble rite nor formal ostentation--
- Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
- That I must call't in question.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- So you shall;
- And where the offence is let the great axe fall.
- I pray you, go with me.
-
[Exeunt]
ACT IV, SCENE VI. Another room in the castle.
[Enter HORATIO and a Servant]
HORATIO:
- What are they that would speak with me?
Servant:
- Sailors, sir: they say they have letters for you.
HORATIO:
- Let them come in.
-
[Exit Servant]
- I do not know from what part of the world
- I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.
-
[Enter Sailors]
First Sailor:
- God bless you, sir.
HORATIO:
- Let him bless thee too.
First Sailor:
- He shall, sir, an't please him. There's a letter for
- you, sir; it comes from the ambassador that was
- bound for England; if your name be Horatio, as I am
- let to know it is.
HORATIO:
-
[Reads]
- 'Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked
- this, give these fellows some means to the king:
- they have letters for him. Ere we were two days old
- at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us
- chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on
- a compelled valour, and in the grapple I boarded
- them: on the instant they got clear of our ship; so
- I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with
- me like thieves of mercy: but they knew what they
- did; I am to do a good turn for them. Let the king
- have the letters I have sent; and repair thou to me
- with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death. I
- have words to speak in thine ear will make thee
- dumb; yet are they much too light for the bore of
- the matter. These good fellows will bring thee
- where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their
- course for England: of them I have much to tell
- thee. Farewell.
- 'He that thou knowest thine, HAMLET.'
- Come, I will make you way for these your letters;
- And do't the speedier, that you may direct me
- To him from whom you brought them.
-
[Exeunt]
ACT IV, SCENE VII. Another room in the castle.
[Enter KING CLAUDIUS and LAERTES]
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Now must your conscience my acquaintance seal,
- And you must put me in your heart for friend,
- Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
- That he which hath your noble father slain
- Pursued my life.
LAERTES:
- It well appears: but tell me
- Why you proceeded not against these feats,
- So crimeful and so capital in nature,
- As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
- You mainly were stirr'd up.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- O, for two special reasons;
- Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew'd,
- But yet to me they are strong. The queen his mother
- Lives almost by his looks; and for myself--
- My virtue or my plague, be it either which--
- She's so conjunctive to my life and soul,
- That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
- I could not but by her. The other motive,
- Why to a public count I might not go,
- Is the great love the general gender bear him;
- Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
- Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
- Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows,
- Too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind,
- Would have reverted to my bow again,
- And not where I had aim'd them.
LAERTES:
- And so have I a noble father lost;
- A sister driven into desperate terms,
- Whose worth, if praises may go back again,
- Stood challenger on mount of all the age
- For her perfections: but my revenge will come.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Break not your sleeps for that: you must not think
- That we are made of stuff so flat and dull
- That we can let our beard be shook with danger
- And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more:
- I loved your father, and we love ourself;
- And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine--
-
[Enter a Messenger]
- How now! what news?
Messenger:
- Letters, my lord, from Hamlet:
- This to your majesty; this to the queen.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- From Hamlet! who brought them?
Messenger:
- Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not:
- They were given me by Claudio; he received them
- Of him that brought them.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Laertes, you shall hear them. Leave us.
-
[Exit Messenger]
-
[Reads]
- 'High and mighty, You shall know I am set naked on
- your kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see
- your kingly eyes: when I shall, first asking your
- pardon thereunto, recount the occasion of my sudden
- and more strange return. 'HAMLET.'
- What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
- Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?
LAERTES:
- Know you the hand?
KING CLAUDIUS:
- 'Tis Hamlets character. 'Naked!
- And in a postscript here, he says 'alone.'
- Can you advise me?
LAERTES:
- I'm lost in it, my lord. But let him come;
- It warms the very sickness in my heart,
- That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,
- 'Thus didest thou.'
KING CLAUDIUS:
- If it be so, Laertes--
- As how should it be so? how otherwise?--
- Will you be ruled by me?
LAERTES:
- Ay, my lord;
- So you will not o'errule me to a peace.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- To thine own peace. If he be now return'd,
- As checking at his voyage, and that he means
- No more to undertake it, I will work him
- To an exploit, now ripe in my device,
- Under the which he shall not choose but fall:
- And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe,
- But even his mother shall uncharge the practise
- And call it accident.
LAERTES:
- My lord, I will be ruled;
- The rather, if you could devise it so
- That I might be the organ.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- It falls right.
- You have been talk'd of since your travel much,
- And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality
- Wherein, they say, you shine: your sum of parts
- Did not together pluck such envy from him
- As did that one, and that, in my regard,
- Of the unworthiest siege.
LAERTES:
- What part is that, my lord?
KING CLAUDIUS:
- A very riband in the cap of youth,
- Yet needful too; for youth no less becomes
- The light and careless livery that it wears
- Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
- Importing health and graveness. Two months since,
- Here was a gentleman of Normandy:--
- I've seen myself, and served against, the French,
- And they can well on horseback: but this gallant
- Had witchcraft in't; he grew unto his seat;
- And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
- As he had been incorpsed and demi-natured
- With the brave beast: so far he topp'd my thought,
- That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,
- Come short of what he did.
LAERTES:
- Upon my life, Lamond.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- The very same.
LAERTES:
- I know him well: he is the brooch indeed
- And gem of all the nation.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- He made confession of you,
- And gave you such a masterly report
- For art and exercise in your defence
- And for your rapier most especially,
- That he cried out, 'twould be a sight indeed,
- If one could match you: the scrimers of their nation,
- He swore, had had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
- If you opposed them. Sir, this report of his
- Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy
- That he could nothing do but wish and beg
- Your sudden coming o'er, to play with him.
- Now, out of this,--
LAERTES:
- What out of this, my lord?
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Laertes, was your father dear to you?
- Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
- A face without a heart?
LAERTES:
- Why ask you this?
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Not that I think you did not love your father;
- But that I know love is begun by time;
- And that I see, in passages of proof,
- Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
- There lives within the very flame of love
- A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
- And nothing is at a like goodness still;
- For goodness, growing to a plurisy,
- Dies in his own too much: that we would do
- We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes
- And hath abatements and delays as many
- As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
- And then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh,
- That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o' the ulcer:--
- Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake,
- To show yourself your father's son in deed
- More than in words?
LAERTES:
- To cut his throat i' the church.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize;
- Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,
- Will you do this, keep close within your chamber.
- Hamlet return'd shall know you are come home:
- We'll put on those shall praise your excellence
- And set a double varnish on the fame
- The Frenchman gave you, bring you in fine together
- And wager on your heads: he, being remiss,
- Most generous and free from all contriving,
- Will not peruse the foils; so that, with ease,
- Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
- A sword unbated, and in a pass of practise
- Requite him for your father.
LAERTES:
- I will do't:
- And, for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword.
- I bought an unction of a mountebank,
- So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
- Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
- Collected from all simples that have virtue
- Under the moon, can save the thing from death
- That is but scratch'd withal: I'll touch my point
- With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
- It may be death.
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Let's further think of this;
- Weigh what convenience both of time and means
- May fit us to our shape: if this should fail,
- And that our drift look through our bad performance,
- 'Twere better not assay'd: therefore this project
- Should have a back or second, that might hold,
- If this should blast in proof. Soft! let me see:
- We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings: I ha't.
- When in your motion you are hot and dry--
- As make your bouts more violent to that end--
- And that he calls for drink, I'll have prepared him
- A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
- If he by chance escape your venom'd stuck,
- Our purpose may hold there.
-
[Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE]
- How now, sweet queen!
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
- So fast they follow; your sister's drown'd, Laertes.
LAERTES:
- Drown'd! O, where?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
- That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
- There with fantastic garlands did she come
- Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
- That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
- But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
- There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
- Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
- When down her weedy trophies and herself
- Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
- And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
- Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
- As one incapable of her own distress,
- Or like a creature native and indued
- Unto that element: but long it could not be
- Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
- Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
- To muddy death.
LAERTES:
- Alas, then, she is drown'd?
QUEEN GERTRUDE:
- Drown'd, drown'd.
LAERTES:
- Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
- And therefore I forbid my tears: but yet
- It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
- Let shame say what it will: when these are gone,
- The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord:
- I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
- But that this folly douts it.
-
[Exit]
KING CLAUDIUS:
- Let's follow, Gertrude:
- How much I had to do to calm his rage!
- Now fear I this will give it start again;
- Therefore let's follow.
-
[Exeunt]