APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/shakespear/hamlet/HAMLET

Text File | 1994-08-29 | 202.2 KB | 6,046 lines

        HAMLET


        DRAMATIS PERSONAE


CLAUDIUS        king of Denmark. (KING CLAUDIUS:)

HAMLET  son to the late, and nephew to the present king.

POLONIUS        lord chamberlain. (LORD POLONIUS:)

HORATIO friend to Hamlet.

LAERTES son to Polonius.

LUCIANUS        nephew to the king.


VOLTIMAND       |
        |
CORNELIUS       |
        |
ROSENCRANTZ     |  courtiers.
        |
GUILDENSTERN    |
        |
OSRIC   |


        A Gentleman, (Gentlemen:)

        A Priest. (First Priest:)


MARCELLUS       |
        |  officers.
BERNARDO        |


FRANCISCO       a soldier.

REYNALDO        servant to Polonius.
        Players.
        (First Player:)
        (Player King:)
        (Player Queen:)

        Two Clowns, grave-diggers.
        (First Clown:)
        (Second Clown:)

FORTINBRAS      prince of Norway. (PRINCE FORTINBRAS:)

        A Captain.

        English Ambassadors. (First Ambassador:)

GERTRUDE        queen of Denmark, and mother to Hamlet.
        (QUEEN GERTRUDE:)

OPHELIA daughter to Polonius.

        Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers,
        and other Attendants. (Lord:)
        (First Sailor:)
        (Messenger:)

        Ghost of Hamlet's Father. (Ghost:)



SCENE   Denmark.




        HAMLET


ACT I



SCENE I Elsinore. A platform before the castle.


        [FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO]

BERNARDO        Who's there?

FRANCISCO       Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

BERNARDO        Long live the king!

FRANCISCO       Bernardo?

BERNARDO        He.

FRANCISCO       You come most carefully upon your hour.

BERNARDO        'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.

FRANCISCO       For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,
        And I am sick at heart.

BERNARDO        Have you had quiet guard?

FRANCISCO       Not a mouse stirring.

BERNARDO        Well, good night.
        If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
        The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

FRANCISCO       I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who's there?

        [Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS]

HORATIO Friends to this ground.

MARCELLUS       And liegemen to the Dane.

FRANCISCO       Give you good night.

MARCELLUS       O, farewell, honest soldier:
        Who hath relieved you?

FRANCISCO       Bernardo has my place.
        Give you good night.

        [Exit]

MARCELLUS       Holla! Bernardo!

BERNARDO        Say,
        What, is Horatio there?

HORATIO A piece of him.

BERNARDO        Welcome, Horatio: welcome, good Marcellus.

MARCELLUS       What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?

BERNARDO        I have seen nothing.

MARCELLUS       Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,
        And will not let belief take hold of him
        Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us:
        Therefore I have entreated him along
        With us to watch the minutes of this night;
        That if again this apparition come,
        He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

HORATIO Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.

BERNARDO        Sit down awhile;
        And let us once again assail your ears,
        That are so fortified against our story
        What we have two nights seen.

HORATIO Well, sit we down,
        And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.

BERNARDO        Last night of all,
        When yond same star that's westward from the pole
        Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
        Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
        The bell then beating one,--

        [Enter Ghost]

MARCELLUS       Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

BERNARDO        In the same figure, like the king that's dead.

MARCELLUS       Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

BERNARDO        Looks it not like the king?  mark it, Horatio.

HORATIO Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.

BERNARDO        It would be spoke to.

MARCELLUS       Question it, Horatio.

HORATIO What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
        Together with that fair and warlike form
        In which the majesty of buried Denmark
        Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!

MARCELLUS       It is offended.

BERNARDO                          See, it stalks away!

HORATIO Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!

        [Exit Ghost]

MARCELLUS       'Tis gone, and will not answer.

BERNARDO        How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:
        Is not this something more than fantasy?
        What think you on't?

HORATIO Before my God, I might not this believe
        Without the sensible and true avouch
        Of mine own eyes.

MARCELLUS                         Is it not like the king?

HORATIO As thou art to thyself:
        Such was the very armour he had on
        When he the ambitious Norway combated;
        So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
        He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
        'Tis strange.

MARCELLUS       Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
        With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

HORATIO In what particular thought to work I know not;
        But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
        This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

MARCELLUS       Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
        Why this same strict and most observant watch
        So nightly toils the subject of the land,
        And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
        And foreign mart for implements of war;
        Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
        Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
        What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
        Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
        Who is't that can inform me?

HORATIO That can I;
        At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,
        Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
        Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
        Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
        Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet--
        For so this side of our known world esteem'd him--
        Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal'd compact,
        Well ratified by law and heraldry,
        Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
        Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
        Against the which, a moiety competent
        Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
        To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
        Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
        And carriage of the article design'd,
        His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
        Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
        Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
        Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
        For food and diet, to some enterprise
        That hath a stomach in't; which is no other--
        As it doth well appear unto our state--
        But to recover of us, by strong hand
        And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
        So by his father lost: and this, I take it,
        Is the main motive of our preparations,
        The source of this our watch and the chief head
        Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

BERNARDO        I think it be no other but e'en so:
        Well may it sort that this portentous figure
        Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
        That was and is the question of these wars.

HORATIO A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
        In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
        A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
        The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
        Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
        As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
        Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
        Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
        Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
        And even the like precurse of fierce events,
        As harbingers preceding still the fates
        And prologue to the omen coming on,
        Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
        Unto our climatures and countrymen.--
        But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!

        [Re-enter Ghost]

        I'll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion!
        If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
        Speak to me:
        If there be any good thing to be done,
        That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
        Speak to me:

        [Cock crows]

        If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
        Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!
        Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
        Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
        For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
        Speak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it, Marcellus.

MARCELLUS       Shall I strike at it with my partisan?

HORATIO Do, if it will not stand.

BERNARDO        'Tis here!

HORATIO 'Tis here!

MARCELLUS       'Tis gone!

        [Exit Ghost]

        We do it wrong, being so majestical,
        To offer it the show of violence;
        For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
        And our vain blows malicious mockery.

BERNARDO        It was about to speak, when the cock crew.

HORATIO And then it started like a guilty thing
        Upon a fearful summons. I have heard,
        The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
        Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
        Awake the god of day; and, at his warning,
        Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
        The extravagant and erring spirit hies
        To his confine: and of the truth herein
        This present object made probation.

MARCELLUS       It faded on the crowing of the cock.
        Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
        Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
        The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
        And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
        The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
        No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
        So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

HORATIO So have I heard and do in part believe it.
        But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
        Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill:
        Break we our watch up; and by my advice,
        Let us impart what we have seen to-night
        Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
        This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
        Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
        As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

MARCELLUS       Let's do't, I pray; and I this morning know
        Where we shall find him most conveniently.

        [Exeunt]




        HAMLET


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       |
        |  In that and all things will we show our duty.
VOLTIMAND       |


KING CLAUDIUS   We doubt it nothing: heartily farewell.

        [Exeunt VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS]

        And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?
        You told us of some suit; what is't, Laertes?
        You cannot speak of reason to the Dane,
        And loose your voice: what wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
        That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
        The head is not more native to the heart,
        The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
        Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
        What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

LAERTES My dread lord,
        Your leave and favour to return to France;
        From whence though willingly I came to Denmark,
        To show my duty in your coronation,
        Yet now, I must confess, that duty done,
        My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France
        And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

KING CLAUDIUS   Have you your father's leave? What says Polonius?

LORD POLONIUS   He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
        By laboursome petition, and at last
        Upon his will I seal'd my hard consent:
        I do beseech you, give him leave to go.

KING CLAUDIUS   Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine,
        And thy best graces spend it at thy will!
        But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,--

HAMLET  [Aside]  A little more than kin, and less than kind.

KING CLAUDIUS   How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET  Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
        And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
        Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
        Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
        Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,
        Passing through nature to eternity.

HAMLET  Ay, madam, it is common.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  If it be,
        Why seems it so particular with thee?

HAMLET  Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
        'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
        Nor customary suits of solemn black,
        Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
        No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
        Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
        Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
        That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
        For they are actions that a man might play:
        But I have that within which passeth show;
        These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

KING CLAUDIUS   'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
        To give these mourning duties to your father:
        But, you must know, your father lost a father;
        That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
        In filial obligation for some term
        To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
        In obstinate condolement is a course
        Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
        It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
        A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
        An understanding simple and unschool'd:
        For what we know must be and is as common
        As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
        Why should we in our peevish opposition
        Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
        A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
        To reason most absurd: whose common theme
        Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
        From the first corse till he that died to-day,
        'This must be so.' We pray you, throw to earth
        This unprevailing woe, and think of us
        As of a father: for let the world take note,
        You are the most immediate to our throne;
        And with no less nobility of love
        Than that which dearest father bears his son,
        Do I impart toward you. For your intent
        In going back to school in Wittenberg,
        It is most retrograde to our desire:
        And we beseech you, bend you to remain
        Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
        Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet:
        I pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.

HAMLET  I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

KING CLAUDIUS   Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply:
        Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come;
        This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
        Sits smiling to my heart: in grace whereof,
        No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
        But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
        And the king's rouse the heavens all bruit again,
        Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.

        [Exeunt all but HAMLET]

HAMLET  O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
        Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
        Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
        His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
        How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
        Seem to me all the uses of this world!
        Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
        That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
        Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
        But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
        So excellent a king; that was, to this,
        Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
        That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
        Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
        Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
        As if increase of appetite had grown
        By what it fed on: and yet, within a month--
        Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!--
        A little month, or ere those shoes were old
        With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
        Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she--
        O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
        Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
        My father's brother, but no more like my father
        Than I to Hercules: within a month:
        Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
        Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
        She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
        With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
        It is not nor it cannot come to good:
        But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.

        [Enter HORATIO, MARCELLUS, and BERNARDO]

HORATIO Hail to your lordship!

HAMLET  I am glad to see you well:
        Horatio,--or I do forget myself.

HORATIO The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.

HAMLET  Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you:
        And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? Marcellus?

MARCELLUS       My good lord--

HAMLET  I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir.
        But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

HORATIO A truant disposition, good my lord.

HAMLET  I would not hear your enemy say so,
        Nor shall you do mine ear that violence,
        To make it truster of your own report
        Against yourself: I know you are no truant.
        But what is your affair in Elsinore?
        We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.

HORATIO My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.

HAMLET  I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student;
        I think it was to see my mother's wedding.

HORATIO Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon.

HAMLET  Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
        Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
        Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
        Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
        My father!--methinks I see my father.

HORATIO Where, my lord?

HAMLET                    In my mind's eye, Horatio.

HORATIO I saw him once; he was a goodly king.

HAMLET  He was a man, take him for all in all,
        I shall not look upon his like again.

HORATIO My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

HAMLET  Saw? who?

HORATIO My lord, the king your father.

HAMLET  The king my father!

HORATIO Season your admiration for awhile
        With an attent ear, till I may deliver,
        Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
        This marvel to you.

HAMLET  For God's love, let me hear.

HORATIO Two nights together had these gentlemen,
        Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,
        In the dead vast and middle of the night,
        Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father,
        Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,
        Appears before them, and with solemn march
        Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd
        By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes,
        Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distilled
        Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
        Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me
        In dreadful secrecy impart they did;
        And I with them the third night kept the watch;
        Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,
        Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
        The apparition comes: I knew your father;
        These hands are not more like.

HAMLET  But where was this?

MARCELLUS       My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd.

HAMLET  Did you not speak to it?

HORATIO My lord, I did;
        But answer made it none: yet once methought
        It lifted up its head and did address
        Itself to motion, like as it would speak;
        But even then the morning cock crew loud,
        And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
        And vanish'd from our sight.

HAMLET  'Tis very strange.

HORATIO As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true;
        And we did think it writ down in our duty
        To let you know of it.

HAMLET  Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
        Hold you the watch to-night?


MARCELLUS       |
        |       We do, my lord.
BERNARDO        |


HAMLET  Arm'd, say you?


MARCELLUS       |
        |  Arm'd, my lord.
BERNARDO        |


HAMLET  From top to toe?


MARCELLUS       |
        |             My lord, from head to foot.
BERNARDO        |


HAMLET  Then saw you not his face?

HORATIO O, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver up.

HAMLET  What, look'd he frowningly?

HORATIO A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

HAMLET  Pale or red?

HORATIO Nay, very pale.

HAMLET                    And fix'd his eyes upon you?

HORATIO Most constantly.

HAMLET                    I would I had been there.

HORATIO It would have much amazed you.

HAMLET  Very like, very like. Stay'd it long?

HORATIO While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.


MARCELLUS       |
        | Longer, longer.
BERNARDO        |


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]




        HAMLET


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.

OPHELIA        No more but so?

LAERTES Think it no more;
        For nature, crescent, does not grow alone
        In thews and bulk, but, as this temple waxes,
        The inward service of the mind and soul
        Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
        And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
        The virtue of his will: but you must fear,
        His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own;
        For he himself is subject to his birth:
        He may not, as unvalued persons do,
        Carve for himself; for on his choice depends
        The safety and health of this whole state;
        And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
        Unto the voice and yielding of that body
        Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,
        It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
        As he in his particular act and place
        May give his saying deed; which is no further
        Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
        Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain,
        If with too credent ear you list his songs,
        Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
        To his unmaster'd importunity.
        Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
        And keep you in the rear of your affection,
        Out of the shot and danger of desire.
        The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
        If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
        Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes:
        The canker galls the infants of the spring,
        Too oft before their buttons be disclosed,
        And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
        Contagious blastments are most imminent.
        Be wary then; best safety lies in fear:
        Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.

OPHELIA I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,
        As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
        Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
        Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
        Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
        Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
        And recks not his own rede.

LAERTES O, fear me not.
        I stay too long: but here my father comes.

        [Enter POLONIUS]

        A double blessing is a double grace,
        Occasion smiles upon a second leave.

LORD POLONIUS   Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
        The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
        And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee!
        And these few precepts in thy memory
        See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
        Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
        Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
        Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
        Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
        But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
        Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
        Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
        Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
        Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
        Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
        Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
        But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
        For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
        And they in France of the best rank and station
        Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
        Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
        For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
        And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
        This above all: to thine ownself be true,
        And it must follow, as the night the day,
        Thou canst not then be false to any man.
        Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

LAERTES Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS   The time invites you; go; your servants tend.

LAERTES Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well
        What I have said to you.

OPHELIA 'Tis in my memory lock'd,
        And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

LAERTES Farewell.

        [Exit]

LORD POLONIUS   What is't, Ophelia, be hath said to you?

OPHELIA So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.

LORD POLONIUS   Marry, well bethought:
        'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late
        Given private time to you; and you yourself
        Have of your audience been most free and bounteous:
        If it be so, as so 'tis put on me,
        And that in way of caution, I must tell you,
        You do not understand yourself so clearly
        As it behoves my daughter and your honour.
        What is between you? give me up the truth.

OPHELIA He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
        Of his affection to me.

LORD POLONIUS   Affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl,
        Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
        Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?

OPHELIA I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

LORD POLONIUS   Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby;
        That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,
        Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly;
        Or--not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
        Running it thus--you'll tender me a fool.

OPHELIA My lord, he hath importuned me with love
        In honourable fashion.

LORD POLONIUS   Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.

OPHELIA And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
        With almost all the holy vows of heaven.

LORD POLONIUS   Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
        When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
        Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter,
        Giving more light than heat, extinct in both,
        Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
        You must not take for fire. From this time
        Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence;
        Set your entreatments at a higher rate
        Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
        Believe so much in him, that he is young
        And with a larger tether may he walk
        Than may be given you: in few, Ophelia,
        Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
        Not of that dye which their investments show,
        But mere implorators of unholy suits,
        Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
        The better to beguile. This is for all:
        I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,
        Have you so slander any moment leisure,
        As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
        Look to't, I charge you: come your ways.

OPHELIA I shall obey, my lord.

        [Exeunt]




        HAMLET


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.

HAMLET  What hour now?

HORATIO                   I think it lacks of twelve.

HAMLET  No, it is struck.

HORATIO Indeed? I heard it not: then it draws near the season
        Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

        [A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off, within]

        What does this mean, my lord?

HAMLET  The king doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
        Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;
        And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
        The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
        The triumph of his pledge.

HORATIO Is it a custom?

HAMLET  Ay, marry, is't:
        But to my mind, though I am native here
        And to the manner born, it is a custom
        More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
        This heavy-headed revel east and west
        Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations:
        They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
        Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
        From our achievements, though perform'd at height,
        The pith and marrow of our attribute.
        So, oft it chances in particular men,
        That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
        As, in their birth--wherein they are not guilty,
        Since nature cannot choose his origin--
        By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,
        Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
        Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens
        The form of plausive manners, that these men,
        Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
        Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,--
        Their virtues else--be they as pure as grace,
        As infinite as man may undergo--
        Shall in the general censure take corruption
        From that particular fault: the dram of eale
        Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
        To his own scandal.

HORATIO Look, my lord, it comes!

        [Enter Ghost]

HAMLET  Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
        Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
        Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
        Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
        Thou comest in such a questionable shape
        That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,
        King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
        Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
        Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
        Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
        Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
        Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
        To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
        That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
        Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
        Making night hideous; and we fools of nature
        So horridly to shake our disposition
        With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
        Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?

        [Ghost beckons HAMLET]

HORATIO It beckons you to go away with it,
        As if it some impartment did desire
        To you alone.

MARCELLUS                         Look, with what courteous action
        It waves you to a more removed ground:
        But do not go with it.

HORATIO No, by no means.

HAMLET  It will not speak; then I will follow it.

HORATIO Do not, my lord.

HAMLET                    Why, what should be the fear?
        I do not set my life in a pin's fee;
        And for my soul, what can it do to that,
        Being a thing immortal as itself?
        It waves me forth again: I'll follow it.

HORATIO What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
        Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
        That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
        And there assume some other horrible form,
        Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
        And draw you into madness? think of it:
        The very place puts toys of desperation,
        Without more motive, into every brain
        That looks so many fathoms to the sea
        And hears it roar beneath.

HAMLET  It waves me still.
        Go on; I'll follow thee.

MARCELLUS       You shall not go, my lord.

HAMLET  Hold off your hands.

HORATIO Be ruled; you shall not go.

HAMLET  My fate cries out,
        And makes each petty artery in this body
        As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.
        Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen.
        By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me!
        I say, away! Go on; I'll follow thee.

        [Exeunt Ghost and HAMLET]

HORATIO He waxes desperate with imagination.

MARCELLUS       Let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey him.

HORATIO Have after. To what issue will this come?

MARCELLUS       Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

HORATIO Heaven will direct it.

MARCELLUS       Nay, let's follow him.

        [Exeunt]




        HAMLET


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   Mark me.

HAMLET         I will.

Ghost                     My hour is almost come,
        When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
        Must render up myself.

HAMLET  Alas, poor ghost!

Ghost   Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
        To what I shall unfold.

HAMLET  Speak; I am bound to hear.

Ghost    So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

HAMLET  What?

Ghost   I am thy father's spirit,
        Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
        And for the day confined to fast in fires,
        Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
        Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
        To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
        I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
        Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
        Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
        Thy knotted and combined locks to part
        And each particular hair to stand on end,
        Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
        But this eternal blazon must not be
        To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
        If thou didst ever thy dear father love--

HAMLET  O God!

Ghost   Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET  Murder!

Ghost   Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
        But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

HAMLET  Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift
        As meditation or the thoughts of love,
        May sweep to my revenge.

Ghost   I find thee apt;
        And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
        That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
        Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear:
        'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
        A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
        Is by a forged process of my death
        Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth,
        The serpent that did sting thy father's life
        Now wears his crown.

HAMLET  O my prophetic soul! My uncle!

Ghost   Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
        With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,--
        O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
        So to seduce!--won to his shameful lust
        The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen:
        O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!
        From me, whose love was of that dignity
        That it went hand in hand even with the vow
        I made to her in marriage, and to decline
        Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
        To those of mine!
        But virtue, as it never will be moved,
        Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
        So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
        Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
        And prey on garbage.
        But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
        Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
        My custom always of the afternoon,
        Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
        With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
        And in the porches of my ears did pour
        The leperous distilment; whose effect
        Holds such an enmity with blood of man
        That swift as quicksilver it courses through
        The natural gates and alleys of the body,
        And with a sudden vigour doth posset
        And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
        The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine;
        And a most instant tetter bark'd about,
        Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
        All my smooth body.
        Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand
        Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd:
        Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
        Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,
        No reckoning made, but sent to my account
        With all my imperfections on my head:
        O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
        If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
        Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
        A couch for luxury and damned incest.
        But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,
        Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
        Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven
        And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
        To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
        The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
        And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire:
        Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.

        [Exit]

HAMLET  O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?
        And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart;
        And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
        But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!
        Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
        In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
        Yea, from the table of my memory
        I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
        All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
        That youth and observation copied there;
        And thy commandment all alone shall live
        Within the book and volume of my brain,
        Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven!
        O most pernicious woman!
        O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
        My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
        That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
        At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:

        [Writing]

        So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
        It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me.'
        I have sworn 't.


MARCELLUS       |
        | [Within]  My lord, my lord,--
HORATIO |


MARCELLUS       [Within]        Lord Hamlet,--

HORATIO [Within]        Heaven secure him!

HAMLET  So be it!

HORATIO [Within]  Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!

HAMLET  Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come, bird, come.

        [Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS]

MARCELLUS       How is't, my noble lord?

HORATIO What news, my lord?

HAMLET  O, wonderful!

HORATIO                   Good my lord, tell it.

HAMLET  No; you'll reveal it.

HORATIO Not I, my lord, by heaven.

MARCELLUS       Nor I, my lord.

HAMLET  How say you, then; would heart of man once think it?
        But you'll be secret?


HORATIO |
        |                   Ay, by heaven, my lord.
MARCELLUS       |


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 |
        | My lord, we will not.
MARCELLUS       |


HAMLET  Nay, but swear't.

HORATIO In faith,
        My lord, not I.

MARCELLUS                         Nor I, my lord, in faith.

HAMLET  Upon my sword.

MARCELLUS                         We have sworn, my lord, already.

HAMLET  Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.

Ghost   [Beneath]  Swear.

HAMLET  Ah, ha, boy! say'st thou so? art thou there,
        truepenny?
        Come on--you hear this fellow in the cellarage--
        Consent to swear.

HORATIO                   Propose the oath, my lord.

HAMLET  Never to speak of this that you have seen,
        Swear by my sword.

Ghost   [Beneath]  Swear.

HAMLET  Hic et ubique? then we'll shift our ground.
        Come hither, gentlemen,
        And lay your hands again upon my sword:
        Never to speak of this that you have heard,
        Swear by my sword.

Ghost   [Beneath]  Swear.

HAMLET  Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast?
        A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends.

HORATIO O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

HAMLET  And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
        There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
        Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come;
        Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
        How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,
        As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
        To put an antic disposition on,
        That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
        With arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake,
        Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
        As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,'
        Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,'
        Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
        That you know aught of me: this not to do,
        So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.

Ghost   [Beneath]  Swear.

HAMLET  Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!

        [They swear]

                        So, gentlemen,
        With all my love I do commend me to you:
        And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
        May do, to express his love and friending to you,
        God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;
        And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
        The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
        That ever I was born to set it right!
        Nay, come, let's go together.

        [Exeunt]




        HAMLET


ACT II



SCENE I A room in POLONIUS' house.


        [Enter POLONIUS and REYNALDO]

LORD POLONIUS   Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.

REYNALDO        I will, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS   You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo,
        Before you visit him, to make inquire
        Of his behavior.

REYNALDO                          My lord, I did intend it.

LORD POLONIUS   Marry, well said; very well said. Look you, sir,
        Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris;
        And how, and who, what means, and where they keep,
        What company, at what expense; and finding
        By this encompassment and drift of question
        That they do know my son, come you more nearer
        Than your particular demands will touch it:
        Take you, as 'twere, some distant knowledge of him;
        As thus, 'I know his father and his friends,
        And in part him: ' do you mark this, Reynaldo?

REYNALDO        Ay, very well, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS   'And in part him; but' you may say 'not well:
        But, if't be he I mean, he's very wild;
        Addicted so and so:' and there put on him
        What forgeries you please; marry, none so rank
        As may dishonour him; take heed of that;
        But, sir, such wanton, wild and usual slips
        As are companions noted and most known
        To youth and liberty.

REYNALDO        As gaming, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS   Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling,
        Drabbing: you may go so far.

REYNALDO        My lord, that would dishonour him.

LORD POLONIUS   'Faith, no; as you may season it in the charge
        You must not put another scandal on him,
        That he is open to incontinency;
        That's not my meaning: but breathe his faults so quaintly
        That they may seem the taints of liberty,
        The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,
        A savageness in unreclaimed blood,
        Of general assault.

REYNALDO        But, my good lord,--

LORD POLONIUS   Wherefore should you do this?

REYNALDO        Ay, my lord,
        I would know that.

LORD POLONIUS                     Marry, sir, here's my drift;
        And I believe, it is a fetch of wit:
        You laying these slight sullies on my son,
        As 'twere a thing a little soil'd i' the working, Mark you,
        Your party in converse, him you would sound,
        Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes
        The youth you breathe of guilty, be assured
        He closes with you in this consequence;
        'Good sir,' or so, or 'friend,' or 'gentleman,'
        According to the phrase or the addition
        Of man and country.

REYNALDO        Very good, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS   And then, sir, does he this--he does--what was I
        about to say? By the mass, I was about to say
        something: where did I leave?

REYNALDO        At 'closes in the consequence,' at 'friend or so,'
        and 'gentleman.'

LORD POLONIUS   At 'closes in the consequence,' ay, marry;
        He closes thus: 'I know the gentleman;
        I saw him yesterday, or t' other day,
        Or then, or then; with such, or such; and, as you say,
        There was a' gaming; there o'ertook in's rouse;
        There falling out at tennis:' or perchance,
        'I saw him enter such a house of sale,'
        Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth.
        See you now;
        Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
        And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
        With windlasses and with assays of bias,
        By indirections find directions out:
        So by my former lecture and advice,
        Shall you my son. You have me, have you not?

REYNALDO        My lord, I have.

LORD POLONIUS                     God be wi' you; fare you well.

REYNALDO        Good my lord!

LORD POLONIUS   Observe his inclination in yourself.

REYNALDO        I shall, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS   And let him ply his music.

REYNALDO        Well, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS   Farewell!

        [Exit REYNALDO]

        [Enter OPHELIA]

        How now, Ophelia! what's the matter?

OPHELIA O, my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted!

LORD POLONIUS   With what, i' the name of God?

OPHELIA My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
        Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
        No hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd,
        Ungarter'd, and down-gyved to his ancle;
        Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
        And with a look so piteous in purport
        As if he had been loosed out of hell
        To speak of horrors,--he comes before me.

LORD POLONIUS   Mad for thy love?

OPHELIA                   My lord, I do not know;
        But truly, I do fear it.

LORD POLONIUS   What said he?

OPHELIA He took me by the wrist and held me hard;
        Then goes he to the length of all his arm;
        And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
        He falls to such perusal of my face
        As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so;
        At last, a little shaking of mine arm
        And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
        He raised a sigh so piteous and profound
        As it did seem to shatter all his bulk
        And end his being: that done, he lets me go:
        And, with his head over his shoulder turn'd,
        He seem'd to find his way without his eyes;
        For out o' doors he went without their helps,
        And, to the last, bended their light on me.

LORD POLONIUS   Come, go with me: I will go seek the king.
        This is the very ecstasy of love,
        Whose violent property fordoes itself
        And leads the will to desperate undertakings
        As oft as any passion under heaven
        That does afflict our natures. I am sorry.
        What, have you given him any hard words of late?

OPHELIA No, my good lord, but, as you did command,
        I did repel his fetters and denied
        His access to me.

LORD POLONIUS                     That hath made him mad.
        I am sorry that with better heed and judgment
        I had not quoted him: I fear'd he did but trifle,
        And meant to wreck thee; but, beshrew my jealousy!
        By heaven, it is as proper to our age
        To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
        As it is common for the younger sort
        To lack discretion. Come, go we to the king:
        This must be known; which, being kept close, might
        move
        More grief to hide than hate to utter love.

        [Exeunt]




        HAMLET


ACT II



SCENE II        A room in the castle.


        [Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, ROSENCRANTZ,
        GUILDENSTERN, and Attendants]

KING CLAUDIUS   Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!
        Moreover that we much did long to see you,
        The need we have to use you did provoke
        Our hasty sending. Something have you heard
        Of Hamlet's transformation; so call it,
        Sith nor the exterior nor the inward man
        Resembles that it was. What it should be,
        More than his father's death, that thus hath put him
        So much from the understanding of himself,
        I cannot dream of: I entreat you both,
        That, being of so young days brought up with him,
        And sith so neighbour'd to his youth and havior,
        That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court
        Some little time: so by your companies
        To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather,
        So much as from occasion you may glean,
        Whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus,
        That, open'd, lies within our remedy.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Good gentlemen, he hath much talk'd of you;
        And sure I am two men there are not living
        To whom he more adheres. If it will please you
        To show us so much gentry and good will
        As to expend your time with us awhile,
        For the supply and profit of our hope,
        Your visitation shall receive such thanks
        As fits a king's remembrance.

ROSENCRANTZ     Both your majesties
        Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,
        Put your dread pleasures more into command
        Than to entreaty.

GUILDENSTERN                      But we both obey,
        And here give up ourselves, in the full bent
        To lay our service freely at your feet,
        To be commanded.

KING CLAUDIUS   Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz:
        And I beseech you instantly to visit
        My too much changed son. Go, some of you,
        And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.

GUILDENSTERN    Heavens make our presence and our practises
        Pleasant and helpful to him!

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Ay, amen!

        [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and some
        Attendants]

        [Enter POLONIUS]

LORD POLONIUS   The ambassadors from Norway, my good lord,
        Are joyfully return'd.

KING CLAUDIUS   Thou still hast been the father of good news.

LORD POLONIUS   Have I, my lord? I assure my good liege,
        I hold my duty, as I hold my soul,
        Both to my God and to my gracious king:
        And I do think, or else this brain of mine
        Hunts not the trail of policy so sure
        As it hath used to do, that I have found
        The very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.

KING CLAUDIUS   O, speak of that; that do I long to hear.

LORD POLONIUS   Give first admittance to the ambassadors;
        My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.

KING CLAUDIUS   Thyself do grace to them, and bring them in.

        [Exit POLONIUS]

        He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found
        The head and source of all your son's distemper.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  I doubt it is no other but the main;
        His father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage.

KING CLAUDIUS   Well, we shall sift him.

        [Re-enter POLONIUS, with VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS]

                   Welcome, my good friends!
        Say, Voltimand, what from our brother Norway?

VOLTIMAND       Most fair return of greetings and desires.
        Upon our first, he sent out to suppress
        His nephew's levies; which to him appear'd
        To be a preparation 'gainst the Polack;
        But, better look'd into, he truly found
        It was against your highness: whereat grieved,
        That so his sickness, age and impotence
        Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests
        On Fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys;
        Receives rebuke from Norway, and in fine
        Makes vow before his uncle never more
        To give the assay of arms against your majesty.
        Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,
        Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee,
        And his commission to employ those soldiers,
        So levied as before, against the Polack:
        With an entreaty, herein further shown,

        [Giving a paper]

        That it might please you to give quiet pass
        Through your dominions for this enterprise,
        On such regards of safety and allowance
        As therein are set down.

KING CLAUDIUS   It likes us well;
        And at our more consider'd time well read,
        Answer, and think upon this business.
        Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour:
        Go to your rest; at night we'll feast together:
        Most welcome home!

        [Exeunt VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS]

LORD POLONIUS                     This business is well ended.
        My liege, and madam, to expostulate
        What majesty should be, what duty is,
        Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
        Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
        Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
        And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
        I will be brief: your noble son is mad:
        Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
        What is't but to be nothing else but mad?
        But let that go.

QUEEN GERTRUDE                    More matter, with less art.

LORD POLONIUS   Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
        That he is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity;
        And pity 'tis 'tis true: a foolish figure;
        But farewell it, for I will use no art.
        Mad let us grant him, then: and now remains
        That we find out the cause of this effect,
        Or rather say, the cause of this defect,
        For this effect defective comes by cause:
        Thus it remains, and the remainder thus. Perpend.
        I have a daughter--have while she is mine--
        Who, in her duty and obedience, mark,
        Hath given me this: now gather, and surmise.

        [Reads]

        'To the celestial and my soul's idol, the most
        beautified Ophelia,'--
        That's an ill phrase, a vile phrase; 'beautified' is
        a vile phrase: but you shall hear. Thus:

        [Reads]

        'In her excellent white bosom, these, &c.'

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Came this from Hamlet to her?

LORD POLONIUS   Good madam, stay awhile; I will be faithful.

        [Reads]

        'Doubt thou the stars are fire;
        Doubt that the sun doth move;
        Doubt truth to be a liar;
        But never doubt I love.
        'O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers;
        I have not art to reckon my groans: but that
        I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu.
        'Thine evermore most dear lady, whilst
        this machine is to him, HAMLET.'
        This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me,
        And more above, hath his solicitings,
        As they fell out by time, by means and place,
        All given to mine ear.

KING CLAUDIUS   But how hath she
        Received his love?

LORD POLONIUS                     What do you think of me?

KING CLAUDIUS   As of a man faithful and honourable.

LORD POLONIUS   I would fain prove so. But what might you think,
        When I had seen this hot love on the wing--
        As I perceived it, I must tell you that,
        Before my daughter told me--what might you,
        Or my dear majesty your queen here, think,
        If I had play'd the desk or table-book,
        Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb,
        Or look'd upon this love with idle sight;
        What might you think? No, I went round to work,
        And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:
        'Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star;
        This must not be:' and then I precepts gave her,
        That she should lock herself from his resort,
        Admit no messengers, receive no tokens.
        Which done, she took the fruits of my advice;
        And he, repulsed--a short tale to make--
        Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,
        Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
        Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,
        Into the madness wherein now he raves,
        And all we mourn for.

KING CLAUDIUS   Do you think 'tis this?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  It may be, very likely.

LORD POLONIUS   Hath there been such a time--I'd fain know that--
        That I have positively said 'Tis so,'
        When it proved otherwise?

KING CLAUDIUS   Not that I know.

LORD POLONIUS   [Pointing to his head and shoulder]

        Take this from this, if this be otherwise:
        If circumstances lead me, I will find
        Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
        Within the centre.

KING CLAUDIUS                     How may we try it further?

LORD POLONIUS   You know, sometimes he walks four hours together
        Here in the lobby.

QUEEN GERTRUDE                    So he does indeed.

LORD POLONIUS   At such a time I'll loose my daughter to him:
        Be you and I behind an arras then;
        Mark the encounter: if he love her not
        And be not from his reason fall'n thereon,
        Let me be no assistant for a state,
        But keep a farm and carters.

KING CLAUDIUS   We will try it.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  But, look, where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.

LORD POLONIUS   Away, I do beseech you, both away:
        I'll board him presently.

        [Exeunt KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, and
        Attendants]

        [Enter HAMLET, reading]

                    O, give me leave:
        How does my good Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET  Well, God-a-mercy.

LORD POLONIUS   Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET  Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.

LORD POLONIUS   Not I, my lord.

HAMLET  Then I would you were so honest a man.

LORD POLONIUS   Honest, my lord!

HAMLET  Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be
        one man picked out of ten thousand.

LORD POLONIUS   That's very true, my lord.

HAMLET  For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a
        god kissing carrion,--Have you a daughter?

LORD POLONIUS   I have, my lord.

HAMLET  Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a
        blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive.
        Friend, look to 't.

LORD POLONIUS   [Aside]  How say you by that? Still harping on my
        daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I
        was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and
        truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for
        love; very near this. I'll speak to him again.
        What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET  Words, words, words.

LORD POLONIUS   What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET  Between who?

LORD POLONIUS   I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

HAMLET  Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here
        that old men have grey beards, that their faces are
        wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and
        plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of
        wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir,
        though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet
        I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for
        yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab
        you could go backward.

LORD POLONIUS   [Aside]  Though this be madness, yet there is method
        in 't. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET  Into my grave.

LORD POLONIUS   Indeed, that is out o' the air.

        [Aside]

        How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness
        that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity
        could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will
        leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of
        meeting between him and my daughter.--My honourable
        lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

HAMLET  You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will
        more willingly part withal: except my life, except
        my life, except my life.

LORD POLONIUS   Fare you well, my lord.

HAMLET  These tedious old fools!

        [Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN]

LORD POLONIUS   You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.

ROSENCRANTZ     [To POLONIUS]  God save you, sir!

        [Exit POLONIUS]

GUILDENSTERN    My honoured lord!

ROSENCRANTZ     My most dear lord!

HAMLET  My excellent good friends! How dost thou,
        Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?

ROSENCRANTZ     As the indifferent children of the earth.

GUILDENSTERN    Happy, in that we are not over-happy;
        On fortune's cap we are not the very button.

HAMLET  Nor the soles of her shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ     Neither, my lord.

HAMLET  Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of
        her favours?

GUILDENSTERN    'Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET  In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she
        is a strumpet. What's the news?

ROSENCRANTZ     None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.

HAMLET  Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true.
        Let me question more in particular: what have you,
        my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune,
        that she sends you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN    Prison, my lord!

HAMLET  Denmark's a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ     Then is the world one.

HAMLET  A goodly one; in which there are many confines,
        wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.

ROSENCRANTZ     We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET  Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
        either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me
        it is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ     Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too
        narrow for your mind.

HAMLET  O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
        myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
        have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN    Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very
        substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET  A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ     Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a
        quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.

HAMLET  Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and
        outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we
        to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.


ROSENCRANTZ     |
        | We'll wait upon you.
GUILDENSTERN    |


HAMLET  No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest
        of my servants, for, to speak to you like an honest
        man, I am most dreadfully attended. But, in the
        beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?

ROSENCRANTZ     To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.

HAMLET  Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I
        thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are
        too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it
        your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come,
        deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak.

GUILDENSTERN    What should we say, my lord?

HAMLET  Why, any thing, but to the purpose. You were sent
        for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks
        which your modesties have not craft enough to colour:
        I know the good king and queen have sent for you.

ROSENCRANTZ     To what end, my lord?

HAMLET  That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by
        the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of
        our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved
        love, and by what more dear a better proposer could
        charge you withal, be even and direct with me,
        whether you were sent for, or no?

ROSENCRANTZ     [Aside to GUILDENSTERN]  What say you?

HAMLET  [Aside]  Nay, then, I have an eye of you.--If you
        love me, hold not off.

GUILDENSTERN    My lord, we were sent for.

HAMLET  I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
        prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king
        and queen moult no feather. I have of late--but
        wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all
        custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
        with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
        earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
        excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
        o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
        with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
        me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
        What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
        how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
        express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
        in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
        world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
        what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
        me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
        you seem to say so.

ROSENCRANTZ     My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.

HAMLET  Why did you laugh then, when I said 'man delights not me'?

ROSENCRANTZ     To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what
        lenten entertainment the players shall receive from
        you: we coted them on the way; and hither are they
        coming, to offer you service.

HAMLET  He that plays the king shall be welcome; his majesty
        shall have tribute of me; the adventurous knight
        shall use his foil and target; the lover shall not
        sigh gratis; the humourous man shall end his part
        in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose
        lungs are tickled o' the sere; and the lady shall
        say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt
        for't. What players are they?

ROSENCRANTZ     Even those you were wont to take delight in, the
        tragedians of the city.

HAMLET  How chances it they travel? their residence, both
        in reputation and profit, was better both ways.

ROSENCRANTZ     I think their inhibition comes by the means of the
        late innovation.

HAMLET  Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was
        in the city? are they so followed?

ROSENCRANTZ     No, indeed, are they not.

HAMLET  How comes it? do they grow rusty?

ROSENCRANTZ     Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace: but
        there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases,
        that cry out on the top of question, and are most
        tyrannically clapped for't: these are now the
        fashion, and so berattle the common stages--so they
        call them--that many wearing rapiers are afraid of
        goose-quills and dare scarce come thither.

HAMLET  What, are they children? who maintains 'em? how are
        they escoted? Will they pursue the quality no
        longer than they can sing? will they not say
        afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common
        players--as it is most like, if their means are no
        better--their writers do them wrong, to make them
        exclaim against their own succession?

ROSENCRANTZ     'Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and
        the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to
        controversy: there was, for a while, no money bid
        for argument, unless the poet and the player went to
        cuffs in the question.

HAMLET  Is't possible?

GUILDENSTERN    O, there has been much throwing about of brains.

HAMLET  Do the boys carry it away?

ROSENCRANTZ     Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load too.

HAMLET  It is not very strange; for mine uncle is king of
        Denmark, and those that would make mows at him while
        my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, an
        hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in little.
        'Sblood, there is something in this more than
        natural, if philosophy could find it out.

        [Flourish of trumpets within]

GUILDENSTERN    There are the players.

HAMLET  Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands,
        come then: the appurtenance of welcome is fashion
        and ceremony: let me comply with you in this garb,
        lest my extent to the players, which, I tell you,
        must show fairly outward, should more appear like
        entertainment than yours. You are welcome: but my
        uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.

GUILDENSTERN    In what, my dear lord?

HAMLET  I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is
        southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.

        [Enter POLONIUS]

LORD POLONIUS   Well be with you, gentlemen!

HAMLET  Hark you, Guildenstern; and you too: at each ear a
        hearer: that great baby you see there is not yet
        out of his swaddling-clouts.

ROSENCRANTZ     Happily he's the second time come to them; for they
        say an old man is twice a child.

HAMLET  I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players;
        mark it. You say right, sir: o' Monday morning;
        'twas so indeed.

LORD POLONIUS   My lord, I have news to tell you.

HAMLET  My lord, I have news to tell you.
        When Roscius was an actor in Rome,--

LORD POLONIUS   The actors are come hither, my lord.

HAMLET  Buz, buz!

LORD POLONIUS   Upon mine honour,--

HAMLET  Then came each actor on his ass,--

LORD POLONIUS   The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
        comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
        historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-
        comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or
        poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor
        Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the
        liberty, these are the only men.

HAMLET  O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!

LORD POLONIUS   What a treasure had he, my lord?

HAMLET  Why,
        'One fair daughter and no more,
        The which he loved passing well.'

LORD POLONIUS   [Aside]  Still on my daughter.

HAMLET  Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah?

LORD POLONIUS   If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter
        that I love passing well.

HAMLET  Nay, that follows not.

LORD POLONIUS   What follows, then, my lord?

HAMLET  Why,
        'As by lot, God wot,'
        and then, you know,
        'It came to pass, as most like it was,'--
        the first row of the pious chanson will show you
        more; for look, where my abridgement comes.

        [Enter four or five Players]

        You are welcome, masters; welcome, all. I am glad
        to see thee well. Welcome, good friends. O, my old
        friend! thy face is valenced since I saw thee last:
        comest thou to beard me in Denmark? What, my young
        lady and mistress! By'r lady, your ladyship is
        nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the
        altitude of a chopine. Pray God, your voice, like
        apiece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the
        ring. Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en
        to't like French falconers, fly at any thing we see:
        we'll have a speech straight: come, give us a taste
        of your quality; come, a passionate speech.

First Player    What speech, my lord?

HAMLET  I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was
        never acted; or, if it was, not above once; for the
        play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas
        caviare to the general: but it was--as I received
        it, and others, whose judgments in such matters
        cried in the top of mine--an excellent play, well
        digested in the scenes, set down with as much
        modesty as cunning. I remember, one said there
        were no sallets in the lines to make the matter
        savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might
        indict the author of affectation; but called it an
        honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very
        much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I
        chiefly loved: 'twas Aeneas' tale to Dido; and
        thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of
        Priam's slaughter: if it live in your memory, begin
        at this line: let me see, let me see--
        'The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,'--
        it is not so:--it begins with Pyrrhus:--
        'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
        Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
        When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
        Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
        With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
        Now is he total gules; horridly trick'd
        With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
        Baked and impasted with the parching streets,
        That lend a tyrannous and damned light
        To their lord's murder: roasted in wrath and fire,
        And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,
        With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
        Old grandsire Priam seeks.'
        So, proceed you.

LORD POLONIUS   'Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and
        good discretion.

First Player    'Anon he finds him
        Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
        Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
        Repugnant to command: unequal match'd,
        Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
        But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
        The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
        Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
        Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
        Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo! his sword,
        Which was declining on the milky head
        Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick:
        So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
        And like a neutral to his will and matter,
        Did nothing.
        But, as we often see, against some storm,
        A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
        The bold winds speechless and the orb below
        As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
        Doth rend the region, so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
        Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work;
        And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
        On Mars's armour forged for proof eterne
        With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
        Now falls on Priam.
        Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
        In general synod 'take away her power;
        Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
        And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
        As low as to the fiends!'

LORD POLONIUS   This is too long.

HAMLET  It shall to the barber's, with your beard. Prithee,
        say on: he's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he
        sleeps: say on: come to Hecuba.

First Player    'But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen--'

HAMLET  'The mobled queen?'

LORD POLONIUS   That's good; 'mobled queen' is good.

First Player    'Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
        With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
        Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
        About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,
        A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
        Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
        'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have
        pronounced:
        But if the gods themselves did see her then
        When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
        In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
        The instant burst of clamour that she made,
        Unless things mortal move them not at all,
        Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
        And passion in the gods.'

LORD POLONIUS   Look, whether he has not turned his colour and has
        tears in's eyes. Pray you, no more.

HAMLET  'Tis well: I'll have thee speak out the rest soon.
        Good my lord, will you see the players well
        bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for
        they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the
        time: after your death you were better have a bad
        epitaph than their ill report while you live.

LORD POLONIUS   My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

HAMLET  God's bodykins, man, much better: use every man
        after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?
        Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less
        they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
        Take them in.

LORD POLONIUS   Come, sirs.

HAMLET  Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow.

        [Exit POLONIUS with all the Players but the First]

        Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the
        Murder of Gonzago?

First Player    Ay, my lord.

HAMLET  We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could, for a need,
        study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which
        I would set down and insert in't, could you not?

First Player    Ay, my lord.

HAMLET  Very well. Follow that lord; and look you mock him
        not.

        [Exit First Player]

        My good friends, I'll leave you till night: you are
        welcome to Elsinore.

ROSENCRANTZ     Good my lord!

HAMLET  Ay, so, God be wi' ye;

        [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN]

                  Now I am alone.
        O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
        Is it not monstrous that this player here,
        But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
        Could force his soul so to his own conceit
        That from her working all his visage wann'd,
        Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
        A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
        With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
        For Hecuba!
        What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
        That he should weep for her? What would he do,
        Had he the motive and the cue for passion
        That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
        And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
        Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
        Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
        The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
        A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
        Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
        And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
        Upon whose property and most dear life
        A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
        Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
        Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
        Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
        As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
        Ha!
        'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
        But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
        To make oppression bitter, or ere this
        I should have fatted all the region kites
        With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
        Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
        O, vengeance!
        Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
        That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
        Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
        Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
        And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
        A scullion!
        Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard
        That guilty creatures sitting at a play
        Have by the very cunning of the scene
        Been struck so to the soul that presently
        They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
        For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
        With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
        Play something like the murder of my father
        Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
        I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
        I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
        May be the devil: and the devil hath power
        To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
        Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
        As he is very potent with such spirits,
        Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
        More relative than this: the play 's the thing
        Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

        [Exit]




        HAMLET


ACT III



SCENE I A room in the castle.


        [Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS,
        OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN]

KING CLAUDIUS   And can you, by no drift of circumstance,
        Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
        Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
        With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

ROSENCRANTZ     He does confess he feels himself distracted;
        But from what cause he will by no means speak.

GUILDENSTERN    Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
        But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,
        When we would bring him on to some confession
        Of his true state.

QUEEN GERTRUDE                    Did he receive you well?

ROSENCRANTZ     Most like a gentleman.

GUILDENSTERN    But with much forcing of his disposition.

ROSENCRANTZ     Niggard of question; but, of our demands,
        Most free in his reply.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Did you assay him?
        To any pastime?

ROSENCRANTZ     Madam, it so fell out, that certain players
        We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him;
        And there did seem in him a kind of joy
        To hear of it: they are about the court,
        And, as I think, they have already order
        This night to play before him.

LORD POLONIUS   'Tis most true:
        And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties
        To hear and see the matter.

KING CLAUDIUS   With all my heart; and it doth much content me
        To hear him so inclined.
        Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
        And drive his purpose on to these delights.

ROSENCRANTZ     We shall, my lord.

        [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN]

KING CLAUDIUS                     Sweet Gertrude, leave us too;
        For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
        That he, as 'twere by accident, may here
        Affront Ophelia:
        Her father and myself, lawful espials,
        Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen,
        We may of their encounter frankly judge,
        And gather by him, as he is behaved,
        If 't be the affliction of his love or no
        That thus he suffers for.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  I shall obey you.
        And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
        That your good beauties be the happy cause
        Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
        Will bring him to his wonted way again,
        To both your honours.

OPHELIA Madam, I wish it may.

        [Exit QUEEN GERTRUDE]

LORD POLONIUS   Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious, so please you,
        We will bestow ourselves.

        [To OPHELIA]

                    Read on this book;
        That show of such an exercise may colour
        Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,--
        'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
        And pious action we do sugar o'er
        The devil himself.

KING CLAUDIUS   [Aside]          O, 'tis too true!
        How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
        The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,
        Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
        Than is my deed to my most painted word:
        O heavy burthen!

LORD POLONIUS   I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord.

        [Exeunt KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS]

        [Enter HAMLET]

HAMLET  To be, or not to be: that is the question:
        Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
        The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
        Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
        And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
        No more; and by a sleep to say we end
        The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
        That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
        Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
        To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
        For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
        When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
        Must give us pause: there's the respect
        That makes calamity of so long life;
        For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
        The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
        The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
        The insolence of office and the spurns
        That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
        When he himself might his quietus make
        With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
        To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
        But that the dread of something after death,
        The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
        No traveller returns, puzzles the will
        And makes us rather bear those ills we have
        Than fly to others that we know not of?
        Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
        And thus the native hue of resolution
        Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
        And enterprises of great pith and moment
        With this regard their currents turn awry,
        And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
        The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
        Be all my sins remember'd.

OPHELIA Good my lord,
        How does your honour for this many a day?

HAMLET  I humbly thank you; well, well, well.

OPHELIA My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
        That I have longed long to re-deliver;
        I pray you, now receive them.

HAMLET  No, not I;
        I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
        And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
        As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
        Take these again; for to the noble mind
        Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
        There, my lord.

HAMLET  Ha, ha! are you honest?

OPHELIA My lord?

HAMLET  Are you fair?

OPHELIA What means your lordship?

HAMLET  That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should
        admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPHELIA Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than
        with honesty?

HAMLET  Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
        transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
        force of honesty can translate beauty into his
        likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the
        time gives it proof. I did love you once.

OPHELIA Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET  You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
        so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of
        it: I loved you not.

OPHELIA I was the more deceived.

HAMLET  Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
        breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
        but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
        were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
        proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
        my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
        imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
        in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
        between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
        all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
        Where's your father?

OPHELIA At home, my lord.

HAMLET  Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
        fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.

OPHELIA O, help him, you sweet heavens!

HAMLET  If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for
        thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
        snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a
        nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs
        marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough
        what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go,
        and quickly too. Farewell.

OPHELIA O heavenly powers, restore him!

HAMLET  I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God
        has given you one face, and you make yourselves
        another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
        nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness
        your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
        made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages:
        those that are married already, all but one, shall
        live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a
        nunnery, go.

        [Exit]

OPHELIA O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
        The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;
        The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
        The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
        The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
        And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
        That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
        Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
        Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
        That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth
        Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,
        To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

        [Re-enter KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS]

KING CLAUDIUS   Love! his affections do not that way tend;
        Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,
        Was not like madness. There's something in his soul,
        O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;
        And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
        Will be some danger: which for to prevent,
        I have in quick determination
        Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England,
        For the demand of our neglected tribute
        Haply the seas and countries different
        With variable objects shall expel
        This something-settled matter in his heart,
        Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
        From fashion of himself. What think you on't?

LORD POLONIUS   It shall do well: but yet do I believe
        The origin and commencement of his grief
        Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia!
        You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said;
        We heard it all. My lord, do as you please;
        But, if you hold it fit, after the play
        Let his queen mother all alone entreat him
        To show his grief: let her be round with him;
        And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear
        Of all their conference. If she find him not,
        To England send him, or confine him where
        Your wisdom best shall think.

KING CLAUDIUS   It shall be so:
        Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.

        [Exeunt]




        HAMLET


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.

HAMLET  O, reform it altogether. And let those that play
        your clowns speak no more than is set down for them;
        for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to
        set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh
        too; though, in the mean time, some necessary
        question of the play be then to be considered:
        that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition
        in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.

        [Exeunt Players]

        [Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN]

        How now, my lord! I will the king hear this piece of work?

LORD POLONIUS   And the queen too, and that presently.

HAMLET  Bid the players make haste.

        [Exit POLONIUS]

        Will you two help to hasten them?


ROSENCRANTZ     |
        |  We will, my lord.
GUILDENSTERN    |


        [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN]

HAMLET  What ho! Horatio!

        [Enter HORATIO]

HORATIO Here, sweet lord, at your service.

HAMLET  Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
        As e'er my conversation coped withal.

HORATIO O, my dear lord,--

HAMLET                    Nay, do not think I flatter;
        For what advancement may I hope from thee
        That no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
        To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?
        No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
        And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
        Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
        Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
        And could of men distinguish, her election
        Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been
        As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
        A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
        Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those
        Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
        That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
        To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
        That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
        In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
        As I do thee.--Something too much of this.--
        There is a play to-night before the king;
        One scene of it comes near the circumstance
        Which I have told thee of my father's death:
        I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,
        Even with the very comment of thy soul
        Observe mine uncle: if his occulted guilt
        Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
        It is a damned ghost that we have seen,
        And my imaginations are as foul
        As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note;
        For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
        And after we will both our judgments join
        In censure of his seeming.

HORATIO Well, my lord:
        If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,
        And 'scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

HAMLET  They are coming to the play; I must be idle:
        Get you a place.

        [Danish march. A flourish. Enter KING CLAUDIUS,
        QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ,
        GUILDENSTERN, and others]

KING CLAUDIUS   How fares our cousin Hamlet?

HAMLET  Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish: I eat
        the air, promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.

KING CLAUDIUS   I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words
        are not mine.

HAMLET  No, nor mine now.

        [To POLONIUS]

        My lord, you played once i' the university, you say?

LORD POLONIUS   That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.

HAMLET  What did you enact?

LORD POLONIUS   I did enact Julius Caesar: I was killed i' the
        Capitol; Brutus killed me.

HAMLET  It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf
        there. Be the players ready?

ROSENCRANTZ     Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

HAMLET  No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.

LORD POLONIUS   [To KING CLAUDIUS]  O, ho! do you mark that?

HAMLET  Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

        [Lying down at OPHELIA's feet]

OPHELIA No, my lord.

HAMLET  I mean, my head upon your lap?

OPHELIA Ay, my lord.

HAMLET  Do you think I meant country matters?

OPHELIA I think nothing, my lord.

HAMLET  That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.

OPHELIA What is, my lord?

HAMLET  Nothing.

OPHELIA You are merry, my lord.

HAMLET  Who, I?

OPHELIA Ay, my lord.

HAMLET  O God, your only jig-maker. What should a man do
        but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my
        mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.

OPHELIA Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.

HAMLET  So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for
        I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two
        months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's
        hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half
        a year: but, by'r lady, he must build churches,
        then; or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with
        the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is 'For, O, for, O,
        the hobby-horse is forgot.'

        [Hautboys play. The dumb-show enters]

        [Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen
        embracing him, and he her. She kneels, and makes
        show of protestation unto him. He takes her up,
        and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down
        upon a bank of flowers: she, seeing him asleep,
        leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his
        crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's
        ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the King
        dead, and makes passionate action. The Poisoner,
        with some two or three Mutes, comes in again,
        seeming to lament with her. The dead body is
        carried away. The Poisoner wooes the Queen with
        gifts: she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but
        in the end accepts his love]

        [Exeunt]

OPHELIA What means this, my lord?

HAMLET  Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.

OPHELIA Belike this show imports the argument of the play.

        [Enter Prologue]

HAMLET  We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot
        keep counsel; they'll tell all.

OPHELIA Will he tell us what this show meant?

HAMLET  Ay, or any show that you'll show him: be not you
        ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means.

OPHELIA You are naught, you are naught: I'll mark the play.

Prologue             For us, and for our tragedy,
        Here stooping to your clemency,
        We beg your hearing patiently.

        [Exit]

HAMLET  Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

OPHELIA 'Tis brief, my lord.

HAMLET  As woman's love.

        [Enter two Players, King and Queen]

Player King        Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
        Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,
        And thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen
        About the world have times twelve thirties been,
        Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands
        Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

Player Queen       So many journeys may the sun and moon
        Make us again count o'er ere love be done!
        But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,
        So far from cheer and from your former state,
        That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
        Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must:
        For women's fear and love holds quantity;
        In neither aught, or in extremity.
        Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
        And as my love is sized, my fear is so:
        Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
        Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

Player King     'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
        My operant powers their functions leave to do:
        And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
        Honour'd, beloved; and haply one as kind
        For husband shalt thou--

Player Queen    O, confound the rest!
        Such love must needs be treason in my breast:
        In second husband let me be accurst!
        None wed the second but who kill'd the first.

HAMLET  [Aside]  Wormwood, wormwood.

Player Queen       The instances that second marriage move
        Are base respects of thrift, but none of love:
        A second time I kill my husband dead,
        When second husband kisses me in bed.

Player King        I do believe you think what now you speak;
        But what we do determine oft we break.
        Purpose is but the slave to memory,
        Of violent birth, but poor validity;
        Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree;
        But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.
        Most necessary 'tis that we forget
        To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt:
        What to ourselves in passion we propose,
        The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
        The violence of either grief or joy
        Their own enactures with themselves destroy:
        Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;
        Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
        This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange
        That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
        For 'tis a question left us yet to prove,
        Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
        The great man down, you mark his favourite flies;
        The poor advanced makes friends of enemies.
        And hitherto doth love on fortune tend;
        For who not needs shall never lack a friend,
        And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
        Directly seasons him his enemy.
        But, orderly to end where I begun,
        Our wills and fates do so contrary run
        That our devices still are overthrown;
        Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own:
        So think thou wilt no second husband wed;
        But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

Player Queen       Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light!
        Sport and repose lock from me day and night!
        To desperation turn my trust and hope!
        An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope!
        Each opposite that blanks the face of joy
        Meet what I would have well and it destroy!
        Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
        If, once a widow, ever I be wife!

HAMLET  If she should break it now!

Player King     'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile;
        My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
        The tedious day with sleep.

        [Sleeps]

Player Queen    Sleep rock thy brain,
        And never come mischance between us twain!

        [Exit]

HAMLET  Madam, how like you this play?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  The lady protests too much, methinks.

HAMLET  O, but she'll keep her word.

KING CLAUDIUS   Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in 't?

HAMLET  No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence
        i' the world.

KING CLAUDIUS   What do you call the play?

HAMLET  The Mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play
        is the image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is
        the duke's name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see
        anon; 'tis a knavish piece of work: but what o'
        that? your majesty and we that have free souls, it
        touches us not: let the galled jade wince, our
        withers are unwrung.

        [Enter LUCIANUS]

        This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.

OPHELIA You are as good as a chorus, my lord.

HAMLET  I could interpret between you and your love, if I
        could see the puppets dallying.

OPHELIA You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

HAMLET  It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.

OPHELIA Still better, and worse.

HAMLET  So you must take your husbands. Begin, murderer;
        pox, leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come:
        'the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.'

LUCIANUS           Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;
        Confederate season, else no creature seeing;
        Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
        With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
        Thy natural magic and dire property,
        On wholesome life usurp immediately.

        [Pours the poison into the sleeper's ears]

HAMLET  He poisons him i' the garden for's estate. His
        name's Gonzago: the story is extant, and writ in
        choice Italian: you shall see anon how the murderer
        gets the love of Gonzago's wife.

OPHELIA The king rises.

HAMLET  What, frighted with false fire!

QUEEN GERTRUDE  How fares my lord?

LORD POLONIUS   Give o'er the play.

KING CLAUDIUS   Give me some light: away!

All     Lights, lights, lights!

        [Exeunt all but HAMLET and HORATIO]

HAMLET       Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
        The hart ungalled play;
        For some must watch, while some must sleep:
        So runs the world away.
        Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers-- if
        the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me--with two
        Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a
        fellowship in a cry of players, sir?

HORATIO Half a share.

HAMLET  A whole one, I.
        For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
        This realm dismantled was
        Of Jove himself; and now reigns here
        A very, very--pajock.

HORATIO You might have rhymed.

HAMLET  O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a
        thousand pound. Didst perceive?

HORATIO Very well, my lord.

HAMLET  Upon the talk of the poisoning?

HORATIO I did very well note him.

HAMLET  Ah, ha! Come, some music! come, the recorders!
        For if the king like not the comedy,
        Why then, belike, he likes it not, perdy.
        Come, some music!

        [Re-enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN]

GUILDENSTERN    Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

HAMLET  Sir, a whole history.

GUILDENSTERN    The king, sir,--

HAMLET  Ay, sir, what of him?

GUILDENSTERN    Is in his retirement marvellous distempered.

HAMLET  With drink, sir?

GUILDENSTERN    No, my lord, rather with choler.

HAMLET  Your wisdom should show itself more richer to
        signify this to his doctor; for, for me to put him
        to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far
        more choler.

GUILDENSTERN    Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame and
        start not so wildly from my affair.

HAMLET  I am tame, sir: pronounce.

GUILDENSTERN    The queen, your mother, in most great affliction of
        spirit, hath sent me to you.

HAMLET  You are welcome.

GUILDENSTERN    Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right
        breed. If it shall please you to make me a
        wholesome answer, I will do your mother's
        commandment: if not, your pardon and my return
        shall be the end of my business.

HAMLET  Sir, I cannot.

GUILDENSTERN    What, my lord?

HAMLET  Make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseased: but,
        sir, such answer as I can make, you shall command;
        or, rather, as you say, my mother: therefore no
        more, but to the matter: my mother, you say,--

ROSENCRANTZ     Then thus she says; your behavior hath struck her
        into amazement and admiration.

HAMLET  O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother! But
        is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's
        admiration? Impart.

ROSENCRANTZ     She desires to speak with you in her closet, ere you
        go to bed.

HAMLET  We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have
        you any further trade with us?

ROSENCRANTZ     My lord, you once did love me.

HAMLET  So I do still, by these pickers and stealers.

ROSENCRANTZ     Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? you
        do, surely, bar the door upon your own liberty, if
        you deny your griefs to your friend.

HAMLET  Sir, I lack advancement.

ROSENCRANTZ     How can that be, when you have the voice of the king
        himself for your succession in Denmark?

HAMLET  Ay, but sir, 'While the grass grows,'--the proverb
        is something musty.

        [Re-enter Players with recorders]

        O, the recorders! let me see one. To withdraw with
        you:--why do you go about to recover the wind of me,
        as if you would drive me into a toil?

GUILDENSTERN    O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too
        unmannerly.

HAMLET  I do not well understand that. Will you play upon
        this pipe?

GUILDENSTERN    My lord, I cannot.

HAMLET  I pray you.

GUILDENSTERN    Believe me, I cannot.

HAMLET  I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN    I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET  'Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with
        your lingers and thumb, give it breath with your
        mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music.
        Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN    But these cannot I command to any utterance of
        harmony; I have not the skill.

HAMLET  Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
        me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
        my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
        mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
        the top of my compass: and there is much music,
        excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot
        you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am
        easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
        instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
        cannot play upon me.

        [Enter POLONIUS]

        God bless you, sir!

LORD POLONIUS   My lord, the queen would speak with you, and
        presently.

HAMLET  Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?

LORD POLONIUS   By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.

HAMLET  Methinks it is like a weasel.

LORD POLONIUS   It is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET  Or like a whale?

LORD POLONIUS   Very like a whale.

HAMLET  Then I will come to my mother by and by. They fool
        me to the top of my bent. I will come by and by.

LORD POLONIUS   I will say so.

HAMLET  By and by is easily said.

        [Exit POLONIUS]

        Leave me, friends.

        [Exeunt all but HAMLET]

        Tis now the very witching time of night,
        When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
        Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
        And do such bitter business as the day
        Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother.
        O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
        The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:
        Let me be cruel, not unnatural:
        I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
        My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites;
        How in my words soever she be shent,
        To give them seals never, my soul, consent!

        [Exit]



        HAMLET


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.


ROSENCRANTZ     |
        |       We will haste us.
GUILDENSTERN    |


        [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN]

        [Enter POLONIUS]

LORD POLONIUS   My lord, he's going to his mother's closet:
        Behind the arras I'll convey myself,
        To hear the process; and warrant she'll tax him home:
        And, as you said, and wisely was it said,
        'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
        Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear
        The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege:
        I'll call upon you ere you go to bed,
        And tell you what I know.

KING CLAUDIUS   Thanks, dear my lord.

        [Exit POLONIUS]

        O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
        It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,
        A brother's murder. Pray can I not,
        Though inclination be as sharp as will:
        My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
        And, like a man to double business bound,
        I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
        And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
        Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
        Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
        To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
        But to confront the visage of offence?
        And what's in prayer but this two-fold force,
        To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
        Or pardon'd being down? Then I'll look up;
        My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
        Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'?
        That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
        Of those effects for which I did the murder,
        My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
        May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
        In the corrupted currents of this world
        Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
        And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
        Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above;
        There is no shuffling, there the action lies
        In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
        Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
        To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
        Try what repentance can: what can it not?
        Yet what can it when one can not repent?
        O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
        O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
        Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
        Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
        Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
        All may be well.

        [Retires and kneels]

        [Enter HAMLET]

HAMLET  Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
        And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;
        And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:
        A villain kills my father; and for that,
        I, his sole son, do this same villain send
        To heaven.
        O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
        He took my father grossly, full of bread;
        With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
        And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
        But in our circumstance and course of thought,
        'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,
        To take him in the purging of his soul,
        When he is fit and season'd for his passage?
        No!
        Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
        When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
        Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
        At gaming, swearing, or about some act
        That has no relish of salvation in't;
        Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
        And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
        As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
        This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

        [Exit]

KING CLAUDIUS   [Rising]  My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
        Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

        [Exit]




        HAMLET


ACT III



SCENE IV        The Queen's closet.


        [Enter QUEEN MARGARET and POLONIUS]

LORD POLONIUS   He will come straight. Look you lay home to him:
        Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
        And that your grace hath screen'd and stood between
        Much heat and him. I'll sconce me even here.
        Pray you, be round with him.

HAMLET  [Within]  Mother, mother, mother!

QUEEN GERTRUDE  I'll warrant you,
        Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.

        [POLONIUS hides behind the arras]

        [Enter HAMLET]

HAMLET  Now, mother, what's the matter?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

HAMLET  Mother, you have my father much offended.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

HAMLET  Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Why, how now, Hamlet!

HAMLET  What's the matter now?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Have you forgot me?

HAMLET  No, by the rood, not so:
        You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife;
        And--would it were not so!--you are my mother.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.

HAMLET  Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
        You go not till I set you up a glass
        Where you may see the inmost part of you.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
        Help, help, ho!

LORD POLONIUS   [Behind]  What, ho! help, help, help!

HAMLET  [Drawing]  How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!

        [Makes a pass through the arras]

LORD POLONIUS   [Behind]  O, I am slain!

        [Falls and dies]

QUEEN GERTRUDE  O me, what hast thou done?

HAMLET  Nay, I know not:
        Is it the king?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

HAMLET  A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
        As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  As kill a king!

HAMLET                    Ay, lady, 'twas my word.

        [Lifts up the array and discovers POLONIUS]

        Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
        I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;
        Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger.
        Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down,
        And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,
        If it be made of penetrable stuff,
        If damned custom have not brass'd it so
        That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
        In noise so rude against me?

HAMLET  Such an act
        That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
        Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
        From the fair forehead of an innocent love
        And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
        As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed
        As from the body of contraction plucks
        The very soul, and sweet religion makes
        A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow:
        Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
        With tristful visage, as against the doom,
        Is thought-sick at the act.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Ay me, what act,
        That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

HAMLET  Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
        The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
        See, what a grace was seated on this brow;
        Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
        An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
        A station like the herald Mercury
        New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
        A combination and a form indeed,
        Where every god did seem to set his seal,
        To give the world assurance of a man:
        This was your husband. Look you now, what follows:
        Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear,
        Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
        Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
        And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
        You cannot call it love; for at your age
        The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble,
        And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment
        Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have,
        Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense
        Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err,
        Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd
        But it reserved some quantity of choice,
        To serve in such a difference. What devil was't
        That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?
        Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
        Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
        Or but a sickly part of one true sense
        Could not so mope.
        O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
        If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,
        To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
        And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame
        When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
        Since frost itself as actively doth burn
        And reason panders will.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  O Hamlet, speak no more:
        Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
        And there I see such black and grained spots
        As will not leave their tinct.

HAMLET  Nay, but to live
        In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
        Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
        Over the nasty sty,--

QUEEN GERTRUDE  O, speak to me no more;
        These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
        No more, sweet Hamlet!

HAMLET  A murderer and a villain;
        A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
        Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
        A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
        That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
        And put it in his pocket!

QUEEN GERTRUDE  No more!

HAMLET  A king of shreds and patches,--

        [Enter Ghost]

        Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
        You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Alas, he's mad!

HAMLET  Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
        That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
        The important acting of your dread command? O, say!

Ghost   Do not forget: this visitation
        Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
        But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
        O, step between her and her fighting soul:
        Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
        Speak to her, Hamlet.

HAMLET  How is it with you, lady?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Alas, how is't with you,
        That you do bend your eye on vacancy
        And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
        Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
        And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
        Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
        Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son,
        Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
        Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

HAMLET  On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares!
        His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones,
        Would make them capable. Do not look upon me;
        Lest with this piteous action you convert
        My stern effects: then what I have to do
        Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET  Do you see nothing there?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

HAMLET  Nor did you nothing hear?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET  Why, look you there! look, how it steals away!
        My father, in his habit as he lived!
        Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!

        [Exit Ghost]

QUEEN GERTRUDE  This the very coinage of your brain:
        This bodiless creation ecstasy
        Is very cunning in.

HAMLET  Ecstasy!
        My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
        And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
        That I have utter'd: bring me to the test,
        And I the matter will re-word; which madness
        Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
        Lay not that mattering unction to your soul,
        That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
        It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
        Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
        Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
        Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
        And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
        To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;
        For in the fatness of these pursy times
        Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
        Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

HAMLET  O, throw away the worser part of it,
        And live the purer with the other half.
        Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed;
        Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
        That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
        Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
        That to the use of actions fair and good
        He likewise gives a frock or livery,
        That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
        And that shall lend a kind of easiness
        To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
        For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
        And either [         ] the devil, or throw him out
        With wondrous potency. Once more, good night:
        And when you are desirous to be bless'd,
        I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,

        [Pointing to POLONIUS]

        I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,
        To punish me with this and this with me,
        That I must be their scourge and minister.
        I will bestow him, and will answer well
        The death I gave him. So, again, good night.
        I must be cruel, only to be kind:
        Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.
        One word more, good lady.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  What shall I do?

HAMLET  Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
        Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed;
        Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;
        And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
        Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,
        Make you to ravel all this matter out,
        That I essentially am not in madness,
        But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know;
        For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
        Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
        Such dear concernings hide? who would do so?
        No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
        Unpeg the basket on the house's top.
        Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape,
        To try conclusions, in the basket creep,
        And break your own neck down.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,
        And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
        What thou hast said to me.

HAMLET  I must to England; you know that?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Alack,
        I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on.

HAMLET  There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows,
        Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,
        They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way,
        And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
        For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
        Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard
        But I will delve one yard below their mines,
        And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet,
        When in one line two crafts directly meet.
        This man shall set me packing:
        I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.
        Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor
        Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
        Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
        Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
        Good night, mother.

        [Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in POLONIUS]




        HAMLET


ACT IV



SCENE I A room in the castle.


        [Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, ROSENCRANTZ,
        and GUILDENSTERN]

KING CLAUDIUS   There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves:
        You must translate: 'tis fit we understand them.
        Where is your son?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Bestow this place on us a little while.

        [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN]

        Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night!

KING CLAUDIUS   What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend
        Which is the mightier: in his lawless fit,
        Behind the arras hearing something stir,
        Whips out his rapier, cries, 'A rat, a rat!'
        And, in this brainish apprehension, kills
        The unseen good old man.

KING CLAUDIUS   O heavy deed!
        It had been so with us, had we been there:
        His liberty is full of threats to all;
        To you yourself, to us, to every one.
        Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd?
        It will be laid to us, whose providence
        Should have kept short, restrain'd and out of haunt,
        This mad young man: but so much was our love,
        We would not understand what was most fit;
        But, like the owner of a foul disease,
        To keep it from divulging, let it feed
        Even on the pith of Life. Where is he gone?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  To draw apart the body he hath kill'd:
        O'er whom his very madness, like some ore
        Among a mineral of metals base,
        Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done.

KING CLAUDIUS   O Gertrude, come away!
        The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch,
        But we will ship him hence: and this vile deed
        We must, with all our majesty and skill,
        Both countenance and excuse. Ho, Guildenstern!

        [Re-enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN]

        Friends both, go join you with some further aid:
        Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
        And from his mother's closet hath he dragg'd him:
        Go seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body
        Into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this.

        [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN]

        Come, Gertrude, we'll call up our wisest friends;
        And let them know, both what we mean to do,
        And what's untimely done [                ]
        Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter,
        As level as the cannon to his blank,
        Transports his poison'd shot, may miss our name,
        And hit the woundless air. O, come away!
        My soul is full of discord and dismay.

        [Exeunt]




        HAMLET


ACT IV



SCENE II        Another room in the castle.


        [Enter HAMLET]

HAMLET  Safely stowed.


ROSENCRANTZ:    |
        |   [Within]  Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!
GUILDENSTERN:   |


HAMLET  What noise? who calls on Hamlet?
        O, here they come.

        [Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN]

ROSENCRANTZ     What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?

HAMLET  Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.

ROSENCRANTZ     Tell us where 'tis, that we may take it thence
        And bear it to the chapel.

HAMLET  Do not believe it.

ROSENCRANTZ     Believe what?

HAMLET  That I can keep your counsel and not mine own.
        Besides, to be demanded of a sponge! what
        replication should be made by the son of a king?

ROSENCRANTZ     Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

HAMLET  Ay, sir, that soaks up the king's countenance, his
        rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the
        king best service in the end: he keeps them, like
        an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to
        be last swallowed: when he needs what you have
        gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you
        shall be dry again.

ROSENCRANTZ     I understand you not, my lord.

HAMLET  I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a
        foolish ear.

ROSENCRANTZ     My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go
        with us to the king.

HAMLET  The body is with the king, but the king is not with
        the body. The king is a thing--

GUILDENSTERN    A thing, my lord!

HAMLET  Of nothing: bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.

        [Exeunt]




        HAMLET


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.

ROSENCRANTZ     Ho, Guildenstern! bring in my lord.

        [Enter HAMLET and GUILDENSTERN]

KING CLAUDIUS   Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?

HAMLET  At supper.

KING CLAUDIUS   At supper! where?

HAMLET  Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain
        convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your
        worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all
        creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for
        maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but
        variable service, two dishes, but to one table:
        that's the end.

KING CLAUDIUS   Alas, alas!

HAMLET  A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a
        king, and 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.

HAMLET                    For England!

KING CLAUDIUS   Ay, Hamlet.

HAMLET  Good.

KING CLAUDIUS   So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.

HAMLET  I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for
        England! Farewell, dear mother.

KING CLAUDIUS   Thy loving father, Hamlet.

HAMLET  My mother: father and mother is man and wife; man
        and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England!

        [Exit]

KING CLAUDIUS   Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard;
        Delay it not; I'll have him hence to-night:
        Away! for every thing is seal'd and done
        That else leans on the affair: pray you, make haste.

        [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN]

        And, England, if my love thou hold'st at aught--
        As my great power thereof may give thee sense,
        Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red
        After the Danish sword, and thy free awe
        Pays homage to us--thou mayst not coldly set
        Our sovereign process; which imports at full,
        By letters congruing to that effect,
        The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England;
        For like the hectic in my blood he rages,
        And thou must cure me: till I know 'tis done,
        Howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun.

        [Exit]




        HAMLET


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?

HAMLET  I'll be with you straight go a little before.

        [Exeunt all except HAMLET]

        How all occasions do inform against me,
        And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
        If his chief good and market of his time
        Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
        Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
        Looking before and after, gave us not
        That capability and god-like reason
        To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
        Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
        Of thinking too precisely on the event,
        A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
        And ever three parts coward, I do not know
        Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
        Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
        To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
        Witness this army of such mass and charge
        Led by a delicate and tender prince,
        Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
        Makes mouths at the invisible event,
        Exposing what is mortal and unsure
        To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
        Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
        Is not to stir without great argument,
        But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
        When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
        That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
        Excitements of my reason and my blood,
        And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
        The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
        That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
        Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
        Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
        Which is not tomb enough and continent
        To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
        My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

        [Exit]




        HAMLET


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.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Let her come in.

        [Exit HORATIO]

        To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is,
        Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss:
        So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
        It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

        [Re-enter HORATIO, with OPHELIA]

OPHELIA Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  How now, Ophelia!

OPHELIA [Sings]

        How should I your true love know
        From another one?
        By his cockle hat and staff,
        And his sandal shoon.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

OPHELIA Say you? nay, pray you, mark.

        [Sings]

        He is dead and gone, lady,
        He is dead and gone;
        At his head a grass-green turf,
        At his heels a stone.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Nay, but, Ophelia,--

OPHELIA Pray you, mark.

        [Sings]

        White his shroud as the mountain snow,--

        [Enter KING CLAUDIUS]

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Alas, look here, my lord.

OPHELIA [Sings]

        Larded with sweet flowers
        Which bewept to the grave did go
        With true-love showers.

KING CLAUDIUS   How do you, pretty lady?

OPHELIA Well, God 'ild you! They say the owl was a baker's
        daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not
        what we may be. God be at your table!

KING CLAUDIUS   Conceit upon her father.

OPHELIA Pray you, let's have no words of this; but when they
        ask you what it means, say you this:

        [Sings]

        To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
        All in the morning betime,
        And I a maid at your window,
        To be your Valentine.
        Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
        And dupp'd the chamber-door;
        Let in the maid, that out a maid
        Never departed more.

KING CLAUDIUS   Pretty Ophelia!

OPHELIA Indeed, la, without an oath, I'll make an end on't:

        [Sings]

        By Gis and by Saint Charity,
        Alack, and fie for shame!
        Young men will do't, if they come to't;
        By cock, they are to blame.
        Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
        You promised me to wed.
        So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
        An thou hadst not come to my bed.

KING CLAUDIUS   How long hath she been thus?

OPHELIA I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I
        cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him
        i' the cold ground. My brother shall know of it:
        and so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my
        coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies;
        good night, good night.

        [Exit]

KING CLAUDIUS   Follow her close; give her good watch,
        I pray you.

        [Exit HORATIO]

        O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
        All from her father's death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
        When sorrows come, they come not single spies
        But in battalions. First, her father slain:
        Next, your son gone; and he most violent author
        Of his own just remove: the people muddied,
        Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers,
        For good Polonius' death; and we have done but greenly,
        In hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Ophelia
        Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
        Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts:
        Last, and as much containing as all these,
        Her brother is in secret come from France;
        Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
        And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
        With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
        Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
        Will nothing stick our person to arraign
        In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
        Like to a murdering-piece, in many places
        Gives me superfluous death.

        [A noise within]

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Alack, what noise is this?

KING CLAUDIUS   Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.

        [Enter another Gentleman]

        What is the matter?

Gentleman       Save yourself, my lord:
        The ocean, overpeering of his list,
        Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
        Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
        O'erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord;
        And, as the world were now but to begin,
        Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
        The ratifiers and props of every word,
        They cry 'Choose we: Laertes shall be king:'
        Caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds:
        'Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!'

QUEEN GERTRUDE  How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
        O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!

KING CLAUDIUS   The doors are broke.

        [Noise within]

        [Enter LAERTES, armed; Danes following]

LAERTES Where is this king? Sirs, stand you all without.

Danes   No, let's come in.

LAERTES                   I pray you, give me leave.

Danes   We will, we will.

        [They retire without the door]

LAERTES I thank you: keep the door. O thou vile king,
        Give me my father!

QUEEN GERTRUDE                    Calmly, good Laertes.

LAERTES That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,
        Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
        Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow
        Of my true mother.

KING CLAUDIUS                     What is the cause, Laertes,
        That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?
        Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person:
        There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
        That treason can but peep to what it would,
        Acts little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,
        Why thou art thus incensed. Let him go, Gertrude.
        Speak, man.

LAERTES Where is my father?

KING CLAUDIUS   Dead.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  But not by him.

KING CLAUDIUS   Let him demand his fill.

LAERTES How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
        To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
        Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
        I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
        That both the worlds I give to negligence,
        Let come what comes; only I'll be revenged
        Most thoroughly for my father.

KING CLAUDIUS   Who shall stay you?

LAERTES My will, not all the world:
        And for my means, I'll husband them so well,
        They shall go far with little.

KING CLAUDIUS   Good Laertes,
        If you desire to know the certainty
        Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge,
        That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
        Winner and loser?

LAERTES None but his enemies.

KING CLAUDIUS   Will you know them then?

LAERTES To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
        And like the kind life-rendering pelican,
        Repast them with my blood.

KING CLAUDIUS   Why, now you speak
        Like a good child and a true gentleman.
        That I am guiltless of your father's death,
        And am most sensible in grief for it,
        It shall as level to your judgment pierce
        As day does to your eye.

Danes   [Within]                Let her come in.

LAERTES How now! what noise is that?

        [Re-enter OPHELIA]

        O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
        Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
        By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
        Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
        Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
        O heavens! is't possible, a young maid's wits
        Should be as moral as an old man's life?
        Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine,
        It sends some precious instance of itself
        After the thing it loves.

OPHELIA [Sings]

        They bore him barefaced on the bier;
        Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
        And in his grave rain'd many a tear:--
        Fare you well, my dove!

LAERTES Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
        It could not move thus.

OPHELIA [Sings]

        You must sing a-down a-down,
        An you call him a-down-a.
        O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false
        steward, that stole his master's daughter.

LAERTES This nothing's more than matter.

OPHELIA There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray,
        love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts.

LAERTES A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.

OPHELIA There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue
        for you; and here's some for me: we may call it
        herb-grace o' Sundays: O you must wear your rue with
        a difference. There's a daisy: I would give you
        some violets, but they withered all when my father
        died: they say he made a good end,--

        [Sings]

        For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.

LAERTES Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
        She turns to favour and to prettiness.

OPHELIA [Sings]

        And will he not come again?
        And will he not come again?
        No, no, he is dead:
        Go to thy death-bed:
        He never will come again.

        His beard was as white as snow,
        All flaxen was his poll:
        He is gone, he is gone,
        And we cast away moan:
        God ha' mercy on his soul!

        And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be wi' ye.

        [Exit]

LAERTES Do you see this, O God?

KING CLAUDIUS   Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
        Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
        Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will.
        And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me:
        If by direct or by collateral hand
        They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give,
        Our crown, our life, and all that we can ours,
        To you in satisfaction; but if not,
        Be you content to lend your patience to us,
        And we shall jointly labour with your soul
        To give it due content.

LAERTES Let this be so;
        His means of death, his obscure funeral--
        No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
        No noble rite nor formal ostentation--
        Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
        That I must call't in question.

KING CLAUDIUS   So you shall;
        And where the offence is let the great axe fall.
        I pray you, go with me.

        [Exeunt]




        HAMLET


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]




        HAMLET


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 A Norman was't?

KING CLAUDIUS   A Norman.

LAERTES Upon my life, Lamond.

KING CLAUDIUS   The very same.

LAERTES I know him well: he is the brooch indeed
        And gem of all the nation.

KING CLAUDIUS   He made confession of you,
        And gave you such a masterly report
        For art and exercise in your defence
        And for your rapier most especially,
        That he cried out, 'twould be a sight indeed,
        If one could match you: the scrimers of their nation,
        He swore, had had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
        If you opposed them. Sir, this report of his
        Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy
        That he could nothing do but wish and beg
        Your sudden coming o'er, to play with him.
        Now, out of this,--

LAERTES What out of this, my lord?

KING CLAUDIUS   Laertes, was your father dear to you?
        Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
        A face without a heart?

LAERTES Why ask you this?

KING CLAUDIUS   Not that I think you did not love your father;
        But that I know love is begun by time;
        And that I see, in passages of proof,
        Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
        There lives within the very flame of love
        A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
        And nothing is at a like goodness still;
        For goodness, growing to a plurisy,
        Dies in his own too much: that we would do
        We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes
        And hath abatements and delays as many
        As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
        And then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh,
        That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o' the ulcer:--
        Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake,
        To show yourself your father's son in deed
        More than in words?

LAERTES To cut his throat i' the church.

KING CLAUDIUS   No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize;
        Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,
        Will you do this, keep close within your chamber.
        Hamlet return'd shall know you are come home:
        We'll put on those shall praise your excellence
        And set a double varnish on the fame
        The Frenchman gave you, bring you in fine together
        And wager on your heads: he, being remiss,
        Most generous and free from all contriving,
        Will not peruse the foils; so that, with ease,
        Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
        A sword unbated, and in a pass of practise
        Requite him for your father.

LAERTES I will do't:
        And, for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword.
        I bought an unction of a mountebank,
        So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
        Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
        Collected from all simples that have virtue
        Under the moon, can save the thing from death
        That is but scratch'd withal: I'll touch my point
        With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
        It may be death.

KING CLAUDIUS                     Let's further think of this;
        Weigh what convenience both of time and means
        May fit us to our shape: if this should fail,
        And that our drift look through our bad performance,
        'Twere better not assay'd: therefore this project
        Should have a back or second, that might hold,
        If this should blast in proof. Soft! let me see:
        We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings: I ha't.
        When in your motion you are hot and dry--
        As make your bouts more violent to that end--
        And that he calls for drink, I'll have prepared him
        A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
        If he by chance escape your venom'd stuck,
        Our purpose may hold there.

        [Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE]

                      How now, sweet queen!

QUEEN GERTRUDE  One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
        So fast they follow; your sister's drown'd, Laertes.

LAERTES Drown'd! O, where?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
        That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
        There with fantastic garlands did she come
        Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
        That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
        But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
        There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
        Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
        When down her weedy trophies and herself
        Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
        And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
        Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
        As one incapable of her own distress,
        Or like a creature native and indued
        Unto that element: but long it could not be
        Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
        Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
        To muddy death.

LAERTES                   Alas, then, she is drown'd?

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Drown'd, drown'd.

LAERTES Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
        And therefore I forbid my tears: but yet
        It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
        Let shame say what it will: when these are gone,
        The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord:
        I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
        But that this folly douts it.

        [Exit]

KING CLAUDIUS   Let's follow, Gertrude:
        How much I had to do to calm his rage!
        Now fear I this will give it start again;
        Therefore let's follow.

        [Exeunt]




        HAMLET


ACT V



SCENE I A churchyard.


        [Enter two Clowns, with spades, &c]

First Clown     Is she to be buried in Christian burial that
        wilfully seeks her own salvation?

Second Clown    I tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave
        straight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it
        Christian burial.

First Clown     How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her
        own defence?

Second Clown    Why, 'tis found so.

First Clown     It must be 'se offendendo;' it cannot be else. For
        here lies the point:  if I drown myself wittingly,
        it argues an act: and an act hath three branches: it
        is, to act, to do, to perform: argal, she drowned
        herself wittingly.

Second Clown    Nay, but hear you, goodman delver,--

First Clown     Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here
        stands the man; good; if the man go to this water,
        and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he
        goes,--mark you that; but if the water come to him
        and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he
        that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.

Second Clown    But is this law?

First Clown     Ay, marry, is't; crowner's quest law.

Second Clown    Will you ha' the truth on't? If this had not been
        a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o'
        Christian burial.

First Clown     Why, there thou say'st: and the more pity that
        great folk should have countenance in this world to
        drown or hang themselves, more than their even
        Christian. Come, my spade. There is no ancient
        gentleman but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers:
        they hold up Adam's profession.

Second Clown    Was he a gentleman?

First Clown     He was the first that ever bore arms.

Second Clown    Why, he had none.

First Clown     What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the
        Scripture? The Scripture says 'Adam digged:'
        could he dig without arms? I'll put another
        question to thee: if thou answerest me not to the
        purpose, confess thyself--

Second Clown    Go to.

First Clown     What is he that builds stronger than either the
        mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

Second Clown    The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a
        thousand tenants.

First Clown     I like thy wit well, in good faith: the gallows
        does well; but how does it well? it does well to
        those that do in: now thou dost ill to say the
        gallows is built stronger than the church: argal,
        the gallows may do well to thee. To't again, come.

Second Clown    'Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or
        a carpenter?'

First Clown     Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.

Second Clown    Marry, now I can tell.

First Clown     To't.

Second Clown    Mass, I cannot tell.

        [Enter HAMLET and HORATIO, at a distance]

First Clown     Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull
        ass will not mend his pace with beating; and, when
        you are asked this question next, say 'a
        grave-maker: 'the houses that he makes last till
        doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan: fetch me a
        stoup of liquor.

        [Exit Second Clown]

        [He digs and sings]

        In youth, when I did love, did love,
        Methought it was very sweet,
        To contract, O, the time, for, ah, my behove,
        O, methought, there was nothing meet.

HAMLET  Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he
        sings at grave-making?

HORATIO Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

HAMLET  'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath
        the daintier sense.

First Clown     [Sings]

        But age, with his stealing steps,
        Hath claw'd me in his clutch,
        And hath shipped me intil the land,
        As if I had never been such.

        [Throws up a skull]

HAMLET  That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once:
        how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were
        Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murder! It
        might be the pate of a politician, which this ass
        now o'er-reaches; one that would circumvent God,
        might it not?

HORATIO It might, my lord.

HAMLET  Or of a courtier; which could say 'Good morrow,
        sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?' This might
        be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord
        such-a-one's horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not?

HORATIO Ay, my lord.

HAMLET  Why, e'en so: and now my Lady Worm's; chapless, and
        knocked about the mazzard with a sexton's spade:
        here's fine revolution, an we had the trick to
        see't. Did these bones cost no more the breeding,
        but to play at loggats with 'em? mine ache to think on't.

First Clown: [Sings]

        A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade,
        For and a shrouding sheet:
        O, a pit of clay for to be made
        For such a guest is meet.

        [Throws up another skull]

HAMLET  There's another: why may not that be the skull of a
        lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets,
        his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he
        suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the
        sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of
        his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be
        in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes,
        his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers,
        his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and
        the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine
        pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him
        no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than
        the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The
        very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in
        this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

HORATIO Not a jot more, my lord.

HAMLET  Is not parchment made of sheepskins?

HORATIO Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too.

HAMLET  They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance
        in that. I will speak to this fellow. Whose
        grave's this, sirrah?

First Clown     Mine, sir.

        [Sings]

        O, a pit of clay for to be made
        For such a guest is meet.

HAMLET  I think it be thine, indeed; for thou liest in't.

First Clown     You lie out on't, sir, and therefore it is not
        yours: for my part, I do not lie in't, and yet it is mine.

HAMLET  'Thou dost lie in't, to be in't and say it is thine:
        'tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.

First Clown     'Tis a quick lie, sir; 'twill away gain, from me to
        you.

HAMLET  What man dost thou dig it for?

First Clown     For no man, sir.

HAMLET  What woman, then?

First Clown     For none, neither.

HAMLET  Who is to be buried in't?

First Clown     One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she's dead.

HAMLET  How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the
        card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord,
        Horatio, these three years I have taken a note of
        it; the age is grown so picked that the toe of the
        peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he
        gaffs his kibe. How long hast thou been a
        grave-maker?

First Clown     Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day
        that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.

HAMLET  How long is that since?

First Clown     Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it
        was the very day that young Hamlet was born; he that
        is mad, and sent into England.

HAMLET  Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?

First Clown     Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits
        there; or, if he do not, it's no great matter there.

HAMLET  Why?

First Clown     'Twill, a not be seen in him there; there the men
        are as mad as he.

HAMLET  How came he mad?

First Clown     Very strangely, they say.

HAMLET  How strangely?

First Clown     Faith, e'en with losing his wits.

HAMLET  Upon what ground?

First Clown     Why, here in Denmark: I have been sexton here, man
        and boy, thirty years.

HAMLET  How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot?

First Clown     I' faith, if he be not rotten before he die--as we
        have many pocky corses now-a-days, that will scarce
        hold the laying in--he will last you some eight year
        or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year.

HAMLET  Why he more than another?

First Clown     Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade, that
        he will keep out water a great while; and your water
        is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.
        Here's a skull now; this skull has lain in the earth
        three and twenty years.

HAMLET  Whose was it?

First Clown     A whoreson mad fellow's it was: whose do you think it was?

HAMLET  Nay, I know not.

First Clown     A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a' poured a
        flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull,
        sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester.

HAMLET  This?

First Clown     E'en that.

HAMLET  Let me see.

        [Takes the skull]

        Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
        of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
        borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
        abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
        it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
        not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
        gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
        that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
        now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
        Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let
        her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
        come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell
        me one thing.

HORATIO What's that, my lord?

HAMLET  Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i'
        the earth?

HORATIO E'en so.

HAMLET  And smelt so? pah!

        [Puts down the skull]

HORATIO E'en so, my lord.

HAMLET  To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may
        not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander,
        till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

HORATIO 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

HAMLET  No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with
        modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as
        thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
        Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of
        earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he
        was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?
        Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
        Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
        O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
        Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!
        But soft! but soft! aside: here comes the king.

        [Enter Priest, &c. in procession; the Corpse of
        OPHELIA, LAERTES and Mourners following; KING
        CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, their trains, &c]

        The queen, the courtiers: who is this they follow?
        And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken
        The corse they follow did with desperate hand
        Fordo its own life: 'twas of some estate.
        Couch we awhile, and mark.

        [Retiring with HORATIO]

LAERTES What ceremony else?

HAMLET  That is Laertes,
        A very noble youth: mark.

LAERTES What ceremony else?

First Priest    Her obsequies have been as far enlarged
        As we have warrantise: her death was doubtful;
        And, but that great command o'ersways the order,
        She should in ground unsanctified have lodged
        Till the last trumpet: for charitable prayers,
        Shards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her;
        Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants,
        Her maiden strewments and the bringing home
        Of bell and burial.

LAERTES Must there no more be done?

First Priest    No more be done:
        We should profane the service of the dead
        To sing a requiem and such rest to her
        As to peace-parted souls.

LAERTES Lay her i' the earth:
        And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
        May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
        A ministering angel shall my sister be,
        When thou liest howling.

HAMLET  What, the fair Ophelia!

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Sweets to the sweet: farewell!

        [Scattering flowers]

        I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;
        I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
        And not have strew'd thy grave.

LAERTES O, treble woe
        Fall ten times treble on that cursed head,
        Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense
        Deprived thee of! Hold off the earth awhile,
        Till I have caught her once more in mine arms:

        [Leaps into the grave]

        Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
        Till of this flat a mountain you have made,
        To o'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head
        Of blue Olympus.

HAMLET  [Advancing]     What is he whose grief
        Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow
        Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand
        Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,
        Hamlet the Dane.

        [Leaps into the grave]

LAERTES                   The devil take thy soul!

        [Grappling with him]

HAMLET  Thou pray'st not well.
        I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat;
        For, though I am not splenitive and rash,
        Yet have I something in me dangerous,
        Which let thy wiseness fear: hold off thy hand.

KING CLAUDIUS   Pluck them asunder.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Hamlet, Hamlet!

All     Gentlemen,--

HORATIO                   Good my lord, be quiet.

        [The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave]

HAMLET  Why I will fight with him upon this theme
        Until my eyelids will no longer wag.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  O my son, what theme?

HAMLET  I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers
        Could not, with all their quantity of love,
        Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?

KING CLAUDIUS   O, he is mad, Laertes.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  For love of God, forbear him.

HAMLET  'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do:
        Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself?
        Woo't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile?
        I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine?
        To outface me with leaping in her grave?
        Be buried quick with her, and so will I:
        And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
        Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
        Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
        Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
        I'll rant as well as thou.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  This is mere madness:
        And thus awhile the fit will work on him;
        Anon, as patient as the female dove,
        When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
        His silence will sit drooping.

HAMLET  Hear you, sir;
        What is the reason that you use me thus?
        I loved you ever: but it is no matter;
        Let Hercules himself do what he may,
        The cat will mew and dog will have his day.

        [Exit]

KING CLAUDIUS   I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon him.

        [Exit HORATIO]

        [To LAERTES]

        Strengthen your patience in our last night's speech;
        We'll put the matter to the present push.
        Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.
        This grave shall have a living monument:
        An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;
        Till then, in patience our proceeding be.

        [Exeunt]



        HAMLET


ACT V



SCENE II        A hall in the castle.


        [Enter HAMLET and HORATIO]

HAMLET  So much for this, sir: now shall you see the other;
        You do remember all the circumstance?

HORATIO Remember it, my lord?

HAMLET  Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting,
        That would not let me sleep: methought I lay
        Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly,
        And praised be rashness for it, let us know,
        Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
        When our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us
        There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
        Rough-hew them how we will,--

HORATIO That is most certain.

HAMLET  Up from my cabin,
        My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark
        Groped I to find out them; had my desire.
        Finger'd their packet, and in fine withdrew
        To mine own room again; making so bold,
        My fears forgetting manners, to unseal
        Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio,--
        O royal knavery!--an exact command,
        Larded with many several sorts of reasons
        Importing Denmark's health and England's too,
        With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life,
        That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,
        No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
        My head should be struck off.

HORATIO Is't possible?

HAMLET  Here's the commission: read it at more leisure.
        But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed?

HORATIO I beseech you.

HAMLET  Being thus be-netted round with villanies,--
        Ere I could make a prologue to my brains,
        They had begun the play--I sat me down,
        Devised a new commission, wrote it fair:
        I once did hold it, as our statists do,
        A baseness to write fair and labour'd much
        How to forget that learning, but, sir, now
        It did me yeoman's service: wilt thou know
        The effect of what I wrote?

HORATIO Ay, good my lord.

HAMLET  An earnest conjuration from the king,
        As England was his faithful tributary,
        As love between them like the palm might flourish,
        As peace should stiff her wheaten garland wear
        And stand a comma 'tween their amities,
        And many such-like 'As'es of great charge,
        That, on the view and knowing of these contents,
        Without debatement further, more or less,
        He should the bearers put to sudden death,
        Not shriving-time allow'd.

HORATIO How was this seal'd?

HAMLET  Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.
        I had my father's signet in my purse,
        Which was the model of that Danish seal;
        Folded the writ up in form of the other,
        Subscribed it, gave't the impression, placed it safely,
        The changeling never known. Now, the next day
        Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent
        Thou know'st already.

HORATIO So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to't.

HAMLET  Why, man, they did make love to this employment;
        They are not near my conscience; their defeat
        Does by their own insinuation grow:
        'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
        Between the pass and fell incensed points
        Of mighty opposites.

HORATIO Why, what a king is this!

HAMLET  Does it not, think'st thee, stand me now upon--
        He that hath kill'd my king and whored my mother,
        Popp'd in between the election and my hopes,
        Thrown out his angle for my proper life,
        And with such cozenage--is't not perfect conscience,
        To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd,
        To let this canker of our nature come
        In further evil?

HORATIO It must be shortly known to him from England
        What is the issue of the business there.

HAMLET  It will be short: the interim is mine;
        And a man's life's no more than to say 'One.'
        But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
        That to Laertes I forgot myself;
        For, by the image of my cause, I see
        The portraiture of his: I'll court his favours.
        But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me
        Into a towering passion.

HORATIO Peace! who comes here?

        [Enter OSRIC]

OSRIC   Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.

HAMLET  I humbly thank you, sir. Dost know this water-fly?

HORATIO No, my good lord.

HAMLET  Thy state is the more gracious; for 'tis a vice to
        know him. He hath much land, and fertile: let a
        beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at
        the king's mess: 'tis a chough; but, as I say,
        spacious in the possession of dirt.

OSRIC   Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I
        should impart a thing to you from his majesty.

HAMLET  I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of
        spirit. Put your bonnet to his right use; 'tis for the head.

OSRIC   I thank your lordship, it is very hot.

HAMLET  No, believe me, 'tis very cold; the wind is
        northerly.

OSRIC   It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.

HAMLET  But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my
        complexion.

OSRIC   Exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry,--as
        'twere,--I cannot tell how. But, my lord, his
        majesty bade me signify to you that he has laid a
        great wager on your head: sir, this is the matter,--

HAMLET  I beseech you, remember--

        [HAMLET moves him to put on his hat]

OSRIC   Nay, good my lord; for mine ease, in good faith.
        Sir, here is newly come to court Laertes; believe
        me, an absolute gentleman, full of most excellent
        differences, of very soft society and great showing:
        indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the card or
        calendar of gentry, for you shall find in him the
        continent of what part a gentleman would see.

HAMLET  Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you;
        though, I know, to divide him inventorially would
        dizzy the arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw
        neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in the
        verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of
        great article; and his infusion of such dearth and
        rareness, as, to make true diction of him, his
        semblable is his mirror; and who else would trace
        him, his umbrage, nothing more.

OSRIC   Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him.

HAMLET  The concernancy, sir? why do we wrap the gentleman
        in our more rawer breath?

OSRIC   Sir?

HORATIO Is't not possible to understand in another tongue?
        You will do't, sir, really.

HAMLET  What imports the nomination of this gentleman?

OSRIC   Of Laertes?

HORATIO His purse is empty already; all's golden words are spent.

HAMLET  Of him, sir.

OSRIC   I know you are not ignorant--

HAMLET  I would you did, sir; yet, in faith, if you did,
        it would not much approve me. Well, sir?

OSRIC   You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is--

HAMLET  I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with
        him in excellence; but, to know a man well, were to
        know himself.

OSRIC   I mean, sir, for his weapon; but in the imputation
        laid on him by them, in his meed he's unfellowed.

HAMLET  What's his weapon?

OSRIC   Rapier and dagger.

HAMLET  That's two of his weapons: but, well.

OSRIC   The king, sir, hath wagered with him six Barbary
        horses: against the which he has imponed, as I take
        it, six French rapiers and poniards, with their
        assigns, as girdle, hangers, and so: three of the
        carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very
        responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages,
        and of very liberal conceit.

HAMLET  What call you the carriages?

HORATIO I knew you must be edified by the margent ere you had done.

OSRIC   The carriages, sir, are the hangers.

HAMLET  The phrase would be more german to the matter, if we
        could carry cannon by our sides: I would it might
        be hangers till then. But, on: six Barbary horses
        against six French swords, their assigns, and three
        liberal-conceited carriages; that's the French bet
        against the Danish. Why is this 'imponed,' as you call it?

OSRIC   The king, sir, hath laid, that in a dozen passes
        between yourself and him, he shall not exceed you
        three hits: he hath laid on twelve for nine; and it
        would come to immediate trial, if your lordship
        would vouchsafe the answer.

HAMLET  How if I answer 'no'?

OSRIC   I mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in trial.

HAMLET  Sir, I will walk here in the hall: if it please his
        majesty, 'tis the breathing time of day with me; let
        the foils be brought, the gentleman willing, and the
        king hold his purpose, I will win for him an I can;
        if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.

OSRIC   Shall I re-deliver you e'en so?

HAMLET  To this effect, sir; after what flourish your nature will.

OSRIC   I commend my duty to your lordship.

HAMLET  Yours, yours.

        [Exit OSRIC]

        He does well to commend it himself; there are no
        tongues else for's turn.

HORATIO This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.

HAMLET  He did comply with his dug, before he sucked it.
        Thus has he--and many more of the same bevy that I
        know the dressy age dotes on--only got the tune of
        the time and outward habit of encounter; a kind of
        yesty collection, which carries them through and
        through the most fond and winnowed opinions; and do
        but blow them to their trial, the bubbles are out.

        [Enter a Lord]

Lord    My lord, his majesty commended him to you by young
        Osric, who brings back to him that you attend him in
        the hall: he sends to know if your pleasure hold to
        play with Laertes, or that you will take longer time.

HAMLET  I am constant to my purpose; they follow the king's
        pleasure: if his fitness speaks, mine is ready; now
        or whensoever, provided I be so able as now.

Lord    The king and queen and all are coming down.

HAMLET  In happy time.

Lord    The queen desires you to use some gentle
        entertainment to Laertes before you fall to play.

HAMLET  She well instructs me.

        [Exit Lord]

HORATIO You will lose this wager, my lord.

HAMLET  I do not think so: since he went into France, I
        have been in continual practise: I shall win at the
        odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here
        about my heart: but it is no matter.

HORATIO Nay, good my lord,--

HAMLET  It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of
        gain-giving, as would perhaps trouble a woman.

HORATIO If your mind dislike any thing, obey it: I will
        forestall their repair hither, and say you are not
        fit.

HAMLET  Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special
        providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
        'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
        now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
        readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
        leaves, what is't to leave betimes?

        [Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, LAERTES,
        Lords, OSRIC, and Attendants with foils, &c]

KING CLAUDIUS   Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.

        [KING CLAUDIUS puts LAERTES' hand into HAMLET's]

HAMLET  Give me your pardon, sir: I've done you wrong;
        But pardon't, as you are a gentleman.
        This presence knows,
        And you must needs have heard, how I am punish'd
        With sore distraction. What I have done,
        That might your nature, honour and exception
        Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
        Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet:
        If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,
        And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes,
        Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
        Who does it, then? His madness: if't be so,
        Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd;
        His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy.
        Sir, in this audience,
        Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil
        Free me so far in your most generous thoughts,
        That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house,
        And hurt my brother.

LAERTES I am satisfied in nature,
        Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most
        To my revenge: but in my terms of honour
        I stand aloof; and will no reconcilement,
        Till by some elder masters, of known honour,
        I have a voice and precedent of peace,
        To keep my name ungored. But till that time,
        I do receive your offer'd love like love,
        And will not wrong it.

HAMLET  I embrace it freely;
        And will this brother's wager frankly play.
        Give us the foils. Come on.

LAERTES Come, one for me.

HAMLET  I'll be your foil, Laertes: in mine ignorance
        Your skill shall, like a star i' the darkest night,
        Stick fiery off indeed.

LAERTES You mock me, sir.

HAMLET  No, by this hand.

KING CLAUDIUS   Give them the foils, young Osric. Cousin Hamlet,
        You know the wager?

HAMLET  Very well, my lord
        Your grace hath laid the odds o' the weaker side.

KING CLAUDIUS   I do not fear it; I have seen you both:
        But since he is better'd, we have therefore odds.

LAERTES This is too heavy, let me see another.

HAMLET  This likes me well. These foils have all a length?

        [They prepare to play]

OSRIC   Ay, my good lord.

KING CLAUDIUS   Set me the stoops of wine upon that table.
        If Hamlet give the first or second hit,
        Or quit in answer of the third exchange,
        Let all the battlements their ordnance fire:
        The king shall drink to Hamlet's better breath;
        And in the cup an union shall he throw,
        Richer than that which four successive kings
        In Denmark's crown have worn. Give me the cups;
        And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
        The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
        The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth,
        'Now the king dunks to Hamlet.' Come, begin:
        And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.

HAMLET  Come on, sir.

LAERTES                   Come, my lord.

        [They play]

HAMLET  One.

LAERTES No.

HAMLET  Judgment.

OSRIC   A hit, a very palpable hit.

LAERTES Well; again.

KING CLAUDIUS   Stay; give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine;
        Here's to thy health.

        [Trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within]

                Give him the cup.

HAMLET  I'll play this bout first; set it by awhile. Come.

        [They play]

        Another hit; what say you?

LAERTES A touch, a touch, I do confess.

KING CLAUDIUS   Our son shall win.

QUEEN GERTRUDE                    He's fat, and scant of breath.
        Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows;
        The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.

HAMLET  Good madam!

KING CLAUDIUS             Gertrude, do not drink.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  I will, my lord; I pray you, pardon me.

KING CLAUDIUS   [Aside]  It is the poison'd cup: it is too late.

HAMLET  I dare not drink yet, madam; by and by.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  Come, let me wipe thy face.

LAERTES My lord, I'll hit him now.

KING CLAUDIUS   I do not think't.

LAERTES [Aside]  And yet 'tis almost 'gainst my conscience.

HAMLET  Come, for the third, Laertes: you but dally;
        I pray you, pass with your best violence;
        I am afeard you make a wanton of me.

LAERTES Say you so? come on.

        [They play]

OSRIC   Nothing, neither way.

LAERTES Have at you now!

        [LAERTES wounds HAMLET; then in scuffling, they
        change rapiers, and HAMLET wounds LAERTES]

KING CLAUDIUS   Part them; they are incensed.

HAMLET  Nay, come, again.

        [QUEEN GERTRUDE falls]

OSRIC                     Look to the queen there, ho!

HORATIO They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?

OSRIC   How is't, Laertes?

LAERTES Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric;
        I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery.

HAMLET  How does the queen?

KING CLAUDIUS   She swounds to see them bleed.

QUEEN GERTRUDE  No, no, the drink, the drink,--O my dear Hamlet,--
        The drink, the drink! I am poison'd.

        [Dies]

HAMLET  O villany! Ho! let the door be lock'd:
        Treachery! Seek it out.

LAERTES It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art slain;
        No medicine in the world can do thee good;
        In thee there is not half an hour of life;
        The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
        Unbated and envenom'd: the foul practise
        Hath turn'd itself on me lo, here I lie,
        Never to rise again: thy mother's poison'd:
        I can no more: the king, the king's to blame.

HAMLET  The point!--envenom'd too!
        Then, venom, to thy work.

        [Stabs KING CLAUDIUS]

All     Treason! treason!

KING CLAUDIUS   O, yet defend me, friends; I am but hurt.

HAMLET  Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
        Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
        Follow my mother.

        [KING CLAUDIUS dies]

LAERTES                   He is justly served;
        It is a poison temper'd by himself.
        Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet:
        Mine and my father's death come not upon thee,
        Nor thine on me.

        [Dies]

HAMLET  Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.
        I am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu!
        You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
        That are but mutes or audience to this act,
        Had I but time--as this fell sergeant, death,
        Is strict in his arrest--O, I could tell you--
        But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;
        Thou livest; report me and my cause aright
        To the unsatisfied.

HORATIO Never believe it:
        I am more an antique Roman than a Dane:
        Here's yet some liquor left.

HAMLET  As thou'rt a man,
        Give me the cup: let go; by heaven, I'll have't.
        O good Horatio, what a wounded name,
        Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
        If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
        Absent thee from felicity awhile,
        And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
        To tell my story.

        [March afar off, and shot within]

        What warlike noise is this?

OSRIC   Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,
        To the ambassadors of England gives
        This warlike volley.

HAMLET  O, I die, Horatio;
        The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit:
        I cannot live to hear the news from England;
        But I do prophesy the election lights
        On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
        So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
        Which have solicited. The rest is silence.

        [Dies]

HORATIO Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:
        And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
        Why does the drum come hither?

        [March within]

        [Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambassadors,
        and others]

PRINCE FORTINBRAS       Where is this sight?

HORATIO What is it ye would see?
        If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.

PRINCE FORTINBRAS       This quarry cries on havoc. O proud death,
        What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
        That thou so many princes at a shot
        So bloodily hast struck?

First Ambassador        The sight is dismal;
        And our affairs from England come too late:
        The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
        To tell him his commandment is fulfill'd,
        That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead:
        Where should we have our thanks?

HORATIO Not from his mouth,
        Had it the ability of life to thank you:
        He never gave commandment for their death.
        But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
        You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
        Are here arrived give order that these bodies
        High on a stage be placed to the view;
        And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
        How these things came about: so shall you hear
        Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
        Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
        Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
        And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
        Fall'n on the inventors' reads: all this can I
        Truly deliver.

PRINCE FORTINBRAS                         Let us haste to hear it,
        And call the noblest to the audience.
        For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune:
        I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
        Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.

HORATIO Of that I shall have also cause to speak,
        And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more;
        But let this same be presently perform'd,
        Even while men's minds are wild; lest more mischance
        On plots and errors, happen.

PRINCE FORTINBRAS       Let four captains
        Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
        For he was likely, had he been put on,
        To have proved most royally: and, for his passage,
        The soldiers' music and the rites of war
        Speak loudly for him.
        Take up the bodies: such a sight as this
        Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
        Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

        [A dead march. Exeunt, bearing off the dead
        bodies; after which a peal of ordnance is shot off]