Hamlet

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HAMLET.
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(1887 Leiden E.J. Brill

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CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY .
HAMLET .
BY
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
BELLE
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED :
LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE.

1886.
INTRODUCTION.
SHAKESPEARE's Hamlet was first printed in quarto in

1603. That First Quarto contains a very imperfect
text, which was entered by James Robertes at Stationers'
Hall, on the 26th of July, 1602, as 66'A booke called
the Revenge of Hamlett Prince Denmarke, as yt was
latelie Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes."
The text of this publication was evidently unauthorised,
and is very imperfect ; but it contains indications of
some touches of change that must have been made soon
after the piece was first put upon the stage. Thus, the
names of Polonius and his servant Reynaldo appear in
this First Quarto as Corambis and Montano, and it is to
be inferred, also from its text, that there may have been
some early readjustment of the lights and shades of
character. James Robertes, who entered the book for
publication, seems to have transferred his responsibility
to Nicholas ] L[ing ] , for whom and for John Trundell
the First Quarto was printed; and a really good text of
the play was afterwards obtained and printed in 1604,
for Nicholas ] L[ing ] by I[ames] R[obertes ? ]. The
text of this Second Quarto, when collated with that of
the first edition of Shakespeare's collected plays, pub-
lished in 1623 by his fellow-players, Heminge and
Condell, the edition known as the First Folio, practi-
cally assures to us the whole play as Shakespeare left
it. The Second Quarto contains passages that are
omitted in the First Folio, and the First Quarto helps
now and then to settle a reading, There were three
6 INTRODUCTION.
other quartos ; one in 1605, one undated` [1607 ?] , and

one in 1611.
The text of the present edition of Hamlet has been
freshly compared throughout with the texts of the First
and Second Quarto and of the First Folio, this being
the first of a series of interspersed volumes, through
which the editor hopes to include in THE NATIONAL
LIBRARY his own edition of Shakespeare's Plays.
Each play will be in a handy volume by itself, giving
what the editor believes to be the nearest attainable
approach to Shakespeare's text. The only sources of
the modern text of a play of Shakespeare's are the
quartos in which some of them appeared before their
collection, and the folio into which they were collected,
seven years after Shakespeare's death, by friends of
his who had access to the play-house copies. Printed
books of their days abounded in errata, which were
added to whatever faults there might be in the copy
printed from. A prudent editor has, therefore, to avoid
much risk of injuring the text with new corruptions of
his own.
The text here given was obtained in this manner,
which may be taken to represent the degree of atten-
tion that will be given to the text of future volumes :
The play was first printed from the text of Professor
Delius ; it was then minutely compared with the texts of
the First and Second Quarto and the Folio, and with
the text of Dyce's last edition, which is, on the whole,
the best yet issued . In one place an omitted line has
been inserted ; in one place a superfluous conjectural
addition to the text, although it has been generally
adopted, is struck out. In one place where there is an
unquestionable misprint, " disasters in the sun," which
various editors have sought in various unsatisfactory
ways to correct, one more attempt has been made to
give, if not the true reading, the true sense. Where a
preceding correction is adopted, the adoption will, in
all the little books of the plays of Shakespeare that
appear from time to time among the volumes of the
INTRODUCTION. 7
NATIONAL LIBRARY, mean that the correction has

been freshly considered and accepted. Wherea
change of word is not adopted, and the original text is
fallen back upon, it means, and will mean, either that
the present Editor takes the word in the original text
to be the right word, or the error in the original to be
one that has not yet been finally corrected . In all
cases of doubt as to the value of corrections, the
original text will be preferred. But while in such
matters conservative, these little books will not be
found conservative of that overload of punctuation with
which many editors have , destroyed, the pliancy and
often the sense of Shakespeare's poetry. There are
here discharged from the text many of the little
hooked commas, that tortured it, and also the whole of
that cruel apparatus of hooks through which good
verse is dragged for no crimes of its own. Does any one
want the printer of either prose or verse to print
"hook'd " lest the reader should read " hooked "?
Surely it is enough if in the few cases where there is any
variation from usage that is indicated by an accent, and
in all other respects the verse of Shakespeare is left to
be read as we read verse of Tennyson, or any other
poet of the present day. The old butcherly array of
hooks across a poet's lines remains to us now only as a
superstition of the past in books that, by inadvertence,
are still left, as Shakespeare has hitherto been left,
encumbered with such useless furniture.
If life and health suffice to the completion of the
plan here sketched, the series of the plays will be
followed by three or four volumes of selected and
original Notes. But the Introduction to each play will
endeavour only to assist enjoyment of it as a whole.
The story of Hamlet actually originates in an old

Danish Saga, which found its way, in 1570, from Saxo
Grammaticus into the fifth volume of Histoires tragi-
ques, by François de Belleforest, as a tale showing
Avec quelle ruse Amleth, qui depuis fut roy de
8 INTRODUCTION.
Dannemarch, vengea la mort de son père Horvendille,

occis par Fengon son frère, et autre occurrence de son
histoire. An English version of the tale in Belleforest
appeared as the Historie of Hamblet ; and it was also
made into an English play, now lost, that preceded
Shakespeare's. This must have served as a starting
point for Shakespeare's invention. In an epistle by
Thomas Nash, before Robert Greene's novel of
"Menaphon," in 1589, there is an allusion to the shifty
playwrights, who from English Seneca may draw
whole Hamlets, I should say handfulls of tragical
speeches ;" and in the Diary of Henslowe, the actor,
there is mention of a Hamlet represented, June 9th,
1594, in the theatre at Newington Butts, which was
an old play, from which Henslowe only got eight
shillings for his share of the proceeds.
Shakespeare's play opens with watch over the sea

against attack by Fortinbras for the recovery of land
lost thirty years before, when the father of Fortinbras,
the King of Norway, lost the land, and with it his life,
wagered by him in duel with the father of Hamlet.
The time elapsed since that duel, which was on the
day of Hamlet's birth, is precisely told in the fifth
act (pages 166-7), where the grave-digger says that he
became a grave-digger " that day that our last King
Hamlet o'ercame Fortinbras," which was 6، the very
day that young Hamlet was born," and presently adds"",
46 I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.'
Thus Shakespeare clearly fixes Hamlet's age as thirty.
Young Fortinbras can hardly be younger, since his
father was killed on the day of Hamlet's birth. We
can only think of him as a young child when his father's
brother succeeded to rule in Norway, according to the
old usage (illustrated also in Macbeth) that set aside
direct succession if the king's son was not of age to be
a leader of the people. But Hamlet was a man in
years, though not in action, when he left his uncle free
to take the throne.
INTRODUCTION. 9
Throughout the play, Fortinbras serves as a foil to

Hamlet. Fortinbras is a man of action, who thinks
little ; Hamlet is a man of the highest intellectual
culture, in whom thought is ever busy ; in whom
" 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. "
At the opening of the play there is stir of warlike pre-

paration in Denmark, and strict watch against the
sudden energies of Fortinbras, who is expected to make
a bold dash for the lands his father lost. Into the
midst of the watch comes one from the other world, to
give Hamlet something that he must not only think
upon, but do. As Shakespeare reads life, every one
who has come to manhood has to do his work. In
youth we prepare for our work ; but after we have
entered on life's active duties all study is but the care
to keep our arms from rusting, arms that we have
daily to use. Hamlet, when the play opens, has only
been drawn from his enjoyment of the studious univer-
sity life by his father's sudden death, followed within
a month by his uncle's marriage with his mother.
When the play opens he is still at Elsinore, his father
"but two months dead ; nay, not so much, not two,"
and his mother had married
" Within a month, -
Let me not think on 't. Frailty, thy name is woman."
His mother's marriage pains him yet more than his
father's death. When he hears of his father's spirit in
arms, his thought flashes at once to suspicion of his
uncle. The spirit confirms his suspicion. He has no
doubt that it is his duty to avenge the murder of his
father. But, in the first conviction, he plans already
simulation of madness that shall give him opportunities
of secret observation ,
10 INTRODUCTION.
" As I perhaps hereafter shall think meet,

To put an antic disposition on. "
The device is that of a mind already " sicklied o'er with
the pale cast of thought." Had Fortinbras been so
summoned to action, the king would have been dead in
an hour. When, later in the play, by the killing of
Polonius, Laertes, who serves also as a contrast to
Hamlet, is in Hamlet's position, with a father killed,
he is back from Paris in a whirlwind, beating at the
palace gates. But at the close of the first act, Hamlet's
exclamation, after he has learnt his duty is,
The time is out of joint : O, cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right. "
No man healthily active would in Hamlet's position
either have felt it necessary to break from the woman
whom he deeply loved, or to use the tricks of a feigned
madness to cover self-indulgence in a long, last fare-
well look. Time passes, and much is thought and felt,
but nothing done. When the players come, to whom,
as delighting him with shadows of action, he had been
a good patron at the University, and when one of the
players loses himself in the griefs of Hecuba, Hamlet
reproaches himself with self-comparison.
"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?"
66 About my brains ! " is the result ; and still only the
brain works. The spirit may have been the devil in a
pleasing shape. Hamlet will put its truth to test bythe
device of the play, in which the King shall see the
image of his crime.
"If his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech, ""
It is a damnéd ghost that we have seen.'
It does unkennel itself. Hamlet absolutely knows his
INTRODUCTION. 11
uncle's guilt ; but it is by a method that reveals his

knowledge to his uncle, whom an evil conscience had
made eager to discover whether some such knowledge
did not lie at the root of Hamlet's change of manner.
And now, why does not Hamlet kill the King? An
easy opportunity offers. But his mind is again too
busy ; he refrains out of no spirit of mercy, but
because he cannot kill the King enough. The King is
praying. Killed now, he might find heaven. Hamlet
will wait till he can kill more perfectly, body and soul.
And two months have now slipped by since Hamlet
undertook his duty. This is marked by a passage in
the play scene. " How cheerfully my mother looks,
and my father died within two hours." Ophelia.
66
Nay, ' tis twice two months, my lord." Atthe
beginning of the play, it was " Nay, not two
months, not two." The King, who has learnt from
Hamlet the danger to himself, loses no time, though
Hamlet still delays. Hamlet allows himself to be
shipped off to England, with secret orders for his
execution there. While he is still thus passive, he sees
the forces of young Fortinbras, whose preparation
against Denmark has been diverted to the Polack,
pass over a plain before him, and again has clear intel-
lectual sense of his own fault. He can tell himself
what the play tells to us all, that-
" 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."
All deeds of Hamlet are by action without premedita-
tion. By sudden impulse he stabs Polonius behind
the arras, without time even to give full birth to the
thought that he may be killing the King. No think-
ing of his could possibly have foreseen or brought the
pirate ship that came into engagement with the ship
carrying him to England ; and it was not even with
design so to return to Denmark that he leapt to the
other deck as the ships grappled for action.
12 INTRODUCTION .
But when he had returned he was again passive.

He accepted passive the challenge to the fencing
match, and when he at last did kill his own and his
father's murderer, it was by action on the impulse of
the moment. It was done rashly, as Hamlet said to
Horatio of an act of his on board the ship ; and
Hamlet's comment on this rashness has in it the soul
of the play-
" Let us know,
Our indiscretion sometimes serves as 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."
How many Hamlets are there in the world with
intellectual power for large usefulness, who wait, day
by day and year by year, in hope to do more perfectly
what they live to do ; die, therefore, and leave their
lives unused while men of lower power, prompt for
action, are content and ready to do what they can, well
knowing that at the best they can only rough hew, but
in humble trust that leaves to God the issues of the
little service they may bring. It is a last touch to the
significance of this whole play that at its close the man
whose fault is the reverse of Hamlet's -the man of
ready action, though it be with little thought, the stir
of whose energies was felt in the opening scene- re-
enters from his victory over the Polack, and the
curtain falls on Fortinbras, King. H. M.
HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
CLAUDIUS, King of Denmark. A Captain.
HAMLET, Son to the former, English Ambassadors.
and Nephew to the present Ghost of Hamlet's Father.
King. FORTINBRAS, Prince of Nor-
HORATIO, Friend to Hamlet. way.
POLONIUS, Lord Chamberlain. Players.
LAERTES, his Son. Two Clowns, Grave-diggers.
VOLTIMAND,
CORNELIUS, GERTRUDE, Queen of Den-
ROSENCRANTZ, mark, and Mother to Ham-
GUILDENSTERN Courtiers. let.
OSRIC, OPHELIA, Daughter to Polo-
A Gentleman, nius.
A Priest.
MARCELLUS, Lords, Ladies, Officers, Sol-
BERNARDO ' Officers. diers, Sailors, Messengers,
FRANCISCO, A Soldier. and Attendants.
REYNALDO, Servant to Polo-
nius.
SCENE-ELSINORE ; except in the fourth scene of the fifth act,
where it is a PLAIN IN DENMARK.
ACT I.
SCENE I.- Elsinore. A Platform before the

Castle.
FRANCISCO, a sentinel.BERNARDO enters to relieve
him .
Ber. Who's there ? Wie daar ?
Fran. Nay, answer me : stand, and unfold your-
self. aan my de mand :і ду sta maak
" bekend
14 HAMLET. [Act I.
Ber. Long live the king ! g vrest!

Lang low .de
dau
Fran. Bernardo ? Lyt gy't, Bemardo ?

Ber. He. Ja
Fran. You come most carefully upon your
hour. Sy Komt welstipt of tuur van uvewacht
Ber. 'T is now struck twelve : get thee to bed,
Francisco . Het oloeg daar twaalf: gogyte bed to
trance
Fran. For this relief much thanks : 't is bitter
tovernaamt. tis bitter
cold, dank dat gy't overnaant; Rond
And I am sick at heart. en ik ben moe en mat.
Ber. Have you had quiet guard ? Kadtoy een stille wacht ?
Fran. Not a mouse stirring.
han muisse pieple
Ber. Well, good night. Nu,goede nacht
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, Komtgy Horako legen
un marcellus mugn wachtgenooten auffhen can bot spoed
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
Fran. I think I hear them.- Stand ! Who's
My drukt 1 4 hour ze news He staat wie daar
there ?
Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.
Hor. Friends to this ground. dandskindren

Mar. And liegemen to the Dane.
Dunagis von der denen vorst
Fran. Give you good night. Na goede nacht
Mar. O, farewell, honest soldier: who hath
relieved yo
dan u offer;
Kupffer wore loste u as
; we
Fran. Bernardo has my place. Give you good

semardo heeftmijn wacht than grepExit.
night.
Mar. Holla ! Bernardo ! Hola , mardo
Scene 1.] HAMLET . 15
Ber. Say,- Leof

What is Horatio there ? Zouis Horatio daar
Hor. A piece of him. Een stuk:vanhem
van
Ber. Welcome, Horatio : welcome, good Mar-
cellus. Welkom Horatio ; welkom , viend marcellus
Mar. What, has this thing appeared again to-
night ? is dat ding ook deze nacht verschenen ?
Ber. I have seen nothing. X heb niets gesien
Mar. Horatio says, 'tis but our fantasy,

Horatio houdt het enkel voor verbedding
And will not let belief take hold of him
bu laat mich fol, dat hem 't geloofbevangtseed is
ofverrezen
us,
Touching this dreaded sight twice .
can'tsewuks eeld dat ons swam.
Therefore, I have entreated him along
dies overreed de ik hem dat hy met dus
With us watch the minute ofyou waken
this night .,
de stehende uren dezes.
That, if again this apparition come,
opdat wanneer het spooksef way verschynt
He may approve ouhéeyes, dok and speak
in het to it.
bespreek
My. o get she
4 przer Tush, will not appear.
Ber. Kom kom 't verschynt niet Sit .down awhile,
Zet een wyl in neder
And let us ons oncenogeens
~again assail your ears,
un for bestonmen
That are so fortified against quit our story,
voor't bericht
Dat zich verschanster in toes
What we have two nights seen.
van wat twee wachten ous ver ve gebeen .
Hor. Well, sit we down
Net
And let us hear Bernardo, speak of this. 342
wyretterous :Bemarde doe't verhaal.
Ber. Last night of all,
Де Jongstverlooken nacht
When yond same star , that's westward from the
toen oindstepole ster , daar westwaart van de pool:
Had made his course to illume that part of
heaven
Dat deel des hemels in haar loop verlichtte
16 HAMLET..
Traar thans haar flinkring straalt ,daar
jag
Where now it burns, Marcellus, and myself Marcelles
The bell then beating one, --
éen
Met my, byby't daan van
X
Ostil, he unter Ghost
op, zie. hoe top nieuw
Mar. Peace ! break thee off : look, where it
comes again ! Komt !
Ber. In the samefigure, like the king that's dead.,
gehoodhet wezen desgestore men Koning ,
Mar. Thou art a scholar ; speak to it, Horatio.
byzytgelette
Ber. Looks rd? affeek gy & toe foratio
it not like
king ? mark it,
"netwaar,'tgelykt den Roning ? zie,
Hor. Most like !-It harrows me with fear and

wonder. Geheel, he het slagt met.
augot
of my
my , metontzetting.
Ber. It would be spoke to. 't hocht toegesproken zijn
Mar. Beproef &Horatio Question it, Horatio.
Hor. What art thou, that usurp'st this time of
night, wiejytgy
stout un nachtin
die dit agant,
Together with that fair and warlike form

Met de scale Krygomans D lust,
nmarwaarmeede
In which the majesty of buriedewar k webHooge
sometimes
Did rad . R march ? by Heayen I charge thee,
Bet
speak? ez weer u byden Hemel , spreek!
Mar. It is offended. Het is beledigd.
stalks awr
Ber. Zie , t schryd See,
voortit en we ay !
Hor . Stay ! speak, speak, I charge thee, speak !

Blyf, spreek ofreek , it begweer n[ de Exitgu st. gheen
Ghona
. Twea
Marto is gone and wil
Ht enwer
geans
l not . twe
an
Ber. How now, Horatio you tremble and look
Hoe is .
Horatio
*pale : by ziet bleek
rt ;
in sidde
Scene 1.] HAMLET. 17
Lou dit verbeelding wezen ofiets meer?
Is not this something more than fantasy ?
ns
What think you on 't ? Watdenktg . ytha
Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe,
fthe chung vomGod, I as n
Without the sensible and true avouch ditgelo
Maarze myn oog efe tziker ,
heen twyfel tastbaar Zagehr
merit not like the king?
Tret waan leek den koning?
Hor. As thou art to thyself. gelel
als u ze
Was was the
foy
ery armour he had on diehy droeg
& Such eixe n was .
bow n byme
Whe the ambitionsewr
n he the Norwust
aying
combated .
en drowngen toonnan streed ;
So frowned he once when , inan angry parle,
blik
70 was zijer. grainment
He smote the skedded Polacks in thei
yen pool zijn slede
"T is strange ! 't Is neemde outbound , hetysdeed ont
711 eten
Mar. Thus twice before, and jump at this dead
Reeds tweemaal
hour, doodsche sebreed byin deey '
stonden
watch.
With martial stalk hath he gone by our wa
aldus in tryand wacht tch.by
Hor In what particular aye
thought to work, I know
Ik weet niet w at མའ hoe ikmoet
not; vermoeden ;
But in the gross and scope of mine opinion,
Maardit staat in myn gwent toch vast:het:spelt
benabodes
This some strange eruption to our state,
Gostaat
r.en od bootubewering
neer , nemde dingen .
Rom . sit down and tell me, he that
en Zegg !my wie het weet
knows,
Why this
waartoe same
eenstrict
was and most observant watch rau
00 Hipt,zoohoogst lettend.
So nightly toils the subject of the land ?
seranderdagen hier nacht op nocht bezwaart?
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
Waartoe dat daaylytisch gieten van ingeschut,
Andatforeign
king,mart
the implements of war neemde
Koopen in denn. ?.
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore
Waartoe dit
task scheeps bound , entgepreste
Bolk
18 HAMLET [Act I.
By t zure e werk geen Zondag ooit gegund ?
Does not divide the Sunday een the week ?
datfrom
atmight be toward, that this sweaty hastegend .
What
Je nacht tot arbeid Ketent aan len day ?
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the
day !
We Rare mydit verklaren
Who is 't that can inform me ?
Hor. Dit kan ik That can
ben minste your toerucht. De voor I;
ge ont
At least, the whisper goes so . Our last kingin
Wiens schim zoueven hier aanons
Who
Werdage
se even
we , w appeared to us, verscheen,
t
but
‫އ‬ door Forhembrasden hoorman
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway, ,
Thereto
ben st pricked on by a most emulate pride,
ry. etart. moich ourdapfore Valiant
Dared the combat';
Hamlet
Want hamlet zyde der bekende wereld
pant this side of our known world esteemed
notren wem, " versloeg dien Fortinbras

Seefthehimther
Did slay this Fortinbra's ; who, by a sealed
ie by verdrag ,gezegeld en bekrachtigd
Door wet en Kamprecht, me t hetleven tevens
Well ratified by law and heraldryland verbeurde .
Den overwinnar hel
Did forfeit with his life all those his lands
Waartigen me worktoth billyk deel
Which he stood seized of, to
Van'tyou versand had dataan Fostumbras
Againstdue which, a moiety competent
de regepraat in deel
Was gaged our king, which had returned
bywo
allin, at gelist alsun geheel.
To the nheritance Fortinbras
2yrheloud
Had been vanquisher as, letter
, noor in; en mentverdrag,
by the same comart
And
aancarriage of the
Hamlet kwain designed
articlede jonge , Forenbras
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sin young Fortinbras,
rewould,
Of•
Thays of de gielnenmoed
improved mettle hot and fuproin
wasche full, hier, daar
en daar
of
Voor Kost en miderhoud, een docle binde
Sharked up a listaangenowen
of lawless resolutes,
Foran schoolers , voor een stuk,
r food and diet, to some enterprise .
Bathath
That moeda stomach
verlischt,inen of nicht
which minder
no other- doelt
,-
't, is
als ong bustus ppear myjet, dan 't heroov
As it dothW well appear upto ourstate-a- r̀land
But to recover of us, by strong hand
Dat door zijn vader . als ik hele herdacht
And terms compulsative,
Verto Myditthose
,pennyforesaid
take
vi lands'
it,
•sen perd, ed s
So by his father lost. And this,
ware gund , dat wy den prepara
IsDethe main motive of our
Krya ons vristen.
tions , 1
De reden der nachtwaak, in de bron
The source of this our watch, and the chief head
Kom al post
dien spoed
y denkt omkeerin
en romage denland
in the lande ,
Of this , and
- haste .
Kan niets anders zijn dan dit;
Ber. I think, it be no other, but e'en so :
En dies komt wis dit schrikbeeld onze wacht
Well may
Bezoek enitedsort that this portentous figure
Comes 200 gelykerd of dem te ing like the
through our watch,
king
Die was the Corprond dezerwaspring was enis
That was, and is, the question of these wars
benspook i on'sgeestes . oog te trusten .
Hor. A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
e, zijn wine in &Rom toppunt was,
In theRom most high and , palmy state of e,
Kortvoorfen val des grooten Julius , stonden
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The groven leta, de omhulde doppen Kreten
graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted
dead
fon Kryschten aak lig schril door Rom is obraten;
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman, streets,
Anququistwith mymye voorspel van wat dreigt, -
Als boden die het cones lok verkouden ,
Disastrous omen gave ; and the moist star,
UpoIm n sorrbookofanwat
whose influence eptune's sehrskyerwekkendmaakt.-
empire stands,
Heeft aarde en hemmel thans vereind eroond
Was sick toekdoomsday eclipse
agu onthe netshe en landwithgenoot eni :
As harbingers met user

preced genthe
ing still starterbeaded
fates, met
blood
20 [Act I.
HAMLET;1
mitvlekken
De you metvlekken in
en het bleek gesternt"
And prologue to the omen coming
Dat door
Have heaven als
andraht hepping . beleescht ,
Kwynde voor de bordulgmonstrated
together
laden werd
Unto our climatures and countrymen- Sgedoofd;-
Re-enter Ghost.
But, soft ! behold ! lo , where it comes again !

I'll cross it, though it blast me. -Stay, illusion,
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me ! [It spreads its arms.
If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease, and grace to me,
Speak to me !
If thou art privy to, thy country's fate,
Which happily foreknowing may avoid,
O, speak !
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
[The cock crows.
Speak of it, stay, and speak ! -Stop it, Marcellus.
Mar. Shall I strike at it with my partisan ?
Hor. Do, if it will not stand.
Ber. "T is here !
Hor. "T is here !
Mar. 'T is gone ! [Exit Ghost
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence ;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable,

And our vain blows malicious mockery.
Ber. It was about to speak, when the cock crew.
Hor. And then it started, like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard ,
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day ; and, at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine; and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.
Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long :
And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad ;
The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
Hor. So have I heard, and do in part believe it.
But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern 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.
22 HAMLET. [Act I.
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,

As needful in our loves, fitting our duty ?
Mar. Let's do ' t, I pray ; and I this morning
know
Where we shall find him most convenient.
[Exeunt.
SCENE II. The Same. A Room of State.

Flourish. Enter the KING, QUEEN, HAMLET,
POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS,
Lords, and Attendants.
King. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's

death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe ;
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature,
That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore, our sometime sister, now our queen,
The imperial jointress of this warlike state,
Have we, as 't were 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 barred
Scene 2. ] HAMLET. 23
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 bands 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, imp tent 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 despatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand,
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway ;
Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the king, more than the scope
Of these dilated articles allow.
Farewell ; and let your haste commend your
duty.
24 HAMLET. [Act I.
Cor., Vol. In that, and all things, will we show -

our duty.
King. We doubt it nothing : heartily farewell.
[Exeunt VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS.
And now, Laertes, what's the news with you ?
You told us of some suit ; what is 't, Laertes ?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane
And lose your voice : what wouldst thou beg,
Laertes,
That shall not be my offer, not thy asking ?
The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
What wouldst thou have, Laertes ?
Laer. Dread my lord,
Your leave and favour to return to France ;
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark
To show my duty in your coronation,
Yet now, I must confess, that duty done,
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward
France
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
King. Have you your father's leave ? What
says Polonius ?
Pol. He hath, my lord , wrung from me my slow
leave
By laboursome petition ; and, at last,
25
Scene 2. ] HAMLET . 25
Upon his will I sealed my hard consent :

I do beseech you, give him leave to go.
King. Take thy fair hour, Laertes ; time be
thine,
And thy best graces spend it at thy will.-
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son, —
Ham. [Aside. ] A little more than kin, and less
than kind.
King. How is it that the clouds still hang on
you ?
Ham. Not so, my lord ; I am too much i' the
sun.
Queen. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailéd lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust :
Thou know'st, ' t is common ; all that lives must
die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
Ham. Ay, madam, it is common.
Queen. If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee ?
Ham. Seems, madam ! nay, it is ; I know not
' seems.'
"T is not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
26 HAMLET. [Act I.
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly : these, indeed, seem,
For they are actions that a man might play
But I have that within, which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
King. Tis sweet and commendable in your
nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father :
But you must know your father lost a father ;
That father lost, lost his ; and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow : but to perséver
In obstinate condolement, is a course
Of impious stubbornness ; 't is unmanly grief ;
It shows a will most incorrect to Heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschooled :
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 ! 't is 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,
423
6 This must be so.' We pray you, throw to

earth
This unprevailing woe, and think of us
As of a father : for let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our throne ;
And with no less nobility of love
Than that which dearest father bears his son
Do I impart toward you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire ;
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers,
Hamlet :
I pray thee, stay with us ; go not to Wittenberg.
Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
King. Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply :
Be as ourself in Denmark. - Madam, come ;
This gentle and 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 shall bruit
again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.
[Flourish. Exeunt all, but HAMLET.
28 HAMLET. [Act I.
Ham. O, that this too too solid flesh would

melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew ;
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter ! O God ! O God !
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world !
Fie on 't ! Ah fie ! 't is 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 beṭeem 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 e'er those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears ;-why she, even she-
O God ! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer -married with 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 galléd eyes,
She married :-O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets !
It is not, nor it cannot come to, good :
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue !
Enter HORATIO, MARCELLUS, and BERNARDO.

Hor. Hail to your lordship !
Ham. I am glad to see you well :
Horatio,-or I do forget myself.
Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant
ever.
Ham. Sir, my good friend ; I'll change that
name with you.
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio ?—
Marcellus ?
Mar. My good lord,-
Ham. I am very glad to see you.—[ To BER-
NARDO.] Good even, sir.-
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg ?
Hor. A truant disposition, good my lord.
Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so ;
30
399 HAMLET. [Act I.
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.
Hor. My lord, I came to see your father's
funeral.
Ham. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-
student ;
I think, it was to see my mother's wedding.
Hor. Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.
Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! the funeral baked
meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Ere I had ever seen that day, Horatio !— #
My father, methinks I see my father-
Hor. O, where, my lord ?
Ham. In my mind's eye, Horatio..
Hor. I saw him once he was a goodly king.
Ham. He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.
Hor. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
Ham. Saw, who ?
Hor. My lord, the king your father.
Ham. The king my father !
Hor. Season your admiration for a while
With an attent ear, till I may deliver,

Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
This marvel to you.
Ham. For God's love, let me hear.
Hor. Two nights together had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,
In the dead waste and middle of the night,
Been thus encountered : a figure like your father,
Arméd at point, exactly, cap-à-pé,
Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them : thrice he
walked
By their oppressed and fear-surpriséd 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 delivered, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes. I knew your father .
These hands are not more like.
Ham. But where was this ?
Mar. My lord, upon the platform where we
watched .
Ham. Did you not speak to it ?
32 HAMLET. [Act L
Hor. 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 vanished from our sight.
Ham. 'T is very strange.
Hor. As I do live, my honoured lord , 't is true ;
And we did think it writ down in our duty,
To let you know of it.
Ham. Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles
me.
Hold you the watch to-night ?
Mar. , Ber. We do, my lord.
Ham. Armed, say you?
Mar., Ber. Armed, my lord.
Ham. From top to toe?
Mar., Ber. My lord, from head to foot.
Ham. Then, saw you not his face ?
!
Hor. O yes, my lord ; he wore his beaver up.
Ham. What, looked he frowningly ?
Hor. A countenance more in sorrow than in
anger.
Ham. Pale, or red ?
Hor. Nay, very pale.
Ham. And fixed his eyes upon you ?
Hor. Most constantly.

Ham. I would I had been there.
Hor. It would have much amazed you.
Ham. Very like, very like. Staid it long ?
Hor. While one with moderate haste might tell
a hundred.
Mar., Ber. Longer, longer.
Hor. Not when I saw 't.
Ham. His beard was grizzled ? no ?
Hor. It was, as I have seen it in his life,
A sable silvered.
Ham. I will watch to-night :
Perchance, ' t will walk again.
Hor. I warrant it will.
1
Ham. If it assume my noble father's person,
I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape,
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
Ifyou have hitherto concealed 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.
Ham. Your loves ; as mine to you : Farewell.
[Exeunt HORATIO, MARCELLUS, and Bernardo,
B- 22
34 HAMLET. [Act I.
My father's spirit- in arms ;—all is not well ;

I doubt some foul play : ' would, the night were
come !
Till then, sit still, my soul.-Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's
eyes. [Exit.
SCENE III.- A Room in the House of POLONIUS.

Enter LAERTES and OPHELIA.
Laer. My necessaries are embarked : farewell ;

And, sister, as the winds give benefit
And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,
But let me hear from you.
Oph. Do you doubt that ?
Laer. For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour,
Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood ;
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute ;
No more.
Oph. No more but so ?

Laer. Think it no more .
For nature, crescent, does not grow alone
In thews and bulk ; but, as this temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now ;
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch

The virtue of his will : but you must fear,
His greatness weighed , 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 the 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 unmastered 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 :
36 HAMLET. [Act I.
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth

Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary then ; best safety lies in fear :
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.
Oph. I shall 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,
Whilst, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede.
Laer. O, fear me not.
I stay too long, but here my father comes :
Enter POLONIUS.
A double blessing is a double grace ;

Occasion smiles upon a second leave.
Pol. Yet here, Laertes ? aboard, aboard, for
shame !
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stayed for. There, my blessing
with theee ;
[Laying his hand on LAERTES' head.
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou charácter. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar :
The 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-hatched, unfledged courage. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel ; but, being in,
Bear't that the opposéd may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice ;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judg-
ment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy ; rich, not gaudy :
For the apparel oft proclaims the man ;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are most select and generous in that.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be ;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all, —to thine own self be true ;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell ; my blessing season this in thee !
Laer. Most humbly do I take my leave, my
lord.
Pol. The time invites you : go, your servants
tend.
Laer. Farewell, Ophelia ; and remember well
What I have said to you.
38 HAMLET. [Act I.
Oph. "T is in my memory locked ,

And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
Laer. Farewell. [Exit.
Pol. What is 't, Ophelia, he hath said to you ?
Oph. So please you, something touching the Lord
Hamlet.
Pol. Marry, well bethought :
"T is told me, he hath very oft of late
Given private time to you ; and you yourself
Have of your audience been most free and boun-
teous .
If it be so, (as so 't is 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.
Oph. He hath, my lord, of late made many
tenders
Of his affection to me.
Pol. Affection ? pooh ! you speak like a green
girl
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call them ?
Oph. I do not know, my lord, what I should
think.
Pol. Marry, I'll teach you : think yourself a
baby ;
That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,

Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more
dearly ;
Or, not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus, you'll tender me a fool.
Oph. My lord, he hath importuned me with
love
In honourable fashion.
Pol. Ay, fashion you may call it ; go to, go to.
Oph. And hath given countenance to his speech,
my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
Pol. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do
know,
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows : these blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat,-extinct in both,
Even in their promise as it is a-making,-
You must not take for fire. From this time,
Be 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,
40 HAMLET. [Act I.
But mere implorators of unholy suits

Breathing like sanctified and pious bonds
The better to beguile. This is for all,-
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,
Have you so slander any moment's leisure
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to 't, I charge you : come your ways.
Oph. I shall obey, my lord. [Exeunt.
SCENE IV. - The Platform .

Enter HAMLET, HORATIO , and MARCELLUS .
Ham. The air bites shrewdly ; it is very cold.
Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air.
Ham. What hour now ?
Hor. I think it lacks of twelve.
Mar. No, it is struck.
Hor. Indeed ? I heard it not it then draws
near the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
[4 flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off,
within.
What does this mean, my lord ?
Ham. The king doth wake to-night, and takes
his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels ;
And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,

The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
Hor. Is it a custom ?
Ham. Ay, marry, is 't :
But to my mind, -though I am native here,
And to the manner born,-it is a custom
More honoured in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel, east and west
Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations :
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition ; and, indeed, it takes
From our achievements, though performed 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 their 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,
42 HAMLET. [Act I.
Shall in the general censure take corruption :

From that particular fault : the dram of eale
Doth all the noble substance often dout
To his own scandal.
Enter Ghost.
Hor. Look, my lord ! it comes.
Ham. Angels and ministers of grace defend
us :-
Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from
hell,
Be thy intents wicked , or charitable,
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee : I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane : O answer me,
Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell,
Why thy canónised bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements ; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urned,
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 ? [The Ghost beckons.
Hor. It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.
Mar. Look, with what courteous action
It waves you to a more removéd ground :
But do not go with it.
Hor No, by no means .
Ham. It will not speak : then will I follow
it.
Hor. Do not, my lord.
Ham. Why, what should be the
fear ?
I do not set my life at a pin's fee ;
And, for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself ?
It waves me forth again :-I'll follow it.
Hor. What if it tempt you toward the flood, my
lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness ? think of it :
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
44 HAMLET . [Act I.
That looks so many fathoms to the sea

And hears it roar beneath.
Ham. It waves me still go on, I'll follow
thee.
Mar. You shall not go, my lord.
1
Ham Hold off your hands.
Hor. Be ruled ; you shall not go.
Ham. My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body,
As hardy as the Némean lion's nerve.-
[The Ghost beckons.
Still am I called. -Unhand me, gentlemen, —
[ Breakingfrom them.
By Heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets
me :-
-Go on, I'll follow thee.
I say, away !-
[Exeunt Ghost and HAMLET.
Hor. He waxes desperate with imagination.
Mar. Let's follow ; 't is not fit thus to obey
him.
Hor. Have after. To what issue will this
come ?
Mar. Something is rotten in the state of Den-
mark.
Hor. Heaven will direct it.
Mar. Nay, let's follow him.
[Exeunt.
32933565
SCENE V. -A more remote Part of the Platform.

Enter Ghost and HAMLET.
Ham. Whither wilt thou lead me ? speak ; I'll go
no further.
Ghost. Mark me.
Ham. I will.
Ghost. My hour is almost come
When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.
Ham. Alas, poor ghost !
Ghost. Pity me not ; but lend thy serious
hearing
To what I shall unfold. m Mhruwen
Ham. Speak, I am bound to hear.
Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt
hear.
Ham. What ?
Ghost. I am thy father's spirit ;
Doomed 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
46 HAMLET . [Act I.
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes like stars start from their
spheres,
Thy knotted and combinéd 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,—
Ham. O God !
Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural
murder.
Ham. Murder ?
Ghost. Murder most foul, as in the best it is,
But this, most foul, strange, and unnatural.
Ham. Haste me to know 't, that I, with wings
as swift
As meditation, or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.
Ghost. I find thee apt :
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet,
hear.
"T is given out, that, sleeping in mine orchard,
A serpent stung me ; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forgéd process of my death.
Rankly abused ; but know, thou noble youth,

The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown.
Ham. 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 linked,
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 mine orchard,
My custom always in the afternoon ,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of curséd hebenon in a vial,
48 HAMLET. [Act I,
And in the porches of my ears did pour

The leperous distilment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour it doth possess
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood : so did it mine ;
And a most instant tetter barked 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, and queen, at once despatched ;
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,
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 incést.
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, adieu ! remember me. [Exit.
Ham. 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,
Unmixed with baser matter : yes, by Heaven !
O most pernicious woman !
O villain, villain, smiling, damnéd villain !
My tables,-meet it is, I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain ;
At least, I am sure, it may be so in Denmark :
[Writing.
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word ;
It is, ' Adieu, adieu ! remember me.'
I have sworn 't.
Hor. [Within. ] My lord ! my lord !
50 HAMLET. [Act I.
Mar. [Within.] Lord Hamlet !

Hor. [Within.] Heaven secure him !
Mar. [Within.] So be it !
Hor. [ Within. ] Illo, ho, ho, my lord !
Ham. Hillo, ho, ho, boy ! come, bird, come.
5
Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.
Mar. How is 't, my noble lord ?

Hor. What news, my lord ?
Ham. O wonderful !
Hor. Good my lord , tell it.
Ham. No ; you will reveal it.
Hor. Not I, my lord, by Heaven.
Mar. Nor I, my lord.
Ham. How say you, then ; would heart of man
once think it ?--
But you 'll be secret ?
Hor., Mar. Ay, by Heaven, my lord.
Ham. There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Den-
mark,
But he's an arrant knave.
Hor. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from
the grave,
To tell us this.
Ham. Why, right ; you are in 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 hath business and desire,
Such as it is ; and, for my own poor part,
I will go pray.
Hor. These are but wild and whirling words, my
lord.
Ham. I am sorry they offend you, heartily ;
Yes, 'faith, heartily.
Hor. There's no offence, my lord.
Ham.Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is,
Horatio,
And much offence too. Touching this vision.
here,
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you :
For your desire to know what is between us,
O'ermaster 't as you may. And now, good
friends,
As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,
Give me one poor request.
Hor. What is 't, my lord ? we will.
Ham. Never make known what you have seen
to-night.
Hor., Mar. My lord, we will not.
Ham. Nay, but swear 't.
Hor. In faith ,
My lord, not I.
52 HAMLET . [Act I.
Mar. Nor I, my lord, in faith.
Ham. Upon my sword.
Mar. We have sworn, my lord, already.
Ham. In deed, upon my sword, in deed.
Ghost. [Beneath. ] Swear.
Ham. Ha, ha, boy ! say'st thou so ? art thou
there, true-penny?
Come on, you hear this fellow in the cellarage, --
Consent to swear.
Hor. Propose the oath, my lord.
Ham. Never to speak of this that you have
seen,
Swear by my sword.
Ham. Hic et ubique ? then we'll shift our
ground.-
Come hither, gentlemen,
And lay your hands again upon my sword :
Never to speak of this that you have heard,
Swear by my sword. :
Ham . Well said, old mole ! canst work i' the
earth so fast ?
A worthy pioner !-Once more remove, good
friends.
Hor. O day and night, but this is wondrous
strange !
Scene 5.1 HAMLET .. 53
Ham. And therefore as a stranger give it wel-

come.
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 antick disposition on, -
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumbered thus, or this head-shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
6
As, Well, well, we know ; '-or, ' We could, an
if we would ;'-
' 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.

Ham. Rest, rest, perturbéd spirit !-So , gentle-
men,
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,
54 HAMLET. [Act II.
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.
r
t
e
g
e
r
a
m
ACT II.
SCENE I. - A Room in the House of POLONIUS.
Enter POLONIUS and REYNALDO.
Pol. Give him this money, and these notes, Rey-

naldo.
Rey. I will, my lord.

Pol. You shall do marvellous wisely, good Rey-
naldo,
Before you visit him, to make inquiry
Of his behaviour.
Rey. My lord, I did intend it.
Pol. Marry, well said : very well said. Look
you, sir,
Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris ;
And how, and who, what means, and where they
keep,
38
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 't were, some distant knowledge of
him,
As thus, I know his father, and his friends,
And, in part, him : '-do you mark this, Rey-
naldo ?
Rey. Ay, very well, my lord.
Pol. and, in part, him ; but,' you may say,
' not well :
But if 't be he I mean, he's very wild,
Addicted so and so ; '-and there put on him
What forgeries you please, - marry, none SO
rank
As may dishonour him : take heed of that ;
But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips,
As are companions noted and most known
To youth and liberty.
Rey. As gaming, my lord.
Pol. Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing,
Quarrelling, drabbing : you may go so far.
Rey. My lord, that would dishonour him.
Pol. 'Faith, no ; as you may season it in the
charge.
56 HAMLET . [Act II,
You must not put another scandal on him,

That he is open to incontinency ;
That's not my meaning : but breathe his faults so
quaintly,
That they may seem the taints of liberty,
The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,
A savageness in unreclaimed blood,
Of general assault.
Rey. But, my good lord, --
Pol. Wherefore should you do this ?
Rey. Ay, my lord,
I would know that.
Pol. Marry, sir, here's my drift ;
And, I believe, it is a fetch of warrant ;
You laying these slight sullies on my son,
As 't were a thing a little soiled 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 ' gentle-
man,'
According to the phrase, or the addition,
Of man, and country—
Rey. Very good, my lord.
Pol. And then, sir, does he this,—he does—
HAMLET. 57
Scene 1.]
What was I about to say ?-By the mass, I was
About to say something : —where did I leave ?
Rey. At closes in the consequence,'
At ' friend or so,' and ' gentleman. ’
Pol. At ' closes in the consequence,'- ay, marry :
He closes with you thus ; I know the gentle-
man ;
I saw him yesterday, or t' other day,
Or then, or then, with such or such, and, as you
say,
There was he gaming ; there o'ertook in 's rouse ;
There falling out at tennis ; ' or, perchance,
' I saw him enter such a house of sale,'
Videlicet , a brothel, or so forth.—
See you now ;
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth :
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlases and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out :
So, by my former lecture and advice,
You have me, have you not ?
Shall you my son.
Rey. My lord, I have.
Pol. God buy ye ; fare ye well.
Rey. Good my lord !

Pol. Observe his inclination in yourself.
Rey. I shall, my lord.
Pol. And let him ply his music.
58 HAMLET. [Act II.
Rey. Well, my lord.

Pol. Farewell ! [Exit REYNALDO.
Enter OPHELIA.
How now, Ophelia ? what's the matter ?

Oph. Alas, my lord, I have been so affrighted !
Pol. With what, i' the name of God ?
Oph. My lord, as I was sewing in my chamber,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced ;
No hat upon his head ; his stockings fouled,
Ungartered, and down-gyvéd 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 looséd out of hell
To speak of horrors, he comes before me.
Pol. Mad for thy love?
Oph. My lord, I do not know ;
But, truly, I do fear it.
Pol. What said he ?
Oph. He took me by the wrist, and held me
hard ;
Then goes he to the length of all his arm,
And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face
As he would draw it. Long stayed 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,

That 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 turned,
He seemed to find his way without his eyes ;
For out o' doors he went without their help,
And to the last bended their light on me.
Pol. Come, go with me : I will go seek the
king.
This is the very ecstacy of love,
Whose violent property fordoes itself
And leads the will to desperate undertakings
As oft as any passion under heaven
That does afflict our natures. I am sorry--
What, have you given him any hard words of
late ?
Oph. No, my good lord ; but, as you did com-
mand,
I did repel his letters, and denied
His access to me.
Pol. That hath made him mad.-
I am sorry that with better heed and judgment
I had not quoted him : I feared 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
60 HAMLET. [Act II.
As it is common for the younger sort 1

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.
Come. [Exeunt.
SCENE II. A Room in the Castle.
Enter KING, QUEEN, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN,

and Attendants.
King. Welcome, dear Rosencrantz, and Guilden-
stern !
Moreover that we much did long to see you,
The need we have to use you did provoke
Our hasty sending. Something have you heard
Of Hamlet's transformation ; so I call it,
Since not 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,
7
I cannot dream of : I entreat you both,
That, being of so young days brought up with
him
And since so neighboured to his youth and humour,
That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court
Some little time ; so by your companies

To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather,
So much as from occasions you may glean,
Whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus,
That, opened, lies within our remedy.
Queen. Good gentlemen, he hath much talked of
you ;
And, sure I am, two men there are not living
To whom he more adheres. If it will please you
To show us so much gentry and good will
As to expend your time with us awhile,
For the supply and profit of our hope,
Your visitation shall receive such thanks
As fits a king's remembrance.
Ros. Both your majesties
Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,
Put your dread pleasures more into command
Than to entreaty.
Guil. But we both obey ;
And here give up ourselves, in the full bent
To lay our services freely at your feet,
To be commanded.
King. Thanks, Rosencrantz, and gentle Guilden-
stern.
Queen. Thanks, Guildenstern, and gentle Rosen-
crantz :
And I beseech you instantly to visit
62 HAMLET. [Act II.
My too much changéd son.--Go , some of you,

And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.
Guil. Heavens make our presence and our prac-
tices
Pleasant and helpful to him !
Queen. Ay, Amen !
[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and
some Attendants.
Enter POLONIUS.
Pol. The ambassadors from Norway, my good
lord,
Arejoyfully returned .
King. Thou still hast been the father of good
news.
Pol. Have I, my lord ? Assure you, my good
liege,
I hold my duty, as I hold my soul,
Both to my God, and to my gracious king :
And I do think--or else this brain of mine
Hunts not the trail of policy so sure
As it hath used to do-that I have found
The very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.
King. O ! speak of that ; that do I long to
hear.
Pol. Give first admittance to the ambassadors ;
My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.
Scene 2.1 HAMLET. 63
King. Thyself do grace to them, and bring them

in.- [Exit POLONIUS .
He tells me, my sweet queen, that he hath
found
The head and source of all your son's distemper.
Queen. I doubt it is no other but the main, -
His father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage.
King. Well, we shall sift him.-
Re-enter POLONIUS, with VOLTIMAND and
CORNELIUS.
Welcome, my good friends.
Say, Voltimand, what from our brother Nor-
way ?
L
Volt. Most fair return of greetings and desires.
Upon our first, he sent out to suppress
His nephew's levies ; which to him appeared
To be a preparation ' gainst the Polack,
But, better looked 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 th' assay of arms against your majesty.
Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,
Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee,
64 HAMLET . [Act II.
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. It likes us well ;
And, at our more considered time, we'll read ,
Answer, and think upon this business :
Meantine, we thank you for your well -took
labour.
Go to your rest ; at night we'll feast together :
Most welcome home !
[Exeunt VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS.
Pol. This business is well ended.-
My Liege, and Madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night, night, and time is
time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day, and
time.
Therefore, since brevity's the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief. Your noble son is mad :
Mad call I it ; for, to define true madness,
What is 't, but to be nothing else but mad ?

But let that go.
Queen. More matter, with less art.
Pol. Madam, I swear, I use no art at all.
That he is mad, ' t is true : 't is true 't is pity ;
And pity 't is 't is true. -A foolish figure :
But farewell it, for I will use no art.
Mad let us grant him, then ; and now re-
mains,
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
為
Perpend.
I have a daughter ; have, whilst she is mine ;
Who, in her duty and obedience, mark,
Hath given me this : now gather, and surmise :
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 :
'In her excellent-white bosom, these, ' &c.-
Queen. Came this from Hamlet to her ?
Pol. Good madam, stay awhile ; I will be faith-
ful.-
[ Reads. ] ' Doubt thou the stars are fire ,

Doubt, that the sun doth move ;
C- 22
66 HAMLET . Act II.
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 showed me ;
And more above, hath his solicitings,
As they fell out by time, by means, and place,
All given to mine ear.
King. But how hath she
Received his love ?
Pol. What do you think of me ?
King. As of a man faithful and honourable.
Pol. I would fain prove so. But what might
you think,
When I had seen this hot love on the wing, -
As I 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 played the desk, or table-book ;
Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb ;
Or looked 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, repulséd,-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. Do you think 't is this ?
Queen. It may be, very likely.
Pol. Hath there been such a time, I'd fain know
that,
That I have positively said, ' 'Tis so,'
When it proved otherwise ?
King. Not that I know.
Pol. [Pointing to his head and body. ] 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. How may we try it further ?
Pol. You know, sometimes he walks four hours
together
Here in the lobby.
68 HAMLET. [Act II.
Queen. So he does, indeed .

Pol. At such a time I'll loose my daughter to
him :
Be you and I behind an arras then ;
Mark the encounter : if he love her not,
And be not from his reason fallen thereon,
Let me be no assistant for a state
But keep a farm and carters.
King. We will try it.
Queen. But, look, where sadly the poor wretch
comes reading.
Pol. Away ! I do beseech you, both away :
I'll board him presently :-O ! give me leave.-
[ Exeunt KING, QUEEN, and Attendants.
Enter HAMLET, reading.
How does my good Lord Hamlet ?

Ham. Well, God-a-mercy.
Pol. Do you know me, my lord ?
Ham. Excellent well ; you are a fishmonger.
Pol. Not I, my lord.
Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man.
Pol. Honest, my lord ?
Ham. Ay, sir : to be honest, as this world goes,
is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
Pol. That's very true, my lord.
Ham. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead
Scene 2. ] HAMLET. €9
dog, being a god kissing carrion, -Have you a

daughter ?
Pol. I have, my lord.
Ham. Let her not walk i' the sun : conception is
a blessing ; but not as your daughter may conceive.
-Friend, look to 't.
Pol. How say you by that ? -[Aside. ] Still
harping on my daughter :-yet he knew me not at
first ; he said, I was a fishmonger. He is far gone,
far gone and truly in my youth I suffered much
extremity for love ; very near this. I'll speak to
him again.—What do you read, my lord ?
Ham. Words, words, words.
Pol. What is the matter, my lord ?
Ham. Between who ?
Pol. I mean, the matter that you read , my lord.
Ham. Slanders, sir : for the satirical slave says
here, that old men have grey beards, that their
faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick
amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a
plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak
hams all of which, sir, though I most powerfully
and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to
have it thus set down ; for yourself, sir, shall grow
old as I am : if like a crab you could go back-
ward.
Pol. [Aside. ] Though this be madness, yet there's
70 HAMLET. [Act II.
method in 't.-Will you walk out o' the air, my

lord ?
¡ Ham. Into my grave.
Pol. Indeed, that is out o' the air.-[Aside. ]
How pregnant sometimes his replies are a happi-
ness that often madness hits on, which reason and
sanity could not so prosperously be 'delivered of.
I will leave him, and suddenly contrive the means
of meeting between him and my daughter. - My
honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave
of you.
Ham. You cannot, sir, take from me anything
that I will more willingly part withal : except my
life, except my life, except my life.
Pol. Fare you well, my lord.
Ham. These tedious old fools !
Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
Pol. You go to seek the Lord Hamlet ; there he

is.
Ros. [TO POLONIUS. ] God save you, sir !
[Exit POLONIUS.
Guil. Mine honoured lord !-
Ros. My most dear lord !
Ham. My excellent good friends ! How dost
thou, Guildenstern ? Ah, Rosencrantz ! Good
lads, how do ye both ?
Ros. As the indifferent children of the earth.

Guil. Happy, in that we are not overhappy ;
On Fortune's cap we are not the very button.
Ham. Nor the soles of her shoe ?
Ros. Neither, my lord.
Ham. Then you live about her waist, or in the
middle of her favours?
Guil. ' Faith, her privates we.
Ham. In the secret parts of Fortune ? O ! most
true ; she is a strumpet. What news ?
Ros. None, my lord, but that the world's grown
honest.
Ham. Then is doomsday near ; but your news
is not true. Let me question more in particular :
what have you, my good friends, deserved at the
hands of Fortune, that she sends you to prison
hither ?
Guil. Prison, my lord ?
Ham. Denmark's a prison.
Ros. Then is the world one.
Ham. A goodly one ; in which there are many
confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one
of the worst.
Ros. We think not so, my lord.
Ham. Why, then, 't is none to you ; for there is
nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it
so to me it is a prison.
72 HAMLET. [Act II.
Ros. Why, then your ambition makes it one : 't is

too narrow for your mind.
Ham. 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.
Guil. Which dreams, indeed, are ambition ; for
the very substance of the ambitious is merely the
shadow of a dream.
Ham. A dream itself is but a shadow.
Ros. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy
and light a quality, that it is but a shadow's
shadow.
Ham. Then are our beggars bodies, and our
monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars'
shadows. Shall we to the court ? for, by my fay, I
cannot reason.
Ros. , Guil. We'll wait upon you.
Ham. No such matter : I will not sort you with
the rest of my servants ; for, to speak to you like
an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. But,
in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at
Elsinore ?
Ros. To visit you, my lord ; no other occasion.
Ham. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in
thanks ; but I thank you : and sure, dear friends,
my thanks are too dear, a halfpenny. Were you
not sent for ? Is it your own inclining ? Is it a
free visitation ? Come, come ; deal justly with me :

come, come ; nay, speak.
Guil. What should we say, my lord ?
Ham. Why, anything, but to the purpose. You
were sent for ; and there is a kind of confession in
your looks, which your modesties have not craft
enough to colour ; I know, the good king and queen
have sent for you.
Ros. To what end, my lord ?
Ham. That you must teach me. But let me
conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the
consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our
ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a
better proposer could charge you withal, be even
and direct with me, whether you were sent for
or no.
Ros. What say you ?
Ham. Nay, then I have an eye of you. If you
love me, hold not off.
Guil. My lord, we were sent for.
Ham. I will tell you why ; so shall my anticipa-
tion 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 ;
74 HAMLET. [Act II.
this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this

brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof
fretted with golden fire, why, it appeareth no other
thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation
of vapours. What a piece of work is man ! how
noble in reason ! how infinite in 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.
Ros. My lord, there was no such stuff in my
thoughts .
Ham. Why did you laugh then, when I said,
man delights not me ?
Ros. To think, my lord, if you delight not in
map, what lenten Jentertainment the players shall
DCO receive from you ; we coted them on the way, and
hither are they coming to offer you service.
Ham. He that plays the king shall be welcome ;
his Majesty shall have tribute of me : the adventu-
rous knight shall use his foil and target ; the lover
shall not sigh gratis ; the humorous man shall end
his part in peace ; the clown shall make those
laugh, whose lungs are tickled o' the sere ; and the
lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse

shall halt for 't. What players are they ?
Ros. Even those you were wont to take such
delight in, the tragedians of the city.
Ham. How chances it they travel ? their resi-
dence, both in reputation and profit, was better
both ways.
Ros. I think, their inhibition comes by the means
of the late innovation.
Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they
did when I was in the city ? Are they so
followed ?
Ros. No, indeed, they are not.
Ham. How comes it ? Do they grow rusty ?
Ros. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted
pace but there is, sir, an aery of children, little
eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are
most tyrannically clapped for 't : these are now the
fashion, and so berattle the common stages-so
they call them- that many wearing rapiers are
afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither.
Ham. What, are they children ? who maintains
them ? 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 not better their writers do them wrong,
76 HAMLET. [Act II.
to make them exclaim against their own succes-

sion ?
Ros. 'Faith, there has been much to do on both
sides ; and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them
to controversy : there was, for a while, no money
bid for argument, unless the poet and the player
went to cuffs in the question.
Ham. Is it possible ?
Guil. O, there has been much throwing about of
brains.
Ham. Do the boys carry it away ?
Ros. Ay, that they do, my lord ; Hercules and
his load too.
Ham. It is not very strange ; for my uncle is
King of Denmark, and those that would make mouths
at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty,
fifty, 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 oftrumpets within.
Guil. There are the players.
Ham. 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.
Guil. In what, my dear lord ?
Ham. I am but mad north-north-west : when
the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a hand-
saw .
Re-enter POLONIUS.
Pol. Well be with you, gentlemen !

Ham. Mark you, Guildenstern ;—and you too ;—
~
at each ear a hearer : that great baby you see
there is not yet out of his swathing-clouts.
Ros. Happily he's the second time come to them ;
for they say an old man is twice a child.
Ham. I will prophesy, he comes to tell me of the
players ; mark it.—You say right, sir : o' Monday
morning : 't was then indeed.
" Pol. My lord, I have news to tell you .

Ham. My lord, I have news to tell you. When
Roscius was an actor in Rome, -
Pol. The actors are come hither, my lord.
Ham. Buz, buz !
Pol. Upon my honour,-
Ham. Then came each actor on his ass,-
Pol. The best actors in the world, either for
tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comi-
cal-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem
78 HAMLET. [Act II.
unlimited : Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus
too light. For the law of writ, and the liberty, these
are the only men .
Ham. O Jephthah, judge of Israel,' what a
treasure hadst thou !
Pol. What treasure had he, my lord ?
Ham. Why,
' One fair daughter, and no more,
The which he loved passing well. '
Pol. [ Aside.] Still on my daughter.
Ham. Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah ?
Pol. If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a
daughter that I love passing well.
Ham. Nay, that follows not.
Pol. What follows, then, my lord /
Ham. Why,
' As by lot, God wot, '
and then, you know,
' It came to pass, as most like it was,'
the first row of the pious chanson will show you
more ; for look, where my abridgment comes.
Enter four or five Players.

You are welcome, masters ; welcome all.- I am
glad to see thee well -welcome, good friends. - 0,
my old friend, why, thy face is valanced since I
saw thee last : com'st thou to beard me in Denmark ?
What ! my young lady and mistress ! By'r

lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when
I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. Pray
God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be
not cracked within the ring. Masters, you are all
welcome. We'll e'en to 't like French falconers, fly
at anything we see : we'll have a speech straight.
Come, give us a taste of your quality ; come, a
passionate speech.
1 Play. What speech, my good lord ?
Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once, -
but it was never acted ; or, if it was, not above
once ; for the play, I remember, pleased not the
million ; 't was caviare to the general : but it was
-as I received it, and others, whose judgments in
such matters cried in the top of mine-an excellent
play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as
much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said,
there were no sallets in the lines to make the
matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that
might indite the author of affection, 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 : 't was Æneas' 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 :—
80 HAMLET. [Act II.
'The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian

beast,'
-'t 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 couchéd in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion
smeared
With heraldry more dismal ; head to foot
Now is he total gules ; horridly tricked
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters,
sons ,
Baked and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and damnéd light
To their vile murders : 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.
thegood
Pol. 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken ; with
accent, and good discretion .
1 Play. ' Anon he finds him
Striking too short at Greeks ; his antique
sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command. Unequal matched,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives ; in rage, strikes

wide ;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnervéd 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, seemed i̇' th' 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,
Arouséd vengeance sets him new a-work ;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars his 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 ;
82 HAMLET. [Act II.
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,

And bowl the round nave down the hill of
heaven,
As low as to the fiends !'
Pol. This is too long.
Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard.-
Pr'ythee say on :-he's for a jig, or a tale of
bawdry, or he sleeps.
Say on : come to Hecuba.
6
1 Play. But who, O, who had seen the mobled
queen '
Ham. The mobled queen ?
Pol. That's good ; mobled queen is good.
C
1 Play. Run barefoot up and down, threatening
the flames
With bisson rheum ; a clout upon that head,
Where late the diadem stood ; and, for a robe,
About her lank and all o'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 pro-
nounced ;
But if the gods themselves did see her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made-
Unless things mortal move them not at all—
Would have made milch the burning eyes of

heaven,
And passion in the gods.'
Pol. Look, whe'er he has not turned * his colour,
and has tears in ' s eyes !--Pr'ythee, no more.
Ham. 'Tis well ; I'll have thee speak out the
rest of this soon. -Good my lord, will you see the
players well bestowed ? Do you hear, let them be
well used ; for they are the abstract and brief
chronicles of the time : after your death you were
better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while
you lived.
Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their
desert.
Ham. God's bodikin, 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.
Pol. Come, sirs.
Ham. Follow him, friends : we'll hear a play to-
morrow. [Exit POLONIUS, with all the Players ex-
cept the First.] Dost thou hear me, old friend ? can
you play the Murder of Gonzago ?
1 Play. Ay, my lord.
Ham. We'll have it to-morrow night. You could,
for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen
84 HAMLET. [Act II.
lines, which I would set down and insert in 't, could

you not ?
1 Play. Ay, my lord.
Ham. Very well. - Follow that lord ; and look
you mock him not. [Exit First Player. ] My good
friends [to Ros. and GUIL. ] , I'll leave you till night:
you are welcome to Elsinore.
Ros. Good my lord !
Ham. Ay, so, God bye to you.-
[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 whole conceit,
That, from her working, all his visage wanned ;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspéct,
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 What
wall
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 damned 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-livered, 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 vil-
lain !
O, vengeance !
Why, what an ass am I ! This is most brave ;
That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
86 HAMLET. [Act II.
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 proclaimed their malefactions ;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these
players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle : I'll observe his looks
I'll tent him to the quick if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil : and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds
More relative than this : -the play's the thing,
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
[Exit.
Act III.] HAMLET. 87
ACT III.
SCENE I.-A Room in the Castle.
Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSEN-

CRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.
King. And can you, by no drift of conference,

Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy ?
Ros. He does confess he feels himself distracted ;
But from what cause he will by no means speak.
Guil. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded
But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof
When we would bring him on to some confession
Of his true state.
*
Queen. Did he receive you well ?
Ros. Most like a gentleman.
Guil. But with much forcing of his disposition.
Ros. Niggard of question ; but, of our demands,
Most free in his reply.
Queen. Did you assay him
To any pastime ?
Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain players
We o'er-raught on the way of these we told
him ;
88 HAMLET. [Act III.
And there did seem in him a kind of joy

To hear of it. They are about the court ;
And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.
Pol. 'Tis most true :
And he beseeched me to entreat your majesties,
To hear and see the matter.
King. With all my heart ; and it doth much con-
tent me
To hear him so inclined .
Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
And drive his purpose on to these delights.
Ros. We shall, my lord.
King. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too ;
For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
That he, as 't were 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 afflietion of his love or no
That thus he suffers for.
Queen. I shall obey you.—
And, for your part, Ophelia, I do wish,
That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet's wildness ; so shall I hope, your

virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honours.
Oph. Madam, I wish it may.
[Exit QUEEN.
Pol. Ophelia, walk you here.-- Gracious, so please
you,
We will bestow ourselves.-[To OPHELIA. ] Read
on this book,
That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness.We are oft to blame in this, —
"Tis too much proved, that, with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
King. [Aside. ] O ! ' tis too true !
How smart a lash that speech doth give my con-
science !
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it,
Than is my deed to my most painted word.
O heavy burden !
Pol. I hear him coming : let's withdraw, my
lord, [Exeunt KING and POLONIUS.
Enter HAMLET.
Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question :-

90 HAMLET . [Act III.
Whether 't is 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, -'t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. 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 undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns,-puzzles the will,
15
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 remembered.
Oph. Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thank you ; well, well, well.
Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longéd long to re-deliver ;
I pray you, now receive them .
Ham. No, not I ;
I never gave you aught.
Oph. My honoured 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.
Ham. Ha, ha ! are you honest ?
92 HAMLET . [Act III,
Oph. My lord !
Ham. Are you fair ?
Oph. What means your lordship ?
Ham. That if you be honest, and fair, your
honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.
Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better com-
merce than with honesty ?
Ham. Ay, truly ; for the power of beauty will
sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd,
than the force of honesty can translate beauty into
his likeness : this was sometime a paradox , but now
the time gives it proof. I did love you once.
Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe
SO.
Ham. You should not have believed me ; for
virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, but we
shall relish of it : I loved you not.
Oph. I was the more deceived.
Ham. Get thee to a nunnery, why wouldst thou
be a breeder of sinners ? I am myself indifferent
honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things,
that it were better ny 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
1
arrant knaves , all ; believe none of us. Go thy
ways to a nunnery. -Where's your father ?
Oph. At home, my lord.
Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he
may play the fool no where but in 's own house.
Farewell.
Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens !
Ham. If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this
plague for thy dowry : be thou as chaste as ice, as
pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get
thee to a nunnery. Go, farewell. Or, if thou wilt
needs marry, marry a fool ; for wise men know
well enough what monsters you make of them. To
a nunnery, go ; and quickly too. Farewell.
Oph. O heavenly powers, restore him !
Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well
enough God hath given you one face, and you
make yourselves another : you jig, you amble, and you
lisp, and nickname God's creatures, and make your
wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more
on't it hath made me mad. I say we will have
no more marriages : those that are married already,
all but one, shall live ; the rest shall keep as they
are. To a nunnery, go. [Exit.
Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown !
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue,
sword ;
The expectancy and rose ofthe 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 sucked 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 ecstacy : O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see !
Re-enter KING and POLONIUS.
King. Love ! his affections do not that way

tend ;
Nor what he spake, though it lacked 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 ?
Pot. 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. g 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 griefs : 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, hap
To England send him ; or confine him where
Your wisdom best shall think.
King. It shall be so :
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.
[Exeunt.
Scene II.-A Hall in the Same.
Enter HAMLET and three of the Players.

Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pro-
nounced 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 dumb-shows
and noise : I would have such a fellow whipped
for o'erdoing Termagant ; it out-herods Herod :
pray you, avoid it.
1 Play. I warrant your honour.
Ham. Be not too tame neither, but let your own
discretion be your tutor : suit the action to the
word, the word to the action, with this special
observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of
nature ; for anything so overdone is from the
purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first
and now, was and is, to hold, as 't were, 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.
1 Play. I hope, we have reformed that indif-
ferently with us.
Ham. O, reform it altogether. And let those
that play your clowns speak no more than is set
down for them for there be of them, that will
themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren
spectators to laugh too ; though, in the meantime,
some necessary question of the play be then to be
considered : that's villainous, and shows a most
pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make
you ready.- [Exeunt Players.
Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.
How now, my lord ? will the king hear this piece

of work ?
Pol. And the queen too, and that presently.
Ham. Bid the players make haste.—
[Exit POLONIUS.
Will you two help to hasten them ?
-29
Ros., Guil. We will, my lord.
[ Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
Ham. What, ho, Horatio !
Enter HORATIO.
Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service.

Ham. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
As e'er my conversation coped withal.
Hor. O, my dear lord, —
Ham. Nay, do not think I flatter ;
For what advancement may I hope from thee,
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits
To feed and clothe thee ? Why should the poor be
flattered ?
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 sealed 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 co-mingled
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 w
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,

As I do thee. Something too much of this.—
There is a play to-night before the king ;
One scene of it comes near the circumstance
Which I have told thee of my father's death :
I pr'ythee, when thou 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 damnéd ghost that we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note :
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face ;
And, after, we will both our judgments join
In censure of his seeming.
Hor. Well, my lord :
If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,
And ' scape detecting, I will pay the theft.
Ham. They are coming to the play ; I must be
idle :
Get you a place.
Danish march. A flourish. Enter, with his guard

carrying torches, KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS ,
OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and
other Lords attendant.
King. How fares our cousin Hamlet ?
100 HAMLET. [Act III
Ham. Excellent, i' faith ; of the chameleon's

dish : I eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot
feed capons so.
King. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet ;
these words are not mine.
Ham. No, nor mine now.-[To POLONIUS. ]- My
lord, you played once i' th' university, you say?
Pol. That did I, my lord ; and was accounted a
good actor.
Ham. And what did you enact ?
Pol. I did enact Julius Cæsar ; I was killed i'
the Capitol ; Brutus killed me.
Ham. It was a brute part of him to kill so
capital a calf there. - Be the players ready ?
Ros. Ay, my lord ; they stay upon your patience.
Queen. Come hither, my good Hamlet, sit by
me.
Ham. No, good mother, here's metal more attrac-
tive.
Pol. [To the KING. ] O ho, do you mark that ?
Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap ?
[Lying down at OPHELIA's feet.
Oph. No, my lord.
Ham. I mean, my head upon your lap ?
Oph. Ay, my lord.
Ham. Do you think I meant country matters ?
Oph. I think nothing, my lord.
Ham. That's a fair thought to lie between

maids' legs ?
Oph. What is, my lord ?
Ham. Nothing.
Oph. You are merry, my lord.
Ham. Who, I ?
Oph. Ay, my lord.
Ham. O 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 's two hours.
Oph. Nay, 't is twice two months, my lord.
Ham. So long ? Nay then, let the devil wear
black, for I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens,
die two months ago, and not forgotten yet ? Then
there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his
life half a year ; but, by 'r lady, he must build
churches then, or else shall he suffer not thinking
on, with the hobby-horse whose epitaph is, " For,
O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot."
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 ofprotestation unto him. He takes
her up, and declines his head upon her neck. He
lays him down upon a bank offlowers. She, seeing
him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in another man,

takes offhis crown, kisses it, and pours poison inthe
sleeper's ears, and leaves him. 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 woos the
Queen with gifts : she seems loath and unwilling
awhile ; but in the end accepts his love. [Exeunt.
Oph. What means this, my lord ?
Ham. Marry, this is miching mallecho ; it means
mischief.
Oph. Belike this show imports the argument of
the play.
Enter Prologue.
Ham. We shall know by this fellow : the players
cannot keep counsel ; they'll tell all.
Oph. Will he tell us what this show meant ?
Ham. Ay, or any show that you will show him :
be not you ashamed to show, he'll not shame to
tell you what it means.
Oph. You are naught, you are naught. I'll
mark the play.
Pro. For us, and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently. [Exit.
Ham. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring ?
Oph. "T is brief, my lord.

Ham. As woman's love.
Enter a King and a Queen.

P. King. Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart
gone round
Neptune's salt wash, and Tellus ' orbéd ground ;
And thirty dozen moons, with borrow'd sheen,
About the world have times twelve thirties been,
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.
P. Queen. So many journeys may the sun and
moon
Make us again count o'er ere love be done.
But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer and from your former state,
That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must,
For women fear too much, even as they love,
And women's fear and love hold 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 ;
Wherelittle fears grow great, great love grows there.
P. King. Faith, I must leave thee, love, and
shortly too ;
104 HAMLET. [Act III,
My operant powers their functions leave to do :

And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honoured, beloved ; and, haply, one as kind
For husband shalt thou-
P. Queen. O, confound the rest !
Such love must needs be treason in my breast :
In second husband let me be accurst !
None wed the second, but who killed the first.
Ham. [Aside. ] Wormwood, wormwood.
P. Queen. The instances that second marriage
move
Are base respects of thrift, but none of love :
A second time I kill my husband dead
When second husband kisses me in bed.
P. King. I do believe you think what now you
speak ;
But what we do determine oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory,
Of violent birth, but poor validity ;
Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,
But fall unshaken, when they mellow be.
Most necessary 't is, 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 :
Scene 2. HAMLET. 105
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament ;

Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
This world is not for aye ; nor 't is not strange
That even our loves should with our fortunes
change :
For 't is 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 contráry run,
That our devices still are overthrown ;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own :
So think thou wilt no second husband wed ;
But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.
P. Queen. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven
light ;
Sport and repose lock from me day and night ;
To desperation turn my trust and hope ;
An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope ;
Each opposite, that blanks the face of joy,
Meet what I would have well, and it destroy ;
Both here, and hence, pursue me lasting strife, -

If, once a widow, ever I be wife !
Ham. If she should break it now ?
P. King. 'T is deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me
here awhile :
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep. [Sleeps.
P. Queen. Sleep rock thy brain ;
And never come mischance between us twain. [ Exit.
Ham. Madam, how like you this play ?
Queen. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Ham. O, but she 'll keep her word.
King. Have you heard the argument ? Is there
no offence in 't ?
Ham. No, no ; they do but jest, poison in jest ;
no offence i' the world.
King. What do you call the play ?
Ham. The Mouse-trap. Marry, how ? Tro-
pically. This play is the image of a murder done
in Vienna : Gonzago is the duke's name ; his wife,
Baptista . You shall see anon ; ' t is a knavish
piece of work but what of 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.

Oph. You are a good chorus, my lord.

Ham. I could interpret between you and your
love, if I could see the puppets dallying.
Oph. You are keen, my lord, you are keen.
Ham. It would cost you a groaning to take off
my edge.
Oph. Still better, and worse.
Ham. So you must take your husbands.
Begin, murderer, leave thy damnable faces, and
begin. Come : the croaking raven doth bellow
for revenge.
Luc. Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and
time agreeing ;
Confederate season, else no creature seeing ;
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected ,
With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice in-
fected,
Thy natural magic and dire property
On wholesome life usurp immediately.
[Pours the poison into the Sleeper's ears.
Ham. He poisons him i' the garden for 's estate.
His name's Gonzago : the story is extant, and writ
in choice Italian. You shall see anon how the
murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
Oph. The king rises.
Ham. What, frighted with false fire?
Queen. How fares my lord ?
Pol. Give o'er the play.

King. Give me some light !-away !
All. Lights, lights, lights !
[Exeunt all but HAMLET and HORATIO.
Ham. Why, let the strucken deer go weep,
The hart ungalléd play ;
For some must watch, while some must
sleep :
Thus runs the world away.
Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers- if
the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me-with
two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me
a fellowship in a cry of players, sir ?
Hor. Half a share.
Ham. A whole one, I.
For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself ; and now reigns here
A very, very-pajock.
Hor. You might have rhymed.
Ham. O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's
word for a thousand pound. Didst perceive ?
Hor. Very well, my lord.
Ham. Upon the talk of the poisoning,-
Hor. I did very well note him.
Ham. Ah, ha !-Come, some music ! come, the
recorders !
For if the king like not the comedy,

Why then, belike, ―he likes it not, perdy.—
Come, some music !
Guil. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with

you.
Ham. Sir, a whole history.
Guil. The king, sir, -
Ham. Ay, sir, what of him ?
Guil. Is, in his retirement, marvellous dis-
tempered.
Ham. With drink, sir ?
Guil. No, my lord, rather with choler.
Ham. 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.
Guil. Good my lord, put your discourse into
some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair.
Ham. I am tame, sir ; -pronounce.
Guil. The queen, your mother, in most great
affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.
Ham. You are welcome.
Guil. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of
the right breed. If it shall please you to make
me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother's
ΠΟ HAMLET. [Act III.
commandment ; if not, your pardon and my return

shall be the end of my business.
Ham. Sir, I cannot.
Guil. What, my lord ?
Ham. Make you a wholesome answer ; my wit's
diseased : but, sir, such answer as I can make, you
shall command ; or, rather, as you say, my mother :
therefore no more, but to the matter. My mother,
you say,-
Ros. Then, thus she says. Your behaviour hath
struck her into amazement and admiration.
Ham. O wonderful son, that can so astonish a
mother !-But is there no sequel at the heels of
this mother's admiration ? impart.
Ros. She desires to speak with you in her closet,
ere you go to bed.
Ham. We shall obey, were she ten times our
mother. Have you any further trade with us ?
Ros. My lord, you once did love me.
Ham. And do still, by these pickers and stealers.
Ros. Good my lord, what is your cause of dis-
temper ? you do surely bar the door upon your own
liberty, if you deny your griefs to your friend.
Ham. Sir, I lack advancement.
Ros. How can that be, when you have the voice
of the king himself for your succession in Den-
mark ?
Ham. Ay, sir, but While the grass grows '

-the proverb is something musty.
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 ?
Guil. O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my
love is too unmannerly.
Ham. I do not well understand that. Will you
play upon this pipe ?
Guil. My lord, I cannot.
Ham. I pray you.
Guil. Believe me, I cannot.
Ham. I do beseech you.
Guil. I know no touch of it, my lord.
Ham. It is as easy as lying : govern these ven-
tages with your finger and thumb, give it breath
with your mouth, and it will discourse most
eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.
Guil. But these cannot I command to any
utterance of harmony ; I have not the skill.
Ham. Why, look you now, how unworthy a
thing you make of me. You would play upon me ;
you would seem to know my stops ; you would
pluck out the heart of my mystery ; you would
sound me from my lowest note to the top of my

compass and there is much music, excellent voice,
in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak.
Why do you think that I am easier to be played on
than a pipe ? Call me what instrument you will ,
though you can fret me, you cannot play upon
me.
Enter POLONIUS.
God bless you, sir !
Pol. My lord, the queen would speak with you,
and presently.
Ham. Do you see yonder cloud, that's almost in
shape of a camel ?
Pol. By the mass, and 't is like a camel, in-
deed.
Ham. Methinks, it is like a weasel.
Pol. It is backed like a weasel.
Ham. Or, like a whale ?
Pol. Very like a whale.
Ham. Then will I come to my mother by-and-by.
-They fool me to the top of my bent. -I will
come by-and-by.
Pol. I will say so. [Exit.
Ham. By-and-by is easily said. - Leave me,
friends. [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN,
HORATIO, &c.
"T is now the very witching time of night
owen
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes
out
Contagion to this world : now could I drink hot
blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft now, to my
Mother :-
O heart, lose not thy nature ; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom ;
Let me be cruel, not unnatural,
I will speak daggers to her, but use none.
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites :
How in my words soever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my soul, consent ! [Exit.
SCENE III.- A Room in the Same.
Enter KING, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.
King. I like him not ; nor stands it safe with

us
To let his madness range. Therefore, prepare you :
I your commission will forthwith despatch,
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.
Guil. We will ourselves provide .

Most holy and religious fear it is
To keep those many many bodies safe
That live and feed upon your majesty.
Ros. The single and peculiar life is bound,
With all the strength and armour of the mind,
To keep itself from noyance ; but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests
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,
Fixed on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoined ; which, when it falls,
Each small annexment , petty consequence,
Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.
King. Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy
voyage ;
For we will fetters put upon this fear,
Which now goes too free-footed.
Ros., Guil. We will haste us.
[ Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
Enter POLONIUS.
Pol. My lord, he's going to his mother's closet :

Behind the arras I'll convey myself,
To hear the process : I'll warrant, she'll tax him

home ;
And, as you said, and wisely was it said,
'T is meet that some more audience than a mother,
Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear
The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege
I'll call upon you ere you go to bed,
And tell you what I know.
King. Thanks, dear my lord.
[Exit POLONIUS .
O! my offence is rank, it smells to heaven :
It hath the primal eldest curse upon 't,
A brother's murder !--Pray can I not ;
Though inclination be as sharp as will,
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent ;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow ? Whereto serves
mercy,
But to confront the visage of offence ?
And what's in prayer, but this two-fold force, --
To be forestalléd, ere we come to fall,
Or pardoned, 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 pardoned, and retain the offence ?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice ;
And oft ' t is seen, the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law : but 't is not so above ;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled,
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 liméd 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 new-born babe !
All may be well. [Retires and kneels.
Enter HAMLET.
Ham. Now might I do it, pat, now he is pray-
ing ;
And now I'll do 't :—and so he goes to heaven :

And so am I reveng'd ? that would be scanned :
A villain kills my father ; and, for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Why, 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,
"T is heavy with him. And am I, then, revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and seasoned 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 pleasures 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 damned and
black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays :
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days. [Exit.
118 HAMLET. |Act III.
The KING rises and advances

King. My words fly up, my thoughts remain
below :
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
[Exit.
SCENE IV. A Room in the Same.
Enter QUEEN and POLONIUS.

Pol. He will come straight. Look you lay home
to him :
Tell him, his pranks have been too broad to bear
with,
And that your grace hath screened and stood be-
tween
Much heat and him. I'll silence me e'en
here.
Pray you , be round with him.
Ham. [ Within. ] Mother, mother, mother !
Queen. I'll warrant you ;
Fear me not withdraw, I hear him coming.
[POLONIUS hides himself behind the arras.
Enter HAMLET
Ham. Now, mother, what's the matter ?

Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much of-
fended.
Ham. Mother, you have my father much of-

fended.
Queen. Come, come, you answer with an idle
tongue.
Ham. Go, go, you question with a wicked
tongue.
Queen. Why, how now, Hamlet ?
Ham. What's the matter now ?
Queen. Have you forgot me?
Ham. No, by the rood, not so :
You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife ;
And- would it were not so- you are my mother.
Queen. Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can
speak.
Ham. Come, come, and sit you down ; you shall
not budge ; www
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
Queen. What wilt thou do ? thou wilt not
murder me ?
Help, help, ho !
Pol. [Behind. ] What, ho ! help, help, help !
Ham. How now ! a rat ? [Draws. ] Dead for a
ducat, dead !
[Makes a pass through the arras.
Pol. [Behind.] O ! I am slain. [Falls, and dies,
Queen. O me, what hast thou done ?
Ham. Nay, I know not :
Is it the king!
Queen. O, what a rash and bloody deed is this !
Ham. A bloody deed : almost as bad, good
mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
Queen. As kill a king !
Ham. Ay, lady, 't was my word.
[Lifts up the arras, and sees 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 damnéd custom have not braz'd it so,
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
Queen. What have I done, that thou dar'st wag
thy tongue
In noise so rude against me ?
Ham. Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty ;
Calls virtue, hypocrite ; takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there ; makes marriage vows
As false as dicers' oaths : O, such a deed,
As from the body of contraction plucks

The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words : heaven's face doth glow,
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.
Queen. Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the index ?
Ham. Look here, upon this picture, and on
this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on his 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 mòor ? 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 judg-

ment
Would step from this to this ? Sense, sure, you
have,
Else could you not have motion ; but, sure, that
sense
Is apoplexed : for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstacy was ne'er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice,
To serve in such a difference. What devil
was 't,
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind ?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense,
Could not so mope.
O shame, where is thy blush ? Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax
And melt in her own fire : proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge ;
Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
And reason panders will .
Queen. O Hamlet , speak no more !
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul ;
And there I see such black and grainéd spots,
As will not leave their tinct.
Ham. Nay, but to live

In the rank sweat of an enseaméd bed ;
Stewed in corruption ; honeying, and making love
Over the nasty sty, —
Queen. O, speak to me no more !
These words like daggers enter in mine ears :
No more, sweet Hamlet !
Ham. A murderer, and a villain ;
A slave, that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord :—a vice of kings ;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket, '
Queen No more !
Ham. A king of shreds and patches, -
Enter Ghost.
Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,

You heavenly guards ! -What would your gracious
figure ?
Queen. Alas ! he 's mad.
Ham. Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, 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.
Ham. How is it with you, lady ?
Queen. Alas, how is ' t with you
That you do bend your eye on vacancy
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse ?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep ;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm ,
Your bedded 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 ?
Ham. On him, on him !—Look you, how pale he
glares !
His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones
Would make them capable. -Do not look upon
me ;
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects : then, what I have to do
Will want true colour ; tears, perchance, for blood.
Queen. To whom do you speak this ?
Ham. Do you see nothing there ?
Queen. Nothing at all ; yet all that is I see.
Ham. Nor did you nothing hear ?
Queen. No, nothing but ourselves.
Ham. Why, look you there ! look, how it steals

away !
My father, in his habit as he lived !
Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal !
[Exit Ghost.
Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain :
This bodiless creation, ecstacy
Is very cunning in.
Ham. Ecstacy !
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music. It is not mad-
ness
That I have uttered : bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word ; which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks :
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen . Confess yourself to Heaven ;
Repent what's past ; avoid what is to come ;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my
virtue ;
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
Queen. O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in

twain !
Ham. O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
Good night but go not to mine uncle's bed ;
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits 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,
Either subdue the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night :
And when you are desirous to be blessed,
I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,
[Pointing to POLONIUS.
I do repent : but Heaven hath pleas'd it so,
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So, again, good night.-
I must be cruel, only to be kind :
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.-
One word more, good lady.
Queen. What shall I do ?

Ham. Not this, by no means, that I bid you
do :
Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed ;
Pinch wanton on your cheek ; call you his
mouse ;
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
Or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness ,
But mad in craft. 'T were good, you let him
know ;
For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
Such dear concernings hide ? who would do so ?
No, in despite of sense, and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house's top,
Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep,
And break your own neck down.
Queen. Be thou assured, if words be made of
breath
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.
Ham. I must to England ; you know that.
Queen. Alack,
I had forgot 't is so concluded on.
Ham. There's letters sealed : and my two school-

fellows , -
Whom I will trust, as I will adders fanged, -
They bear the mandate ; they must sweep my way,
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work ;
For 't is the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar : and ' t shall go hard,
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon. O, 't is most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.-
This man shall set me packing !
I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.-
Mother, good night. - Indeed , this counsellor
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.-
Good night, mother.
[Exeunt severally ; HAMLET dragging in
POLONIUS.
Act IV.] HAMLET. 129
ACT IV .
SCENE I. - The Same.
Enter KING, QUEEN, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDEN-

STERN.
King. There's matter in these sighs, these pro-

found heaves
You must translate ; 't is fit we understand them.
Where is your son ?——
Queen. Bestow this place on us a little while.
-Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night !
King. What, Gertrude ? How does Hamlet ?
Queen. Mad as the sea and wind when both
contend
Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit,
Behind the arras hearing something stir,
He whips his rapier out, and cries, ' A rat ! a
rat !'
And, in this brainish apprehension, kills
The unseen good old man.
King. O heavy deed !
It had been so with us had we been there.
His liberty is full of threats to all ;
To you yourself, to us, to every one.
E- 22
150 ᎻᎪᎷᏞᎬᎢ . Act IV.1
Alas ! how shall this bloody deed be answered ?
It will be laid to us, whose providence
Should have kept short, restrained, and out of
haunt,
This mad young man ; but, so much was our
love,
We would not understand what was most fit ;
But, like the owner of a foul disease,
To keep it from divulging, let it feed
Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone ?
Queen. To draw apart the body he hath
killed ;
O'er whom his very madness, like some ore
Among a mineral of metals base,
Shows itself pure : he weeps for what is done.
King. O Gertrude, come away.
The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch
But we will ship him hence ; and this vile deed
We must, with all our majesty and skill,
Both countenance and excuse. - Ho, Guildenstern !
Re-enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
Friends both, go join you with some further

aid.
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
And from his mother's closet hath he drag
him :
Go, seek him out ; speak fair, and bring the body
Into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this.
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.
SCENE II.- Another Room in the Same.

Enter HAMLET.
Ham. Safely stowed.

Ros. , Guil. [ Within. ] Hamlet ! Lord Hamlet !
Ham. What noise ? who calls on Hamlet ? O ,
here they come.
Ros. What have you done, my lord, with the

dead body ?
Ham. Compounded it with dust, whereto ' t is
kin.
132 HAMLET . [Act IV.
Ros. Tell us where ' t is, that we may take it

thence
And bear it to the chapel.
Ham. Do not believe it.
Ros. Believe what ?
Ham. That I can keep your counsel and not
mine own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge !
What replication should be made by the son of a

king ?
Ros. Take you me for a sponge, my lord ?
Ham. Ay, sir ; that soaks up the king's
countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But
such officers do the king best service in the end :
he keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his
jaw ; first mouthed to be last swallowed when he
needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing
you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.
Ros. I understand you not, my lord.
Ham. I am glad of it : a knavish speech sleeps
in a foolish ear.
Ros. My lord, you must tell us where the body
is, and go with us to the king.
Ham. The body is with the king, but the king
is not with the body. The king is a thing-
Guil. A thing, my lord !
Ham. Of nothing :-bring me to him . Hide fox,
and all after. [Exeunt.
SCENE III.- Another Room in the Same.

Enter KING, attended.
King. I have sent to seek him, and to find the

body.
How dangerous is it, that this man goes loose !
Yet must not we put the strong law on him :
He's loved of the distracted multitude,
Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes ;
And where 't is So, the offender's Scourge is
weighed,
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 befallen ?
Ros. Where the dead body is bestowed, my lord,
We cannot get from him.
King. But where is he ?
Ros. Without, my lord ; guarded, to know your
pleasure.
King. Bring him before us.
Ros. Ho, Guildenstern ! bring in my lord.
134 HAMLET. [Act IV.
Enter HAMLET and GUILDENSTERN.
King. Now, Hamlet, where 's Polonius ?
Ham At supper.
King. At supper ! Where ?
Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten :
a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at
him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet :
we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat our-
selves for maggots : your fat king and your lean
beggar is but variable service ; two dishes, but to
one table that 's the end.
King. Alas, alas !
Ham. A man may fish with the worm that hath
eat of a king ; and eat of the fish that hath fed of
that worm .
King. What dost thou mean by this ?
Ham. Nothing, but to show you how a king may
go a progress through the guts of a beggar.
King. Where is Polonius ?
Ham. In heaven : send thither to see ; if your
messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other
place yourself. But, indeed, if you find him not
within this month, you shall nose him as you go up
the stairs into the lobby.
King. [To some Attendants. ] Go seek him there.
Ham. He will stay till you come.
[Exeunt Attendants.
King. Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial

safety, -
Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve
For that which thou hast done, -must send thee
hence
With fiery quickness ; therefore, prepare thyself.
The bark is ready, and the wind at help,
The associates tend, and everything is bent
For England.
Ham. For England ? W
King. Ay, Hamlet.
Ham. Good.
King. So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.
Ham. I see a cherub that sees them. - But,
come ; for England !-Farewell, dear mother.
King. Thy loving father, Hamlet.
Ham. My mother father and mother is man
and wife, man and wife is one flesh ; and so, my
mother. Come, for England ! [Exit.
King. Follow him at foot ; tempt him with
speed aboard :
Delay it not, I'll have him hence to-night.
Away, for everything is sealed and done
That else leans on the affair : pray you, make
haste,-
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 may'st not coldly set
Our sovereign process ; which imports at full,
By letters conjuring to that effect,
The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England ;
For like the hectic in my blood he rages,
And thou must cure me. Till I know 't is done,
Howe'er my haps, my joys were neʼer begun.
[Exit.
SCENE IV. - A Plain in Denmark.
Enter FORTINBRAS, a Captain, and Forces,

marching.
For. Go, captain ; from me greet the Danish
king ;
Tell him that, by his license, Fortinbras
Claims 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.
Cap. I will do 't, my lord.
For. Go softly on.
[Exeunt FORTINBRAS and Soldiers.
Enter HAMLET, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, &c.

Ham. Good sir, whose powers are these ?
Cap. They are of Norway, sir.
Ham. How purposed, sir, I pray you ?
Cap. Against some part of Poland.
Ham. Who commands them, sir ?
Cap. The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.
Ham. Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
Or for some frontier ?
Cap. Truly to speak, sir, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it ;
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.
Ham. Why, then the Polack never will defend
it.
Cap. Yes, 't is already garrisoned.
Ham. Two thousand souls and twenty thousand
ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw :
This is the imposthume of much wealth and
peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies. -I humbly thank you, sir.
Cap. God buy you, sir. [Exit.
Ros. Will't please you go, my lord ?
138 HAMLET. LAct IV.
Ham. I'll be with you straight. Go a little

before.
[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, &c.
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man,
If his chief good, and market of his time,
Be but to sleep, and feed ? a beast, no more.
Sure, He, that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,-
A thought which, quartered, 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 puffed,
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 killed, a mother stained,
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 ! a
[Exit.
SCENE V. - Elsinore. A Room in the Castle.

Enter QUEEN and HORATIO.
Queen. I will not speak with her.

Hor. She is importunate, indeed, distract :
Her mood will needs be pitied.
Queen. What would she have ?
Hor. 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,
HAMLET [Act IV.
140
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.
'T were good she were spoken with, for she may
strew
Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds .
Queen. Let her come in. [Exit HORATIO .
To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is,
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss :
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
Re-enter HORATIO, with OPHELIA.

Oph. Where is the beauteous majesty of Den-
mark?
Queen. How now, Ophelia ?
Oph. [Sings. ] How should I your true love know
From another one ?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.
Queen. Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song ?
Oph. Say you ? nay, pray you, mark. [Sings.

He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone ;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.
O, oh !
Queen. Nay, but, Ophelia, -
Oph. Pray you, mark. [Sings.
White his shroud as the mountain snow, —
Enter KING.
Queen. Alas ! look here, my lord. [Sings.

Oph. Larded with sweet flowers ;
Which bewept to the grave did go,
With true-love showers.
King. How do ye, pretty lady ?
Oph. Well, God dild you ! They say, the owl was
egen a baker's daughter. Lord ! we know what we are, but
know not what we may be. God be at your table !
King. Conceit upon her father.
Oph. Pray you, let's have no words of this ; but
when they ask you what it means, say you this :
[Sings.
To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning 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. Pretty Ophelia !
Oph. Indeed, la, without an oath, I'll make an
end on ' t :
By Gis, and by Saint Charity, [Sings.
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. How long hath she been thus ?
Oph. I hope, all will be well. We must be
patient but I cannot choose but weep, to think
they 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. 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. And now, behold,
O Gertrude, Gertrude !
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,

But in battalias. 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 beggared,
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. Alack, what noise is this ?
King. Where are my Switzers ? Let them guard
the door.
Enter a Gentleman.
What is the matter ?
Gent. Save yourself, my lord :
The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
O'erbears your 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. How cheerfully on the false trail they
cry !
O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs !
King. The doors are broke. [Noise within.
Enter LAERTES, armed ; Danes following.

Laer. Where is this king ?-Sirs, stand you all
without.
Danes. No, let's come in.
Laer. I pray you, give me leave.
Danes. We will , we will.
[They retire without the door.
Laer. I thank you : keep the door. -O thou vile
king,
Give me my father.
Queen. Calmly, good Laertes.

Laer. That drop of blood that's calm proclaims
me bastard ;
Cries cuckold to my father ; brands the harlot
Even here, between the chaste unsmirchéd
brow
Of my true mother.
King. What is the cause, Laertes,
That thy rebellion looks so giant-like ?——
Let him go, Gertrude ; do not fear our person :
There's such divinity doth hedge a king
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will. -Tell me, Laertes,
Why thou art thus incensed. -Let him go, Ger-
trude.-
Speak, man.
Laer. Where is my father ?
King. Dead.
Queen. But not by him.
King. Let him demand his fill.
Laer. How came he dead ? I'll not be juggled
with.
To hell, allegiance ! vows, to the blackest
devil !
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit !
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes ; only I'll be revenged

Most throughly for my father.
King. Who shall stay you ?
Laer. My will, not all the world :
And, for my means, I'll husband them so well,
They shall go far with little.
King. Good Laertes,
If you desire to know the certainty
Of your dear father's death, is ' t writ in your
revenge
That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and
foe,
Winner and loser ?
Laer. None but his enemies.
King. Will you know them then ?
Laer. To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my
arms ;
And, like the kind life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood.
King. Why, now you speak
Like a good child and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father's death,
And am most sensibly in grief for it,
It shall as level to your judgment pierce
As day does to your eye.
Danes. [ Within.] Let her come in.
Laer. How now ! what noise is that ?
Re-enter OPHELIA.
O heat, dry up my brains ! tears seven times
salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye 1-
By Heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May !
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia !-
O heavens ! is 't possible, a young maid's wits
Should be as mortal as an old man's life ?
Nature is fine in love ; and, where ' t is fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.
Oph. They bore him barefaced on the bier ; bam
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny :
And in his grave rained many a tear,
Fare you well, my dove !
Laer. Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade
revenge,
It could not move thus.
Oph. You must sing, Down a-down, an you call
him a-down-a. O, how the wheel becomes it ! It
is the false steward, that stole his master's
daughter.
Laer. This nothing's more than matter.
Oph. There's rosemary, that 's for remembrance ;
pray you, love, remember : and there is pansies,
that ' s for thoughts . Wil
Laer. A document in madness,-thoughts and

remembrance fitted.
Oph. There's fennel for you , and columbines ;—
there's rue for you ; and here's some for me : we
may call it herb of grace o' Sundays :-O, you must
wear your rue with a difference.- There's a daisy :
I would give you some violets ; but they withered
all when my father died. They say, he made a
good end,-
For bonny sweet Robin is all myjoy,—
Laer. Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
She turns to favour and to prettiness.
Oph. 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 as white as snow,
Allflaxen 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 buy

you ! [Exit.
Laer. Do you see this ? O God !
King. Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
Or you deny me right. Go but apart,

Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
And they shall hear and judge ' twixt you and me.
If by direct or by collateral hand
They find us touched , we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
To you in satisfaction ; but if not,
Be you content to lend your patience to us,
And we shall jointly labour with your soul
To give it due content.
Laer. Let this be so :
His means of death, his obscure burial, —
No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
No noble rite nor formal ostentation, -
Cry to be heard, as 't were from heaven to earth,
That I must call 't in question.
King. So you shall ;
And where the offence is, let the great axe fall .
I pray you, go with me. [Exeunt.
SCENE VI.- Another Room in the Same.

Enter HORATIO and a Servant.
Hor. What are they, that would speak with me ?

Serv. Sailors, sir : they say, they have letters
for you.
Hor. Let them come in.- [Exit Servant.

I do not know from what part of the world
I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.
Enter Sailors.
1 Sail. God bless you, sir.
Hor. Let him bless thee too.
1 Sail. He shall, sir, an 't please him. There's
a letter for you, sir : it comes from the ambassador
that was bound for England,-if your name be
Horatio, as I am let to know it is.
Hor. [Reads. ] Horatio, when thou shalt have
overlooked this, give these fellows some means to
the king : they have letters for him. Ere we were
two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike ap-
pointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too
slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour. In the
grapple I boarded them : on the instant they got
clear of our ship, so I alone became their prisoner.
They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy :
but they knew what they did ; I am to do a good
turn for them. Let the king have the letters I
have sent ; and repair thou to me with as much
haste as thou wouldst fly death. I have words to
speak in thine ear, will make thee dumb ; yet are
they much too light for the bore of the matter.
These good fellows will bring thee where I am.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for

England of them I have much to tell thee.
Farewell. He that thou knowest thine,
HAMLET. '
Come, I will give you way for these your letters ;
And do 't the speedier, that you may direct me
To him from whom you brought them. [Exeunt.
SCENE VII. Another Room in the Same.

Enter KING and LAERTES.
King. Now must your conscience my acquittance

seal,
And you must put me in your heart for friend,
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
That he, which hath your noble father slain,
Pursued my life.
Laer. It well appears :-but tell me
Why you proceeded not against these feats,
So crimeful and so capital in nature,
As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
You mainly were stirred up.
King. O, for two special reasons ;
Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinewed,
And 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 timbered for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aimed them.
Laer. And so have I a noble father lost ;
A sister driven into desperate terms, —
Whose worth, if praises may go back again,
Stood challenger on mount of all the age
For her perfections.-But my revenge will come.
King. Break not your sleeps for that ; you must
not think
That we are made of stuff so flat and dull
That we can let our beard be shook with danger
And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear
more :
I loved your father, and we love ourself ;
And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine, -
Enter a Messenger.
How now ! what news ?
Mess. Letters, my lord, from Hamlet.
This to your majesty ; this to the queen.
King. From Hamlet ! who brought them ?
Mess. Sailors, my lord, they say ; I saw them
not :
They were given me by Claudio, he received them
Of him that brought them.
King. Laertes, you shall hear them.--
Leave us. [Exit Messenger.
[Reads. ] 6 High and mighty, -you shall know, I
am set naked on your kingdom. To-morrow shall I
beg leave to see your kingly eyes ; when I shall,
first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the
occasions of my sudden and more strange return.
HAMLET. '
What should this mean ? Are all the rest come
back ?
Or is it some abuse, and no such thing ?
Laer. Know you the hand ?
King. "Tis Hamlet's character. ' Naked,'-
And, in a postscript here, he says, ' alone.'
Can you advise me ?
Laer. I'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 diddest thou .'
King. If it be so, Laertes, —
As how should it be so ? how otherwise ?—
Will you be ruled by me ?
Laer. Ay, my lord ;
So you will not o'er-rule me to a peace.
King. To thine own peace. If he be now
returned,
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 practice,
And call it accident.
Laer. My lord, I will be ruled ;
The rather, if you could devise it so
That I might be the organ.
King. It falls right.
You have been talked of since your travel much,
And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality
Wherein, they say, you shine : your sum of parts
Did not together pluck such envy from him
As did that one ; and that, in my regard,
Of the unworthiest siege.
Laer. What part is that, my lord ?
King. A very riband in the cap of youth,

Yet needful too ; for youth no less becomes
The light and careless livery that it wears,
Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
Importing health and graveness. -Two months
since,
Here was a gentleman of Normandy, ---
I have 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 topped my thought
That I in forgery of shapes and tricks
Come short of what he did.
Laer. A Norman, was 't ?
King. A Norman .
Laer. Upon my life, Lamord.
King. The very same.
Laer. I know him well he is the brooch,
indeed,
And gem of all the nation.
King. He made confession of you ;
And gave you such a masterly report,
For art and exercise in your defence,
And for your rapier most especially,
That he cried out, 't would be a sight indeed
156 HAMLET. [Act IV
If one could match you : the scrimers of their

nation,
He swore, 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, -
Laer. What out of this, my lord ?
King. Laertes, was your father dear to you ?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart ?
Laer. Why ask you this ?
King. Not that I think you did not love your
father ;
But that I know love is begun by time ;
And that I see, in passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it ;
And nothing is at a like goodness still ;
For goodness, growing to a plurisy,
Dies in his own too-much. That we would do,
We should do when we would ; for this ' would '
changes,
And hath abatements and delays as many,
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents ;
And then this ' should ' is like a spendthrift's sigh,

That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o' the
ulcer :
Hamlet comes back : what would you undertake,
To show yourself your father's son in deed,
More than in words ?
Laer. To cut his throat i' the church.
King. No place, indeed, should murder sanc-
tuarise ;
Revenge should have no bounds. But, good
Laertes,
Will you do this, keep close within your chamber.
Hamlet, returned, shall know you are come home :
We'll put on those shall praise your excellence,
And set a double varnish on the fame
The Frenchman gave you ; bring you, in fine,
together,
And wager on your heads : he, being remiss,
Most generous, and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils ; so that with ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
A sword unbated, and, in a pass of practice,
Requite him for your father.
Laer. I will do 't ;
And, for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank,
So mortal, that but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood, no cataplasm so rare,

Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death,
That is but scratched withal : I'll touch my point
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
It may be death.
King. Let's further think of this ;
Weigh what convenience both of time and means
May fit us to our shape. If this should fail,
And that our drift look through our bad per-
formance,
"T were better not assayed : therefore, this project
Should have a back or second, that might holder
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 venomed stuck
Our purpose may hold there. But stay ! what
noise ?
Enter QUEEN.
How now, sweet queen ?
Queen. One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
So fast they follow. Your sister's drowned, Laertes.
Laer. Drowned ! —O, where ?

Queen. There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream ;
There with fantastic garlands did she come,
Of 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 pendant boughs her coronet weedsj
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,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
Laer. Alas, then, is she drowned !
Queen. Drowned, drowned.
Laer. Too much of water hast thou, poor
Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears but yet
It is our trick ; nature her custom holds,
72
160 HAMLET. [Act V.
Let shame say what it will : when these are gone,

The woman will be out. -Adieu , my lord !
I have a speech of fire that fain would blaze,
But that this folly douts it. [Exit.
King. Let's follow, Gertrude.
How much I had to do to calm his rage !
Now fear I, this will give it start again ;
Therefore let's follow. [Exeunt.
ACT V.
SCENE I -A Churchyard.
Enter two Clowns, with spades and mattocks.

1 Clo. Is she to be buried in Christian burial,
that wilfully seeks her own salvation ?
2 Clo. I tell thee, she is ; and therefore make
her grave straight : the crowner hath sat on her,
and finds it Christian burial.
1 Clo. How can that be, unless she drowned
herself in her own defence ?
2 Clo. Why, 't is found so.
1 Clo. It must be se offendendo ; it cannot be
else. For here lies the point : if I drown myself
wittingly, it argues an act : and an act hath three
branches ; it is, to act, to do, and to perform :

argal, she drowned herself wittingly.
2 Clo. Nay, but hear you, goodman delver.—
1 Clo. 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 him-
self : argal, he that is not guilty of his own death
shortens not his own life.
2 Clo. But is this law ?
1 Clo. Ay, marry, is 't, crowner's quest-law.
2 Clo. Will you ha' the truth on ' t ? If this
had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been
buried out of Christian burial.
1 Clo. Why, there thou say'st ; and the more
pity, that great folk shall have countenance in this
world to drown or hang themselves, more than
their even-Christian. Come, my spade. There is
no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and
grave-makers ; they hold up Adam's profession.
2 Clo. Was he a gentleman ?
1 Clo. He was the first that ever bore arms.
2 Clo. Why, he had none.
1 Clo. What, art a heathen ? How dost thou
understand the Scripture ? The Scripture says,
Adam digged : could he dig without arms ?' I'll
F- 22
162 HAMLET. [Act V.
put another question to thee ; if thou answerest

me not to the purpose, confess thyself—
2 Clo. Go to.
1 Clo. What is he, that builds stronger than
either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter ?
2 Clo. The gallows-maker ; for that frame out-
lives a thousand tenants.
1 Clo. I like thy wit well, in good faith the
gallows does well ; but how does it well ? it does
well to those that do ill : now, thou dost ill to say
the gallows is built stronger than the church :
argal, the gallows may do well to . thee. To't
again ; come.
2 Clo. Who builds stronger than a mason, a
shipwright, or a carpenter ?
1 Clo. Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.
2 Clo. Marry, now I can tell.
1 Clo. To't.
2 Clo. Mass, I cannot tell.
Enter HAMLET and HORATIO, at a distance.

1 Clo. 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 2 Clown.
1 Clown digs, and sings.
In youth, when I did love, did love,

Methought it was very sweet :
To contract, 0, the time, for-a my behove,
O, methought, there was nothing-a meet.
Ham. Hath this fellow no feeling of his business ,

that he sings at grave-making ?
Hor. Custom hath made it in him a property of
easiness.
Ham. "T is e'en so : the hand of little employ-
ment hath the daintier sense.
1 Clo. But age, with his stealing steps, [Sings.
Hath claw'd me in his clutch,
And hath shipped me into the land,
As ifI had never been such.
[Throws up a skull.
Ham. That skull had a tongue in it, and could
sing once : how the knave jowls it to the ground, as
if it were Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murder !
This might be the pate of a politician, which
this ass now o'er-offices, one that would circumvent
God, might it not ?
Hor. It might, my lord.
Ham. Or of a courtier, which could say, ' Good
morrow, sweet lord ! How dost thou, good lord ? '
This might be my Lord Such-a-one, that praised my
164 HAMLET . [Act V.
Lord Such-a -one's horse, when he meant to beg it,

might it not ?
Hor. Ay, my lord .
Ham. Why, e'en so, and now my Lady Worm's ;
chapless, and knocked about the 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.
1 Clo. A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade, [Sings.
For and a shrouding sheet :
O, a pit ofclay for to be made
For such a guest is meet.
[Throws up another skull.
·Ham. There's another : why may not that be the
skull of a lawyer ? Where be his quiddits now,
his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks ?
why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock
him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will
not tell him of his action of battery ? Hum !
This fellow might be in ' s time a great buyer of
land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines,
his double vouchers, his recoveries : is this the fine
of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to
have his fine pate full of fine dirt ? will his vouchers
vouch him no more of his purchases, and double
ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of
ww
indentures ? The very conveyances of his lands

will hardly lie in this box, and must the inheritor
himself have no more ? ha ?
Hor. Not a jot more, my lord.
Ham. Is not parchment made of sheep-skins ?
Hor. Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too .
Ham. They are sheep and calves which seek out
assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow.-
Whose grave's this, sir ?
1 Clo. Mine, sir.- [Sings.
O, a pit ofclay for to be made
For such a guest is meet.
Ham. I think it be thine, indeed ; for thou liest
in 't.
1 Clo. 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.
Ham. Thou dost lie in 't, to be in 't and say it is
thine 't is for the dead, not for the quick ; there-
fore, thou liest.
1 Clo. "Tis a quick lie, sir ; 't will away again
from me to you.
Ham. What man dost thou dig it for ?
1 Clo. For no man, sir.
Ham. What woman, then ?
1 Clo. For none, neither.
Ham. Who is to be buried in 't ?
166 HAMLET. [Act V.
1 Clo. One that was a woman, sir ; but, rest her

soul, she's dead.
Ham. How absolute the knave is ! we must speak
by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the
Lord, Horatio, this three years I have taken note of
it ; the age is grown so picked, that the toe of the
peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he
galls his kibe. - How long hast thou been a grave-
maker ?
1 Clo. Of all the days i' the year, I came to 't
that day that our last King Hamlet o'ercame For-
tinbras.
Ham. How long is that since ?
1 Clo. Cannot you tell that ? every fool can tell
that. It was the very day that young Hamlet was
born ; he that is mad, and sent into England.
Ham. Ay, marry ; why was he sent into Eng-
land ?
1 Clo. Why, because a was mad : a shall re-
cover his wits there ; or, if a do not, 't is no great
matter there.
Ham. Why ?
1 Clo. 'T will not be seen in him there ; there the
men are as mad as he.
Ham. How came he mad ?
1 Clo. Very strangely, they say.
Ham. How strangely ?
1 Clo. ' Faith, e'en with losing his wits.

Ham. Upon what ground ?
1 Clo. Why, here in Denmark : I have been
sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.
Ham. How long will a man lie i' th ' earth ere
he rot ?
1 Clo. 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.
Ham. Why he more than another ?
1 Clo. 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 hath
lain you i' the earth three-and-twenty years.
Ham. Whose was it ?
1 Clo. A whoreson mad fellow's it was : whose
do you think it was ?
Ham. Nay, I know not.
1 Clo. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue ! a
poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This
same skull, sir, this same skull, sir, was Yorick's
skull, the king's jester.
Ham. This ?
1 Clo. E'en that.
168 HAMLET. [Act V.
Ham. Let me see. [ Takes the skull. ] Alas, poor

Yorick !-I knew him, Horatio : a fellow of infinite
jest, of most excellent fancy : he hath borne me on
his back a thousand times ; and now, how abhorred
in my imagination it is ! my gorge rises at it. Here
hung those lips , that I have 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. - Pr'ythee, Horatio, tell me
one thing.
Hor. What's that, my lord ?
Ham. Dost thou think, Alexander looked o' this
fashion i' th' earth ?
Hor. E'en so.
Ham. And smelt so ? pah ! [Puts down the skull.
Hor. E'en so, my lord.
Ham. To what base uses we may return, Horatio !
Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of
Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole ?
Hor. 'T were to consider too curiously, to con-
sider so.
Ham. No, faith, not a jot ; but to follow him
thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead
Scene 1. HAMLET . 169
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 Cæsar, dead, and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away :
O ! that that earth which kept the world in
awe
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw !
But soft, but soft ! aside :-here comes the king,
Enter Priests, &c., in procession ; the Corse of

OPHELIA, LAERTES and Mourners following ;
KING, QUEEN, their Trains, &c.
The queen, the courtiers. Who is that they
follow,
And with such maiméd rites ? This doth betoken,
The corse they follow did with desperate
hand
Fordo its own life ; ' t was of some estate.
Couch we awhile, and mark.
[ Retiring with HORATIO.
Laer. What ceremony else ?
Ham. That is Laertes,
A very noble youth : mark.
Laer. What ceremony else ?
170 HAMLET. [Act V.
Priest. Her obsequies have been as far en-

larged
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.
Laer. Must there no more be done ?
Priest. No more be done :
We should profane the service of the dead
To sing a requiem, and such rest to her
As to peace-parted souls.
Laer. Lay her i' th' earth ;
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring !—I tell thee, churlish priest,
A ministring angel shall my sister be,
When thou liest howling.
Ham. What, the fair Ophelia !
Queen. Sweets to the sweet : farewell.
[Scatteringflowers.
I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's
wife :
I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet

maid,
And not have strewed thy grave.
Luer. 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'er-top old Pelion or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus.
Ham. [Advancing. ] What is he whose grief
Bears such an emphasis ? whose phrase of sorrow
Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them
stand,
Like wonder-wounded hearers ? This is I,
Hamlet the Dane. [ Leaps into the grave.
Laer. The devil take thy soul !
[Grappling with him.
Ham. Thou pray'st not well.
I pr'ythee, take thy fingers from my throat ;
For though I am not splenitive and rash
Yet have I something in me dangerous,
Which let thy wisdom fear. Away thy hand !
King. Pluck them asunder.
172 HAMLET. [Act V.
Queen. Hamlet Hamlet !

All. Gentlemen, -
Hor. Good my lord, be quiet.
[The Attendants part them, and they come
out of the grave.
Ham. TI Why, I will fight with him upon this
theme
Until my eyelids will no longer wag.
Queen. O my son, what theme ?
Ham. 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. O, he is mad, Laertes.
Queen. For love of God, forbear him.
Ham. 'Swounds ! show me what thou 'It do :
Woo't weep ? woo't fight ? woo't fast ? woo't tear
thyself?
Woo't drink up Esill ? eat a crocodile ?
I'll do ' t.-Dost thou come here to whine,
To outface me with leaping in her grave,
Be buried quick with her, and so will I :
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart ! Nay, an thou 'lt mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou.
Queen. This is mere madness :
And thus awhile the fit will work on him ;

Anon, as patient as the female dove
When that her golden couplet are disclos'd,
His silence will sit drooping.
Ham. 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. 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.
SCENE II.- A Hall in the Castle.

Enter HAMLET and HORATIO.
Ham. So much for this, sir : now shall you see

the other ;-—
You do remember all the circumstance ?
174 HAMLET. [Act V.
Hor. Remember it, my lord !

Ham. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of
fighting
That would not let me sleep : methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly, -
And praised be rashness for it : let us know,
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our dear plots do pall ; and that should
teach us,
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.-
Hor. That is most certain.
Ham. Up from my cabin,
My sea-gown scarfed about me, in the dark
Groped I to find out them ; had my desire ;
Fingered their packet ; and, in fine, withdrew
To mine own room again : making so bold,
My fears forgetting manners , to unseal
Their grand commission ; where I found, Horatio ,-
O royal knavery ! —an exact command ,-
Larded with many several sorts of reasons,
Importing Denmark's health, and England's too,
With, ho, such bugs and goblins in my life, -
That, on the supervise , no leisure bated,
No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
My head should be struck off.
Hor. Is 't possible ?
Ham. Here's the commission : read it at more

leisure.
But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed ?
Hor. I beseech you.
Ham. Being thus benetted round with vil-
lainies,---
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 laboured much
How to forget that learning ; but, sir, now
It did me yeoman's service :—wilt thou know
The effect of what I wrote ?
Hor. Ay, good my lord.
Ham. An earnest conjuration from the king, -
As England was his faithful tributary ;
As love between them as the palm should flourish ;
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear ;
And stand a comma 'tween their amities ;
And many such-like ' as's ' of great charge, -
That, on the view and know of these contents,
Without debatement further, more or less,
He should the bearers put to sudden death,
Not shriving-time allowed.
Hor. How was this sealed ?
Ham. Why, even in that was Heaven ordinant.
176 HAMLET. [Act V.
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.
Hor. So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go
to 't.
Ham. Why, man, they did make love to this
employment ;
They are not near my conscience ; their defeat
Does by their own insinuation grow.
'Tis dangerous, when the baser nature comes
Between the pass, and fell-incensed points,
Of mighty opposites.
Hor. Why, what a king is this !
Ham. Does it not, think 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 con-`
science
To quit him with this arm and is 't not to be

damned
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil ?
Hor. It must be shortly known to him from
England
What is the issue of the business there.
Ham. It will be short : the interim is mine ;
And a man's life no more than to say, one.
But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
That to Laertes I forgot myself ;
For, by the image of my cause, I see
The portraiture of his : I'll court his favours :
But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put
me
Into a towering passion.
Hor. Peace, who comes here ?
Enter OSRICK.
Osr. Your lordship is right welcome back to

Denmark.
Ham. I humbly thank you, sir. - Dost know
this water-fly?
Hor. No, my good lord.
Ham. Thy state is the more gracious ; for 't is a
vice to know him. He hath much land, and fer-
tile : let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall
178 HAMLET. [Act V.
stand at the king's mess : ' t is a chough ; but, as I

say, spacious in the possession of dirt.
Osr. Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure,
I should impart a thing to you from his majesty.
Ham. I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of
spirit. Your bonnet to his right use ; 't is for the
head.
Osr. I thank your lordship, it is very hot.
Ham. No, believe me, 't is very cold ; the wind
is northerly.
Osr. It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.
Ham. But yet, methinks, it is very sultry, and
hot for my complexion.
Osr. Exceedingly, my lord ; it is very sultry,-
as 't were, -I cannot tell how. - But, my lord, his
majesty bade me signify to you, that he has laid a
great wager on your head : sir, this is the matter,—
Ham. I beseech you , remember-
[HAMLET moves him to put on his hat.
Osr. Nay, in good faith ; for mine ease, in good
faith. Sir, here is newly come to court, Laertes ;
believe me, an absolute gentleman, full of most
excellent differences, of very soft society, and great
showing : indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is
the card or calendar of gentry, for you shall find in
him the continent of what part a gentleman would
see.
ww
w
Ham. Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in

you : though, I know, to divide him inventorially,
would dizzy the arithmetic of memory, and yet but
yaw neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in
the verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of
great article ; and his infusion of such dearth and
rareness, as, to make true diction of him, his
semblable is his mirror, and who else would trace
him, his umbrage, nothing more.
Osr. Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him.
Ham. The concernancy, sir ? why do we wrap
the gentleman in our more rawer breath ?
Osr. Sir ?
Hor. Is ' t not possible to understand in another
tongue ? You will to ' t, sir, really.
Ham. What imports the nomination of this
gentleman ?
Osr. Of Laertes ?
Hor. His purse is empty already ; all's golden
words are spent.
Ham. Of him, sir.
Osr. I know you are not ignorant—
Ham. I would you did, sir ; yet, in faith, if you
did, it would not much approve me. -Well, sir.
Osr. You are not ignorant of what excellence
Laertes is-
Ham. I dare not confess that, lest I should
180 HAMLET. [Act V.
compare with him in excellence ; but, to know a

man well, were to know himself.
Osr. I mean, sir, for his weapon ; but in the
imputation laid on him by them, in his meed he's
unfellowed. (
Ham. What's his weapon ?
Osr. Rapier and dagger.
Ham. That's two of his weapons : but, well.
Osr. The king, sir, hath 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.
Ham. What call you the carriages ?
Hor. I knew, you must be edified by the margent
ere you had done.
Osr. The carriages, sir, are the hangers.
Ham. The phrase would be more germane 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 ?
Osr. The king, sir, hath laid, sir, that in a dozen
Scene 2. J HAMLET. 181
passes between yourself and him, he shall not

exceed you three hits : he hath laid on twelve for
nine ; and that would come to immediate trial, if
your lordship would vouchsafe the answer.
Ham. How if I answer, no ?
Osr. I mean, my lord, the opposition of your
person in trial.
Ham. Sir, I will walk here in the hall : if it
please his majesty, it is the breathing time of day
with me : let the foils be brought, the gentleman
willing, and the king hold his purpose, I will win
for him an I can : if not, I will gain nothing but
my shame and the odd hits.
Osr. Shall I re-deliver you e'en so ?
Ham. To this effect, sir ; after what flourish
your nature will.
Osr. I commend my duty to your lordship.
Ham. Yours, yours. [Exit OSRICK. ]- He does
well to commend it himself ; there are no tongues
else for's turn.
Hor. This lapwing runs away with the shell on
his head.
Ham. He did comply with his dug before he
sucked it. Thus has he, and many more of the
same bevy, that, I know, the drossy age dotes on,
only got the tune of the time and outward habit
of encounter, a kind of yesty collection which
182 HAMLET. [Act V.
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 Osrick, who brings back to him, that
you attend him in the hall : he sends to know, if
your pleasure hold to play with Laertes, or that
you will take longer time.
Ham. I am constant to my purposes ; they
follow the king's pleasure : if his fitness speaks,
mine is ready ; now, or whensoever, provided I be
so able as now.
Lord. The king and queen and all are coming
down.
Ham. In happy time.
Lord. The queen desires you to use some gentle
entertainment to Laertes, before you fall 1 to
play.
Ham. She well instructs me. [Exit Lord.
Hor. You will lose this wager, my lord.
Ham. I do not think so : since he went into
France I have been in continual practice ; I shall
win at the odds. Thou wouldst not think how ill
all's here about my heart ; but it is no matter.
Hor. Nay, good my lord,-
Ham. It is but foolery ; but it is such a kind of

gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a woman.
Hor. If your mind dislike anything, obey it : I
will forestall their repair hither, and say you are
not fit.
Ham. Not a whit, we defy augury : there is a
special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it
be now, 't is 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 ? Let
be.
Enter KING, QUEEN, LAERTES, Lords, OSRICK, and

Attendants with foils, &c.
King. Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand
from me.
[The KING puts the hand of LAERTES into
that of HAMLET.
Ham. 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 punished
With sore distraction. What I have done,
That might your nature, honour, and exception
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
184 HAMLET. [Act V.
Was 't Hamlet wronged 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 wronged ;
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.
Laer. I am satisfied in nature,
Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most
To my revenge : but in my terms of honour
I stand aloof, and will no reconcilement
Till by some elder masters, of known honour,
I have a voice and precedent of peace,
To keep my name ungored. But till that time,
I do receive your offered love like love,
And will not wrong it.
Ham. I embrace it freely ;
And will this brother's wager frankly play.-
Give us the foils. -Come on.
Laer. Come, one for me.
Ham. I'll be your foil, Laertes : in mine ignor-
ance
Your skill shall , like a star i̇' the darkest night,

Stick fiery off indeed.
Laer. You mock me, sir.
Ham. No, by this hand.
King. Give them the foils, young Osrick.-
Cousin Hamlet,
You know the wager ?
Ham. Very well, my lord ;
Your grace hath laid the odds o' the weaker side.
King. I do not fear it : I have seen you both ;
But since he's bettered, we have therefore odds.
Laer. This is too heavy ; let me see another.
Ham. This likes me well. These foils have all
a length ? [They prepare to play.
Osr. Ay, my good lord.
King. Set me the stoups of wine upon that
table-
If Hamlet give the first or second hit,
Or quit in answer of the third exchange,
Let all the battlements their ordnance fire :
The king shall drink to Hamlet's better breath ;
And in the cup an union shall he throw,
Richer than that which four successive kings
In Denmark's crown have worn. Give me the
cups ;
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
186 HAMLET . [Act V.
The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth,

' Now the king drinks to Hamlet !'. Come,
begin ;-
And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.
Ham. Come on, sir.
Laer. Come, my lord. [They play.
Ham. One.
Laer. No.
Ham. Judgment.
Osr. A hit, a very palpable hit.
Laer. Well : —again.
King. Stay ; give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl
is thine ;
Here's to thy health.- Give him the cup.
[Trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within.
Ham. I'll play this bout first : set it by awhile.
Come.-[They play.] Another hit ; what say you ?
Laer. A touch, a touch, I do confess.
King. Our son shall win.
Queen. He's fat, and scant of breath.-
Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows :
The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.
Ham. Good madam !
King. Gertrude, do not drink.
Queen. I will, my lord : I pray you, pardon me.
King. [Aside. ] It is the poisoned cup : it is too
late.
Ham. I dare not drink yet, madam ; by-and-by.

Queen. Come, let me wipe thy face.
Laer. My lord, I'll hit him now.
King. I do not think it.
Laer. [Aside. ] And yet it is almost against my
conscience.
Ham. Come, for the third, Laertes. You but
dally :
I pray you, pass with your best violence .
I am afeard you make a wanton of me.
Laer. Say you so ? come on. [They play.
Osr. Nothing, neither way.
Laer. Have at you now.
[LAERTES wounds HAMLET ; then, in scuffling
they change rapiers, and HAMLET wounds
LAERTES.
King. Part them ! they are incensed.
Ham. Nay, come again. [The QUEENfalls.
Osr. Look to the queen there, ho !
Hor. They bleed on both sides. -How is it, my
lord ?
Osr. How is 't, Laertes ?
Laer. Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe,
Osrick ;
I am justly killed with mine own treachery.
Ham. How does the queen ?
King. She swoonds to see them bleed.
188 HAMLET. [Act V.
Queen. No, no, the drink, the drink, -O my

dear Hamlet !
The drink, the drink ! I am poison'd. [Dies.
Ham. O villainy !-Ho, let the door be lock'd !
Treachery ! seek it out. [ LAERTES falls.
Laer. It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art
slain ;
No medicine in the world can do thee good :
In thee there is not half an hour of life ;
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
Unbated and envenomed. The foul practice
Hath turned itself on me lo ! here I lie,
Never to rise again. Thy mother's poisoned.
I can no more. The king, the king's to blame.
Ham. The point envenomed too !
Then, venom, to thy work ! [Stabs the KING.
All. Treason ! treason !
King. O, yet defend me, friends ; I am but hurt.
Ham. Here, thou incestuous, murderous, dam-
néd Dane,
Drink off this potion :-is thy union here ?
Follow my mother. [ KING dies.
Laer. He is justly servedd ;
It is a poison tempered by himself.-
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet ;
Mine and my father's death come not upon thee,
Nor thine on me! [Dies.
Ham. Heaven make thee free of it ! I follow

thee.-
I am dead, Horatio. - Wretched queen, adieu !—
You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time, -as this fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest, -O ! I could tell you, —
But let it be.--Horatio, I am dead ;
Thou liv'st : report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.
Hor. Never believe it :
I am more an antique Roman than a Dane ;
Here's yet some liquor left.
Ham. As thou ' rt a man,
Give me the cup : let go ; by Heaven I'll have
it.—
O good Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind
me !
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in
pain
To tell my story. [March afar off, and shot within.
What warlike noise is this ?
Osr. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from
Poland,
190 HAMLET. [ Act V.
To the ambassadors of England gives

This warlike volley.
Ham. O, I die, Horatio ;
The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit :
I cannot live to hear the news from England ;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras he has my dying voice ;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited-The rest is silence. [Dies.
Hor. Now cracks a noble heart. -Good night,
sweet prince ;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest !
Why does the drum come hither ? [ March within.
Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambassadors, and

others.
For. Where is this sight ?

Hor. What is it ye would see ?
If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.
For. This quarry cries on havock. O proud
death !
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell
That thou so many princes at a shot
So bloodily hast struck ?
1 Amb. 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 fulfilled,

That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Where should we have our thanks ?
Hor. Not from his mouth ,
Had it the ability of life to thank you :
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
Are here 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
Fallen on the inventors' heads : all this can I
Truly deliver.
For. Let us haste to hear it,
And call the noblest to the audience.
For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune :
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.
Hor. Of that I shall have also cause to speak,
And from his mouth whose voice will draw on
more :
But let this same be presently performed,
192 HAMLET . LAct V.
Even while men's minds are wild, lest more mis-
chance,
On plots and errors, happen.
For. 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.
[ Exeunt, bearing offthe bodies ; after which,
a peal of ordnance is shot off.
Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.

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This is a reproduction of a library book that was digitized

by Google as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the

met Burgers dyp's vertaling

(1887 Leiden E.J. Brill

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED :

LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE.

SHAKESPEARE's Hamlet was first printed in quarto in

other quartos ; one in 1605, one undated` [1607 ?] , and

NATIONAL LIBRARY, mean that the correction has

The story of Hamlet actually originates in an old

Dannemarch, vengea la mort de son père Horvendille,

Shakespeare's play opens with watch over the sea

Throughout the play, Fortinbras serves as a foil to

At the opening of the play there is stir of warlike pre-

" As I perhaps hereafter shall think meet,

uncle's guilt ; but it is by a method that reveals his

But when he had returned he was again passive.

SCENE I.- Elsinore. A Platform before the

Ber. Long live the king ! g vrest!

Fran. Bernardo ? Lyt gy't, Bemardo ?

Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.

Hor. Friends to this ground. dandskindren

Fran. Bernardo has my place. Give you good

Ber. Say,- Leof

Mar. Horatio says, 'tis but our fantasy,

Hor. Most like !-It harrows me with fear and

Together with that fair and warlike form

Hor . Stay ! speak, speak, I charge thee, speak !

notren wem, " versloeg dien Fortinbras

As harbingers met user

But, soft ! behold ! lo , where it comes again !

For it is, as the air, invulnerable,

Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,

SCENE II. The Same. A Room of State.

King. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's

Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone

Cor., Vol. In that, and all things, will we show -

Upon his will I sealed my hard consent :

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

6 This must be so.' We pray you, throw to

Ham. O, that this too too solid flesh would

Would have mourn'd longer -married with my

Enter HORATIO, MARCELLUS, and BERNARDO.

Nor shall you do mine ear that violence

With an attent ear, till I may deliver,

Hor. Most constantly.

My father's spirit- in arms ;—all is not well ;

SCENE III.- A Room in the House of POLONIUS.

Laer. My necessaries are embarked : farewell ;

Oph. No more but so ?

And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch

And in the morn and liquid dew of youth

A double blessing is a double grace ;

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Oph. "T is in my memory locked ,

That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,

But mere implorators of unholy suits

SCENE IV. - The Platform .

And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,

Shall in the general censure take corruption :