King. With all my heart; and it doth much The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn§ content me To hear him so inclin'd. Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, And drive his purpose on to these delights. Ros. We shall, my lord. King. [Exeunt Ros. and GUIL. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too: For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither; Her father, and myself (lawful espials), Will so bestow ourselves, that, seeing, unseen, If't be the affliction of his love or no, 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 Madam, I wish it may. [Exit QUEEN. Pol. Ophelia, walk you here:-Gracious, so please you, We will bestow ourselves :-Read on this book; That show of such an exercise may colour The devil himself. King. O, 'tis too true! How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience! [Aside. 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 : For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, *Coil means care, bustle. As made the things more rich their perfume lost, Hum. Ha, ha! are you honest ? 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 commerce than with honesty? Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty, 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 lov'd you not. Oph. I was the more deceived. Ham. Get thee to a nunnery. I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne: 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 heaven and earth! We are 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 way but in his own house. Farewell. Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens ! † Bodkin was an ancient term for small dagger. ? Boundary. plague for thy dowry: Be thou 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 HAMLET. Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, word, The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, The observed of all observers ! quite, quite down! And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his muisc 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 lack'd form a little, Was not like madness. There's something in his soul, O'er which his melancholy sits on brood; Thus set it down: He shall with speed to England, This something-settled matter in his heart; Pol. It shall do well; but yet I do believe, Let his queen mother all alone entreat him King [Exeunt. SCENE.-A Hall in the same. Enter HAMLET and certain Players. Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue : but Ecstacy here means madness, if you mouth it, as many of you players do, I had as lief as the town-crier had spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much--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 see 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 could have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing 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 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. 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 nathem well, they imitated humanity so abomiture's journeymen had made men, and not made nably. 1 Play. I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir. 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 mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous; and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. [Exeunt Players. What, ho; Horatio! Enter HORATIO. Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service. That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him Ham. They are coming to the play; I must be ( Behind the arras I'll convey myself idle: Get you a place. me. Queen. Come hither, my good Hamlet, sit by Ham. No, good mother, here's metal more at tractive. To hear the process; I'll warrant she'll tax him And, as you said, and wisely was it said, Thanks, dear my lord. [Exit POL. [Lying down at OPHELIA'S feet., my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; Pol. O, ho do you mark that? [To the KING. It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, Hautboys play. A brother's murther!-Pray can I not, Enter a King and Queen very lovingly; the Though inclination be as sharp as will; Queen embracing him. She kneels, and makes show My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent; of the protestation unto him. He takes her up, and And, like a man to double business bound, declines his head upon her neck; lays him down I stand in pause where I shall first begin, upon a bank of flowers; she, seeing him asleep, And both neglect. What if this cursed hand leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his Were thicker than itself with brother's blood? crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens, ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy, King dead, and makes passionate action. The But to confront the visage of offence? poisoner, with some two or three mutes, comes in And what's in prayer, but this two-fold force,— again, seeming to lament with her. The dead To be forestalled, ere we come to fall, body is carried away. The poisoner woos the Or pardon'd, being down? Then I'll look up; Queen with gifts: she seems louth and unwilling awhile, but, in the end, accepts his love. Oph. Belike this show imports the argument of the play. 'Tis brief, my lord. Ham. As woman's love. 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? ; My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer That cannot be; since I am still possess'd Ham. The mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropi-Buys out the law but 'tis not so above: cally. This play is the image of a murther done There is no shuffling, there the action lies in Vienna: Gonzago is the duke's name; his wife, In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd, Baptista; you shall see anon; 'tis a knavish piece Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, of work: But what of that? your majesty, and To give in evidence. When, then? what rests? we that have free souls, it toucheth us not: Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung. Enter LUCIANUS. Try what repentance can: What can it not? This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king. poisons him 'the garden for his estate. His name's Gonzago; the story is extant, and writ in choice Italian: You shall see anon, how the murtherer gets the love of Gonzaga's wife. Oph. The king rises. Ham. What! frighted with false fire! King. Give me some light: away! [Exeunt all but HAM. I will speak daggers to her, but use none, SCENE.-A Room in the same. Enter KING and POLONIUS. Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe : [Retires and kncels. Enter HAMLET. Ham. Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying, O, this is hire and salary, not revenge. He took my father grossly, full of bread; With all his crimes broad blown, as fresh as May; [Exit. But, in our circumstance and course of thought, Pol, My lord, he's going to his mother's closet; | No. down, Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent :* Leave wringing of your hands: Peace, sit you Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven; The KING rises and advances. [Exit. King. My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go. SCENE.-Another Room in the same. Enter QUEEN and POLONIUS. [Exit. And let me wring your heart: for so I shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff. 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 ; Queen. Pol. He will come straight. Look, you lay See what a grace was seated on his brow : home to him: Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear An eye like Mars, to threaten or command; with; A station like the herald Mercury, And that your grace hath screen'd and stood New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; between Much heat and him. I'll silence me e'en here. Ham. [Within.] Mother! mother! mother! Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much Ham. Mother, you have my father much of- You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife; Ham. Come, come, and sit you down; you You go not, till I set you up a glass murther me? Help, help, ho! A combination and a form, indeed, This was your husband,-look you now what Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear, O, speak to me no more; Ham. A murtherer, and a villain, Pol. [Behind.] What, ho! help! help! help! Ham. Dead, for a ducat, dead. [HAMLET makes a pass through the arras. Nay, I know not: Is it the king? As kill a king, and marry with his brother. * Seize him at a more horrid time. Queen. Alas! he's mad! O gentle son, he glares! His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, me; Lest, with this piteous action, you convert Ham. My father, in his habit as he lived! Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain, † Station means the act of standing, the bearing. Capable means intelligent. I'll blessing beg of you.-For this same lord, [Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in the body of POLONIUS. ACT IV. How dangerous is it that this man goes loose; Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes; Enter LAERTES, armed; Danes following. Laer. Where is this king?-Sirs, stand you all without. Repast them with my blood. Why, now you speak Enter OPHELIA, fantastically dressed with straws and flowers. Laer. O heat, dry up my brains! tears, seven times salt, Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!- heavens! is't possible, a young maid's wits Should be as mortal as an old man's life? Oph. They bore him barefac'd on the bier; Laer. Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, It could not move thus. Oph. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts. 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-grace o' Sundays:-oh, you. Laer. Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favour, and to prettiness. Oph. And will he not come again? Go to thy death-bed; He never will come again. His beard as white as snow, All flaxen was his poll: He is gone, he is gone, |