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Ros. Even those you were wont to take such delight in, the tragedians of the city. Ham. How chances it, they travel? their residence, 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 aiery of children, little eyases,t that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped fort: 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 no better,) their writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their own succession?

Ham. I will prophesy, he comes to tell me
of the players; mark it.-You say right, Sir:
o'Monday morning; 'twas 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, pastoralcomical, historical-pastoral, [tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral,] scene individable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ, and the liberty, these are the only men.

Ham. O Jephthah, judge of Israel,—what a treasure hadst thou!

Pol. What a treasure had he, my lord?
Ham. Why-One fair daughter, and no more,
The which he loved passing well.
Pol. Still on my daughter.
[Aside.
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.

Ros. Faith, there has been much to do on Pol. What follows then, my lord? both sides; and the nation holds it no sin, to Ham. Why, As by lot, God wot, and then, tarre¶ them on to controversy: there was, for you know, It came to pass, As most like it was, a while, no money bid for argument, unless-The first row of the pious chansont will show the poet and the player went to cuffs in the you more; for, look, my abridgment comes. 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, a hundred ducats a-piece, for his picture in little.tt 'Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.

[Flourish of Trumpets 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.

Enter POLONIUS.

Pol. Well be with you, gentlemen! Ham. Hark you, Guildenstern ;-and you too; at each ear a hearer: that great baby, you see there, is not yet out of his swaddling

clouts.

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

child.

Become strollers. +Young nestlings. + Dialogue. Paid. || Profession. ¶ Provoke. ** I. c. The Globe, the sign of Shakspeare's Theatre. ++ Miniature. ‡‡ Compliment.

Enter Four or Five PLAYERS. You are welcome, masters; welcome, all :-I am glad to see thee well:-welcome, good friends.-O, old friend! Why, thy face is valanced‡ since I saw thee last; Com'st thou to beards 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 any thing 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 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; 'twas caviare** to the general:++ but it was (as I received it, and others, whose judgements, 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 sallads in the lines, to make the matter savoury; nor no matter in the phrase, that might inditess 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: 'twas 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 ;

The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast, atis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus. The rugged Pyrrhus,-he, whose sable arms, * Writing. + Christmas carols. + Fringed. Defy. Clog. Profession.

* An Italian dish made of the roes of fishes.

++ Multitude.

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Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion
smear'd

With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
Now is he totul gules;* horribly trick'd
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters,

sons;

Bak'd and impusted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and a damned light
To their lord's murder: Roasted in wrath, and
fire,

And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks;-So proceed you.
Pol. 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken; with
good accent, and good discretion.

1 Play. Anon he find him Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,

Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command: Unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage, strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base; and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo!
sword,

Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i'the air to stick;
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood;
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.

his

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,
A roused vengeance sets him new a-work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars' armour, forg'd for proof eternes
With less remorse thun Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.-

[gods,
Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you
In general synod, take away her power;
Break all the spokes und 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.

1 Play. But who, ah woe! had seen the mobled||| queen

Ham. The mobled queen?

Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good.
1 Play. Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning
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 pronounc'd:

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,)

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Would have made milch the burning eye of And passion in the gods. [heaven, Pol. Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and his tears in's eyes.-Pr'ythee, DO

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 live.

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

Ham. Odd's bodikin, man, much better: Use every man after his desert, and who shall scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

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1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. Very well.-Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exit PLAYER.] My good friends, [To Ros. and GUIL.] I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore. Ros. Good my lord!

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' you:-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 to his own conceit,
That, from her working, all his visage wann'd;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, [ing
A broken voice, and his whole function suit-
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, [do,
That he should weep for her? What would he
Had he the motive and the cue for passion,
That I have? He would drown the stage with
tears,

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I,

| A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property, and most dear life,
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i'the

throat,

As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this? Ha!

Why, 'I should take it: for it cannot be, But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall To make oppression bitter; or, ere this, I should have fatted all the region kites With this slave's offal: Bloody, bawdy villain!

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Remorseless,treacherous, lecherous, kindless,*
villain!

Why, what an ass am 1? This is most brave ;
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with
And fall a cursing, like a very drab, [words,

A scullion !

Fie upon't! foh! About my brains! Humph!
I have heard,

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will
speak

[players
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these
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 do blench,‡
I know my course. The spirit, that I have

seen,

May be a devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, per-
haps,

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.

SCENE I.-A Room in the Castle.

Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, Ro-
SENCRANTZ, und GUILDENSTERN.

King. And can you, by no drift of confer

ence

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 dis-
tracted;
[speak.
But from what cause he will by no means
Guild. Nor do we find him forward to be
sounded;

But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,
When we would bring him on to some confes-
Of his true state.
[sion

Queen. Did he receive you well?
Ros. Most like a gentleman.
Guild. But with much forcing of his disposi-

tion.

Ros. Niggard of question; but, of our deMost free in his reply. [mands,

Queen. Did you assay him
To any pastime?

Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain
players
[him;
We o'er-raughts on the way: of these we told
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:

[ties,

Ros. We shall, my lord.

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
King. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too:
For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither;
That he, as 'twere by accident, may here
Affront Ophelia :

Her father, and myself (lawful espials,+)
Will so bestow ourselves, that, seeing, unseen,
We may of their encounter frankly judge;
And gather by him, as he is behav'd,
If't be the affliction 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
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honours.

virtues

Oph. Madam, I wish it may. [Exit QUEEN.
Pol. Ophelia, walk you here:-Gracious, so
please you,

We will bestows ourselves :-Read on this
That show of such an exercise may colour
book:
[To OPHELIA.

Your loneliness.-We are oft to blame in
this,-
[visage,
'Tis too much prov'd,||-that, with devotion's
And pious action, we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.

King. O, 'tis too true! how smart

A lash that speech doth give my conscience'
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering

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That flesh is heir to,-'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die ;-to sleep ;-
To sleep! perchance to dream;-ay, there's
[come,

the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,¶
Must give us pause: There's the respect,**
That makes calamity of so long life: [ time,
For who would bear the whips and scorns of
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's con-
tumely,+t

The pangs of despis'd 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,

And he beseech'd me to entreat your majes-To grunt and sweat under a weary life;

To hear and see the matter.

King. With all my heart; and it doth much

content me

To hear him so inclin'd.

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
And drive his purpose on to these delights.

Unnatural.

Į Shrink or start.

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+ Search his wounds.

|| || Packs, burdens,

{ Overtook.

¶¶ Boundary, limits.

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

s sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.-Soft you, now!
The fair Ophelia:-Nymph, in thy orisons*
Be all my sins remember'd.

Oph. Good my lord,

How does your honour for this many a day? Ham. I humbly thank you; well.

Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours,

That I have longed long to re-deliver;

I

pray you, now receive them.

Ham. No, not I;

I never gave you aught.

Oph. My honour'd lord, you know right well, you did;

And, with them, words of so sweet breath
compos'd
[lost,
As made the things more rich: their perfume
Take these again; for to the noble mind,
Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove un-
There, my lord.

Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest?
Oph. My lord?

Ham. Are you fair?

Oph. What means your lordship?

[kind.

Ham. That if you be honest, and fair, you 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 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.

So.

Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe

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, my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck,t than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in: What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven! We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us: Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father?

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; 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. 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, * Prayers. + Call.

you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance: Go to; I'll no more oft; 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! [sword: The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion, and the mould* of form, The observ'd of all observers! quite, quite down!

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and
harsh;
[youth,
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown
Blasted with ecstasy:† 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; [little, Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a Was not like madness. There's something in his soul,

O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;
will be some danger: Which for to prevent,
And, I do doubt, the hatch, and the disclose,
Thus set it down; He shall with speed to
I have, in quick determination,
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?

Pol. It shall do well: But yet I do believe, The origin and commencement of his grief Sprung from neglected love.-How now, Ophelia?

You need not tell us what lord Hamlet said;
We heard it all.-My lord, do as you please;
But, if you hold it fit, after the play,
Let his queen mother all alone entreat him
To show his grief; let her be round with him;
And I'll be plac'd, so please you, in the ear
Of all their conference; If she find him not,
To England send him; or confine him, where
Your wisdom best shall think.

King. It shall be so:

Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go. [Exeunt.

SCENE II-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 if you mouth it, as many of our 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) whirlwind of your 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 ground

The model by whom all endeavoured to form themselves.

+ Alienation of mind. Reprimand him with freedom.

been

921

lings; who, for the most part, are capable of | She hath seal'd thee for herself: for thou hast nothing but inexplicable dumb show, and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing Termagant; it out-herods Herod :t Pray you, avoid it.

man

As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing; A man, that fortune's buffets and rewards Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and bless'd are 1 Play. I warrant your honour. those, Ham. Be not too tame neither, but let your Whose blood and judgement are so well co[mingled, own discretion be your tutor: suit the action That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger to the word, the word to the action; with To sound what stop she please: Give me that this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so over- That is not passion's slave, and I will wear [him done is from the purpose of playing, whose In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to As I do thee.-Something too much of this.-hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to There is a play to-night before the king; show virtue her own feature, scorn her own One scene of it comes near the circumstance, image, and the very age and body of the time, Which I have told thee of my father's death. his form and pressure. Now this, overdone, I pr'ythee, when thou seest that act afoot, or come tardy off, though it make the unskill- Even with the very comment of thy soul ful laugh, cannot but make the judicious Observe my uncle; if his occulted* guilt grieve; the censure of which one, must, in Do not itself unkennel in one speech, your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of It is a damned ghost that we have seen; others. O, there be players, that I have seen And my imaginations are as foul play, and heard others praise, and that high- As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note: ly not to speak it profanely, that, neither For I mine eyes will rivet to his face; having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of And, after, we will both our judgements join Christian, Pagan, nor man, have so strutted, In censuret of his seeming. 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 indifferently 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 villanous; and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.

[Exeunt PLAYERS.

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Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service.
Ham. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
As e'er my conversation cop'd 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 flatter'd?

No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp;
And crook the pregnant¶ hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou
hear?

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish her election,

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Hor. Well, my lord:

If he steal aught, the whilst this play is play-
[ing,
And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.
Ham. They are coming to the play; I must
be idle:
Get you a place.

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cannot feed capons so.

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

played once in the university, you say?
Ham. No, nor mine now. My lord,-you
[TO POLONIUS.
Pol. That did I, my lord; and was account-
ed a good actor.

Ham. And what did you enact?
Pol. I did enact Julius Cesar; 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 stays upon your patience.

Queen. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by

me.

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Oph. What is, my lord?

Ham. Nothing.

Oph. You are merry, my lord.
Ham. Who, I?

Oph. Ay, my lord.

Approbation.
Quick, ready.

* Secret.

+ Opinion.

Shop, stithy is a smith's shop.
Wait.

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