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 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? 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. Black as his purpose, did the night resemble With heraldry more dismal; head to foot sons; Bak'd and impusted with the parching streets, And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore, 1 Play. Anon he find him Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword, Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls, Which was declining on the milky head his But, as we often see, against some storm, [gods, 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. With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head, "Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounc'd: But if the gods themselves did see her then, 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. 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! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, [do, And cleave the general ear with horrid speech; | A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, 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! Remorseless,treacherous, lecherous, kindless,* Why, what an ass am 1? This is most brave ; A scullion ! Fie upon't! foh! About my brains! Humph! That guilty creatures, sitting at a play, [players seen, May be a devil: and the devil hath power Out of my weakness, and my melancholy, ACT III. SCENE I.-A Room in the Castle. Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, Ro- King. And can you, by no drift of confer ence Get from him, why he puts on this confusion; But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof, Queen. Did he receive you well? tion. Ros. Niggard of question; but, of our deMost free in his reply. [mands, Queen. Did you assay him Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain Pol. "Tis most true: [ties, Ros. We shall, my lord. [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Her father, and myself (lawful espials,+) Queen. I shall obey you: And, for your part, Ophelia, I do wish, virtues Oph. Madam, I wish it may. [Exit QUEEN. We will bestows ourselves :-Read on this Your loneliness.-We are oft to blame in King. O, 'tis too true! how smart A lash that speech doth give my conscience' That flesh is heir to,-'tis a consummation the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, 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, Unnatural. Į Shrink or start. + Search his wounds. || || Packs, burdens, { Overtook. ¶¶ Boundary, limits. And makes us rather bear those ills we have, s sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; 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 Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest? 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, 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; For the demand of our neglected tribute: 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; 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. Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service. Ham. Nay, do not think I flatter: No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp; Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, Hor. Well, my lord: If he steal aught, the whilst this play is play- cannot feed capons so. Hamlet; these words are not mine. played once in the university, you say? Ham. And what did you enact? 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. Oph. What is, my lord? Ham. Nothing. Oph. You are merry, my lord. Oph. Ay, my lord. Approbation. * Secret. + Opinion. Shop, stithy is a smith's shop. |