To make oppression bitter; or, ere this, Humph! I have heard. Why, what an ass am I? This is most brave; For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak ACT III. SCENE I.-A Room in the Castle. [Exit. Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and King. And can you, by no drift of conference Get from him, why he puts on this confusion; With turbulent and dangerous lunacy? Ros. He does confess, he feels himself distracted; But from what cause he will by no means speak. When we would bring him on to some confession 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 Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain players Pol. 'Tis most true: And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties, 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. King. [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERK 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, We may of their encounter frankly judge : 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 virtues Will bring him to his wonted way again, To both your honors. Oph. Madam, I wish it may. [Exit QUEEN [To OPHELIA Pol. Ophelia, walk you here:-Gracious, so please you, That show of such an exercise may color The devil himself. King. O, 'tis too true! how smart A lash that speech doth give my conscience! [Exeunt KING and Po1 ONIUS Enter HAMLET. Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question : Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; Oph. Good my lord, How does your honor for this many a day? Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours I pray you, now receive them. Ham. I never gave you aught. No, not I; Oph. My honor'd lord, you know right well, you did; And, with them, words of so sweet breath compos'd As made the things more rich: their perfume lost, Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind. Пamlet falls into a wild extravagance of speech, and then exits Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, 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; 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 King. It shall be so : Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go. SCENE II.-A Hall in the same. Enter HAMLET, and certain Players. Exeuni Hum. 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 play ers dọ, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use ail 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 peri wig-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 cut-herods He.va: pray you, avoid it. 1st Play. I warrant, your honor. 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 any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of 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. 1st 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 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. Ham. What, ho; Horatio! Enter HORATIO. Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service. 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? |