Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
You promis'd me to wed:

[He answers.]

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.

pray you.

[Exit. King. Follow her close; give her good watch, I [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 battalions! 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,9

In hugger-mugger to inter him:' Poor Ophelia

9

but greenly,] But unskilfully; with greenness; that is, without maturity of judgment.

In hugger-mugger to inter him :] All the modern editions that I have consulted, give it:

In private to inter him;

That the words now replaced are better, I do not undertake to prove; it is sufficient that they are Shakspeare's: if phraseology is to be changed as words grow uncouth by disuse, or gross by vul

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 beggar'd,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear. 0 my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murdering piece, in many places
Gives me superfluous death.

Queen.

2

[A Noise within. Alack! what noise is this?

Enter a Gentleman.

King. Attend

Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door:

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?

garity, the history of every language will be lost; we shall no longer have the words of any author; and, as these alterations will be often unskilfully made, we shall in time have very little of his meaning. JOHNSON.

2 Like to a murdering piece,] The small cannon, which are, or were used in the forecastle, half-deck, or steerage of a ship of war, were within this century called murdering-pieces.

3

my Switzers?] In many of our old plays, the guards attendant on Kings are called Switzers, and that without any regard to the country where the scene lies, because the Swiss in the time of our poet, as at present, were hired to fight the battles of other nations.

4 The ocean, overpeering of his list,] The lists are the barriers which the spectators of a tournament must not pass, In this place, it signifies boundary, i. e. the shore.

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

[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;

6

Cries, cuckold, to my father; brands the harlot
Even here, between the chaste unsmirched 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,

5 O, this is counter,-] Hounds run counter when they trace the trail backwards.

unsmirched brow,] i. e. clean, not defiled.

Why thou art thus incens'd;-Let him go, Ger

trude ;

Speak, man.

Laer. Where is my father?

King.

Queen.

Dead.

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 reveng'd
Most throughly for my father.

King.

Who shall stay you? Laer. My will, not all the world's: And, for my means, I'll husband them so well, go far with little.

They shall

King.

If

Good Laertes,

र

you desire to know the certainty

Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge, That, sweepstake, 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-rend'ring pelican,

Repast them with

my blood.

Why, now you speak

King.
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 'pear,"

7- to your judgment 'pear,] For appear

Let her come in.

As day does to your eye.

Danes. [Within.

Laer. How now! what noise is that?

Enter OPHELIA, fantastically dressed with Straws and Flowers.

O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!-
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid with 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 'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves."

Oph. They bore him barefac'd on the bier ;
Hey no nonny, nonny hey nonhy :

And in his grave rain'd 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.

8 Nature is fine in love: and, where 'tis fine,

It send some precious instance of itself

After the thing it loves.] Love (says Laertes) is the passion by which nature is most exalted and refined; and as substances, refined and subtilised, easily obey any impulse, or follow any attraction, some part of nature, so purified and refined, flies off after the attracting object, after the thing it loves.

90, how the wheel becomes it ! &c.] The wheel means the burthen of the song, which she had just repeated, and as such was formerly used. But Mr. Malone thinks that wheel is here used in its ordinary sense, and that these words allude to the occupation of the girl who is supposed to sing the song alluded to by Ophelia.