And my imaginations are as foul

As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note:
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face ;

And, after, we will both our judgments join
To censure of his seeming.

HOR.

Well, my lord:

If he steal aught, the whilst this play is playing,
And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

HAM. They are coming to the play; I must be idle :

Get you a place.

Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and other Lords attendant, with his Guard, carrying torches. Danish March. Sound a flourish.

KING. How fares our cousin Hamlet?

HAM. Excellent, i' faith; of the cameleon's dish: I eat the air, promisecrammed: You cannot feed capons so.

KING. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not mine. HAM. No, nor mine now. My lord,—you played once in the university, you say?

POL. That I did, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.

HAM. And what did you enact?

[TO POLONIUS.

POL. I did enact Julius Cæsar: 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 stay upon your patience.
QUEEN. Come hither, my good Hamlet, sit by me.

HAM. No, good mother, here 's metal more attractive.
POL. O ho! do you mark that?

HAM. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

ОPH. No, my lord.

HAM. I mean, my head upon your lap?

OPH. Ay, my lord.

HAM. Do you think I meant country matters?

OPH. I think nothing, my lord.

[To the KING.

[Lying down at OPHELIA's feet.

HAM. That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.

OPH. What is, my lord?

HAM. Nothing.

OPн. You are merry, my lord.

HAM. Who, I?

ОPH. Ay, my

lord.

HAM. O God! your only jig-maker. What should a man do, but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.

OPH. Nay, 't is twice two months, my lord.

HAM. So long? Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables 14 O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year: But by 'r-lady, he must build churches then: or else shall he suffer not thinking on", with the hobby-horse; whose epitaph is, For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot".

Hautboys play. The dumb show enters1.

Enter a King and a Queen, very lovingly; the Queen embracing him. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers; she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The poisoner, with some two or three mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The poisoner woos the Queen with gifts; she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but, in the end, accepts his love.

OPH. What means this, my lord?

HAM. Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.
ОPH. Belike, this show imports the argument of the play.

Enter Prologue.

[Exeunt.

HAM. We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel; they'll tell all.

OPн. Will he tell us what this show meant?

HAM. Ay, or any show that you'll show him: Be not you ashamed to show, he 'll not shame to tell you what it means.

OPH. You are naught, you are naught; I'll mark the play.

PRO. For us, and for our tragedy,

Here stooping to your clemency,

We beg your hearing patiently.

HAM. Is this a prologue, or the poesy 16 of a ring?

OPH. "T is brief, my lord.

HAM. As woman's love.

e

Enter King and his Queen.

P. KING. Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
Neptune's salt wash, and Tellus' orbed ground;
And thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen,
About the world have times twelve thirties been;
Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands,
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

He shall suffer being forgotten.

See Illustration of Love's Labour 's Lost,' Act III., Scene 1.

Miching mallecho. To mich is to filch;-mallecho is misdeed, from the Spanish. The skulking crime pointed out in the dumb show is, in one sense of Hamlet's wild phrase, miching mallecho; his own secret purpose, from which mischief will ensue, is miching mallecho in another sense;-in either case it means mischief."

P. QUEEN. So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o'er, ere love be done!
But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer, and from your former state,
That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing musta:
For women's fear and love holds quantity;
In neither aught, or in extremity.

Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
And as my love is siz'd, my fear is so.

[Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.]
P. KING. 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
My operant powers my functions leave to do:

с

And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honour'd, belov'd; and haply, one as kind
For husband shalt thou-

P. QUEEN.

O, confound the rest!
Such love must needs be treason in my breast:
In second husband let me be accurst!

None wed the second but who kill'd the first.

HAM. Wormwood, wormwood.

P. QUEEN. The instances that second marriage move,
Are base respects of thrift, but none of love;
A second time I kill my husband dead,

When second husband kisses me in bed.

P. KING. I do believe, you think what now you speak;
But, what we do determine oft we break.

Purpose is but the slave to memory;

Of violent birth, but poor validity:

Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree;
But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.
Most necessary 't is, that we forget

To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt:
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
The violence of either grief or joy

Their own enactures with themselves destroy :
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament,
Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
This world is not for aye; nor 't is not strange,

That even our loves should with our fortunes change;

* In the quarto we find a line following this, which is omitted in the folio; it has no correspond

ing line in rhyme:

"For women fear too much, even as they love."

There can be no doubt that the line ought to be struck out, it being superseded by

"For women's fear and love holds quantity."

These two lines are not in the folio.

e

My, in folio; their, in quartos.

• Instances—solicitations, inducements.

For 't is a question left us yet to prove,

Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.

The great man down, you mark, his favourite flies;
The poor advanc'd makes friends of enemies.

And hitherto doth love on fortune tend:

For who not needs shall never lack a friend;
And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
Directly seasons him his enemy.

But, orderly to end where I begun,—
Our wills and fates do so contrary run,
That our devices still are overthrown;

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own;
So think thou wilt no second husband wed;

But die thy thoughts, when thy first lord is dead.
P. QUEEN. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light!
Sport and repose lock from me, day, and night!
[ To desperation turn my trust and hope!
An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope!]
Each opposite, that blanks the face of joy,
Meet what I would have well, and it destroy!
Both here, and hence, pursue me lasting strife,
If, once a widow, ever I be wife!

HAM. If she should break it now,

P. KING. "T is deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here a while;
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile

The tedious day with sleep.

And never come mischance between us twain!

HAM. Madam, how like you this play?

QUEEN. The lady protests too much, me thinks.

[TO OPHELIA.

[Sleeps.

[Exit.

HAM. O, but she 'll keep her word.

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?

HAM. The mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murther done in Vienna: Gonzago is the duke's name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see anon; 't is a knavish piece of work: But what of that? your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not: Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.

Enter LUCIANUS.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.

OPH. You are as good as a chorus, my lord.

This couplet is found only in the quartos.

b Anchor's cheer-anchoret's fare. This abbreviation of anchoret is very ancient.

с

Tropically-figuratively.

"Good as a chorus," in the quartos. The folio, "a good chorus."

HAM. I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets dallyinga.

OPH. You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

HAM. It would cost you a groaning, to take off my edge.

OPH. Still better, and worse.

HAM. So you must take your husbands.— Begin, murtherer; leave thy damnable faces, and begin.

Come ;

-The croaking raven

Doth bellow for revenge.

Luc. Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;

Confederate season, else no creature seeing;

Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,

Thy natural magic and dire property,

On wholesome life usurp immediately.

HAM. He poisons him i' the garden for his estate.

[Pours the poison in his ears.

His name 's Gonzago; the

story is extant, and writ in choice Italian: You shall see anon, how the mur

therer gets the love of Gonzago's wife.

ОPH. The king rises.

HAM. What! frighted with false fire!

QUEEN. How fares my lord?

Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, (if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me,) with two Provincial roses on my razede shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?

HOR. Half a share17.

HAM. A whole one, ay.

In puppet-shows, which were called motions, an interpreter explained the action to the audience. See Two Gentlemen of Verona,' Act II., Scene 1.

L Must take. This is the reading of the quarto of 1603. Johnson, who had not seen that edition, suggested must take as a correction of the common text, mistake. Mistake may, however, be used in the sense of to take wrongly.

* See the exquisite passage descriptive of "the poor sequester'd stag," and "his velvet friends," in As You Like It,' Act II., Scene 1.

4 Turn Turk—if the rest of my fortunes deal with me cruelly. "To turn Turk and throw stones at the poor," is a proverbial expression for the conduct of one who is tyrannical and hardhearted.

• Razed, slashed. The cut shoes were tied with a riband gathered in the form of a rose. The feathers and the fine shoes were the chief decorations of the players of Shakspere's day.