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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)

Would have made milch the burning eye of heaven,55 And passion in the gods.

Pol. Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in's eyes. - Pr'ythee, no more. Ham. 'Tis well; I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon. Good my lord, will you see the players well bestow'd? Do you hear? let them be well us'd; for they are the abstracts 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.

Pol. Come, sirs. [Exit, with some of the Players. Ham. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play tomorrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend? can you play the murder of Gonzago?

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1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. We'll have't to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down, and insert in't, could you not?

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55 By a hardy poetical licence this expression means, "Would have filled with tears the burning eye of heaven." We have 'Lemosus, milch-hearted," in Huloet's and Lyttleton's Dictionaries. It is remarkable that, in old Italian, lattuoso is used for luttuoso, in the same metaphorical manner.

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!

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[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 so to his own conceit, That, from her working, all his visage wann'd ; Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing! For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,56

That he should weep for her? What would he do, Had he the motive and the cue for passion,

57

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,58 unpregnant of my cause,

56 So the folio and first quarto; the other quartos, "or he to her," instead of, "or he to Hecuba."

H.

57 That is, the hint or prompt-word, a technical phrase among players. "A prompter," says Florio, "one who keepes the booke for the plaiers, and teacheth them, or schollers their kue."

58 This John was probably distinguished as a sleepy, apathetic fellow, a sort of dreaming or droning simpleton or flunkey. The only other mention of him that has reached us, is in Armin's Nest of Ninnies, 1608: "His name is John, indeed, says the cinnick, but neither John a-nods nor John a-dreams, yet either, as you take

it."

H.

And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property, and most dear life,

A damn'd defeat was made.5 59 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 th' nose? gives me the lie i'the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha!

"Zounds! I should take it; for it cannot be,
But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall

60

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 61 vil-
lain!

O, vengeance!

Why, what an ass am I? This is most brave;
That I, the son of the dear murdered,62
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

59 Defeat was frequently used in the sense of undo or take away by our old writers. Thus Chapman in his Revenge for Honour : "That he might meantime make a sure defeat on our good aged father's life."

60 Of course the meaning is, "lack gall to make me feel the bitterness of oppression." There were no need of saying this, but that Collier, on the strength of his second folio, would read transgression, and Singer, on the strength of nothing, aggression. Dyce justly pronounces the alteration "nothing less than villain

ous.'

H.

61 Kindless is unnatural. See The Merchant of Venice, Act i. sc. 3, note 7.

62 Thus the folio; some copies of the undated quarto, and the quarto of 1611, read, "the son of a dear father murder'd." The quartos of 1604 and 1605 are without father; and that of 1603 reads, "the son of my dear father." There can be no question that the reading we have adopted, besides having the most authority, is much the more beautiful and expressive, though modern editors commonly take the other. The words, "O, vengeance!" are found only in the folio.

H.

Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words, And fall a-cursing like a very drab,

A scullion! Fie upon't! foh!

About, my brain! 63 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; 64
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
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
T'assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me.

More relative than this:

I'll have grounds

65

66 the play's the thing,

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

[Exit.

63 About, my brain," is nothing more than "to work, my brain." The phrase, to go about a thing, is still common.

64 Several instances of the kind are collected by Thomas Heywood in his Apology for Actors.

65 To tent was to probe, to search a wound. To blench is to shrink or start.

664 More relative" is more correspondent, more conjunctive with the cause; that is, more certain. The sense is well explained by the reading of the first quarto: "I will have sounder proofs." -That Hamlet was not alone in the suspicion here started, appears from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici: "I believe that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood, and villainy; instilling and stealing into our hearts that the blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander, solicitous of the affairs of the world.

ACT III.

SCENE I. A Room in the Castle.

Enter the King, the Queen, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.

King. And can you, by no drift of conference,' 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 distracted; But from what cause he will by no means speak. Guil. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded; But with a crafty madness keeps aloof,

When we would bring him on to some confession Of his true state.

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 to any pastime?

Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain players We o'er-raught on the way:2 of these we told him; And there did seem in him a kind of joy To hear of it. They are about the court;3

But, that those phantasms appear often, and do frequent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and churches, it is because those are the dormitories of the dead, where the devil, like an insolent champion, beholds with pride the spoils and trophies of his victory in Adam."

1 So the quartos; the folio, circumstance.

2 Oer-raught is overtook.

Thus the folio; the quartos, "They are here."

H.

H.

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