Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings, You heavenly guards!—What would your* gracious figure?

QUEEN. Alas, he's mad!

HAM. Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, laps'd in time and passion, lets go by
The important acting of your dread command?
O, say!

GHOST. Do not forget: this visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look! amazement on thy mother sits:
O, step between her and her fighting soul,-
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works,—
Speak to her, Hamlet.

HAM.

How is it with you, lady? QUEEN. Alas, how is 't with you, That you do bend your eye on vacancy, And with the incorporal air do hold discourse? Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep; And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, Starts up, and stands on end. O, gentle son, Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? HAM. On him! on him!-Look you, how pale he glares!

His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, Would make them capable."-Do not look upon me;

My father, in his habit as he liv'd!

Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal! [Exit Ghost.

QUEEN. This is the very coinage of your brain: This bodiless creation ecstasy

Is very cunning in.

HAM.

Ecstasy!

My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
That I have utter'd: bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word, which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that* flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
To make them ranker.+-[Aside.] Forgive me
this, my virtue;f

e

For in the fatness of these § pursy times,
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg;
Yea, curbs and woo for leave to do him good.
QUEEN. O, Hamlet! thou hast cleft my heart

in twain.

HAM. O, throw away the worser part of it, And live the purer with the other half. Good night but go not to mine uncle's bed; Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

That monster, Custom, who all sense doth eat, Oft habits' devil, is angel yet in this,-"

editors uniformly print this as if Hamlet addressed it to the Queen, nothing can be more evident than that it is an imploration to his own virtue.

h

gcurb-] Bow, or truckle; from the French courber. That monster, Custom, who all sense doth eat, Oft habits' devil, &c.]

The reading of the old text is,

"That monster custome, who all sense doth eate Of habits devill," &c.;

Which has been variously modified to,-

and

"who all sense doth eat

Of habits evil," &c.

"who all sense doth eat,

If habit's devil," &c.;

"who all sense doth eat, Or habit's devil," &c.

The trifling change we have taken the liberty to make, while doing little violence to the original, may be thought, it is hoped, to give at least as good a meaning as any other which has been proposed.

To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And master the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good
night:

And when you are desirous to be bless'd,
I'll blessing beg of you.-For this same lord,
[Pointing to POLONIUS.

I do repent: but heaven hath pleas'd it so,
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well

The death I gave him. So, again, good night.
I must be cruel, only to be kind:

Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.-
One word more, good lady.

QUEEN.

What shall I do?

HAM. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:

Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed;
Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness,

But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know;

For who, that 's but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,

(*) First folio, blunt.

a That aptly is put on.] The passage from "That monster" to "put on " inclusive, is not in the folio.

b And master the devil, or throw him out-] The quartos, 1604 and 1605, present this line, "And either the devill," &c.; the after ones read as above, which, as it affords sense, though destructive to the metre, we retain, not, however, without acknowledging a preference for Malone's conjecture, "And either curb the devil," &c.

And marshal me to knavery. Let it work!
For 't is the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar: and 't shall go hard,
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon. O, 't is most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.-
This man shall set me packing:

I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room :-
Mother, good night.-Indeed, this counsellor
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.-
Good night, mother.

[Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging outh
the body of POLONIUS. (6)

c With wondrous potency.] This and what precedes, from "the next more easy" inclusive, is only in the quarto copies.

d One word more, good lady.] Not in the folio.

e a paddock-a gib,-] A "paddock" is a toad; for "gib," "a cat," see note (b), p. 512, Vol. I.

fconclusions,-1 Experiments.

g directly meet.-] This, as well as the eight preceding lines, are only in the quartos.

h-dragging out-] The folio direction reads, " tugging in."

To you yourself, to us, to every one.

Alas! how shall this bloody deed be answered? It will be laid to us, whose providence

Should have kept short, restrain'd, and out of haunt,"

This mad young man: but so much was our love,
We would not understand what was most fit;
But, like the owner of a foul disease,
To keep it from divulging, let it feed
Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?
QUEEN. To draw apart the body he hath kill'd,
O'er whom his very madness, like some oreb
Among a mineral of metals base,

Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done.
KING. O, Gertrude, come away!
The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch,
But we will ship him hence: and this vile deed
We must, with all our majesty and skill,
Both countenance and excuse.-Ho! Guilden-
stern!

;

Go, seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body
Into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this.-
[Exeunt Ros. and GUIL.
Come, Gertrude, we 'll call up our wisest friends
To let them know, both what we mean to do,
And what's untimely done: so, haply slander,-d
Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter,
As level as the cannon to his blank,
Transports his poison'd shot,-may miss our name,
And hit the woundless air.-O, come away!
My soul is full of discord and dismay. [Exeunt.