Edition: HamletHamlet, Folio Modern
1.1
Enter Barnardo and Francisco, two sentinels.1.1.Sp11Barnardo
Enter Horatio and Marcellus.
Exit Francisco.
Well, goodnight.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
1.1.Sp24Marcellus
Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy,
And will not let belief take hold of him,
Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us, to watch the minutes of this night,
That if again this apparition come
He may approve our eyes and speak to it.
1.1.Sp26Barnardo
Sit down awhile,
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
What we two nights have seen.
1.1.Sp28Barnardo
Enter the Ghost.
Last night of all,
When yond same star that’s westward from the pole
Had made his course t’illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one—
1.1.Sp36Horatio
Exit the Ghost.
What art thou that usurp’st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? By heaven, I charge thee speak!
1.1.Sp41Barnardo
How now, Horatio? You tremble and look pale.
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on’t?
1.1.Sp42Horatio
Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
1.1.Sp44Horatio
As thou art to thyself.
Such was the very armor he had on
When he th’ambitious Norway combated.
So frowned he once, when in an angry parle
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
’Tis strange.
1.1.Sp45Marcellus
Thus twice before, and just at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
1.1.Sp46Horatio
In what particular thought to work I know not,
But in the gross and scope of my opinion
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
1.1.Sp47Marcellus
Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week.
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-laborer with the day?
Who is’t that can inform me?
1.1.Sp48Horatio
That can I.
At least the whisper goes so: our last King,
Whose image even but now appeared to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteemed him)
Did slay this Fortinbras, who by a sealed compact
Well ratified by law and heraldry
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized on, to the conqueror;
Against the which a moiety competent
Was gagèd by our King, which had returned
To the inheritance of Fortinbras
Had he been vanquisher, as, by the same cov’nant
And carriage of the article design
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimprovèd mettle, hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Sharked up a list of landless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in’t, which is no other
(And it doth well appear unto our state)
But to recover of us by strong hand
And terms compulsative those foresaid lands
So by his father lost. And this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch, and the chief head
Of this post-haste and rummage in the land.
Enter Ghost again.But soft, behold: lo, where it comes again!
I’ll cross it, though it blast me.—Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound or use of voice,
Speak to me!
If there be any good thing to be done
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me!
If thou art privy to thy country’s fate,
Which happily foreknowing may avoid,
Oh, speak!
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it. Stay and speak!—Stop it, Marcellus!
1.1.Sp53Marcellus
’Tis gone.
(Exit Ghost.)
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence,
For it is as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.
1.1.Sp55Horatio
And then it started, like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard
The cock, that is the trumpet to the day,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day, and, at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
Th’extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine. And of the truth herein
This present object made probation.
1.1.Sp56Marcellus
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some says that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long,
And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad;
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy talks, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.
1.1.Sp57Horatio
So have I heard, and do in part believe it.
But look, the morn in russet mantle clad
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.
Break we our watch up, and by my advice
Let us impart what we have seen tonight
Unto young Hamlet. For, upon my life,
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?
1.1.Sp58Marcellus
Exeunt.
Let’s do’t, I pray, and I this morning know
Where we shall find him most conveniently.
1.2
Enter Claudius, King of Denmark, Gertrude the Queen, Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes, and his sister Ophelia, Lords attendant.1.2.Sp1King
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometimes sister, now our queen,
Th’imperial jointress of this warlike state,
Have we, as ’twere, with a defeated joy,
With one auspicious and one dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,
Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barred
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along. For all, our thanks.
Now follows, that you know young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Co-leaguèd with the dream of his advantage,
He hath not failed to pester us with message
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother. So much for him.
(Enter Voltemand and Cornelius.)
Now for ourself, and for this time of meeting,
Thus much the business is: we have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,
Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears
Of this his nephew’s purpose, to suppress
His further gait herein, in that the levies,
The lists, and full proportions are all made
Out of his subject; and we here dispatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,
For bearing of this greeting to old Norway,
Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the King more than the scope
Of these dilated articles allow.
Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.
1.2.Sp3King
We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell.
Exit Voltemand and Cornelius.And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?
You told us of some suit. What is’t, Laertes?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane
And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
What wouldst thou have, Laertes?
1.2.Sp4Laertes
Dread my lord,
Your leave and favor to return to France,
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark
To show my duty in your coronation,
Yet now I must confess, that duty done,
My thoughts and wishes bend again towards France
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
1.2.Sp7Claudius
Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine,
And thy best graces spend it at thy will.
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—
1.2.Sp11Queen
Good Hamlet, cast thy nightly color off
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not forever with thy vailèd lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know’st ’tis common: all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
1.2.Sp14Hamlet
Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not seems.
’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief
That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play.
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
1.2.Sp15King
’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father.
But you must know, your father lost a father,
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness. ’Tis unmanly grief.
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschooled;
For what we know must be and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? Fie, ’tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd, whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried
From the first corse till he that died today
“This must be so.” We pray you throw to earth
This unprevailing woe, and think of us
As of a father; for let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our throne,
And with no less nobility of love
Than that which dearest father bears his son
Do I impart towards you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire,
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier cousin, and our son.
1.2.Sp16Queen
Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.
I prithee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.
1.2.Sp18King
Exeunt. Hamlet remains onstage.
Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply.
Be as ourself in Denmark.—Madam, come.
This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof
No jocund health that Denmark drinks today
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the King’s rouse the heavens shall bruit again,
Respeaking earthly thunder. Come, away!
1.2.Sp19Hamlet
Enter Horatio, Barnardo, and Marcellus.
Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter. O God, O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seems to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t! Oh, fie, fie, ’tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead—nay, not so much, not two.
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on; and yet within a month—
Let me not think on’t. Frailty, thy name is woman!
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body,
Like Niobe, all tears, why, she, even she—
Oh, heaven! a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer!—married with mine uncle,
My father’s brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month!
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing of her gallèd eyes,
She married. Oh, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good,
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
1.2.Sp23Hamlet
Sir, my good friend, I’ll change that name with you.
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?—
Marcellus.
1.2.Sp25Hamlet
I am very glad to see you.
To Barnardo.
Good even, sir.
To Horatio
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
1.2.Sp27Hamlet
I would not have your enemy say so,
Nor shall you do mine ear that violence
To make it truster of your own report
Against yourself. I know you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?
We’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
1.2.Sp29Hamlet
I pray thee do not mock me, fellow student.
I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.
1.2.Sp31Hamlet
Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Ere I had ever seen that day, Horatio!
My father—methinks I see my father.
Horatio
Oh, where, my lord?
1.2.Sp39Horatio
Season your admiration for a while
With an attent ear, till I may deliver,
Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
This marvel to you.
1.2.Sp41Horatio
Two nights together had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch
In the dead waste and middle of the night
Been thus encountered: a figure like your father
Armed at all points exactly, cap-à-pie,
Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately. By them thrice he walked,
By their oppressed and fear-surprisèd eyes,
Within his truncheon’s length, whilst they, bestilled
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did,
And I with them the third night kept the watch,
Where, as they had delivered, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes. I knew your father.
These hands are not more like.
1.2.Sp45Horatio
My lord, I did,
But answer made it none. Yet once methought
It lifted up it head and did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak;
But even then the morning cock crew loud,
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away
And vanished from our sight.
1.2.Sp47Horatio
As I do live, my honored lord, ’tis true;
And we did think it writ down in our duty
To let you know of it.
1.2.Sp72Hamlet
Exeunt all but Hamlet.
If it assume my noble father’s person,
I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
If you have hitherto concealed this sight,
Let it be treble in your silence still.
And whatsoever else shall hap tonight,
Give it an understanding but no tongue;
I will requite your loves. So, fare ye well.
Upon the platform ’twixt eleven and twelve
I’ll visit you.
1.2.Sp74Hamlet
Exit.
Your love, as mine to you. Farewell.
My father’s spirit in arms! All is not well.
I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come!
Till then, sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.
1.3
Enter Laertes and Ophelia.1.3.Sp1Laertes
My necessaries are imbarked. Farewell.
And sister, as the winds give benefit
And convoy is assistant, do not sleep
But let me hear from you.
1.3.Sp3Laertes
For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favors,
Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Froward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The suppliance of a minute? No more.
1.3.Sp5Laertes
Think it no more.
For nature crescent does not grow alone
In thews and bulk, but as his temple waxes
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
The virtue of his will; but you must fear,
His greatness weighed, his will is not his own,
For he himself is subject to his birth.
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself, for on his choice depends
The sanctity and health of the whole state,
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his peculiar sect and force
May give his saying deed, which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honor may sustain,
If with too credent ear you list his songs,
Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
To his unmastered importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
And keep within the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough
If she unmask her beauty to the moon.
Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes.
The canker galls the infants of the spring
Too oft before the buttons be disclosed,
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary, then; best safety lies in fear.
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.
1.3.Sp6Ophelia
I shall th’effect of this good lesson keep
As watchmen to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whilst, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.
1.3.Sp7Laertes
Oh, fear me not.
Enter Polonius.I stay too long. But here my father comes.
A double blessing, is a double grace;
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.
1.3.Sp8Polonius
Exit Laertes.
Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stayed for there. My blessing with you,
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel,
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each unhatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in,
Bear’t that th’opposèd may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy—rich, not gaudy,
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all; to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!
Ophelia
So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.
1.3.Sp15Polonius
Marry, well bethought
’Tis told me he hath very oft of late
Given private time to you, and you yourself
Have of your audience been most free and bounteous.
If it be so—as so ’tis put on me,
And that in way of caution—I must tell you
You do not understand yourself so clearly
As it behooves my daughter and your honor.
What is between you? Give me up the truth.
1.3.Sp17Polonius
Affection? Pooh! You speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?
1.3.Sp19Polonius
Marry, I’ll teach you. Think yourself a baby,
That you have ta’en his tenders for true pay
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly,
Or—not to crack the wind of the poor phrase
Roaming it thus—you’ll tender me a fool.
1.3.Sp23Polonius
Exeunt.
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Gives the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both
Even in their promise as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. For this time, daughter,
Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence.
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him that he is young,
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers
Not of the eye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits
Breathing like sanctified and pious bonds
The better to beguile. This is for all:
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth
Have you so slander any moment leisure
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to’t, I charge you. Come your ways.
1.4
Enter Hamlet, Horatio, Marcellus.1.4.Sp6Horatio
Indeed? I heard it not. Then it draws near the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
A flourish of trumpets, and two pieces go off.
What does this mean, my lord?
1.4.Sp7Hamlet
The King doth wake tonight, and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassails, and the swaggering upspring reels;
And as he drains his drafts of Rhenish down
The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
1.4.Sp9Hamlet
Enter Ghost.
Ay, marry, is’t,
And to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honored in the breach than the observance.
1.4.Sp11Hamlet
Ghost beckons Hamlet.
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy events wicked or charitable,
Thou com’st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane. Oh, oh, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsèd in death,
Have burst their cerements, why the sepulcher
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurned
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws
To cast thee up again? What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in compleat steel,
Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?
1.4.Sp13Marcellus
Look with what courteous action
It wafts you to a more removèd ground.
But do not go with it.
1.4.Sp17Hamlet
Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life at a pin’s fee,
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again. I’ll follow it.
1.4.Sp18Horatio
They attempt to restrain him.
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o’er his base into the sea,
And there assumes some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? Think of it.
1.4.Sp23Hamlet
Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet.
Exeunt.
My fate cries out
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.
Still am I called? Unhand me, gentlemen!
By heav’n, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me.
I say, away!—Go on, I’ll follow thee.
1.5
Enter Ghost and Hamlet.1.5.Sp10Ghost
I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,
Thy knotty and combinèd locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, Hamlet, oh, list:
If thou didst ever thy dear father love—
1.5.Sp15Hamlet
Haste, haste me to know it, that with wings as swift
As meditation, or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.
1.5.Sp16Ghost
I find thee apt,
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf
Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear:
It’s given out that, sleeping in mine orchard,
A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forgèd process of my death
Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father’s life
Now wears his crown.
1.5.Sp18Ghost
Exit.
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts—
Oh, wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce!—won to this shameful lust
The will of my most seeming virtuous queen.
Oh, Hamlet, what a falling off was there!
From me, whose love was of that dignity
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage, and to decline
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine. But virtue, as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel linked,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed
And prey on garbage.
But soft, methinks I scent the morning’s air.
Brief let me be. Sleeping within mine orchard,
My custom always in the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour, thy uncle stole
With juice of cursèd hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of mine ears did pour
The leperous distillment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigor it doth posset
And curd like eager droppings into milk
The thin and wholesome blood; so did it mine,
And a most instant tetter baked about
Most lazarlike with vile and loathsome crust
All my smooth body.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand
Of life, of crown, and queen at once dispatched,
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousled, disappointed, unaneled,
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
Oh, horrible, oh, horrible, most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damnèd incest.
But howsoever thou pursuest this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once.
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near
And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
Adieu, adieu, Hamlet! Remember me.
1.5.Sp19Hamlet
Enter Horatio and Marcellus.
Oh, all you host of heaven! Oh, earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell? Oh, fie! Hold, my heart,
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter. Yes, yes, by heaven.
Oh, most pernicious woman!
Oh, villain, villain, smiling damnèd villain!
My tables, my tables—meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark.
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word.
It is “Adieu, adieu, remember me.”
I have sworn’t.
I have sworn’t.
1.5.Sp37Hamlet
Why, right, you are i’th’ right.
And so, without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part:
You as your business and desires shall point you
(For every man has business and desire,
Such as it is), and for mine own poor part,
Look you, I’ll go pray.
1.5.Sp41Hamlet
He holds out his sword.
Ghost cries under the stage.
Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, my lord,
And much offense too. Touching this vision here,
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you.
For your desire to know what is between us,
O’ermaster’t as you may. And now, good friends,
As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,
Give me one poor request.
1.5.Sp52Hamlet
They swear.
Ah ha, boy, sayest thou so? Art thou there, truepenny?—
Come on, you hear this fellow in the cellarage.
Consent to swear.
1.5.Sp56Hamlet
They swear.
Hic et ubique? Then we’ll shift for ground.
He moves them to another spot.
Come hither, gentlemen,
And lay your hands again upon my sword,
Never to speak of this that you have heard.
Swear by my sword.
1.5.Sp58Hamlet
They move once more.
Well said, old mole. Canst work i’th’ ground so fast?
A worthy pioneer!—Once more remove, good friends.
1.5.Sp60Hamlet
They swear.
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy. But come,
Here as before: never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd soe’er I bear myself
(As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on),
That you at such time seeing me never shall,
With arms encumbered thus, or thus headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase
As, “Well, we know,” or “We could an if we would,”
Or “If we list to speak,” or “There be an if there might,”
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me. This not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you,
Swear.
1.5.Sp62Hamlet
Exeunt.
Rest, rest, perturbèd spirit. So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you,
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do t’express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together,
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint. Oh, cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
They wait for him to leave first.
Nay, come, let’s go together.
2.1
Enter Polonius and Reynaldo. He gives money and papers.2.1.Sp3Polonius
You shall do marvel’s wisely, good Reynaldo,
Before you visit him you make inquiry
Of his behavior.
2.1.Sp5Polonius
Marry, well said, very well said. Look you, sir,
Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris,
And how, and who, what means, and where they keep,
What company, at what expense; and finding
By this encompassment and drift of question
That they do know my son, come you more nearer
Than your particular demands will touch it;
Take you as ’twere some distant knowledge of him,
And thus, “I know his father and his friends,
And in part him.” Do you mark this, Reynaldo?
2.1.Sp7Polonius
“And in part him. But,” you may say, “not well,
But if’t be he I mean, he’s very wild,
Addicted so and so,” and there put on him
What forgeries you please—marry, none so rank
As may dishonor him, take heed of that,
But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips
As are companions noted and most known
To youth and liberty.
2.1.Sp11Polonius
Faith, no, as you may season it in the charge.
You must not put another scandal on him
That he is open to incontinency;
That’s not my meaning. But breathe his faults so quaintly
That they may seem the taints of liberty,
The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,
A savageness in unreclaimèd blood,
Of general assault.
2.1.Sp15Polonius
Marry sir, here’s my drift,
And I believe it is a fetch of warrant.
You laying these slight sullies on my son
As ’twere a thing a little soiled i’th’ working,
Mark you, your party in converse, him you would sound,
Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes
The youth you breathe of guilty, be assured
He closes with you in this consequence:
“Good sir,” or so, or “friend,” or “gentleman,”
According to the phrase and the addition
Of man and country.
2.1.Sp17Polonius
And then, sir, does he this,
He does—what was I about to say?
I was about to say something. Where did I leave?
Reynaldo
At “closes in the consequence,”
At “friend,” or so, and “gentleman.”
2.1.Sp18Polonius
Exit.
Enter Ophelia.
At “closes in the consequence.” Ay, marry,
He closes with you thus: “I know the gentleman,
I saw him yesterday”—or t’other day,
Or then, or then—“with such and such, and as you say,
There was he gaming, there o’ertook in’s rouse,
There falling out at tennis,” or perchance
“I saw him enter such a house of sale,”
Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth. See you now,
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth,
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out;
So by my former lecture and advice
Shall you my son. You have me, have you not?
2.1.Sp29Ophelia
My lord, as I was sewing in my chamber,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,
No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,
Ungartered, and down-gyvèd to his ankle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosèd out of hell
To speak of horrors, he comes before me.
2.1.Sp33Ophelia
He took me by the wrist, and held me hard.
Then goes he to the length of all his arm,
And with his other hand thus o’er his brow
He falls to such perusal of my face
As he would draw it. Long stayed he so.
At last, a little shaking of mine arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound
That it did seem to shatter all his bulk
And end his being. That done, he lets me go,
And with his head over his shoulders turned
He seemed to find his way without his eyes,
For out o’ doors he went without their help,
And to the last bended their light on me.
2.1.Sp34Polonius
Go with me. I will go seek the King.
This is the very ecstasy of love,
Whose violent property fordoes itself
And leads the will to desperate undertakings
As oft as any passion under heaven
That does afflict our natures. I am sorry.
What, have you given him any hard words of late?
2.1.Sp35Ophelia
No, my good lord, but as you did command
I did repel his letters, and denied
His access to me.
2.1.Sp36Polonius
Exeunt.
That hath made him mad.
I am sorry that with better speed and judgment
I had not quoted him. I fear he did but trifle
And meant to wrack thee; but beshrew my jealousy!
It seems it is as proper to our age
To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
As it is common for the younger sort
To lack discretion. Come, go we to the King.
This must be known, which, being kept close, might move
More grief to hide than hate to utter love.
2.2
Enter King, Queen, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern cum aliis2.2.Sp1King
Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Moreover that we much did long to see you,
The need we have to use you did provoke
Our hasty sending. Something have you heard
Of Hamlet’s transformation—so I call it,
Since not th’exterior nor the inward man
Resembles that it was. What it should be,
More than his father’s death, that thus hath put him
So much from th’understanding of himself,
I cannot deem of. I entreat you both
That, being of so young days brought up with him,
And since so neighbored to his youth and humor,
That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court
Some little time, so by your companies
To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather
So much as from occasions you may glean
That, opened, lies within our remedy.
2.2.Sp2Queen
Good gentlemen, he hath much talked of you,
And sure I am two men there are not living
To whom he more adheres. If it will please you
To show us so much gentry and good will
As to expend your time with us awhile
For the supply and profit of our hope,
Your visitation shall receive such thanks
As fits a king’s remembrance.
2.2.Sp3Rosencrantz
Both your majesties
Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,
Put your dread pleasures more into command
Than to entreaty.
2.2.Sp4Guildenstern
We both obey,
And here give up ourselves in the full bent
To lay our services freely at your feet
To be commanded.
2.2.Sp6Queen
Exit Guildenstern with Rosencrantz and other Courtiers.
Enter Polonius.
Thanks, Guildenstern, and gentle Rosencrantz.
And I beseech you instantly to visit
My too-much-changèd son.—Go, some of ye,
And bring the gentlemen where Hamlet is.
2.2.Sp11Polonius
Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege,
I hold my duty, as I hold my soul,
Both to my God, one to my gracious king;
And I do think, or else this brain of mine
Hunts not the trail of policy so sure
As I have used to do, that I have found
The very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy.
2.2.Sp13Polonius
Give first admittance to th’ambassadors.
My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.
2.2.Sp14King
Enter Polonius, Voltemand, and Cornelius.
Thyself do grace to them, and bring them in.—
Polonius goes to bring in the ambassadors.
He tells me, my sweet Queen, that he hath found
The head and source of all your son’s distemper.
2.2.Sp16King
Well, we shall sift him.—Welcome, good friends.
Say, Voltemand, what from our brother Norway?
2.2.Sp17Voltemand
Most fair return of greetings and desires.
Upon our first, he sent out to suppress
His nephew’s levies, which to him appeared
To be a preparation ’gainst the Polack,
But, better looked into, he truly found
It was against your highness; whereat grieved
That so his sickness, age, and impotence
Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests
On Fortinbras, which he (in brief) obeys,
Receives rebuke from Norway, and, in fine,
Makes vow before his uncle never more
To give th’assay of arms against your majesty.
Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,
Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee
And his commission to employ those soldiers
So levied, as before, against the Polack,
With an entreaty herein further shown
That it might please you to give quiet pass
Through your dominions for his enterprise
On such regards of safety and allowance
As therein are set down.
2.2.Sp18King
Exit Ambassadors.
It likes us well,
And at our more considered time we’ll read,
Answer, and think upon this business.
Meantime, we thank you for your well-took labor.
Go to your rest. At night we’ll feast together.
Most welcome home!
2.2.Sp19Polonius
This business is very well ended.
My liege and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night, night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes.
I will be brief. Your noble son is mad.
Mad call I it, for to define true madness,
What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go.
2.2.Sp21Polonius
Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
That he is mad, ’tis true, ’tis true ’tis pity,
And pity it is true—a foolish figure,
But farewell it, for I will use no art.
Mad let us grant him, then. And now remains
That we find out the cause of this effect,
Or rather say the cause of this defect,
For this effect defective comes by cause.
Thus it remains, and the remainder thus.
Perpend.
I have a daughter—have whilst she is mine—
Who in her duty and obedience, mark,
Hath given me this. Now gather and surmise.
He reads from the letter.“To the celestial and my soul’s idol, the most beautified Ophelia.” That’s an ill
phrase, a vile phrase; beautified is a vile in phrase. But you shall hear: “These in her excellent white bosom, these.”
2.2.Sp23Polonius
Good madam, stay awhile, I will be faithful.
He reads.
“Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.”
“Oh, dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers. I have not art to reckon my groans. But that I love thee best, oh, most best, believe it. Adieu. Thine evermore,
most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him. Hamlet.”
This in obedience hath my daughter showed me,
And, more above, hath his soliciting,
As they fell out, by time, by means, and place,
All given to mine ear.
2.2.Sp27Polonius
I would fain prove so. But what might you think,
When I had seen this hot love on the wing—
As I perceived it (I must tell you that)
Before my daughter told me—what might you,
Or my dear majesty your queen here, think
If I had played the desk or table-book,
Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb,
Or looked upon this love with idle sight,
What might you think? No, I went round to work,
And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:
“Lord Hamlet is a prince out of thy star.
This must not be.” And then I precepts gave her
That she should lock herself from his resort,
Admit no messengers, receive no tokens.
Which done, she took the fruits of my advice,
And he, repulsèd, a short tale to make,
Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,
Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
Thence to a lightness, and by this declension
Into the madness whereon now he raves,
And all we wail for.
2.2.Sp30Polonius
Hath there been such a time—I’d fain know that—
That I have positively said ’tis so
When it proved otherwise?
2.2.Sp32Polonius
Take this from this, if this be otherwise.
If circumstances lead me, I will find
Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
Within the center.
2.2.Sp36Polonius
Enter Hamlet reading on a book.
At such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him.
Be you and I behind an arras then;
Mark the encounter. If he love her not,
And be not from his reason fall’n thereon,
Let me be no assistant for a state
And keep a farm and carters.
2.2.Sp39Polonius
Away, I do beseech you, both away.
I’ll board him presently.
(Exit King and Queen.)
Oh, give me leave.—How does my good Lord Hamlet?
2.2.Sp46Hamlet
Ay, sir, to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of two thousand.
2.2.Sp48Hamlet
For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion— Have you a daughter?
2.2.Sp50Hamlet
Let her not walk i’th’ sun. Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to’t.
2.2.Sp51Polonius
Aside
How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first. He said I was a fishmonger. He is far gone, far gone. And truly, in my youth I suffered much extremity for love, very near this. I’ll
speak to him again.—What do you read, my lord?
2.2.Sp56Hamlet
Slanders sir; for the satirical slave says here
that old men have gray beards, that their faces are
wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber or plumtree
gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit,
together with weak hams—all which, sir, though I
most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it
not honesty to have it thus set down; for you
yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you could
go backward.
2.2.Sp57Polonius
Aside
Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.—Will you walk out of the air, my
lord?
2.2.Sp59Polonius
Aside
Indeed, that is out o’th’air.
How pregnant sometimes his replies are!
A happiness
that often madness hits on,
which reason and sanity could not
so prosperously be delivered of.
I will leave him,
and suddenly contrive the means of meeting
between him and my daughter.—
My honorable lord, I will most humbly
take my leave of you.
2.2.Sp60Hamlet
You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal—except my life, my life.
2.2.Sp63Polonius
Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Exit Polonius.
To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as they enter
You go to seek my Lord Hamlet? There he is.
2.2.Sp67Hamlet
My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Oh, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye
both?
2.2.Sp69Guildenstern
Happy in that we are not over-happy. On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.
2.2.Sp76Hamlet
Then is doomsday near. But your news is not true. Let me question more in particular. What have you, my good friends, deserved at the
hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?
2.2.Sp80Hamlet
A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’th’ worst.
2.2.Sp82Hamlet
Why, then ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes
it so. To me it is a prison.
2.2.Sp84Hamlet
Oh, God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space,
were it not that I have bad dreams.
2.2.Sp85Guildenstern
Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
2.2.Sp87Rosencrantz
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s
shadow.
2.2.Sp88Hamlet
Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars’
shadows. Shall we to th’court? For, by my fay, I cannot reason.
2.2.Sp90Hamlet
No such matter. I will not sort you with the rest of my servants, for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most
dreadfully attended. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?
2.2.Sp92Hamlet
Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks, but I thank you; and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, deal justly with me. Come, come, nay, speak.
2.2.Sp94Hamlet
Why, anything. But to the purpose: you were sent for, and there is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties have craft enough to color. I know the good King and Queen have sent for you.
2.2.Sp96Hamlet
That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me whether you were sent for or no.
2.2.Sp100Hamlet
I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the King and
Queen molt no feather. I have of late, but wherefore
I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of
exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my
disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a
sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy the air,
look you, this brave o’erhanging, this majestical roof
fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing
to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of
vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in
reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving
how express and admirable! In action, how like an
angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the
world, the paragon of animals. And yet to me what is
this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, no,
nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem
to say so.
2.2.Sp103Rosencrantz
To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you. We coted them on the way, and hither are they coming to offer you service.
2.2.Sp104Hamlet
He that plays the King shall be welcome; his
majesty shall have tribute of me. The Adventurous
Knight shall use his foil and target, the Lover shall
not sigh gratis, the Humorous Man shall end his part in
peace, the Clown shall make those laugh whose lungs
are tickled o’th’sear, and the Lady shall say her mind
freely, or the blank verse shall halt for’t. What players
are they?
2.2.Sp106Hamlet
How chances it they travel? Their
residence both in reputation and profit was better both
ways.
2.2.Sp108Hamlet
Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? Are they so followed?
2.2.Sp111Rosencrantz
Nay, their endeavor keeps in the wonted
pace. But there is, sir, an eyrie of children, little
eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and
are most tyrannically clapped for’t. These are now the
fashion, and so berattle the common stages—so they
call them—that many wearing rapiers are afraid of
goose quills and dare scarce come thither.
2.2.Sp112Hamlet
What, are they children? Who maintains ’em?
How are they escoted? Will they pursue the quality no
longer than they can sing? Will they not say afterwards,
if they should grow themselves to common players—as
it is most like if their means are not better—their
writers do them wrong to make them exclaim against their
own succession?
2.2.Sp113Rosencrantz
Faith, there has been much to-do on both sides,
and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to
controversy. There was for a while no money bid for
argument unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in
the question.
2.2.Sp118Hamlet
Flourish for the players.
It is not strange, for mine uncle is King of
Denmark, and those that would make mows at him
while my father lived give twenty, forty, an hundred
ducats apiece for his picture in little. There is
something in this more than natural, if philosophy could
find it out.
2.2.Sp120Hamlet
Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your
hands, come. The appurtenance of welcome is fashion
and ceremony. Let me comply with you in the garb,
lest my extent to the players, which, I tell you, must show
fairly outward, should more appear like entertainment
than yours. You are welcome. But my uncle-father
and aunt-mother are deceived.
2.2.Sp122Hamlet
Enter Polonius.
I am but mad north-north-west; when the
wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
2.2.Sp124Hamlet
Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too, at each
ear a hearer: that great baby you see there is not yet
out of his swathing clouts.
2.2.Sp125Rosencrantz
Happily he’s the second time come to them, for
they say an old man is twice a child.
2.2.Sp126Hamlet
I will prophesy: he comes to tell me of the
players. Mark it.—You say right, sir, for o’Monday
morning, ’twas so indeed.
2.2.Sp133Polonius
The best actors in the world, either for
tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral,
pastoral-comical-historical-pastoral, tragical-historical,
tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or
poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus
too light for the law of writ and the liberty. These are
the only men.
2.2.Sp142Hamlet
Why,
“
As by lot,
God wot,”
and then you know,
“
It came to pass,
As most like it was.”
The first row of the
pious chanson will show you more, for look where my
abridgments come.
(Enter four or five Players.)
Y’are welcome, masters, welcome all.—I am glad to see
thee well. Welcome, good friends.—Oh, my old friend!
Thy face is valiant since I saw thee last. Com’st thou to
beard me in Denmark?—What, my young lady and
mistress! By’r Lady, your ladyship is nearer heaven than when
I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. Pray God
your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked
within the ring.—Masters, you are all welcome. We’ll e’en
to’t, like French falconers: fly at anything we see. We’ll
have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your
quality. Come, a passionate speech.
2.2.Sp144Hamlet
I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was
never acted, or if it was, not above once; for the play, I
remember, pleased not the million, ’twas caviary to the
general. But it was, as I received it, and others whose
judgment in such matters cried in the top of mine, an
excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down
with as much modesty as cunning. I remember one said
there was no sallets in the lines, to make the matter
savory, nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the
author of affectation, but called it an honest method. One
chief speech in it I chiefly loved: ’twas Aeneas’ tale
to Dido, and thereabout of it especially where he speaks
of Priam’s slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at
this line—let me see, let me see—
The rugged Pyrrhus, like
th’Hyrcanian beast—
It is not so, it begins with Pyrrhus.
The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couchèd in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smeared
With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot
Now is he total gules, horridly tricked
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Baked and empasted with the parching streets
That lend a tyrannous and damnèd light
To their vile murders. Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o’ersizèd with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.
2.2.Sp146FirstPlayer
Anon he finds him,
Striking too short at Greeks. His anticke sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command. Unequal match!
Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide,
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
Th’unnervèd father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel his blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus’ ear; for lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seemed i’th’ air to stick.
So as a painted tyrant Pyrrhus stood,
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
But as we often see against some storm
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region, so, after Pyrrhus’ pause,
A rousèd vengeance sets him new a-work,
And never did the Cyclops’ hammers fall
On Mars his armor, forged for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.
Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods
In general synod take away her power,
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven
As low as to the fiends!
2.2.Sp148Hamlet
It shall to th’ barber’s with your beard.—
Prithee, say on. He’s for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he
sleeps. Say on. Come to Hecuba.
2.2.Sp152FirstPlayer
Run barefoot up and down, threat’ning the flame
With bisson rheum, a clout about that head
Where late the diadem stood, and, for a robe,
About her lank and all o’er-teemèd loins
A blanket in th’alarum of fear caught up—
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped
’Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have pronounced!
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 clamor that she made
(Unless things mortal move them not at all)
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven
And passion in the gods.
2.2.Sp153Polonius
Look where he has not turned his color, and
has tears in’s eyes.—Pray you, no more.
2.2.Sp154Hamlet
’Tis well. I’ll have thee speak out the rest soon.
To Polonius
Good my lord, will you see the players well
bestowed? Do ye hear, let them be well used, 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 lived.
2.2.Sp156Hamlet
Exit Polonius.
God’s bodykins, man, better. Use every man
after his desert and who should scape whipping? Use
them after your own honor and dignity; the less they
deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them
in.
2.2.Sp158Hamlet
Follow him, friends. We’ll hear a play tomorrow.
Aside to the First Player
Dost thou hear me, old friend, can you play The
Murder of Gonzago?
2.2.Sp160Hamlet
We’ll ha’t tomorrow 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 ye not?
2.2.Sp162Hamlet
Exeunt. Manet Hamlet.
Very well. Follow that lord, and look you
mock him not.—My good friends, I’ll leave you till night. You are welcome to Elsinore.
2.2.Sp164Hamlet
Exit.
Ay, so, God buy ye.—Now I am alone.
Oh, 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 whole conceit
That from her working all his visage warmed,
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,
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
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 faculty of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damned defeat was made. 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’th’ throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha? Why, I should take it; for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave’s offal, bloody, a bawdy villain,
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
Oh, vengeance!
Who? What an ass am I! Ay, sure, this is most brave,
That I, the son of the dear murderèd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
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!
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 proclaimed their malefactions;
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 but blench
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the 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. I’ll have grounds
More relative than this. The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.
3.1
Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia,Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Lords.3.1.Sp1King
And can you by no drift of circumstance
Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
3.1.Sp2Rosencrantz
He does confess he feels himself distracted,
But from what cause he will by no means speak.
3.1.Sp3Guildenstern
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.
3.1.Sp9Rosencrantz
Madam, it so fell out that certain players
We o’erraught on the way. Of these we told him,
And there did seem in him a kind of joy
To hear of it. They are about the court,
And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.
3.1.Sp10Polonius
’Tis most true,
And he beseeched me to entreat your majesties
To hear and see the matter.
3.1.Sp11King
Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Lords.
With all my heart, and it doth much content me
To hear him so inclined. Good gentlemen,
Give him a further edge, and drive his purpose on
To these delights.
3.1.Sp13King
Sweet Gertrude, leave us too,
For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
That he, as ’twere by accident, may there
Affront Ophelia. Her father and myself, lawful espials,
Will so bestow our selves that, seeing unseen,
We may of their encounter frankly judge,
And gather by him, as he is behaved,
If’t be th’affliction of his love or no
That thus he suffers for.
3.1.Sp14Queen
Exit 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.
3.1.Sp16Polonius
Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please ye,
We will bestow ourselves.
To Ophelia
Read on this book,
That show of such an exercise may color
Your loneliness. We are oft too blame in this,
’Tis too much proved, that with devotion’s visage
And pious action we do sugar o’er
The devil himself.
3.1.Sp17King
Exeunt the King and Polonius, as they conceal themselves.
Enter Hamlet.
Aside
Oh, ’tis true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plast’ring art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word.
Oh, heavy burden!
3.1.Sp19Hamlet
To be, or not to be, that is the question,
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to? ’Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the poor man’s contumely,
The pangs of disprized love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn away
And lose the name of action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia!—Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
3.1.Sp22Ophelia
My lord, I have remembrances of yours
That I have longèd long to redeliver.
I pray you now receive them.
3.1.Sp24Ophelia
She offers Hamlet the remembrances.
My honored lord, I know right well you did,
And with them words of so sweet breath composed
As made the things more rich. Then, perfume left,
Take these again, for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind,
There, my lord. "
3.1.Sp29Hamlet
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.
3.1.Sp31Hamlet
Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to
a bawd than the
force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness.
This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it
proof. I did love you once.
3.1.Sp33Hamlet
You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.
3.1.Sp35Hamlet
Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou
be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest,
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were
better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud,
revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck
than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give
them shape, or time to act them in. What should such
fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth?
We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy
ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?
3.1.Sp37Hamlet
Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no way but in’s own house. Farewell.
3.1.Sp39Hamlet
If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague
for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,
thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery.
Go, farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool,
for wise men know well enough what monsters you
make of them. To a nunnery go, and quickly too.
Farewell.
3.1.Sp41Hamlet
Exit Hamlet.
I have heard of your pratlings too well enough.
God has given you one pace, and you make yourself
another. You jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname
God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your
ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t; it hath made me mad.
I say we will have no more marriages. Those that are
married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep
as they are. To a nunnery, go.
3.1.Sp42Ophelia
Enter King and Polonius stepping forward from concealment.
Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,
Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mold of form,
Th’observed of all observers, quite, quite down.
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune, and harsh,
That unmatched form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. Oh, woe is me
T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
3.1.Sp43King
Love? His affections do not that way tend,
Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little,
Was not like madness. There’s something in his soul
O’er which his melancholy sits on brood,
And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
Will be some danger; which 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
From fashion of himself. What think you on’t?
3.1.Sp44Polonius
Exeunt.
It shall do well. But yet do I believe
The origin and commencement of this grief
Sprung from neglected love.—How now, Ophelia?
You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said,
We heard it all.—My lord, do as you please,
But if you hold it fit, after the play
Let his queen-mother all alone entreat him
To show his griefs. Let her be round with him,
And I’ll be placed so, please you, in the ear
Of all their conference. If she find him not,
To England send him, or confine him where
Your wisdom best shall think.
3.2
Enter Hamlet, and two or three of the Players.3.2.Sp1Hamlet
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced
it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it,
as many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier
had spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much—
your hand thus—but use all gently; for in the very
torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of
passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that
may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul
to see a robustious periwig-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 could
have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant. It
out-Herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.
3.2.Sp3Hamlet
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
anything 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
unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the
censure of the which one must in your allowance
o’erweigh a whole theater of others. Oh, 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,
or Norman, 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
abhominably.
3.2.Sp5Hamlet
Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Enter Horatio.
Oh, 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 meantime some necessary question
of the play be then to be considered. That’s villainous, and
shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses
it. Go make you ready.
(Exeunt Players.)
(Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.)
To Polonius
How now, my lord,
will the King hear this piece of work?
3.2.Sp13Hamlet
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 flattered?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow feigning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of my choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath sealed thee for herself. For thou hast been
As one in suffering all that suffers nothing,
A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hath ta’en with equal thanks. And blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled
That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.—Something too much of this.—
There is a play tonight before the King.
One scene of it comes near the circumstance
Which I have told thee, of my father’s death.
I prithee, when thou see’st that act afoot,
Even with the very comment of my soul
Observe mine uncle. If his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damnèd ghost that we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan’s stithy. Give him needful note,
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
And after we will both our judgments join
To censure of his seeming.
3.2.Sp14Horatio
Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and other Lords attendant,
with his Guard carrying torches. Danish march. Sound a flourish.
Well, my lord,
If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing
And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.
3.2.Sp17Hamlet
Excellent, i’faith, of the chameleon’s dish; I eat
the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so.
3.2.Sp40Hamlet
Oh, 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’s two
hours.
3.2.Sp42Hamlet
Hautboys play. The dumb-show enters.
Enter Players as a King and 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, pours poison in the King’s ears, and
exits. 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.
Exeunt Players.
So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black,
for I’ll have suit of sables. Oh, 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 oh, for oh, the hobby-horse is forgot."
3.2.Sp48Hamlet
Enter Prologue.
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.
3.2.Sp50
Prologue
Exit.
Enter two Players as King and his Queen Baptista.
For us and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently.
3.2.Sp54King
Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round
Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbèd ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.
3.2.Sp55Baptista
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 must.
For women’s fear and love hold quantity;
In neither aught, or in extremity.
Now what my love is, proof hath made you know,
And as my love is sized, my fear is so.
3.2.Sp56King
Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
My operant powers my functions leave to do.
And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honored, beloved; and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou—
3.2.Sp57Baptista
Oh, 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 killed the first.
3.2.Sp59Baptista
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.
3.2.Sp60King
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 ’tis 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 enactors 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 ’tis not strange
That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
For ’tis a question left us yet to prove
Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
The great man down, you mark his favorites flies;
The poor advanced 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.
3.2.Sp61Baptista
Nor earth to give me food, nor heaven light,
Sport and repose lock from me day and night,
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!
3.2.Sp63King
Exit Player Queen.
’Tis deeply sworn.Sweet, leave me here awhile.
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.
3.2.Sp71Hamlet
The Mousetrap. Marry, how? Tropically.
This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna.
Gonzago is the Duke’s name, his wife Baptista. You shall see
anon. ’Tis a knavish piece of work, but what o’ that?
Your majesty and we that have free souls, it touches
us not. Let the galled jade winch; our withers are unwrung.
(Enter Lucianus.)
This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.
3.2.Sp77Hamlet
So you mistake husbands.—
Begin, murderer. Pox, leave thy damnable faces and
begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for
revenge.
3.2.Sp78Lucianus
Pours the poison in his ears. Exit.
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.
3.2.Sp79Hamlet
Exeunt. Hamlet and Horatio remain on stage.
He poisons him i’th’ garden for’s estate. His
name’s Gonzago. The story is extant, and writ in choice
Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer gets the
love of Gonzago’s wife.
3.2.Sp86Hamlet
“Why, let the strucken deer go weep,
The heart ungallèd play,
For some must watch while some must sleep;
So runs the world away.”
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 razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry
of players, sir?
3.2.Sp88Hamlet
Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
A whole one, I.
For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was of Jove himself,
And now reigns here
A very, very pajock.
3.2.Sp94Hamlet
Oh, ha! Come, some music! Come, the recorders.
For if the King like not the comedy,
Why, then belike he likes it not, perdie.
Come, some music.
3.2.Sp102Hamlet
Your wisdom should show itself more
richer to signify this to his doctor, for, for me to put him
to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far
more choler.
3.2.Sp103Guildenstern
Good my lord, put your discourse into some
frame, and start not so wildly from my affair.
3.2.Sp105Guildenstern
The Queen your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.
3.2.Sp107Guildenstern
Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of
the right breed. If it shall please you to make me a
wholesome answer, I will do your mother’s commandment.
If not, your pardon and my return shall be the end of
my business.
3.2.Sp110Hamlet
Make you a wholesome answer; my wit’s
diseased. But, sir, such answers as I can make, you shall
command, or rather, you say, my mother. Therefore no more
but to the matter. My mother, you say.
3.2.Sp111Rosencrantz
Then thus she says: your behavior hath struck
her into amazement and admiration.
3.2.Sp112Hamlet
Oh, wonderful son, that can so astonish a
mother! But is there no sequel at the heels of this
mother’s admiration?
3.2.Sp117Rosencrantz
Good my lord, what is your cause of
distemper? You do freely bar the door of your own
liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend.
3.2.Sp119Rosencrantz
How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself for your succession in
Denmark?
3.2.Sp120Hamlet
Ay, but "while the grass grows"— the proverb is
something musty.
(Enter one with a recorder.)
Oh, the recorder. Let me see.
He takes the recorder.
To withdraw with you, why
do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you
would drive me into a toil?
3.2.Sp128Hamlet
’Tis as easy as lying. Govern these ventages
with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your
mouth, and it will discourse most excellent music.
Look you, these are the stops.
3.2.Sp130Hamlet
Enter Polonius.
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing
you make of me! You would play upon me, you would
seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart
of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest
note to the top of my compass, and there is much
music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot
you make it. Why, do you think that I am easier to be
played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will,
though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.
To Polonius, as he enters
God bless you, sir.
3.2.Sp138Hamlet
Then will I come to my mother by and by.
Aside
They fool me to the top of my bent.
Aloud
I will come by and by.
3.2.Sp139Polonius
Exit.
I will say so.
(Exit.)
"By and by" is easily said.—Leave me, friends.
Exeunt all but Hamlet.
’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft now, to my mother.
O heart, loose not thy nature! Let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom.
Let me be cruel, not unnatural;
I will speak daggers to her, but use none.
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites:
How in my words somever she be shent,
To give them seals, never my soul consent!
3.3
Enter King, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.3.3.Sp1King
I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you.
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you.
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow
Out of his lunacies.
3.3.Sp2Guildenstern
We will ourselves provide.
Most holy and religious fear it is
To keep those many many bodies safe
That live and feed upon your majesty.
3.3.Sp3Rosencrantz
The single and peculiar life is bound
With all the strength and armor of the mind
To keep itself from noyance, but much more
That spirit upon whose spirit depends and rests
The lives of many. The cease of majesty
Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
What’s near it with it. It is a massy wheel
Fixed on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoined, which, when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.
3.3.Sp4King
Exeunt gentlemen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Enter Polonius.
Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage,
For we will fetters put upon this fear,
Which now goes too free-footed.
3.3.Sp6Polonius
My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet.
Behind the arras I’ll convey myself
To hear the process. I’ll warrant she’ll tax him home,
And, as you said—and wisely was it said—
’Tis meet that some more audience then a mother,
Since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear
The speech of vantage. Fare you well, my liege.
I’ll call upon you ere you go to bed,
And tell you what I know.
3.3.Sp7King
He kneels.
Enter Hamlet.
Thanks, dear my lord.
Exit Polonius.
Oh, my offense is rank! It smells to heaven.
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will;
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,
And like a man to double business bound
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursèd hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offense?
And what’s in prayer but this twofold force,
To be forestallèd ere we come to fall,
Or pardoned being down? Then I’ll look up;
My fault is past. But, oh, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? "Forgive me my foul murder"?
That cannot be, since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder:
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain th’offense?
In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offense’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above:
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limèd soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay.
Bow, stubborn knees, and heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well.
3.3.Sp8Hamlet
Exit.
Exit.
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying,
And now I’ll do’t.
He draws his sword.
And so he goes to heaven,
And so am I revenged. That would be scanned:
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his foul son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Oh, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as fresh as May,
And how his audit stands, who knows, save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought
’Tis heavy with him. And am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and seasoned for his passage? No.
He sheathes his sword.
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed,
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in’t,
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damned and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
3.4
Enter Queen and Polonius.3.4.Sp1Polonius
Polonius conceals himself behind the arras.
Enter Hamlet.
He will come straight. Look you lay home to him.
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
And that your grace hath screened and stood between
Much heat and him. I’ll silence me e’en here.
Pray you, be round with him.
3.4.Sp12Hamlet
No, by the rood, not so.
You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,
But—would you were not so!—you are my mother.
3.4.Sp14Hamlet
He stabs through the arras with his rapier.
Hamlet kills Polonius.
Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
3.4.Sp24Hamlet
Ay, lady, ’twas my word.
He parts the arras and discovers the dead Polonius.
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy betters. Take thy fortune.
Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.
To the Queen
Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down,
And let me wring your heart, for so I shall
If it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damnèd custom have not brazed it so
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
3.4.Sp26Hamlet
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And makes a blister there, makes marriage vows
As false as dicers’ oaths—oh, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face doth glow,
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.
3.4.Sp28Hamlet
Showing her two likenesses
:
Look here upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See what a grace was seated on his brow:
Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,
An eye like Mars to threaten or command,
A station like the herald Mercury
New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill,
A combination and a form indeed
Where every god did seem to set his seal
To give the world assurance of a man.
This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear,
Blasting his wholesome breath. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed
And batten on this moor? Ha? Have you eyes?
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble,
And waits upon the judgment, and what judgment
Would step from this to this? What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?
O shame, where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax
And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardor gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn
As reason panders will.
3.4.Sp29Queen
Oh, Hamlet speak no more!
Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,
And there I see such black and grainèd spots
As will not leave their tinct.
3.4.Sp30Hamlet
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty!
3.4.Sp31Queen
Oh, speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in mine ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
3.4.Sp32Hamlet
Enter Ghost.
A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord, a vice of kings,
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
And put it in his pocket—
3.4.Sp34Hamlet
A king of shreds and patches—
Seeing the Ghost
Save me and hover o’er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would you, gracious figure?
3.4.Sp36Hamlet
Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command?
Oh, say!
3.4.Sp37Ghost
Do not forget. This visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But look, amazement on thy mother sits.
Oh, step between her and her fighting soul!
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.
3.4.Sp39Queen
Alas, how is’t with you,
That you bend your eye on vacancy,
And with th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,
And, as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?
3.4.Sp40Hamlet
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares!
His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable.
To the Ghost
Do not look upon me,
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects. Then what I have to do
Will want true color, tears perchance for blood.
3.4.Sp46Hamlet
Exit Ghost.
Why, look you there, look how it steals away!
My father in his habit as he lived.
Look where he goes, even now out at the portal!
3.4.Sp47Queen
This is the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy is very cunning in.
3.4.Sp48Hamlet
Ecstasy?
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test
And I the matter will reword, which madness
Would gambol from, Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not a flattering unction to your soul
That not your trespass but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst 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 o’er the weeds
To make them rank. Forgive me this my virtue,
For in the fatness of this pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
3.4.Sp50Hamlet
Oh, 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. Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence. Once more good night,
And when you are desirous to be blest,
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,
I do repent; but heaven hath pleased 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.
3.4.Sp52Hamlet
Not this by no means that I bid you do:
Let the blunt 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 damned 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,
Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?
No, in dispite of sense and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house’s top,
Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep
And break your own neck down.
3.4.Sp53Queen
Be thou assured, if words be made of breath
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.
3.4.Sp56Hamlet
Exit Hamlet, tugging in Polonius.
This man shall set me packing.
I’ll lug the guts into the neighbor room.
Mother, good night. Indeed, this counselor
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.
4.1
Enter King.4.1.Sp1King
There’s matters in these sighs. These profound heaves
You must translate; ’tis fit we understand them.
Where is your son?
4.1.Sp4Queen
Mad as the seas and wind, when both contend
Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit,
Behind the arras hearing something stir,
He whips his rapier out, and cries, "A rat, a rat!"
And in his brainish apprehension kills
The unseen good old man.
4.1.Sp5King
Oh, heavy deed!
It had been so with us had we been there.
His liberty is full of threats to all,
To you yourself, to us, to everyone.
Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered?
It will be laid to us, whose providence
Should have kept short, restrained, 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, lets it feed
Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?
4.1.Sp6Queen
To draw apart the body he hath killed,
O’er whom his very madness, like some ore
Among a mineral of metals base,
Shows itself pure: he weeps for what is done.
4.1.Sp7King
Exeunt.
Oh, 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.
(Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.)
Ho, Guildenstern!
Friends both, go join you with some further aid.
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
And from his mother’s closet hath he dragged him.
Go seek him out, speak fair, and bring the body
Into the chapel. I pray you haste in this.
(Exit Gentlemen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.)
Come, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends
To let them know both what we mean to do
And what’s untimely done. Oh, come away!
My soul is full of discord and dismay.
4.2
Enter Hamlet. Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.4.2.Sp9Hamlet
That I can keep your counsel and not mine
own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge, what
replication should be made by the son of a king?
4.2.Sp11Hamlet
Exeunt.
Ay, sir, that soaks up the King’s countenance, his
rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the King
best service in the end: he keeps them like an ape in
the corner of his jaw, first mouthed to be last swallowed.
When he needs what you have gleaned, it is but
squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.
4.3
Enter King.4.3.Sp1King
Enter Rosencrantz.
Enter Hamlet and Guildenstern and Guards.
I have sent to seek him and to find the body.
How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!
Yet must not we put the strong law on him;
He’s loved of the distracted multitude,
Who like not in their judgment but their eyes,
And where ’tis so, th’offender’s scourge is weighed,
But ne’er the offense. To bear all smooth and even,
This sudden sending him away must seem
Deliberate pause. Diseases desperate grown
By desperate appliance are relieved,
Or not at all.
4.3.Sp11Hamlet
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A
certain convocation of worms are e’en at him. Your worm
is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else
to fat us, and we fat ourself for maggots. Your fat king
and your lean beggar is but variable service to dishes,
but to one table that’s the end.
4.3.Sp15Hamlet
Exeunt attendants.
In heaven. Send thither to see. If your
messenger find him not there, seek him i’th’ other place
yourself. But indeed if you find him not this month, you
shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.
4.3.Sp18King
Hamlet, this deed of thine, for thine especial safety—
Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve
For that which thou hast done—must send thee hence
With fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself.
The bark is ready, and the wind at help,
Th’associates tend, and everything at bent
For England.
4.3.Sp25Hamlet
Exit.
My mother. Father and mother is man and
wife, man and wife is one flesh, and so, my mother. Come,
for England!
4.3.Sp26King
Exit.
Follow him at foot.
Tempt him with speed aboard.
Delay it not. I’ll have him hence tonight.
Away! For everything is sealed and done
That else leans on th’affair. Pray you, make haste.
Exeunt all but the King.
And England, if my love thou hold’st at aught,
As my great power thereof may give thee sense,
Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red
After the Danish sword, and thy free awe
Pays homage to us, thou mayst not coldly set
Our sovereign process, which imports at full
By letters conjuring to that effect
The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England,
For like the hectic in my blood he rages,
And thou must cure me. Till I know ’tis done,
Howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.
4.4
Enter Fortinbras and a Captain with an army.4.4.Sp1Fortinbras
Exit with all the rest.
Go, captain, from me greet the Danish King.
Tell him that by his license Fortinbras
Claims the conveyance of a promised march
Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.
If that his majesty would aught with us,
We shall express our duty in his eye;
And let him know so.
4.5
Enter Queen and Horatio.4.5.Sp4Horatio
She speaks much of her father, says she hears
There’s tricks i’th’ world, and hems, and beats her heart,
Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt
That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshapèd use of it doth move
The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,
Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,
Indeed would make one think there would be thought,
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
4.5.Sp5Queen
Enter Ophelia, distracted.
’Twere good she were spoken with,
For she may strew dangerous conjectures
In ill-breeding minds. Let her come in.
Exit Gentleman.
Aside
To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is,
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
4.5.Sp8Ophelia
She sings.
“How should I your true love know
from another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.”
She sings. He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone. At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone.Enter King.
White his shroud as the mountain snow—
4.5.Sp14Ophelia
She sings.
“Larded with sweet flowers,
Which bewept to the grave did not go
With true-love showers.”
4.5.Sp16Ophelia
Well God dild you. They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!
4.5.Sp18Ophelia
Pray you, let’s have no words of this. But when they ask you what it means, say you this:
She sings.
Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donned his clothes,
And dupped the chamber door,
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more
.4.5.Sp20Ophelia
Indeed, la? Without an oath I’ll make an end on’t.
She sings.
By Gis and by Saint Charity,
Alack, and fie for shame!
Young men will do’t if they come to’t;
By Cock, they are too blame.
Quoth she, ‘Before you tumbled me,
you promised me to wed.ʼ
‘So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.ʼ4.5.Sp22Ophelia
Exit.
I hope all will be well. We must be patient.
But I cannot choose but weep to think they should
lay him i’th’ 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.
4.5.Sp23King
A noise within.
Enter a Messenger.
To Horatio.
Follow her close. Give her good watch, I pray you.
Exit Horatio.
Oh, this is the poison of deep grief! It springs
All from her father’s death. Oh, Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows comes, they come not single spies
But in battalias. 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
In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia
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,
Keeps 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 beggared,
Will nothing stick our persons to arraign
In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murdering piece, in many places
Gives me superfluous death.
4.5.Sp26Messenger
Save yourself, my lord!
The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impiteous haste
Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
O’erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord,
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!"
4.5.Sp27Queen
Noise within.
Enter Laertes.
How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
Oh, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!
4.5.Sp33Laertes
I thank you. Keep the door.—
Laertes’s followers remain outside the door.
O thou vile king, give me my father!
4.5.Sp35Laertes
That drop of blood that calms
proclaims me bastard,
Cries "Cuckold!" to my father, brands the harlot
Even here between the chaste unsmirchèd brow
Of my true mother.
4.5.Sp36King
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,
Why thou art thus incensed?—Let him go, Gertrude.—
Speak, man.
4.5.Sp41Laertes
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 revenged
Most throughly for my father.
4.5.Sp43Laertes
My will, not all the world.
And for my means, I’ll husband them so well
They shall go far with little.
4.5.Sp44King
Good Laertes,
If you desire to know the certainty
Of your dear father’s death, is’t writ in your revenge
That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
Winner and loser?
4.5.Sp47Laertes
To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms,
And, like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,
Repast them with my blood.
4.5.Sp48King
A noise within.
Enter Ophelia
Why, now you speak
Like a good child and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father’s death,
And am most sensible in grief for it,
It shall as level to your judgment pierce
As day does to your eye.
4.5.Sp50Laertes
How now, what noise is that?
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 by weight
Till our scale turns 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.
4.5.Sp51Ophelia
She sings.
“They bore him bare-faced on the bier,
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny,
And on his grave rains many a tear.”
Fare you well, my dove.
Laertes
Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade
revenge,
It could not move thus.
4.5.Sp52Ophelia
You must sing "down, a-down," an you call
him "a-down-a." Oh, how the wheel becomes it! It is
the false steward that stole his master’s daughter.
4.5.Sp54Ophelia
There’s rosemary; that’s for remembrance.
Pray, love, remember. And there is pansies; that’s for
thoughts.
4.5.Sp56Ophelia
There’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s
rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it
herb-grace o’Sundays. Oh, you must wear your rue
with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would give you
some violets, but they withered all when my father
died. They say he made a good end.
She sings. For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.
4.5.Sp58Ophelia
Exeunt Ophelia and the Queen, following her.
She sings.
“And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
No, no, he is dead,
Go to thy deathbed,
He never will come again.
His beard as white as snow,
All flaxen was his poll.
He is gone, he is gone,
And we cast away moan.
Gramercy on his soul!”
And of all Christian souls, I pray God.
God buy ye!
4.5.Sp60King
Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
And they shall hear and judge ’twixt you and me.
If by direct or by collateral hand
They find us touched, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours
To you in satisfaction; but if not,
Be you content to lend your patience to us,
And we shall jointly labor with your soul
To give it due content.
4.5.Sp61Laertes
Exeunt.
Let this be so.
His means of death, his obscure burial—
No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones,
No noble rite, nor formal ostentation—
Cry to be heard as ’twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call in question.
4.6
Enter Horatio, with an Attendant i.e., Servingman.4.6.Sp3Horatio
Enter Sailor with one or more companions.
Let them come in.
Exit Servingman.
I do not know from what part of the world I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.
4.6.Sp6Sailor
He gives a letter.
He shall, sir, an’t please him. There’s a letter
for you, sir. It comes from th’ambassadors that was
bound for England, if your name be Horatio, as I am let
to know it is.
4.6.Sp7
Horatio
Exit with the sailors.
(Reads the letter.)
“Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked this, give these
fellows some means to the King; they have letters
for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very
warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too
slow of sail, we put on a compelled valor. In the grapple, I
boarded them. On the instant they got clear of our ship, so
I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like
thieves of mercy, but they knew what they did. I am to do
a good turn for them. Let the King have the letters I have
sent, and repair thou to me with as much haste as thou wouldest
fly death. I have words to speak in your ear will make thee
dumb, yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter.
These good fellows will bring thee where I am. Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern hold their course for England. Of them
I have much to tell thee. Farewell.
He that thou knowest thine,
Hamlet. ”
:
Come, I will give you way for these your letters,
/And do’t the speedier that you may direct me
/To him from whom you brought them.
4.7
Enter King and Laertes.4.7.Sp1King
Now must your conscience my acquittance seal,
And you must put me in your heart for friend,
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
That he which hath your noble father slain
Pursued my life.
4.7.Sp2Laertes
It well appears. But tell me
Why you proceeded not against these feats
So crimeful and so capital in nature,
As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
You mainly were stirred up.
4.7.Sp3King
Oh, for two special reasons,
Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinewed,
And yet to me they are strong. The Queen his mother
Lives almost by his looks, and for myself—
My virtue or my plague, be it either which—
She’s so conjunctive to my life and soul
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her. The other motive
Why to a public count I might not go
Is the great love the general gender bear him,
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
Convert his gyves to graces, so that my arrows,
Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had armed them.
4.7.Sp4Laertes
And so have I a noble father lost,
A sister driven into desperate terms,
Who has, if praises may go back again,
Stood challenger on mount of all the age
For her perfections. But my revenge will come.
4.7.Sp5King
He gives letters.
Break not your sleeps for that. You must not think
That we are made of stuff so flat and dull
That we can let our beard be shook with danger
And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more.
I loved your father, and we love ourself,
And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine—
(Enter a Messenger with letters.)
How now? What news?
4.7.Sp8Messenger
Sailors, my lord, they say. I saw them not.
They were given me by Claudio. He received them.
4.7.Sp9King
Laertes, you shall hear them.
To the Messenger
Leave us.
(Exit Messenger.)
He reads.
High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your
kingdom. Tomorrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly
eyes, when I shall (first asking your pardon thereunto)
recount th’occasions of my sudden and more strange return.
Hamlet.4.7.Sp10
King
What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
Or is it some abuse? Or no such thing?
4.7.Sp12King
’Tis Hamlet’s character. "Naked!"
And in a postscript here he says "alone."
Can you advise me?
4.7.Sp13Laertes
I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come.
It warms the very sickness in my heart
That I shall live and tell him to his teeth
"Thus diddest thou."
4.7.Sp16King
To thine own peace. If he be now returned
As checking at his voyage, and that he means
No more to undertake it, I will work him
To an exploit, now ripe in my device,
Under the which he shall not choose but fall;
And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe,
But even his mother shall uncharge the practice
And call it accident. Some two months hence
Here was a gentleman of Normandy.
I have seen myself, and served against, the French,
And they ran well on horseback, but this gallant
Had witchcraft in’t; he grew into his seat,
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse
As had he been incorpsed and demi-natured
With the brave beast. So far he passed my thought
That I in forgery of shapes and tricks
Come short of what he did.
4.7.Sp22King
He made confession of you,
And gave you such a masterly report
For art and exercise in your defense,
And for your rapier most especially,
That he cried out ’twould be a sight indeed
If one could match you, sir. This report of his
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy
That he could nothing do but wish and beg
Your sudden coming o’er to play with him.
Now, out of this—
4.7.Sp24King
Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?
4.7.Sp26King
Not that I think you did not love your father,
But that I know love is begun by time,
And that I see, in passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
Hamlet comes back. What would you undertake
To show yourself your father’s son indeed,
More than in words?
4.7.Sp28King
No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize.
Revenge should have no bounds. But good Laertes,
Will you do this: keep close within your chamber.
Hamlet returned shall know you are come home.
We’ll put on those shall praise your excellence
And set a double varnish on the fame
The Frenchman gave you, bring you in fine together,
And wager on your heads. He being remiss,
Most generous, and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils, so that with ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
A sword unbated, and in a pass of practice
Requite him for your father.
4.7.Sp29Laertes
I will do’t,
And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank
So mortal I but dipped a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death
That is but scratched withal. I’ll touch my point
With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly,
It may be death.
4.7.Sp30King
Enter Queen.
Lets further think of this,
Weigh what convenience both of time and means
May fit us to our shape. If this should fail,
And that our drift look through our bad performance,
’Twere better not assayed. Therefore this project
Should have a back or second, that might hold
If this should blast in proof. Soft, let me see.
We’ll make a solemn wager on your comings—
I ha’t! When in your motion you are hot and dry—
As make your bouts more violent to the end—
And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepared him
A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venomed stuck,
Our purpose may hold there.—How, sweet Queen?
4.7.Sp31Queen
One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,
So fast they’ll follow. Your sister’s drowned, Laertes.
4.7.Sp33Queen
There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands did she come,
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do "dead men’s fingers" call them.
There on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down the weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and endued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
4.7.Sp36Laertes
Exit.
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears. But yet
It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will. (
He weeps.) When these are gone,
The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord.
I have a speech of fire that fain would blaze,
But that this folly douts it.
4.7.Sp37King
Exeunt.
Let’s follow, Gertrude.
How much I had to do to calm his rage!
Now fear I this will give it start again;
Therefore let’s follow.
5.1
Enter two Clowns with spades and mattocks.5.1.Sp2Other
I tell thee she is, and therefore make her grave
straight. The crowner hath sat on her, and finds it
Christian burial.
5.1.Sp5Clown
It must be se offendendo , it cannot be else. For
here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it
argues an act, and an act hath three branches: it is an
act to do and to perform. Argal, she drowned herself
wittingly.
5.1.Sp7Clown
Give me leave. Here lies the water; good.
Here stands the man; good. If the man go to this
water and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes;
mark you that? But if the water come to him and drown
him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not
guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.
5.1.Sp10Other
Will you ha’ the truth on’t? If this had not
been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried
out of Christian burial.
5.1.Sp11Clown
Why, there thou say’st, and the more pity that
great folk should have countenance in this world to
drown or hang themselves more than their
even-Christian. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen
but gardeners, ditchers, and gravemakers. They hold up
Adam’s profession.
5.1.Sp15Clown
Why, art a heathen? How dost thou
understand the Scripture? The Scripture says Adam digged.
Could he dig without arms? I’ll put another
question to thee. If thou answerest me not to the purpose,
confess thyself—
5.1.Sp17Clown
What is he that builds stronger than either the
mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?
5.1.Sp19Clown
Enter Hamlet and Horatio afar off.
I like thy wit well, in good faith, the gallows
does well. But how does it well? It does well to those
that do ill. Now, thou dost ill to say the gallows is
built stronger than the church. Argal, the gallows
may do well to thee. To’t again, come.
5.1.Sp25Clown
Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your
dull ass will not mend his pace with beating; and when
you are asked this question next, say "a grave-maker." The
houses that he makes lasts till doomsday. Go, get thee
to Youghan, fetch me a stoup of liquor.
Exit Second Clown.
The First Clown digs.
Sings.In youth when I did love, did love,
Methought it was very sweet
To contract—oh—the time for—a—my behove,
Oh, methought there was nothing meet. 5.1.Sp29Clown
Clown sings.
But age with his stealing steps
Hath caught me in his clutch,
And hath shipped me intil the land,
As if I had never been such.
The Clown throws up a skull.
5.1.Sp30Hamlet
That skull had a tongue in it and could sing
once. How the knave jowls it to th’ ground, as if it
were Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder! It
might be the pate of a politician, which this ass
o’er-offices, one that could circumvent God, might it not?
5.1.Sp32Hamlet
Or of a courtier, which could say, "Good
morrow, sweet lord, how dost thou, good lord?" This
might be my Lord Such-a-one, that praised my Lord
Such-a-one’s horse when he meant to beg it, might it not?
5.1.Sp34Hamlet
Why, e’en so. And now my Lady Worm’s,
chapless, and knocked about the mazard with a sexton’s
spade. Here’s fine revolution, if we had the trick to
see’t. Did these bones cost no more the breeding but
to play at loggets with ’em? Mine ache to think
on’t.
5.1.Sp35Clown
He throws up another skull.
(Clown sings. )
Song. A pickax and a spade, a spade,
For and a shrouding sheet;
Oh, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet.5.1.Sp36Hamlet
There’s another. Why might not that be the
skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now? His
quillets? His cases? His tenures, and his tricks? Why
does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about
the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of
his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in’s
time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his
recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries.
Is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his
recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? Will his
vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and
double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of
indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will
hardly lie in this box, and must the inheritor himself
have no more? Ha?
5.1.Sp40Hamlet
They are sheep and calves that seek out
assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow.—Whose grave’s
this, sir?
5.1.Sp43Clown
You lie out on’t, sir, and therefore it is not yours.
For my part, I do not lie in’t, and yet it is mine.
5.1.Sp44Hamlet
Thou dost lie in’t, to be in’t and say ’tis thine.
’Tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou
liest.
5.1.Sp52Hamlet
To Horatio
How absolute the knave is! We must speak
by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the
Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it,
the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant
comes so near the heels of our courtier he galls his
kibe.—How long hast thou been grave-maker?
5.1.Sp53Clown
Of all the days i’th’year, I came to’t that day
that our last King Hamlet o’ercame Fortinbras.
5.1.Sp55Clown
Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that.
It was the very day that young Hamlet was born—he
that was mad and sent into England.
5.1.Sp57Clown
Why, because he was mad. He shall recover his wits there; or if he do not, it’s no
great matter there.
5.1.Sp67Clown
I’faith, if he be not rotten before he die—as we have
many pocky corses nowadays that will scarce hold
the laying in—he will last you some eight year, or nine
year. A tanner will last you nine year.
5.1.Sp69Clown
Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade that
he will keep out water a great while; and your water
is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.
He picks up a skull.
Here’s a skull now: this skull has lain in the earth three-and-twenty years.
5.1.Sp73Clown
A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! ’A poured a
flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull,
sir, this same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the King’s jester.
5.1.Sp76Hamlet
Let me see.
He takes the skull.
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him,
Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He
hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and how
abhorred my imagination is! My gorge rises at it. Here
hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.—
Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your
songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to
set the table on a roar? No one now to mock your own
jeering? Quite chopfall’n? Now get you to my lady’s
chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this
favor she must come. Make her laugh at that.
Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.
5.1.Sp82Hamlet
To what base uses we may return, Horatio!
Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of
Alexander till he find it stopping a bunghole?
5.1.Sp84Hamlet
Hamlet and Horatio conceal themselves. Ophelia’s body is taken to the grave.
No, faith, not a jot. But to follow him thither
with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it, as thus:
Alexander died; Alexander was buried; Alexander
returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make
loam, and why of that loam whereto he was
converted might they not stop a beer-barrel?
“
Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
Oh, that that earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall t’expel the winter’s flaw! ”
But soft, but soft, aside! Here comes the King,
Enter King, Queen, Laertes, and a coffin of Ophelia, in funeral procession, with a Priest, with Lords attendant.The Queen, the courtiers. Who is that they follow,
And with such maimèd rites? This doth betoken,
The corse they follow did with desperate hand
Fordo it own life. ’Twas some estate.
Couch we awhile and mark.
5.1.Sp88Priest
Her obsequies have been as far enlarged
As we have warrantise. Her death was doubtful,
And, but that great command o’ersways the order,
She should in ground unsanctified have lodged
Till the last trumpet. For charitable prayer,
Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her;
Yet here she is allowed her virgin rites,
Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home
Of bell and burial.
5.1.Sp90Priest
No more be done.
We should profane the service of the dead
To sing sage requiem and such rest to her
As to peace-parted souls.
5.1.Sp91Laertes
Lay her i’th’earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
A minist’ring angel shall my sister be
When thou liest howling.
5.1.Sp93Queen
Scattering flowers
Sweets to the sweet! Farewell.
I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife.
I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid,
And not t’have strewed thy grave.
5.1.Sp94Laertes
Oh, terrible woe
Fall ten times treble on that cursèd head
Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense
Deprived thee of! Hold off the earth awhile,
Till I have caught her once more in mine arms.
(Leaps in the grave.)
Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
Till of this flat a mountain you have made
To o’ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus.
5.1.Sp95Hamlet
Coming forward
What is he whose griefs
Bears such an emphasis, whose phrase of sorrow
Conjures the wand’ring stars, and makes them stand
Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,
Hamlet the Dane.
5.1.Sp97Hamlet
Hamlet and Laertes are parted.
Thou pray’st not well.
I prithee take thy fingers from my throat.
Sir, though I am not splenative and rash,
Yet have I something in me dangerous,
Which let thy wiseness fear. Away thy hand!
5.1.Sp103Hamlet
I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?
5.1.Sp106Hamlet
Come, show me what thou’lt do.
Woo’t weep? Woo’t fight? Woo’t tear thyself?
Woo’t drink up eisil? Eat a crocodile?
I’ll do’t. Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
Be buried quick with her, and so will I.
And if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart. Nay, an thou’lt mouth,
I’ll rant as well as thou.
5.1.Sp107King
This is mere madness,
And thus awhile the fit will work on him;
Anon, as patient as the female dove
When that her golden couplet are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.
5.1.Sp108Hamlet
Exit.
To Laertes
Hear you, sir:
What is the reason that you use me thus?
I loved you ever. But it is no matter.
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.
5.1.Sp109King
Exeunt.
I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon him.
Exit Horatio.
Aside to Laertes
Strengthen then your patience in our last night’s speech;
We’ll put the matter to the present push.—
Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.—
This grave shall have a living monument.
An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;
Till then, in patience our proceeding be.
5.2
Enter Hamlet and Horatio.5.2.Sp1Hamlet
So much for this, sir. Now let me see, the other.
You do remember all the circumstance?
5.2.Sp3Hamlet
Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly—
And praise be rashness for it!—let us know,
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well
When our dear plots do pall, and that should teach us
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
5.2.Sp5Hamlet
Up from my cabin,
My sea-gown scarfed about me in the dark,
Groped I to find out them; had my desire,
Fingered their packet, and in fine withdrew
To mine own room again, making so bold,
My fears forgetting manners, to unseal
Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio—
Oh, royal knavery!— an exact command,
Larded with many several sorts of reason,
Importing Denmark’s health, and England’s too,
With, hoo! such bugs and goblins in my life,
That on the supervise, no leisure bated,
No, not to stay the grinding of the ax,
My head should be struck off.
5.2.Sp7Hamlet
Showing a document
Here’s the commission. Read it at more leisure.
But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed?
5.2.Sp9Hamlet
Being thus benetted round with villains,
Ere I could make a prologue to my brains,
They had begun the play. I sat me down,
Devised a new commission, wrote it fair.
I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness to write fair, and labored much
How to forget that learning, but, sir, now
It did me yeoman’s service. Wilt thou know
The effects of what I wrote?
5.2.Sp11Hamlet
An earnest conjuration from the King,
As England was his faithful tributary,
As love between them as the palm should flourish,
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear
And stand a comma ’tween their amities,
And many suchlike "as"es of great charge,
That on the view and know of these contents,
Without debatement further, more or less,
He should the bearers put to sudden death,
Not shriving time allowed.
5.2.Sp13Hamlet
Why, even in that was heaven ordinate.
I had my father’s signet in my purse,
Which was the model of that Danish seal;
Folded the writ up in form of the other,
Subscribed it, gave’t th’impression, placed it safely,
The changeling never known. Now the next day
Was our sea fight, and what to this was sequent
Thou know’st already.
5.2.Sp15Hamlet
Why, man, they did make love to this employment.
They are not near my conscience. Their debate
Doth by their own insinuation grow.
’Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
Between the pass and fell incensèd points
Of mighty opposites.
5.2.Sp17Hamlet
Does it not, think’st thee, stand me now upon—
He that hath killed my King and whored my mother,
Popped in between th’election and my hopes,
Thrown out his angle for my proper life,
And with such cozenage—is’t not perfect conscience
To quit him with this arm? And is’t not to be damned
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil?
5.2.Sp18Horatio
It must be shortly known to him from England
What is the issue of the business there.
5.2.Sp19Hamlet
Enter young Osric.
It will be short.
The interim’s mine, and a man’s life’s no more
Than to say one. But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
That to Laertes I forgot myself,
For by the image of my cause I see
The portraiture of his. I’ll count his favors.
But sure the bravery of his grief did put me
Into a tow’ring passion.
5.2.Sp24Hamlet
Aside to Horatio
Thy state is the more gracious, for ’tis a vice to
know him. He hath much land, and fertile. Let a beast
be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the King’s
mess. ’Tis a chough, but, as I saw, spacious in the
possession of dirt.
5.2.Sp25Osric
Sweet lord, if your friendship were at leisure, I should impart a thing to you from his majesty.
5.2.Sp26Hamlet
I will receive it with all diligence of spirit. Put
your bonnet to his right use. ’Tis for the head.
5.2.Sp31Osric
Exceedingly, my lord, it is very sultry, as ’twere—
I cannot tell how. But, my lord, his majesty bade me
signify to you that he has laid a great wager on your head.
Sir, this is the matter—
5.2.Sp33Osric
Nay, in good faith, for mine ease, in good faith.
Sir, you are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is at
his weapon.
5.2.Sp37Osric
The King, sir, has waged with him six Barbary horses, against the which he imponed, as I take it, six French rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdle,
hangers, or so. Three of the carriages, in faith, are very
dear to fancy, very responsive to the hilts, most delicate
carriages, and of very liberal conceit.
5.2.Sp40Hamlet
The phrase would be more germane to the
matter if we could carry cannon by our sides; I would
it might be "hangers" till then. But on. Six Barbary
horses against six French swords, their assigns, and three
liberal-conceited carriages: that’s the French bet
against the Danish. Why is this "imponed," as you call it?
5.2.Sp41Osric
The King, sir, hath laid that in a dozen passes
between you and him, he shall not exceed you three hits.
He hath one twelve for nine, and that would come to
immediate trial, if your lordship would vouchsafe the
answer.
5.2.Sp44Hamlet
Sir, I will walk here in the hall. If it please
his majesty, ’tis the breathing time of day with me. Let
the foils be brought, the gentleman willing, and the
King hold his purpose, I will win for him if I can; if
not, I’ll gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.
5.2.Sp48Hamlet
Yours, yours.
Exit Osric.
He does well to commend it
himself; there are no tongues else for’s turn.
5.2.Sp50Hamlet
He did comply with his dug before he
sucked it. Thus had he, and many more of the same bevy
that I know the drossy age dotes on, only got the tune of
the time and outward habit of encounter, a kind of
yeasty collection, which carries them through and through
the most fanned and winnowed opinions; and do but blow
them to their trials, the bubbles are out.
5.2.Sp52Hamlet
I do not think so. Since he went into France,
I have been in continual practice; I shall win at the
odds. But thou wouldest not think how all here
about my heart, but it is no matter.
5.2.Sp54Hamlet
It is but foolery, but it is such a kind of
gaingiving as would perhaps trouble a woman.
5.2.Sp55Horatio
If your mind dislike anything, obey. I will
forestall their repair hither and say you are not fit.
5.2.Sp56Hamlet
Enter King, Queen, and Lords, with other
Attendants, with foils and gauntlets, a table, and
flagons of wine on it.
The King puts Laertes’s hand into Hamlet’s.
Not a whit, we defy augury. There’s a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not
to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it
be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all, since no man
has aught of what he leaves. What is’t to leave
betimes?
5.2.Sp58Hamlet
To Laertes
Give me your pardon, sir. I’ve done you wrong,
But pardon’t as you are a gentleman.
This presence knows,
And you must needs have heard, how I am punished
With sore distraction. What I have done
That might your nature, honor, and exception
Roughly awake, I hear proclaim was madness.
Was’t Hamlet wronged Laertes? Never Hamlet.
If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away,
And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not; Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then? His madness? If’t be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wronged;
His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy.
Sir, in this audience,
Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts
That I have shot mine arrow o’er the house
And hurt my mother.
5.2.Sp59Laertes
I am satisfied in nature,
Whose motive in this case should stir me most
To my revenge. But in my terms of honor
I stand aloof, and will no reconcilement,
Till by some elder masters of known honor
I have a voice and precedent of peace
To keep my name ungorged. But till that time
I do receive your offered love like love,
And will not wrong it.
5.2.Sp60Hamlet
I do embrace it freely,
And will this brother’s wager frankly play.—
Give us the foils.—Come on.
5.2.Sp62Hamlet
I’ll be your foil, Laertes. In mine ignorance
Your skill shall like a star i’th’darkest night
Stick fiery off indeed.
5.2.Sp65King
Give them the foils, young Osric.
Foils are handed to Hamlet and Laertes.
Cousin Hamlet, you know the wager.
5.2.Sp67King
He exchanges his foil for another.
Prepare to play.
I do not fear it; I have seen you both.
But since he is bettered, we have therefore odds.
5.2.Sp71King
They play. Hamlet scores a hit.
Set me the stoups of wine upon that table.
If Hamlet give the first or second hit,
Or quit in answer of the third exchange,
Let all the battlements their ordnance fire.
The King shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath,
And in the cup an union shall he throw
Richer then that which four successive kings
In Denmark’s crown have worn. Give me the cups,
And let the kettle to the trumpets speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth,
"Now the King drinks to Hamlet." Come, begin.
Trumpets the while.
And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.
5.2.Sp78King
Trumpets sound, and shot goes off.
Stay. Give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine.
He drinks, and throws a pearl in Hamlet’s cup.
Here’s to thy health.—Give him the cup.
5.2.Sp79Hamlet
I’ll play this bout first. Set it by awhile.
Come.
They fence.
Another hit. What say you?
5.2.Sp82Queen
She drinks.
He’s fat and scant of breath.
To Hamlet
Here’s a napkin, rub thy brows.
The Queen takes a cup of wine to offer a toast to Hamlet.
The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.
5.2.Sp92Hamlet
They play.
Laertes wounds Hamlet with his unbated rapier. In scuffling they change rapiers. Hamlet and wounds Laertes.
The Queen falls.
Come, for the third.
Laertes, you but dally.
I pray you, pass with your best violence;
I am afeard you make a wanton of me.
5.2.Sp101Laertes
She dies.
Exit Osric. Laertes falls.
Why, as a woodcock To mine springe, Osric;
I am justly killed with mine own treachery.
5.2.Sp106Laertes
Hurts the King.
It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain.
No medicine in the world can do thee good;
In thee there is not half an hour of life.
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
Unbated and envenomed. The foul practice
Hath turned itself on me. Lo, here I lie,
Never to rise again. Thy mother’s poisoned.
I can no more. The King, the King’s to blame.
5.2.Sp110Hamlet
King dies.
Forcing the King to drink
Here, thou incestuous, murd’rous, damnèd Dane,
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.
5.2.Sp111Laertes
Dies.
He is justly served.
It is a poison tempered by himself.
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.
Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee,
Nor thine on me!
5.2.Sp112Hamlet
Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.
I am dead, Horatio. Wretched Queen, adieu.
You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time, as this fell sergeant Death
Is strict in his arrest, oh, I could tell you—
But let it be. Horatio, I am dead,
Thou liv’st. Report me and my causes right
To the unsatisfied.
5.2.Sp113Horatio
He attempts to drink from the poisoned cup, but is prevented by Hamlet.
Never believe it.
I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.
Here’s yet some liquor left.
5.2.Sp114Hamlet
Enter Osric.
As th’art a man,
Give me the cup! Let go! By heaven, I’ll have’t.
O good Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story.
March afar off, and shout within.What warlike noise is this?
5.2.Sp115Osric
Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,
To th’ambassadors of England gives this warlike volley.
5.2.Sp116Hamlet
Dies.
Oh, I die, Horatio.
The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit.
I cannot live to hear the news from England,
But I do prophesy th’election lights
On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice.
So tell him, with the occurrents more and less
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.
Oh, oh, oh, oh!
5.2.Sp117Horatio
Enter Fortinbras and English Ambassador, with Drum, Colors, and Attendants.
Now crack a noble heart! Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
March within.
Why does the drum come hither?
5.2.Sp120Fortinbras
His quarry cries on havoc. O proud Death,
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes at a shoot
So bloodily hast struck?
5.2.Sp121Ambassador
The sight is dismal,
And our affairs from England come too late.
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
To tell him his commandment is fulfilled,
That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Where should we have our thanks?
5.2.Sp122Horatio
Not from his mouth,
Had it th’ability of life to thank you;
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since so jump upon this bloody question
You from the Polack wars and you from England
Are here arrived, give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placèd to the view,
And let me speak to th’yet unknowing world
How these things came about. So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning, and forced cause,
And in this upshot, purpose mistook
Fall’n on the inventors’ heads. All this can I
Truly deliver.
5.2.Sp123Fortinbras
Let us haste to hear it,
And call the noblest to the audience.
For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune.
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
Which are to claim; my vantage doth invite me.
5.2.Sp124Horatio
Of that I shall have always cause to speak,
And from his mouth Whose voice will draw on more.
But let this same be presently performed,
Even whiles men’s minds are wild, Lest more mischance
On plots and errors happen.
5.2.Sp125Fortinbras
Exeunt marching, after the which, a peal of ordnance are shot off.
Let four captains
Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage,
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royally; And for his passage,
The soldiers’ music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.
Take up the body. Such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.
FINIS
Characters
Hamlet
Ghost
Claudius
Queen
Polonius
Laertes
Ophelia
Reynaldo
Horatio
Rosencrantz
Guildenstern
Barnardo
Francisco
Marcellus
Voltemand
Osric
Gentlemen
Gentleman
FirstPlayer
Player
Prologue
King
Baptista
Lucianus
Fortinbras
Captain
Ambassador
Sailor
Clown
Other
Priest
Messenger
Servingman
Prosopography
Abby Flight
Remediator and encoder, 2024–present. Abby Flight completed her BA in English at the
University of Victoria in 2024, and is now an MA student focusing on Medieval and
Early Modern Studies.
David Bevington
David Bevington was the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus
in the Humanities at the University of Chicago. His books include From
Mankindto Marlowe (1962), Tudor Drama and Politics (1968), Action Is Eloquence (1985), Shakespeare: The Seven Ages of Human Experience (2005), This Wide and Universal Theater: Shakespeare in Performance, Then and Now (2007), Shakespeare’s Ideas (2008), Shakespeare and Biography (2010), and Murder Most Foul: Hamlet Through the Ages (2011). He was the editor of Medieval Drama (1975), The Bantam Shakespeare, and The Complete Works of Shakespeare. The latter was published in a seventh edition in 2014. He was a senior editor of the Revels Student Editions, the Revels Plays, The Norton Anthology of Renaissance Drama, and The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson (2012). Professor Bevington passed away on August 2, 2019.
Donald Bailey
Eric Rasmussen
Eric Rasmussen is Regents Teaching Professor and Foundation Professor of English at
the University of Nevada. He is co-editor with Sir Jonathan Bate of the RSC William Shakespeare Complete Works and general editor, with Paul Werstine, of the New Variorum Shakespeare. He has received the Falstaff Award from PlayShakespeare.com for Best Shakespearean Book of the Year in 2007, 2012, and 2013.
James D. Mardock
James Mardock is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Associate
General Editor for the Internet Shakespeare Editions, and a dramaturge for the Lake
Tahoe Shakespeare Festival and Reno Little Theater. In addition to editing quarto
and folio Henry V for the ISE, he has published essays on Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other Renaissance
literature in The Seventeenth Century, Ben Jonson Journal, Borrowers and Lenders, and contributed to the collections Representing the Plague in Early Modern England (Routledge 2010) and Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (Cambridge 2013). His book Our Scene is London (Routledge 2008) examines Jonson’s representation of urban space as an element in
his strategy of self-definition. With Kathryn McPherson, he edited Stages of Engagement (Duquesne 2013), a collection of essays on drama in post-Reformation England, and
he is currently at work on a monograph on Calvinism and metatheatrical awareness in
early modern English drama.
Janelle Jenstad
Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director
of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.
Kate LeBere
Project Manager, 2020–2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019–2020. Textual Remediator
and Encoder, 2019–2021. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English
at the University of Victoria in 2020. During her degree she published papers in The Corvette (2018), The Albatross (2019), and PLVS VLTRA (2020) and presented at the English Undergraduate Conference (2019), Qualicum History
Conference (2020), and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute’s Project Management
in the Humanities Conference (2021). While her primary research focus was sixteenth
and seventeenth century England, she completed her honours thesis on Soviet ballet
during the Russian Cultural Revolution. She is currently a student at the University
of British Columbia’s iSchool, working on her masters in library and information science.
Mahayla Galliford
Project manager, 2025-present; research assistant, 2021-present. Mahayla Galliford
(she/her) graduated with a BA (Hons with distinction) from the University of Victoria
in 2024. Mahayla’s undergraduate research explored early modern stage directions and
civic water pageantry. Mahayla continues her studies through UVic’s English MA program
and her SSHRC-funded thesis project focuses on editing and encoding girls’ manuscripts,
specifically Lady Rachel Fane’s dramatic entertainments, in collaboration with LEMDO.
Martin Holmes
Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVic’s Humanities Computing and Media
Centre for over two decades, and has been involved with dozens of Digital Humanities
projects. He has served on the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of the
Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as lead developer on LEMDO in 2020.
He is a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.
Michael Best
Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the
Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the
ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery,
a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on
Electronic Shakespeares,and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.
Rae S. Rostron
Rae is studying a BA in English Literature at Durham University. She is particularly
interested in representations of grief and trauma in literature and is currently researching
femicide in the novel. Rae has interned for Creative Media Agency (NYC) and is an
acting student researcher for King College London’s Psychology Department exploring
loneliness in students.
Tracey El Hajj
Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD
from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science
and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched
Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on
Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life.Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021, Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in the English Department at the University of Victoria.
William Shakespeare
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | Hamlet, Folio Modern |
| Type of text | Primary Source Text |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | |
| Source |
This file has been converted from IML, the SGML markup language of the Internet Shakespeare
Editions platform. IML files do not indicate the copy or copytext transcribed. LEMDO
acknowledges that we are not the main source of transcription, and that we do not
know the witness transcribed in this transcription. As time permits, we will compare
this transcription to an open-access digital surrogate and align the transcription
that surrogate. If you have worked on ISE and/or may have an idea as to the source
of this file, please contact lemdo@uvic.ca.
|
| Editorial declaration | No editorial declaration available at this time. |
| Edition | |
| Encoding description | |
| Document status | IML-TEI |
| License/availability |