1.1
Enter Barnardo and Francisco, two sentinels.
Barnardo
Who’s there?
Francisco
Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.
Barnardo
Long live the King!
Francisco
Barnardo?
Barnardo
He.
Francisco
You come most carefully upon your hour.
Barnardo
’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.
Francisco
For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.
Barnardo
Have you had quiet guard?
Francisco
Not a mouse stirring.
Barnardo
Well, good night.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
Enter Horatio and Marcellus.
Francisco
I think I hear them.—Stand, ho! Who is there?
Horatio
Friends to this ground.
Marcellus
And liegemen to the Dane.
Francisco
Give you good night.
Marcellus
Oh, farewell, honest soldiers. Who hath relieved you?
Francisco
Barnardo hath my place. Give you good night.
Exit Francisco.
Marcellus
Holla, Barnardo!
Barnardo
Say, what, is Horatio there?
Horatio
A piece of him.
Barnardo
Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.
Horatio
What, has this thing appeared again tonight?
Barnardo
I have seen nothing.
Marcellus
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.
Horatio
Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.
Barnardo
Sit down awhile,
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
What we have two nights seen.
Horatio
Well, sit we down,
And let us hear Barnardo speak of this.
Barnardo
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—
Enter Ghost.
Marcellus
Peace, break thee off! Look where it comes again!
Barnardo
In the same figure like the King that’s dead.
Marcellus
Thou art a scholar. Speak to it, Horatio.
Barnardo
Looks ’a not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.
Horatio
Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.
Barnardo
It would be spoke to.
Marcellus
Speak to it, Horatio.
Horatio
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!
Marcellus
It is offended.
Barnardo
See, it stalks away.
Horatio
Stay, speak, speak, I charge thee speak!
Exit Ghost.
Marcellus
’Tis gone, and will not answer.
Barnardo
How now, Horatio, you tremble and look pale.
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on’t?
Horatio
Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
Marcellus
Is it not like the King?
Horatio
As thou art to thyself.
Such was the very armor he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated.
So frowned he once, when in an angry parle
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
’Tis strange.
Marcellus
Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
Horatio
In what particular thought to work I know not,
But in the gross and scope of mine opinion
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
Marcellus
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 with such daily cost 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?
Horatio
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 these his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror;
Against the which a moiety competent
Was gagèd by our King, which had return
To the inheritance of Fortinbras
Had he been vanquisher, as, by the same comart
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 lawless resolutes
For food and diet to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in’t, which is no other,
As it doth well appear unto our state,
But to recover of us by strong hand
And terms compulsatory 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.
Barnardo
I think it be no other but e’en so.
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armèd through our watch so like the King
That was and is the question of these wars.
Horatio
A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets,
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of feared events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.
Enter Ghost.
But soft, behold, lo, where it comes again!
I’ll cross it though it blast me.—Stay, illusion!
It spreads his arms.
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, your spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it. Stay and speak!
The cock crows.
Stop it, Marcellus!
Marcellus
Shall I strike it with my partisan?
Horatio
Do, if it will not stand.
Barnardo
’Tis here.
Horatio
’Tis here.
Exit Ghost.
Marcellus
’Tis gone.
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.
Barnardo
It was about to speak when the cock crew.
Horatio
And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
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.
Marcellus
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long,
And then they say no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is that time.
Horatio
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 eastward 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?
Marcellus
Let’s do ’t, I pray, and I this morning know
Where we shall find him most convenient.
Exeunt.
1.2
Flourish. Enter Claudius, King of Denmark, Gertrude the Queen,
Council—as Polonius and his son Laertes,
Hamlet, with others including Voltemand and Cornelius.
King
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 sometime sister, now our queen,
Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we as ’twere with a defeated joy,
With an auspicious and a 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 this 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 bands of law,
To our most valiant brother. So much for him.
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 bearers of this greeting to old Norway,
Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the King more than the scope
Of these delated articles allow.
Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.
Cornelius and Voltemand
In that and all things will we show our duty.
King
We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell.
Exeunt 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?
Laertes
My dread 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 toward France
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
King
Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?
Polonius
H’ath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
By laborsome petition, and at last
Upon his will I sealed my hard consent.
I do beseech you, give him leave to go.
King
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—
Hamlet
A little more than kin, and less than kind.
King
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Hamlet
Not so much, my lord, I am too much in the "son."
Queen
Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted 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.
Hamlet
Ay, madam, it is common.
Queen
If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?
Hamlet
"Seems," madam? Nay, it is, I know not "seems."
’Tis not alone my inky cloak, cold 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, shapes 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 passes show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
King
’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, or 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 toward 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.
Queen
Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.
I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.
Hamlet
I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
King
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 heaven shall bruit again,
Respeaking earthly thunder. Come, away!
Flourish. Exeunt all but Hamlet.
Hamlet
Oh, that this too too sallied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! Oh, God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t, ah, fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come thus!
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 should 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—
Oh, God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer!—married with my 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 in 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.
Enter Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo.
Horatio
Hail to your lordship!
Hamlet
I am glad to see you well.—
Horatio, or I do forget myself!
Horatio
The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
Hamlet
Sir, my good friend, I’ll change that name with you.
And what make you from Wittenberg,
Horatio?—
Marcellus.
Marcellus
My good lord.
Hamlet
I am very glad to see you.
To Barnardo.
Good even, sir.
To Horatio
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
Horatio
A truant disposition, good my lord.
Hamlet
I would not hear your enemy say so,
Nor shall you do my 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 for to drink ere you depart.
Horatio
My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.
Hamlet
I prithee do not mock me, fellow student.
I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.
Horatio
Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.
Hamlet
Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
My father—methinks I see my father.
Horatio
Where, my lord?
Hamlet
In my mind’s eye, Horatio.
Horatio
I saw him once. ’A was a goodly king.
Hamlet
’A was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.
Horatio
My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
Hamlet
Saw? Who?
Horatio
My lord, the King your father.
Hamlet
The King my father?
Horatio
Season your admiration for a while
With an attent ear till I may deliver,
Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
This marvel to you.
Hamlet
For God’s love, let me hear!
Horatio
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 point, 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, distilled
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.
Hamlet
But where was this?
Marcellus
My lord, upon the platform where we watch.
Hamlet
Did you not speak to it?
Horatio
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.
Hamlet
’Tis very strange.
Horatio
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.
Hamlet
Indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
Hold you the watch tonight?
All
We do, my lord.
Hamlet
Armed, say you?
All
Armed, my lord.
Hamlet
From top to toe?
All
My lord, from head to foot.
Hamlet
Then saw you not his face.
Horatio
Oh, yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.
Hamlet
What looked he, frowningly?
Horatio
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
Hamlet
Pale, or red?
Horatio
Nay, very pale.
Hamlet
And fixed his eyes upon you?
Horatio
Most constantly.
Hamlet
I would I had been there.
Horatio
It would have much amazed you.
Hamlet
Very like. Stayed it long?
Horatio
While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.
Both
Longer, longer.
Horatio
Not when I saw’t.
Hamlet
His beard was grizzled, no?
Horatio
It was as I have seen it in his life,
A sable silvered.
Hamlet
I will watch tonight.
Perchance ’twill walk again.
Horatio
I warr’nt it will.
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 tenable in your silence still,
And whatsomever else shall hap tonight,
Give it an understanding but no tongue;
I will requite your loves. So, fare you well.
Upon the platform ’twixt eleven and twelve
I’ll visit you.
All
Our duty to your honor.
Exeunt all but Hamlet.
Hamlet
Your loves, 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. Fond deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.
Exit.
1.3
Enter Laertes, and Ophelia his sister.
Laertes
My necessaries are inbarked. Farewell.
And sister, as the winds give benefit
And convey is assistant, do not sleep
But let me hear from you.
Ophelia
Do you doubt that?
Laertes
For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor,
Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute,
No more.
Ophelia
No more but so?
Laertes
Think it no more.
For nature crescent does not grow alone
In thews and bulks, but as this 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.
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself, for on his choice depends
The safety and health of this 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 particular act and place
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 you in 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 their 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.
Ophelia
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven
Whiles, a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.
Enter Polonius.
Laertes
Oh, fear me not.
I stay too long. But here my father comes.
A double blessing is a double grace;
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.
Polonius
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 thee,
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel,
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged courage. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in,
Bear’t that th’opposèd may beware of thee.
Give every man thy 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, boy,
For love oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulleth 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!
Laertes
Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
Polonius
The time invests you. Go. Your servants tend.
Laertes
Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well
What I have said to you.
Ophelia
’Tis in my memory locked,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
Laertes
Farewell.
Exit Laertes.
Polonius
What is’t, Ophelia, he hath said to you?
Ophelia
So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.
Polonius
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.
Ophelia
He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.
Polonius
Affection? Pooh, you speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his "tenders," as you call them?
Ophelia
I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
Polonius
Marry, I will teach you. Think yourself a baby
That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly,
Or—not to crack the wind of the poor phrase
Wronging it thus—you’ll tender me a fool.
Ophelia
My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honorable fashion.
Polonius
Ay, fashion you may call it. Go to, go to.
Ophelia
And hath given countenance to his speech,
My lord, with almost all the holy vows of heaven.
Polonius
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends 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. From this time
Be something scanter of your maiden presence.
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parle. 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 that dye 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.
Ophelia
I shall obey, my lord.
Exeunt.
1.4
Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.
Hamlet
The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
Horatio
It is nipping, and an eager air.
Hamlet
What hour now?
Horatio
I think it lacks of twelve.
Marcellus
No, it is struck.
Horatio
Indeed? I heard it not. It then draws near the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
A flourish of trumpets, and two pieces goes off.
What does this mean, my lord?
Hamlet
The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swagg’ring upspring reels;
And as he drains his drafts of Rhenish down
The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
Horatio
Is it a custom?
Hamlet
Ay, marry, is’t,
But 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.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations.
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition, and indeed it takes
From our achievements, though performed at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.
So, oft it chances in particular men,
That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty
(Since nature cannot choose his origin),
By the o’ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit that too much o’erleavens
The form of plausive manners, that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect
(Being Nature’s livery, or Fortune’s star),
His virtues else, be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo,
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault. The dram of eale
Doth all the noble substance often dout
To his own scandal.
Enter Ghost.
Horatio
Look, my lord, it comes!
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 intents 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, 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 interred
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?
The Ghost beckons Hamlet.
Horatio
It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.
Marcellus
Look with what courteous action
It waves you to a more removèd ground.
But do not go with it.
Horatio
No, by no means.
Hamlet
It will not speak. Then I will follow it.
Horatio
Do not, my lord.
Hamlet
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?
The Ghost beckons Hamlet.
It waves me forth again. I’ll follow it.
Horatio
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 assume some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? Think of it:
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.
The Ghost beckons Hamlet.
Hamlet
It waves me still.—
Go on, I’ll follow thee.
Marcellus
You shall not go, my lord.
They attempt to restrain him.
Hamlet
Hold off your hands!
Horatio
Be ruled. You shall not go.
Hamlet
My fate cries out
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.
The Ghost beckons Hamlet.
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.
Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet.
Horatio
He waxes desperate with imagination.
Marcellus
Let’s follow. ’Tis not fit thus to obey him.
Horatio
Have after. To what issue will this come?
Marcellus
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Horatio
Heaven will direct it.
Marcellus
Nay, let’s follow him.
Exeunt.
1.5
Enter Ghost and Hamlet.
Hamlet
Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak. I’ll go no further.
Ghost
Mark me.
Hamlet
I will.
Ghost
My hour is almost come
When I to sulf’rous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.
Hamlet
Alas, poor ghost!
Ghost
Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.
Hamlet
Speak. I am bound to hear.
Ghost
So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.
Hamlet
What?
Ghost
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 knotted and combinèd locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fearful porpentine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, oh, list:
If thou didst ever thy dear father love—
Hamlet
O God!
Ghost
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
Hamlet
Murder?
Ghost
Murder most foul, as in the best it is,
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
Hamlet
Haste me to know’t,
that I with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love
May sweep to my revenge.
Ghost
I find thee apt,
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf
Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear:
’Tis given out that, sleeping in my 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.
Hamlet
Oh, my prophetic soul! My uncle?
Ghost
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 his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming virtuous queen.
Oh, Hamlet, what 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 but though to a radiant angel linked,
Will sort itself in a celestial bed
And prey on garbage.
But soft, methinks I scent the morning air.
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour, thy uncle stole
With juice of cursèd hebona in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The lep’rous 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 possess
And curd like eager droppings into milk
The thin and wholesome blood; so did it mine,
And a most instant tetter barked 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, of queen at once dispatched,
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousled, disappointed, unaneled,
No reck’ning 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 howsomever thou pursues 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, adieu! Remember me.
Exit.
Hamlet
O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell? Oh, fie! Hold, hold, my heart,
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me swiftly up. Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles 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, by heaven.
Oh, most pernicious woman!
Oh, villain, villain, smiling damnèd villain!
My tables—meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
At least I am 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.
Enter Horatio and Marcellus
Horatio
My lord, my lord!
Marcellus
Lord Hamlet!
Horatio
Heavens secure him!
Hamlet
So be it.
Marcellus
Illo, ho, ho, my lord!
Hamlet
Hillo, ho, ho, boy, come, and come!
Marcellus
How is’t, my noble lord?
Horatio
What news, my lord?
Hamlet
Oh, wonderful!
Horatio
Good my lord, tell it.
Hamlet
No, you will reveal it.
Horatio
Not I, my lord, by heaven.
Marcellus
Nor I, my lord.
Hamlet
How say you then, would heart of man once think it—
But you’ll be secret?
Both
Ay, by heaven.
Hamlet
There’s never a villain
dwelling in all Denmark
But he’s an arrant knave.
Horatio
There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this.
Hamlet
Why, right, you are in the right.
And so, without more circumstance at all
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part:
You as your business and desire shall point you
(For every man hath business and desire,
Such as it is), and for my own poor part
I will go pray.
Horatio
These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.
Hamlet
I am sorry they offend you—heartily,
Yes, faith, heartily.
Horatio
There’s no offense, my lord.
Hamlet
Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
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 it as you may. And now, good friends,
As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,
Give me one poor request.
Horatio
What is’t, my lord? We will.
Hamlet
Never make known what you have seen tonight.
Both
My lord, we will not.
Hamlet
Nay, but swear’t.
Horatio
In faith, my lord, not I.
Marcellus
Nor I, my lord, in faith.
Hamlet
Upon my sword.
He holds out his sword.
Marcellus
We have sworn, my lord, already.
Hamlet
Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.
Ghost cries under the stage.
Ghost
Swear.
Hamlet
Ha, ha, boy, say’st thou so? Art thou there, truepenny?—
Come on, you hear this fellow in the cellarage.
Consent to swear.
Horatio
Propose the oath, my lord.
Hamlet
Never to speak of this that you have seen.
Swear by my sword.
Ghost
Swear.
They swear.
Hamlet
Hic et ubique? Then we’ll shift our ground.
He moves them to another spot.
Come hither, gentlemen,
And lay your hands again upon my sword.
Swear by my sword
Never to speak of this that you have heard.
Ghost
Swear by his sword.
They swear.
Hamlet
Well said, old mole. Canst work i’th’ earth so fast?
A worthy pioneer!—Once more remove, good friends.
They move once more.
Horatio
Oh, day and night, but this is wondrous strange.
Hamlet
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come,
Here as before: never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd some’er I bear myself
(As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on),
That you at such times seeing me never shall,
With arms encumbered thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase
As, "Well, well, we know," or "We could an if we would,"
Or "If we list to speak," or "There be, an if they might,"
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me. This do swear,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you.
Ghost
Swear.
They swear.
Hamlet
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.
Exeunt.
3.1
Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz,
Guildenstern, Lords.
King
And can you by no drift of conference
Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
Rosencrantz
He does confess he feels himself distracted,
But from what cause, ’a will by no means speak.
Guildenstern
Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
But with a crafty madness keeps aloof
When we would bring him on to some confession
Of his true state.
Queen
Did he receive you well?
Rosencrantz
Most like a gentleman.
Guildenstern
But with much forcing of his disposition.
Rosencrantz
Niggard of question, but of our demands
Most free in his reply.
Queen
Did you assay him to any pastime?
Rosencrantz
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 here about the court,
And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.
Polonius
’Tis most true,
And he beseeched me to entreat your majesties
To hear and see the matter.
King
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 into these delights.
Rosencrantz
We shall, my lord.
Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Lords.
King
Sweet Gertrard, leave us two,
For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
That he, as ’twere by accident, may here
Affront Ophelia. Her father and myself,
We’ll so bestow ourselves 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.
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.
Ophelia
Madam, I wish it may.
Exit Queen.
Polonius
Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please you,
We will bestow ourselves.
To Ophelia, as he gives her a book
Read on this book,
That show of such an exercise may color
Your lowliness. 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.
King
Aside
Oh, ’tis too 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!
Enter Hamlet.
Polonius
I hear him coming. Withdraw, my lord.
The King and Polonius conceal themselves.
Hamlet
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,
Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would 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,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia!—Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
Ophelia
Good my lord,
How does your honor for this many a day?
Hamlet
I humbly thank you well.
Ophelia
My lord, I have remembrances of yours
That I have longèd long to redeliver.
I pray you now receive them.
Hamlet
No, not I. I never gave you aught.
Ophelia
My honored lord, you know right well you did,
And with them words of so sweet breath composed
As made these things more rich. Their perfume lost,
Take these again, for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind,
There, my lord.
She offers Hamlet the remembrances.
Hamlet
Ha, ha! Are you honest?
Ophelia
My lord?
Hamlet
Are you fair?
Ophelia
What means your lordship?
Hamlet
That if you be honest and fair, you should admit
no discourse to your beauty.
Ophelia
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce
than with honesty?
Hamlet
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.
Ophelia
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
Hamlet
You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so
evocutate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.
Ophelia
I was the more deceived.
Hamlet
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 earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves; believe none of us.
Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?
Ophelia
At home, my lord.
Hamlet
Let the doors be shut upon him,
that he may
play the fool nowhere but in’s own house.
Farewell.
Ophelia
Oh, help him, you sweet heavens!
Hamlet
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, 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.
Ophelia
Heavenly powers restore him!
Hamlet
I have heard of your paintings well enough. God hath
given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig and
amble, and you lisp, you nickname God’s creatures, and make your
wantonness ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t; it hath made me mad.
I say we will have no mo marriage. Those that are married already, all
but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.
Exit.
Ophelia
Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,
Th’expectation 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 musicked vows,
Now see what noble and most sovereign reason
Like sweet bells jangled out of time, and harsh,
That unmatched form and stature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. Oh, woe is me
T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
Enter King and Polonius stepping forward from concealment.
King
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 for 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?
Polonius
It shall do well. But yet do I believe
the origin and commencement of his 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 grief. 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.
King
It shall be so;
Madness in great ones must not unmatched go.
Exeunt.
3.2
Enter Hamlet, and three of the Players.
Hamlet
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do,
I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very
torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your
passion, you must
acquire and beget a temperance that
may give it smoothness. Oh, it
offends me to the soul
to hear 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 would have such a fellow whipped for
o’erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.
Player
I warrant your honor.
Hamlet
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 o’erdone 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 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 makes the
unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of
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
praised, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither
having th’accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor
man, 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.
Player
I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us.
Hamlet
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.
To Polonius
How
now, my lord, will the King hear this piece of work?
Enter Polonius, Guildenstern, and Rosencrantz.
Polonius
And the Queen too, and that presently.
Hamlet
Bid the players make haste.
Exit Polonius.
Will you two help to hasten them?
Rosencrantz
Ay, my lord.
Exeunt they two.
Hamlet
What ho, Horatio!
Enter Horatio.
Horatio
Here, sweet lord, at your service.
Hamlet
Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man
As e’er my conversation coped withal.
Horatio
Oh, my dear lord—
Hamlet
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 fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish her election,
Sh’hath sealed thee for herself, for thou hast been
As one in suff’ring all that suffers nothing,
A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hast ta’en with equal thanks; and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commeddled
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 thy soul
Observe my 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 heedful note,
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
And after we will both our judgments join
In censure of his seeming.
Horatio
Well, my lord,
If ’a steal aught the whilst this play is playing
And scape detected, I will pay the theft.
Enter trumpets and kettledrums, King, Queen,
Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz,
Guildenstern, and others.
Hamlet
They are coming to the play. I must be idle.
Get you a place.
King
How fares our cousin Hamlet?
Hamlet
Excellent, i’faith,
of the chameleon’s dish; I eat the air,
promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so.
King
I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet.
These words are not mine.
Hamlet
No, nor mine now.
To Polonius
My lord, you played once i’th’ university, you say?
Polonius
That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.
Hamlet
What did you enact?
Polonius
I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i’th’Capitol.
Brutus killed me.
Hamlet
It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.—
Be the players ready?
Rosencrantz
Ay, my lord, they stay upon your patience.
Queen
Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
Hamlet
No, good mother, here’s mettle more attractive.
Polonius
To the King
Oho, do you mark that?
Hamlet
To Ophelia, as he lies at her feet
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia
No, my lord.
Hamlet
Do you think I meant country matters?
Ophelia
I think nothing, my lord.
Hamlet
That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.
Ophelia
What is, my lord?
Hamlet
Nothing.
Ophelia
You are merry, my lord.
Hamlet
Who, I?
Ophelia
Ay, my lord.
Hamlet
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.
Ophelia
Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.
Hamlet
So long? Nay, then, let the dev’l wear black, for I’ll have a
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, ’a must build churches then, or else shall ’a suffer
not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is, "For oh, for
oh, the hobby-horse is forgot."
The trumpets sounds. Dumb-show follows.
Enter Players as a King and a Queen, the Queen embracing him, and he her. He
takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck. He lies him down
upon a bank of flowers. She, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon come in
another man, takes off his crown, kisses it, pours poison in the sleeper’s ears,
and leaves him. The Queen returns, finds the King dead, makes passionate
action. The poisoner, with some three or four, come in again, seem to
condole with her. The dead body is carried away. The poisoner woos the Queen
with gifts. She seems harsh awhile, but in the end accepts love. Exeunt players.
Ophelia
What means this, my lord?
Hamlet
Marry, this munching mallico, it means mischief.
Ophelia
Belike this show imports the argument of the play.
Enter a Player as Prologue.
Hamlet
We shall know by this fellow.
The players cannot keep counsel; they’ll tell all.
Ophelia
Will ’a tell us what this show meant?
Hamlet
Ay, or any show that you will show him. Be not you ashamed
to show, he’ll not shame to tell you what it means.
Ophelia
You are naught, you are naught. I’ll mark the play.
Prologue
For us and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently.
Exit.
Hamlet
Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
Ophelia
’Tis brief, my lord.
Hamlet
As woman’s love.
Enter two Players as King and Queen.
King
Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round
Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus orbed the 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.
Queen
So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o’er ere love be done!
But woe is me, you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer and from our former state,
That I distrust you. Yet though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must.
For women fear too much, even as they love,
And women’s fear and love hold quantity:
Either none, in neither aught, or in extremity.
Now what my lord is, proof hath made you know,
And as my love is sized, my fear is so.
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.
King
Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
My operant powers their functions leave to do.
And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honored, beloved; and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou—
Queen
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.
Hamlet
That’s wormwood.
Queen
The instances that second marriage move
Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.
A second time I kill my husband dead
When second husband kisses me in bed.
King
I do believe you think what now you speak,
But what we do determine, oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory,
Of violent birth, but poor validity,
Which now the 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 enactures with themselves destroy.
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;
Grief joy, 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 favorite 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.
Queen
Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light,
Sport and repose lock from me day and night,
To desperation turn my trust and hope,
And anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope!
Each opposite that blanks the face of joy
Meet what I would have well, and it destroy!
Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
If once I be a widow, ever I be a wife!
Hamlet
If she should break it now!
King
’Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile.
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.
Queen
Sleep rock thy brain,
And never come mischance between us twain!
The Player King sleeps.
Exit Player Queen.
Hamlet
Madam, how like you this play?
Queen
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Hamlet
Oh, but she’ll keep her word.
King
Have you heard the argument? Is there no offense in’t?
Hamlet
No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest, no
offense i’th’ world.
King
What do you call the play?
Hamlet
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 of
that? Your majesty and we that have free souls, it touches us not.
Let the galled jade winch, our withers are unwrung.
—This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.
Enter Lucianus.
Ophelia
You are as good as a chorus, my lord.
Hamlet
I could interpret between you and your love
if I could see the puppets dallying.
Ophelia
You are keen, my lord, you are keen.
Hamlet
It would cost you a groaning to take off mine
edge.
Ophelia
Still better and worse.
Hamlet
So you mistake your husbands.—Begin, murderer, leave
thy damnable faces and begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow
for revenge.
Lucianus
Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing,
Considerate season, else no creature seeing,
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice invected,
Thy natural magic and dire property
On wholesome life usurps immediately.
Pours the poison in his ears. Exit.
Hamlet
’A poisons him i’th’ garden for his estate. His name’s
Gonzago. The story is extant, and written in very choice Italian. You shall see
anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.
Ophelia
The King rises.
Queen
How fares my lord?
Polonius
Give o’er the play.
King
Give me some light. Away!
Polonius
Lights, lights, lights!
Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio.
Hamlet
"Why, let the strucken deer go weep,
The heart ungallèd play,
For some must watch while some must sleep;
Thus runs the world away."
Would not this, sir, and a forest of
feathers—if the rest of
my fortunes turn Turk with me—with provincial
roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry
of players?
Horatio
Half a share.
Hamlet
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.
Horatio
You might have rhymed.
Hamlet
O good Horatio, I’ll take the Ghost’s word for a thousand
pound. Didst perceive?
Horatio
Very well, my lord.
Hamlet
Upon the talk of the pois’ning.
Horatio
I did very well note him.
Hamlet
Aha, come, some music! Come, the recorders.
For if the King like not the comedy,
Why, then belike he likes it not, perdy.
Come, some music.
Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Guildenstern
Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.
Hamlet
Sir a whole history.
Guildenstern
The King, sir—
Hamlet
Ay, sir, what of him?
Guildenstern
Is in his retirement marvelous distempered.
Hamlet
With drink, sir?
Guildenstern
No, my lord, with choler.
Hamlet
Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify
this to the doctor, for, for me to put him
to his purgation would
perhaps plunge him into
more choler.
Guildenstern
Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame,
and stare not so wildly from my affair.
Hamlet
I am tame sir. Pronounce.
Guildenstern
The Queen your mother, in most great affliction of spirit,
hath sent me to you.
Hamlet
You are welcome.
Guildenstern
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 business.
Hamlet
Sir, I cannot.
Rosencrantz
What, my lord?
Hamlet
Make you a wholesome answer; my wit’s diseased. But, sir, such
answer as I can make, you shall command, or rather, as you say, my
mother. Therefore no more, but to the matter. My mother, you say.
Rosencrantz
Then thus she says: your behavior hath struck her into
amazement and admiration.
Hamlet
Oh, wonderful son, that can so ’stonish a mother! But is there
no sequel at the heels of this
mother’s admiration? Impart.
Rosencrantz
She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed.
Hamlet
We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any
further trade with us?
Rosencrantz
My lord, you once did love me.
Hamlet
And do still, by these pickers and stealers.
Rosencrantz
Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do
surely bar the door upon your own liberty if you deny your griefs to
your friend.
Hamlet
Sir, I lack advancement.
Rosencrantz
How can that be, when you have the voice of the King
himself for your succession in Denmark?
Enter the Players, with recorders.
Hamlet
Ay, sir, but "while the grass grows"—the proverb is something
musty.—Oh, the recorders. Let me see one.
He takes a 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?
Guildenstern
Oh, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love
is too unmannerly.
Hamlet
I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?
Guildenstern
My lord, I cannot.
Hamlet
I pray you.
Guildenstern
Believe me, I cannot.
Hamlet
I do beseech you.
Guildenstern
I know no touch of it, my lord.
Hamlet
It is as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your
fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse
most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.
Guildenstern
But these cannot I command to any utt’rance of harmony. I
have not the skill.
Hamlet
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 my compass, and there is much music,
excellent voice in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood,
do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
instrument you will, though you fret me, you cannot play upon me.
To Polonius, as he enters
God bless you, sir.
Enter Polonius.
Polonius
My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.
Hamlet
Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape
of a camel?
Polonius
By th’mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.
Hamlet
Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius
It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet
Or like a whale.
Polonius
Very like a whale.
Hamlet
Then I will come to my mother by and by.
Aside
They fool me to the top of my bent.
Aloud
I will come by and by. Leave me, friends.
I will, say so. "By and by" is easily said.
Exeunt all but Hamlet.
’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breaks out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such business as the bitter 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 dagger 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!
Exit.
3.3
Enter King, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.
King
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 near’s as doth hourly grow
Out of his brows.
Guildenstern
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.
Rosencrantz
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 weal depends and rests
The lives of many. The cess of majesty
Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
What’s near it with it, or 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.
King
Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage,
For we will fetters put about this fear
Which now goes too free-footed.
Rosencrantz
We will haste us.
Exeunt gentlemen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Enter Polonius.
Polonius
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 than 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.
Exit Polonius.
King
Thanks, dear my lord.
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.
He kneels.
Enter Hamlet.
Hamlet
Now might I do it. But now ’a is a-praying,
And now I’ll do’t.
He draws his sword.
And so ’a goes to heaven,
And so am I revenged. That would be scanned:
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Why, this is base and silly, not revenge.
’A took my father grossly full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush 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 game a-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.
Exit.
King
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
Exit.
3.4
Enter Gertrude and Polonius.
Polonius
’A 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 even here.
Pray you, be round.
Enter Hamlet.
Queen
I’ll wait you. Fear me not.
Withdraw; I hear him coming.
Polonius conceals himself behind the arras.
Hamlet
Now mother, what’s the matter?
Queen
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet
Mother, you have my father much offended.
Queen
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Hamlet
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
Queen
Why, how now, Hamlet?
Hamlet
What’s the matter now?
Queen
Have you forgot me?
Hamlet
No, by the rood, not so.
You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,
And, would it were not so, you are my mother.
Queen
Nay, then, I’ll set those to you that can speak.
Hamlet
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.
Queen
What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
Help, ho!
Polonius
Behind the arras
What ho! Help!
Hamlet
How now, a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!
Hamlet thrusts through the arras with his sword and fatally stabs Polonius.
Polonius
Behind the arras
Oh, I am slain!
Queen
Oh, me, what hast thou done?
Hamlet
Nay I know not. Is it the King?
Queen
Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
Hamlet
A bloody deed—almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
Queen
As kill a king?
Hamlet
Ay, lady, it was my word.
He parts the arras and discovers the dead Polonius.
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better. 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 brassed it so
That it be proof and bulwark against sense.
Queen
What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?
Hamlet
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 sets 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 does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.
Queen
Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud and
thunders in the index?
Hamlet
Showing her two likenesses, of Hamlet senior and Claudius
Look here upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See what a grace was seated on this brow:
Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,
An eye like Mars to threaten and 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 brother. 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? Sense, sure, you have,
Else could you not have motion, but sure that sense
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope. 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,
And reason pardons will.
Queen
Oh, Hamlet speak no more!
Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul,
And there I see such black and grievèd spots
As will leave there their tinct.
Hamlet
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty!
Queen
Oh, speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
Hamlet
A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the kith
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—
Queen
No more!
Enter Ghost in his nightgown.
Hamlet
A king of shreds and patches—
Seeing the Ghost
Save me and hover o’er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
Queen
Alas, he’s mad!
Hamlet
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!
Ghost
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.
Hamlet
How is it with you, lady?
Queen
Alas, how is’t with you,
That you do 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?
Hamlet
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.
Queen
To whom do you speak this?
Hamlet
Do you see nothing there?
Queen
Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.
Hamlet
Nor did you nothing hear?
Queen
No, nothing but ourselves.
Hamlet
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!
Exit Ghost.
Queen
This is the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
Hamlet
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 that flattering unction to your soul
That not your trespass but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven,
Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come,
And do not spread the compost on the weeds
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue,
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
Queen
Oh, Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
Hamlet
Oh, throw away the worser part of it,
And leave the purer with the other half.
Good night. But go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence; the next more easy:
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency. 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.
This bad begins, and worse remains behind.
One word more, good lady.
Queen
What shall I do?
Hamlet
Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed,
Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
Or paddling in your neck with his 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.
Queen
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.
Hamlet
I must to England. You know that?
Queen
Alack, I had forgot.
’Tis so concluded on.
Hamlet
There’s letters sealed, and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work,
For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard, and’t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon. Oh ’tis most sweet
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
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 most foolish prating knave.—
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.—
Good night, mother.
Exit.
4.1
Enter King, and Queen, with Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern.
King
There’s matter in these sighs, these profound heaves.
You must translate; ’tis fit we understand them.
Where is your son?
Queen
To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Bestow this place on us a little while.
Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Ah, mine own lord, what have I seen tonight!
King
What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?
Queen
Mad as the sea and wind when both contend
Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit,
Behind the arras hearing something stir,
Whips out his rapier, cries, "A rat, a rat!"
And in this brainish apprehension kills
The unseen good old man.
King
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, let it feed
Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?
Queen
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: ’a weeps for what is done.
King
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.—Ho, Guildenstern!
Enter Rosencrantz and 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.
Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Come, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends
And let them know both what we mean to do
And what’s untimely done.
Whose whisper o’er the world’s diameter,
As level as the cannon to his blank,
Transports his poisoned shot, may miss our name
And hit the woundless air. Oh, come away!
My soul is full of discord and dismay.
Exeunt.
4.2
Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and others.
Hamlet
Safely stowed. But soft, what noise? Who calls on Hamlet?
Oh, here they come.
Rosencrantz
What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?
Hamlet
Compounded it with dust, whereto ’tis kin.
Rosencrantz
Tell us where ’tis, that we may take it thence
And bear it to the chapel.
Hamlet
Do not believe it.
Rosencrantz
Believe what?
Hamlet
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?
Rosencrantz
Take you me for a sponge, my lord?
Hamlet
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 an apple 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.
Rosencrantz
I understand you not, my lord.
Hamlet
I am glad of it. A knavish speech sleeps in a
foolish ear.
Rosencrantz
My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us
to the King.
Hamlet
The body is with the King, but the King is not with the
body. The King is a thing.
Guildenstern
A thing, my lord?
Hamlet
Of nothing. Bring me to him.
Exeunt.
4.3
Enter King, and two or three.
King
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 never 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.
Enter Rosencrantz and all the rest.
King
How now, what hath befall’n?
Rosencrantz
Where the dead body is bestowed, my lord,
We cannot get from him.
King
But where is he?
Rosencrantz
Without, my lord, guarded, to know your pleasure.
King
Bring him before us.
Rosencrantz
Calling
Ho! Bring in the lord.
They Guildenstern and Guards enter with Hamlet.
King
Now Hamlet, where’s Polonius?
Hamlet
At supper.
King
At supper? Where?
Hamlet
Not where he eats, but where ’a is eaten. A certain
convocation of politic 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
ourselves for maggots. Your fat king
and your lean beggar is but
variable service: two dishes
but to one table. That’s the end.
King
Alas, alas!
Hamlet
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and
eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
King
What dost thou mean by this?
Hamlet
Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress
through the guts of a beggar.
King
Where is Polonius?
Hamlet
In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him
not there, seek him i’th’ other place yourself. But if indeed you find
him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the
stairs into the lobby.
King
To some attendants
Go seek him there.
Hamlet
’A will stay till you come.
Exeunt attendants.
King
Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety—
Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve
For that which thou hast done—must send thee hence.
Therefore prepare thyself.
The bark is ready, and the wind at help,
Th’associates tend, and everything is bent
For England.
Hamlet
For England!
King
Ay, Hamlet.
Hamlet
Good.
King
So is it if thou knew’st our purposes.
Hamlet
I see a cherub that sees them. But come, for England!
Farewell, dear mother.
King
Thy loving father, Hamlet.
Hamlet
My mother. Father and mother is man and wife,
man and wife is one flesh, so, my mother.
Come, for England!
Exit.
King
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 congruing 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 will ne’er begin.
Exit.
4.4
Enter Fortinbras and a Captain with his army over the stage.
Fortinbras
Go, captain, from me greet the Danish King.
Tell him that by his license Fortinbras
Craves 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.
Captain
I will do’t, my lord.
Fortinbras
To his soldiers
Go softly on.
Exeunt all but the Captain.
Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, etc.
Hamlet
To the Captain
Good sir, whose powers are these?
Captain
They are of Norway, sir.
Hamlet
How purposed, sir, I pray you?
Captain
Against some part of Poland.
Hamlet
Who commands them, sir?
Captain
The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.
Hamlet
Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
Or for some frontier?
Captain
Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it,
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.
Hamlet
Why then the Polack never will defend it.
Captain
Yes, it is already garrisoned.
Hamlet
Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw.
This is th’impostume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.
Captain
God buy you, sir.
Exit.
Rosencrantz
Will’t please you go, my lord?
Hamlet
I’ll be with you straight. Go a little before.
Exeunt all but Hamlet.
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th’event—
A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward—I do not know
Why yet I live to say this thing’s to do,
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me.
Witness this army of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honor’s at the stake. How stand I, then,
That have a father killed, a mother stained,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men
That for a fantasy and trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? Oh, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
Exit.
4.5
Enter Horatio, Queen Gertrude, and a Gentleman.
Queen
I will not speak with her.
Gentleman
She is importunate,
Indeed, distract. Her mood
will needs be pitied.
Queen
What would she have?
Gentleman
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 yawn 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 might be thought,
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
Horatio
’Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew
Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
Let her come in.
Exit Gentleman.
Enter Ophelia.
Queen
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.
Enter Ophelia.
Ophelia
Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?
Queen
How now, Ophelia?
Ophelia
She sings.
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.
Queen
Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
Ophelia
Say you? Nay, pray you, mark.
Song.
He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone.
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.
Oho!
Queen
Nay, but Ophelia—
Ophelia
Pray you, mark.
Song.
White his shroud as the mountain snow—
Enter King.
Queen
Alas, look here, my lord.
Ophelia
Song.
Larded all with sweet flowers,
Which bewept to the ground did not go
With true-love showers.
King
How do you, pretty lady?
Ophelia
Well Good 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!
King
Conceit upon her father.
Ophelia
Pray let’s have no words of this, but when they ask you
what it means, say you this:
Song.
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 close
And dupped the chamber door,
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.
King
Pretty Ophelia—
Ophelia
Indeed? Without an oath I’ll make an end on’t.
Song
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.
He answers,
So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.
King
How long hath she been thus?
Ophelia
I hope all will be well. We must be patient. But I cannot choose
but weep to think they would 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.
Exit.
King
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 and now behold!
Oh, Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows come, they come not single spies
But in battalions. First, her father slain;
Next, your son gone, and he most violent author
Of his own just remove; the people muddied,
Thick and unwholesome in 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,
Feeds on this 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 person to arraign
In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murd’ring piece, in many places
Gives me superfluous death.
A noise within.
Enter a Messenger.
King
Attend!
Where is my Switzers? Let them guard the door.
What is the matter?
Messenger
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!"
Queen
How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
A noise within.
Oh, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!
Enter Laertes with others.
King
The doors are broke.
Laertes
Where is this king?—Sirs, stand you all without.
All
No, let’s come in.
Laertes
I pray you, give me leave.
All
We will, we will.
Laertes
I thank you. Keep the door.
Exeunt followers and Messenger.
O thou vile king,
Give me my father!
Queen
Calmly, good Laertes.
Laertes
That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard,
Cries "Cuckold!" to my father, brands the harlot
Even here between the chaste unsmirchèd brow
Of my true mother.
King
What is the cause, Laertes,
That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?—
Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.
There’s such divinity doth hedge a king
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.—Tell me, Laertes,
Why thou art thus incensed?—Let him go, Gertrude.—
Speak, man.
Laertes
Where is my father?
King
Dead.
Queen
But not by him.
King
Let him demand his fill.
Laertes
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.
King
Who shall stay you?
Laertes
My will, not all the world’s.
And for my means, I’ll husband them so well
They shall go far with little.
King
Good Laertes,
If you desire to know the certainty
Of your dear father, is’t writ in your revenge
That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
Winner and loser?
Laertes
None but his enemies.
King
Will you know them, then?
Laertes
To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms,
And, like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,
Repast them with my blood.
King
Why, now you speak
Like a good child and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father’s death,
And am most sensibly in grief for it,
It shall as level to your judgment ’pear
As day does to your eye.
A noise within.
Enter Ophelia as before.
Laertes
Let her come in.
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 with weight
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May,
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
O heavens, is’t possible a young maid’s wits
Should be as mortal as a poor man’s life?
Nature is fine in love, and where ’tis fine
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.
Ophelia
Song.
They bore him bare-faced on the bier,
And in his grave rained many a tear.
Fare you well, my dove.
Laertes
Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move thus.
Ophelia
You must sing "a-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.
Laertes
This nothing’s more than matter.
Ophelia
There’s rosemary; that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love,
remember. And there is pansies; that’s for thoughts.
Laertes
A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.
Ophelia
There’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s rue for
you, and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace o’Sundays.
You may 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 ’a made a good end.
She sings.
For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.
Laertes
Thought and afflictions, passion, hell itself
She turns to favor and to prettiness.
Ophelia
Song.
And will ’a not come again?
And will ’a not come again?
No, no, he is dead,
Go to thy deathbed,
He never will come again.
His beard was as white as snow,
Flaxen was his poll.
He is gone, he is gone,
And we cast away moan.
God ’a’ mercy on his soul!
And of all Christians’ souls, I pray God.
God b’wi’you!
Exit Ophelia, followed by the Queen.
Laertes
Do you see this, O God?
King
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.
Laertes
Let this be so.
His means of death, his obscure funeral—
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’t in question.
King
So you shall,
And where th’offense is, let the great ax fall.
I pray you go with me.
Exeunt.
4.6
Enter Horatio, and others including a Gentleman.
Horatio
What are they that would speak with me?
Gentleman
Seafaring men, sir. They say they have letters for you.
Horatio
Let them come in.
Exit Gentleman.
I do not know from what part of the world
I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.
Enter Sailors.
Sailor
God bless you, sir.
Horatio
Let him bless thee too.
Sailor
’A shall, sir, an please him. There’s a letter for you, sir. It came
from th’ambassador that was bound for England, if your name be
Horatio, as I am let
to know it is.
He gives a letter.
Horatio
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, and 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 turn for them. Let the King have the letters I have sent, and
repair thou to me with as much speed as thou wouldest fly death.
I have words to speak in thine 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.
Horatio
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.
Exeunt.
4.7
Enter King and Laertes.
King
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.
Laertes
It well appears. But tell me
Why you proceed not against these feats
So criminal and so capital in nature,
As by your safety, greatness, wisdom, all things else,
You mainly were stirred up.
King
Oh for two special reasons,
Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinewed,
But yet to me they’re strong. The Queen his mother
Lives almost by his looks, and for myself—
My virtue or my plague, be it either which—
She is so conjunct 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,
Work, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
Convert his gyves to graces, so that my arrows,
Too slightly timbered for so lovèd armed,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
But not where I have aimed them.
Laertes
And so have I a noble father lost,
A sister driven into desp’rate terms,
Whose worth, if praises may go back again,
Stood challenger on mount of all the age
For her perfections. But my revenge will come.
King
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.
Messenger
These to your majesty, this to the Queen.
He gives letters.
King
From Hamlet! Who brought them?
Messenger
Sailors, my lord, they say. I saw them not.
They were given me by Claudio. He received them
Of him that brought them.
King
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 you pardon, thereunto recount the occasion of my sudden
return. Hamlet.
What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?
Laertes
Know you the hand?
King
’Tis Hamlet’s character. "Naked!"
And in a postscript here he says "alone."
Can you devise me?
Laertes
I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come.
It warms the very sickness in my heart
That I live and tell him to his teeth
"Thus didst thou."
King
If it be so, Laertes—
As how should it be so, how otherwise?—
Will you be ruled by me?
Laertes
Ay, my lord,
So you will not o’errule me to a peace.
King
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.
Laertes
My lord, I will be ruled,
The rather if you could devise it so
That I might be the organ.
King
It falls right.
You have been talked of since your travel much,
And that in Hamlet’s hearing, for a quality
Wherein they say you shine. Your sum of parts
Did not together pluck such envy from him
As did that one, and that, in my regard,
Of the unworthiest siege.
Laertes
What part is that, my lord?
King
A very riband in the cap of youth,
Yet needful too, for youth no less becomes
The light and careless livery that it wears
Than settled age his sables and his weeds
Importing health and graveness. Two months since
Here was a gentleman of Normandy.
I have seen myself, and served against, the French,
And they can well on horseback, but this gallant
Had witchcraft in’t; he grew unto 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 topped my thought
That I in forgery of shapes and tricks
Come short of what he did.
Laertes
A Norman was’t?
King
A Norman.
Laertes
Upon my life, Lamord.
King
The very same.
Laertes
I know him well. He is the brooch indeed
And gem of all the nation.
King
He made confession of you,
And gave you such a masterly report
For art and exercise in your defense,
And for your rapier most especial,
That he cried out ’twould be a sight indeed
If one could match you. Th’escrimers of their nation,
He swore, had neither motion, guard, nor eye
If you opposed them. 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 you.
Now, out of this—
Laertes
What out of this, my lord?
King
Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?
Laertes
Why ask you this?
King
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.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it,
And nothing is at a like goodness still,
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too much. That we would do
We should do when we would, for this "would" changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents,
And then this "should" is like a spendthrift’s sigh,
That hurts by easing. But to the quick of th’ulcer:
Hamlet comes back. What would you undertake
To show yourself indeed your father’s son
More than in words?
Laertes
To cut his throat i’th’ church.
King
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 o’er 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.
Laertes
I will do’t,
And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank
So mortal that, but dip 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.
King
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 did blast in proof. Soft, let me see.
We’ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings—
I ha’t! When in your motion you are hot and dry—
As make your bouts more violent to that end—
And that he calls for drink, I’ll have preferred him
A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venomed stuck,
Our purpose may hold there.
A cry within.
But stay, what noise?
Enter Queen.
Queen
One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,
So fast they follow. Your sister’s drowned, Laertes.
Laertes
Drowned! Oh, where?
Queen
There is a willow grows askant the brook
That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cull-cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.
There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds
Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her 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 lauds,
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.
Laertes
Alas, then she is drowned.
Queen
Drowned, drowned.
Laertes
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 o’fire that fain would blaze,
But that this folly drowns it.
Exit.
King
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.
Exeunt.