Act 1
Act 1, Scene 1
Elsinore. A platform before the castle. FRANCISCO at his post.
Enter to him BERNARDO.
Bernardo
Who's there?
Francisco
Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.
Bernardo
Long live the king!
Francisco
Bernardo?
Bernardo
He.
Francisco
You come most carefully upon your hour.
Bernardo
'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.
Francisco
For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.
Bernardo
Have you had quiet guard?
Francisco
Not a mouse stirring.
Bernardo
Well, good night.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
Francisco
I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who is there?
Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.
Horatio
Friends to this ground.
Marcellus
And liegemen to the Dane.
Francisco
Give you good night.
Marcellus
O, farewell, honest soldier:
Who hath relieved you?
Francisco
Bernardo hath my place.
Give you good night.
Exit.
Marcellus
Holla! Bernardo!
Bernardo
Say,
What, is Horatio there?
Horatio
A piece of him.
Bernardo
Welcome, Horatio: welcome, good Marcellus.
Marcellus
What, has this thing appeared again to-night?
Bernardo
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.
Bernardo
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 Bernardo speak of this.
Bernardo
Last night of all,
When yond same star that's westward from the pole
Had made his course to 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!
Bernardo
In the same figure, like the king that's dead.
Marcellus
Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.
Bernardo
Looks 'a not like the king? mark it, Horatio.
Horatio
Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.
Bernardo
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.
Bernardo
See, it stalks away!
Horatio
Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!
Exit Ghost.
Marcellus
'Tis gone, and will not answer.
Bernardo
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 armour 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 why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer 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 those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had returned
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same comart,
And carriage of the article designed,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved 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 posthaste and romage in the land.
Bernardo
I think it be no other but e'en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed 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.
But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
Re-enter Ghost.
I'll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me:
If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me:
Cock crows.
If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid,
O, 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! Stop it, Marcellus.
Marcellus
Shall I strike it with my partisan?
Horatio
Do, if it will not stand.
Bernardo
'Tis here!
Horatio
'Tis here!
Marcellus
'Tis gone!
Exit Ghost.
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.
Bernardo
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,
The 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 Saviour'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 to-night
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.
Act 1, Scene 2
A room of state in the castle.
Enter the KING, QUEEN, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants.
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,
The 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-leagued 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 bedrid, 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, Voltimand,
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 Voltimand
In that and all things will we show our duty.
King
We doubt it nothing: heartily farewell.
Exeunt Voltimand 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 favour 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
Hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
By laboursome 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
Aside
A little more than kin, and less than kind.
King
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Hamlet
Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun.
Gertrude
Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed 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.
Gertrude
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, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected “haviour 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 to-day,
“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.
Gertrude
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 to-day,
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the king's rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
Respeaking earthly thunder. Come away.
Exeunt all but Hamlet.
Hamlet
O, 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! O 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 to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she 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, even she
O 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 galled eyes,
She married. O, 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 BERNARDO.
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. Good even, sir.
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 mine ear that violence,
To make it truster of your own report
Against yourself: I know you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
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; he was a goodly king.
Hamlet
He 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 Bernardo, 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-a-pe,
Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walked
By their oppressed and fear-surprised 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 honoured lord, 'tis true;
And we did think it writ down in our duty
To let you know of it.
Hamlet
Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
Hold you the watch to-night?
Marcellus and Bernardo
We do, my lord.
Hamlet
Armed, say you?
Marcellus and Bernardo
Armed, my lord.
Hamlet
From top to toe?
Marcellus and Bernardo
My lord, from head to foot.
Hamlet
Then saw you not his face?
Horatio
O, 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, very like. Stayed it long?
Horatio
While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.
Marcellus and Bernardo
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 to-night;
Perchance 'twill walk again.
Horatio
I warrant 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 whatsoever else shall hap to-night,
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 honour.
Hamlet
Your loves, as mine to you: farewell.
Exeunt all but Hamlet.
My father's spirit in arms! all is not well;
I doubt some foul play: would the night were come!
Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
Exit.
Act 1, Scene 3
A room in Polonius' house.
Enter LAERTES and OPHELIA.
Laertes
My necessaries are embarked: 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 favour,
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 bulk, 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;
For he himself is subject to his birth:
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 honour 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, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.
Laertes
O, fear me not.
I stay too long: but here my father comes.
Enter POLONIUS.
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 the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
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.
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 honour.
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,
Wringing it thus you'll tender me a fool.
Ophelia
My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honourable 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.
Act 1, Scene 4
The platform.
Enter HAMLET, HORATIO, and MARCELLUS.
Hamlet
The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
Horatio
It is a 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 ordnance shot off, within.
What does this mean, my lord?
Hamlet
The king doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum 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 honoured 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 their 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 evil
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.
Horatio
Look, my lord, it comes!
Enter Ghost.
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 comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurned,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete 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?
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 removed 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?
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.
Hamlet
It waves me still.
Go on; I'll follow thee.
Marcellus
You shall not go, my lord.
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.
Still am I called. Unhand me, gentlemen.
By heaven, 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.
Act 1, Scene 5
Another part of the platform.
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 sulphurous 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 combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand an end,
Like quills upon the fearful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, 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 forged 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
O my prophetic soul!
My uncle!
Ghost
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce! — won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming virtuous queen:
O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!
From me, whose love was of that dignity
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage, and to decline
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine!
But virtue, as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel linked,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage.
But, soft! methinks I scent the morning 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 cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leperous distilment; 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 vigour it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine;
And a most instant tetter barked about,
Most lazar-like, 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,
Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head:
O, horrible! O, 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 damned incest.
But, howsoever 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? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter: yes, by heaven!
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damned 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:
Writing.
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
It is “Adieu, adieu! remember me.”
I have sworn't.
Marcellus and Horatio
Within
My lord, my lord,
Marcellus
Within
Lord Hamlet,
Horatio
Within
Heaven secure him!
Hamlet
So be it!
Horatio
Within
Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!
Hamlet
Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come, bird, come.
Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.
Marcellus
How is't, my noble lord?
Horatio
What news, my lord?
Hamlet
O, 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?
Marcellus and Horatio
Ay, by heaven, my lord.
Hamlet
There's ne'er 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 offence, my lord.
Hamlet
Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
And much offence too. Touching this vision here,
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you:
For your desire to know what is between us,
o'ermaster't as you may. And now, good friends,
As you are friends, scholars and soldiers,
Give me one poor request.
Horatio
What is't, my lord? we will.
Hamlet
Never make known what you have seen to-night.
Marcellus and Horatio
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.
Marcellus
We have sworn, my lord, already.
Hamlet
Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.
Ghost
Beneath
Swear.
Hamlet
Ah, 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
Beneath
Swear.
Hamlet
Hic et ubique? then we'll shift our ground.
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
Beneath
Swear by his sword.
Hamlet
Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast?
A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends.
Horatio
O 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 soe'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
Beneath
Swear.
Hamlet
Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!
They swear.
So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you:
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do, to 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: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let's go together.
Exeunt.
Act 3
Act 3, Scene 1
A room in the castle.
Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.
King
And can you, by no drift of conference,
Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
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.
Gertrude
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.
Gertrude
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 Rosencranlz and Guildenstern.
King
Sweet Gertrude, 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 the affliction of his love or no
That thus he suffers for.
Gertrude
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 honours.
Ophelia
Madam, I wish it may.
Exit Queen.
Polonius
Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious, so please you,
We will bestow ourselves.
To Ophelia
Read on this book;
That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness. We are oft to 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
O, 'tis too true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word:
O heavy burden!
Polonius
I hear him coming: withdraw, my lord.
Exeunt King and Polonius.
Enter HAMLET.
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 heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would 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 traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great 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 honour for this many a day?
Hamlet
I humbly thank you; well, well, well.
Ophelia
My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to redeliver;
I pray you, now receive them.
Hamlet
No, not I;
I never gave you aught.
Ophelia
My honoured 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.
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, your honesty 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 inoculate 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
offences 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 no where but in's own house. Farewell.
Ophelia
O, 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
your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriage:
those that are married already, all but one,
shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a
nunnery, go.
Exit.
Ophelia
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectation and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh;
That unmatched form and stature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
Re-enter KING and POLONIUS.
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 unwatched go.
Exeunt.
Act 3, Scene 2
A hall in the castle.
Enter HAMLET and 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. O, 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.
First Player
I warrant your honour.
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
any thing so overdone is from the purpose of
playing, whose end, both at the first and now,
was and is, to hold as 'twere, the mirror up to
nature; to show virtue her 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 unskilful laugh,
cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure
of which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a
whole theatre of others. O, there be players that
I have seen play, and heard others praise, and
that highly, not to speak it profanely, that,
neither having the accent of Christians nor the
gait of Christian, pagan, 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 abominably.
First Player
I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us,
sir.
Hamlet
O, reform it altogether. And let those that play
your clowns speak no more than is set down for
them; for there be of them that will themselves
laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators
to laugh too; though, in the meantime, some
necessary question of the play be then to be
considered: that's villainous, and shows a most
pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make
you ready.
Exeunt Players.
Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.
How now, my lord! will the king hear this piece of
work?
Polonius
And the queen too, and that presently.
Hamlet
Bid the players make haste.
Exit Polonius.
Will you two help to hasten them?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Ay, my lord.
Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
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
O, 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 suffering 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 judgement 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 to-night 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 seest 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 damned 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 judgements join
In censure of his seeming.
Horatio
Well, my lord:
If 'a steal aught the whilst this play is playing,
And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.
Hamlet
They are coming to the play; I must be idle:
Get you a place.
Danish march. A flourish.
Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and others.
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' the 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' the
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.
Gertrude
Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
Hamlet
No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.
Polonius
To the King
O, ho! do you mark that?
Hamlet
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Lying down at Ophelia's feet.
Ophelia
No, my lord.
Hamlet
I mean, my head upon your lap?
Ophelia
Ay, 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
O God, your only jig-maker. What should a man do
but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my mother
looks, and my father died within's two hours.
Ophelia
Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.
Hamlet
So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for
I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two
months ago, and not forgotten yet! Then there's
hope a great man's memory may outlive his life
half a year: but, by'r lady, 'a must build
churches, then; or else shall 'a suffer not
thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is
“For, O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot.”
Hautboys play.
The dumb-show enters.
Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing him, and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers: she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The Poisoner, with some two or three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner woos the Queen with gifts: she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love.
Exeunt.
Ophelia
What means this, my lord?
Hamlet
Marry, this' miching malicho; it means mischief.
Ophelia
Belike this show imports the argument of the play.
Enter 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, King and Queen.
Player King
Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed 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.
Player Queen
So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o'er ere love be done!
But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer and from your former state,
That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must:
For women's fear and love hold quantity;
In neither aught, or in extremity.
Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
And as my love is sized, my fear is so:
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.
Player 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,
Honoured, beloved; and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou
Player Queen
O, confound the rest!
Such love must needs be treason in my breast:
In second husband let me be accurst!
None wed the second but who killed the first.
Hamlet
Aside
That's wormwood.
Player 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.
Player 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 joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange
That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
For 'tis a question left us yet to prove,
Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
The great man down, you mark his favourite 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.
Player Queen
Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light!
Sport and repose lock from me day and night!
To desperation turn my trust and hope!
An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope!
Each opposite that blanks the face of joy
Meet what I would have well and it destroy!
Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
If, once a widow, ever I be wife!
Hamlet
If she should break it now!
Player King
'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile;
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.
Sleeps.
Player Queen
Sleep rock thy brain;
And never come mischance between us twain!
Exit.
Hamlet
Madam, how like you this play?
Gertrude
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Hamlet
O, but she'll keep her word.
King
Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in't?
Hamlet
No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence
i' the world.
King
What do you call the play?
Hamlet
The Mouse-trap. 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 wince, our
withers are unwrung.
Enter LUCIANUS.
This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.
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;
Confederate season, else no creature seeing;
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
Thy natural magic and dire property,
On wholesome life usurps immediately.
Pours the poison into the sleeper's ears.
Hamlet
'A poisons him i' the 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.
Hamlet
What, frighted with false fire!
Gertrude
How fares my lord?
Polonius
Give o'er the play.
King
Give me some light: away!
All
Lights, lights, lights!
Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio.
Hamlet
Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled 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
two 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 poisoning?
Horatio
I did very well note him.
Hamlet
Ah, ha! 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!
Re-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 marvellous 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
start 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 my business.
Hamlet
Sir, I cannot.
Guildenstern
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 behaviour hath struck her
into amazement and admiration.
Hamlet
O wonderful son, that can so astonish 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?
Hamlet
Ay, sir, but “While the grass grows,” the proverb is
something musty.
Re-enter Players with recorders.
O, the recorders! let me see one. 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
O, 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 utterance 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 the top of 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,
yet you cannot play upon me.
Enter POLONIUS.
God bless you, sir!
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 the 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. They
fool me to the top of my bent. I will come by and by.
Polonius
I will say so.
Hamlet
By and by is easily said.
Exit Polonius.
Leave me, friends.
Exeunt all but Hamlet.
'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother.
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:
Let me be cruel, not unnatural:
I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites;
How in my words soever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my soul, consent!
Exit.
Act 3, Scene 3
A room in the castle.
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 armour 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 boisterous 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 and Guildenstern
We will haste us.
Exeunt 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.
King
Thanks, dear my lord.
Exit Polonius.
O, my offence 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 cursed 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 offence?
And what's in prayer but this twofold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardoned being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past. But, O, 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 the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence'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 can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed 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.
Retires and kneels.
Enter HAMLET.
Hamlet
Now might I do it pat, now 'a is a-praying;
And now I'll do't. 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 hire and salary, 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!
Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the 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
Rising
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
Exit.
Act 3, Scene 4
The Queen's closet.
Enter QUEEN 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.
Gertrude
I'll warrant you, fear me not.
Withdraw, I hear him coming.
Polonius hides behind the arras
Enter HAMLET.
Hamlet
Now, mother, what's the matter?
Gertrude
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet
Mother, you have my father much offended.
Gertrude
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Hamlet
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
Gertrude
Why, how now, Hamlet!
Hamlet
What's the matter now?
Gertrude
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.
Gertrude
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.
Gertrude
What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
Help, ho!
Polonius
Behind
What, ho! help!
Hamlet
Drawing
How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
Makes a pass through the arras.
Polonius
Behind
O, I am slain!
Falls and dies.
Gertrude
O me, what hast thou done?
Hamlet
Nay, I know not: Is it the king?
Gertrude
O, 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.
Gertrude
As kill a king!
Hamlet
Ay, lady, it was my word.
Lifts up the arras and discovers 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.
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 damned custom have not brassed it so
That it be proof and bulwark against sense.
Gertrude
What have I done, that thou darest 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: O, 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.
Gertrude
Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
Hamlet
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 hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgement: and what judgement
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 ardour gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn
And reason panders will.
Gertrude
O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn'st my eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.
Hamlet
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty,
Gertrude
O, 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 tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket!
Gertrude
No more!
Hamlet
A king of shreds and patches,
Enter Ghost.
Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
Gertrude
Alas, he's mad!
Hamlet
Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
The important acting of your dread command?
O, say!
Ghost
Do not forget: this visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
O, step between her and her fighting soul:
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
Speak to her, Hamlet.
Hamlet
How is it with you, lady?
Gertrude
Alas, how is't with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Start up, and stand an 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. Do not look upon me;
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects: then what I have to do
Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.
Gertrude
To whom do you speak this?
Hamlet
Do you see nothing there?
Gertrude
Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
Hamlet
Nor did you nothing hear?
Gertrude
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.
Gertrude
This is the very coinage of your brain:
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
Hamlet
Ecstasy!
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
That I have uttered: bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
To make them ranker. 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.
Gertrude
O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
Hamlet
O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live 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 to-night,
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 blessed,
I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,
Pointing to Polonius.
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.
Gertrude
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 despite 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.
Gertrude
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?
Gertrude
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 petar: and't shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
This man shall set me packing:
I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.
Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Good night, mother.
Exeunt severally; Hamlet dragging in Polonius.