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 heaven! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourned longer,-married with mine
uncle,

My father's brother; but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules :-within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galléd 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, BERNARDO, and MARCELLUS.
Hor. Hail to your lordship!
Ham. I am glad to see you well :
Horatio, or I do forget myself.

Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor ser

vant ever.

Ham. Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you.

And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?— Marcellus?

Mar. My good lord,—

Ham. I am very glad to see you; good even, sir.

But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
Hor. A truant disposition, good my lord.
Ham. 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.
Hor. My lord, I came to see your father's
funeral.

Ham. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellowstudent:

I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
Hor. Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.
Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked

meats

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
'Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Ere I had ever seen that day, Horatio.
My father! methinks I see my father.
Hor. O, where,
My lord?

Ham. In my mind's eye, Horatio.

Hor. I saw him once; he was a goodly king. Ham. He was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again.

Hor. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

Ham. Saw who?

Hor. My lord, the king your father.
Ham. The king my father!

Hor. Season your admiration for a while
With an attent ear; till I may deliver,
Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
This marvel to you.

Ham. For heaven's love, let me hear!
Hor. 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 all points, exactly, cap-à-pé,
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, dis-
tilled

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.

I will watch to-night;

I warrant it will.

Ham. Perchance 'twill walk again. Hor. Ham. 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 well: you Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, I'll visit you.

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 the health of the whole state;
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head: then, if he says he loves

you,

It fits your wisdom so far to believe it

As he in his 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.

Oph. 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,
Shew me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whilst, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own read.

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Be-

ware

Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judg-

ment.

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 ownself 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!

Laer. Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord. Pol. The time invites you; go, your servants tend.

Laer. Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well What I have said to you.

Oph. "Tis in my memory locked,

And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
Laer. Farewell.

[Exit.

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 somewhat scanter of your maiden presence;
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. For lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him, that he is young;
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows: for they are brokers;
Not of that dye which their investments shew,
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's leisure,
As to give words or talk with the lord Hamlet.
Look to 't, I charge you; come your ways.
Oph. I shall obey, my lord.

SCENE IV.-The Platform.

[Exeunt.

Enter HAMLET, HORATIO, and MARCELLUS.
Ham. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air.
Ham. What hour now?

Hor. I think it lacks of twelve.
Mar. No, it is struck.

Hor. 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?

Ham. The king doth wake to-night, and takes

his rouse,

Keeps wassel, 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.

Hor. Is it a custom? Ham. 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.

Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urned,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again! What
this mean,
may
That thou, dead corse, again, in cómplete steel,
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature,
So horribly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?
Hor. It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.

My fate cries out,

Ham.
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Némean lion's nerve.

[Ghost beckons. Still am I called ;-unhand me, gentlemen: [Breaking from them. 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. Hor. He waxes desperate with imagination. Mar. Let's follow; 't is not fit thus to obey him.

Hor. Have after. To what issue will this come?

Mar. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Ghost. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I shall unfold.

Ham. Speak; I am bound to hear.

Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear. Ham. 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 combinéd locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand an-end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine:
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,-
Ham. O, heaven!

Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

Ham. Murder?

Ghost. Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

Ham. Haste me to know it; 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 rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear;
'Tis given out that, sleeping in mine orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forgéd process of my death
Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father's life,
Now wears his crown.

Ham. O, my prophetic soul! my uncle! Ghost. Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate

beast,