You are welcome, masters; welcome, all:—I am glad to see thee well:-welcome, good friends.— O, old friend! why thy face is valanced since I saw thee last; comest thou to beard me in Denmark?—What, my young lady and mistress! By-'r-lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.— Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en to it like French falconers, fly at anything we see : we'll have a speech straight: come, give us a taste of your quality; come, a passionate speech. 1st Play. What speech, my lord? Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once,but it was never acted; or, if it was, not above once for the play, I remember, pleased not the million 't was caviarie to the general but it was (as I received it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of mine) an excellent play; well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember one said, there were no sallets in the lines, to make the matter savoury: nor no matter in the phrase that might indite the author of affectation but called it, an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I chiefly loved: 't was Æneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of Priam's slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at this line; let me see, let me see ; The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,— The rugged Pyrrhus,-he, whose sable arms, Now is he total gules; horridly tricked With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons; Baked and impasted with the parching streets, That lend a tyrannous and a damnéd light To their lord's murder: roasted in wrath and fire, With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus So, proceed you. Pol. 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken; with good accent and good discretion. 1st Player. Anon he finds him Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword But as we often see, against some storm, Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods, Pol. This is too long. Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard. -Pr'y thee, say on: he's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps: say on: come to Hecuba. 1st Player. But who, ah woe! had seen the mobled queen Ham. The mobled queen? Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good. 1st Player. Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames But if the gods themselves did see her then, Pol. Look whether he has not turned his colour, and has tears in 's eyes!-Pr'y thee, no more. Ham. 'Tis well; I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.-Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live. Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert. Ham. Odd's bodikin, man, much better; use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in. Pol. Come, sirs. But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, villain! Why, what an ass am I? This is most brave; Fie upon 't! foh!—About, my brains!--Humph! That guilty creatures, sitting at a play, [Exit. Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. King. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too: For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither; That he, as 't were by accident, may here Affront Ophelia : Her father and myself (lawful espials). Than is my deed to my most painted word; O, heavy burden! [Aside. Pol. I hear him coming; let's withdraw, my lord. [Exeunt KING and POLONIUS. Enter HAMLET. Ham. 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,-'t is 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, For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of déspised love, the law's delay, Take these again; for to the noble mind, Ham. Ha, ha! are you honestî Ham. Are you fair? Oph. What means your lordship? Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty. Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty? Ham. 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 some time a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once. 80. Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe Ham. You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it: I loved you not. Oph. I was the more deceived. Ham. 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 heaven and earth! We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us: go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father? Oph. At home, my lord. Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in 's own house. Farewell. Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens! Ham. 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. Oph. Heavenly powers, restore him! Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance:—Go to; I'll no more of't; it hath made me mad. I say we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, [Exit. go. Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword; The expectancy and rose of the fair state, 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; I have, in quick determination, Thus set it down:-He shall with speed to Eng land, For the demand of our neglected tribute: |