ACT III
Sc. I

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, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. 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 dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death-
The undiscover'd 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 pith 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 remember'd.

ОРНЕ.

Good my Lord,

How does your Honour for this many a day?
HAM. I humbly thank you; well, well, well.

OPHE. My Lord, I have remembrances of your's,

That I have longed long to re-deliver;

I pray you, now receive them.

did;

OPHE. My honour'd Lord, I know right well you
And, with them, words of so sweet breath compos'd
As made the 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.

HAM. Ha, ha! are you honest?

OPHE. My Lord!

HAM. Are you fair?

OPHE. What means your Lordship?

HAM. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPHE. 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 sometime a paradox, but now the time gives
it proof. I did love you once.

OPHE. Indeed, my Lord, you made me believe so.
HAM. You should not have believ'd me; for virtue
cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish
of it; I lov'd you not.

OPHE. I was the more deceiv'd.

120

HAM. Get thee to a nunnery: why would'st 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, all; believe none Go thy ways to a nunnery.

of us. father?

Where's your

131

ACT III
Sc. I

ACT III OPHE. At home, my Lord.

Sc. I

HAM. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play
the fool no where but in 's own house. Farewell.
OPHE. 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,
go; farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a
fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters
you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly
too. Farewell.

142

OPHE. O heavenly Powers, restore him!
HAM. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough;
God has given you one face, and you make yourselves
another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-
name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your
ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on 't; it hath made me
mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: those
that are married already, all but one, shall live; the
rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. [exit.

OPHE. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair State,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

The observ'd of all observers-quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me,

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Re-enter the KING and POLONIUS.

KING. Love! his affections do not that way tend;

152

160

Nor what he spake, though it lack'd 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

1 destroyed with madness.

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?
POLO. 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 shew his grief: let her be round with him;
And I'll be plac'd, 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 unwatch'd

180

go. [exeunt.

SCENE II. The Same. A Hall in the Castle.

Enter HAMLET and Players.

HAM. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue : but, if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier 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, the whirlwind of 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

ACT III

Sc. II

such a fellow whipp'd for o'erdoing Termagant;' it outherods Herod: pray you, avoid it. FIRST PLAY. I warrant your Honour.

14

HAM. 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 shew Virtue her own feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the Time his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the 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 bellow'd, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

FIRST PLAY. I hope we have reform'd that indifferently? with us, Sir.

37

HAM. 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 mean time, some necessary question of
the play be then to be consider'd: that's villainous,
and shews 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?

POLO. And the Queen too, and that presently.

HAM. Bid the players make haste. [Exit POLONIUS.]
Will you two help to hasten them?

1 a fabled god of the Saracens.

2 judiciously.

1