*

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.

Орн. Good my lord, How does your honour for this many a day? HAM. I humbly thank you; well, well, well. ОPH. My lord, I have remembrances of yours, That I have longed long to re-deliver; I pray you, now receive them.

HAM. No, no. I never gave you aught. OPH. My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;

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 ?b
ОPH. My lord?

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 sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once. ОPн. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. HAM. You should not have believed me: for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it: I lov'd 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

apith and moment,-] The quartos have, "pitch and moment;" which Ritson preferred, as do we, though for a different reason, he conceiving pitch to be an allusion "to the pitching or throwing the bar," we supposing it to refer to the pitch or summit of the falcon's flight, and "great pitch and moment" to mean great eminence and import.

bare you honest?] That "honest" in this dialogue is equivalent to chaste or virtuous, it would be superfluous to mention but that some critics, in their strictures on the conduct of Hamlet in the present scene, appear to have forgotten it. The beginning recals to mind some passages in Shirley's play, entitled "The Royal Master," Act IV. Sc. 1,

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? ОPH. At home, my lord.

HAM. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.

ОPH. 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.

ОPH. O, 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 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.

ОPH. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword:d

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,t 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!

King. I could have us'd the name of chaste
Or virgin; but they carry the same sense."

c I have heard of your paintings too. well enough; God hath given you one face,-] So the quartos: the folio exhibits the passage thus," I have heard of your pratlings too wel enough. God has given you one pace," &c.

d The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, &c.] This is the collocation of the quarto, 1603. In the folio we have, "The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's," &c.

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?
POL. 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 griefs; 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,b
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 go.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.-A Hall in the same.

Enter HAMLET, and certain Players.

HAM. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced 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 yours 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 dumbshows and noise: I could have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod :(1) pray you, avoid it.

1 PLAY. I warrant your honour.

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 anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature; to show 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 bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. 1 PLAY. I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir.

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 considered: that's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.(2) Go, make you ready. [Exeunt Players.

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
Hath seal'd thee for herself: for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hath ta'en with equal thanks: and bless'd are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well co-mingled,
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 pr'ythee, when thou seest that act a-foot,
Even with the very comment of thy § soul
Observe mine 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 judgments join
In ¶ censure of his seeming.

HOR.

Well, my lord:

If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing, And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

HAM. They are coming to the play: I must he idle:

Get you a place.

с

b

"My antic knees can turn upon the hinges

Of compliment, and screw a thousand cringes."

Emblems, B. IV.

Vulcan's stithy.] The stithy is the smith's work-place; the stith is his anvil.

e- I must be idle :] I must affect being crazy. We are not aware that any scholiast has pointed out the use of "idle" in the sense of mad; though Shakespeare so employs it several times; among others, in the quarto "Hamlet," 1603, Corambis, the Polonius of the perfect play, speaking of Hamlet's derangement, observes,

"All this comes by love, the vemencie of love,
And when I was yong, I was very idle,
And suffered much extasie in love," &c.

Subsequently in the same edition, where the Ghost appears to
Hamlet when closeted with his mother, we have the following,-
"Queene. But Hamlet, this is onely fantasie,

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.

HAM. No, nor mine now.-My lord, you played once i' the university, you say?

[TO POLONIUS. POL. That did I,* my lord; and was accounted a good actor.

HAM. And what did you enact?

POL. I did enact Julius Cæsar: I was killed i' the Capitol; Brutus killed me.

HAM. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.-Be the players ready?

Ros. Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.

QUEEN. Come hither, my dear+ Hamlet, sit by me.

HAM. No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.

POL. O, ho! do you mark that? [To the KING. HAM. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

[Lying down at OPHELIA's feet.

OPн. No, my lord.

HAM. I mean, my head upon your lap?
ОPн. Ay, my lord.

HAM. Do you think I meant country matters?
OPH. I think nothing, my lord.

HAM. That's a fair thought to lie between

maids' legs.

OPH. What is, my lord?

HAM. Nothing.

OPH. You are merry, my lord.

HAM. Who, I?

ОPн. Ay, my lord.

HAM. 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 these two hours.

d

for I'll have a suit of sables.] The favourite notion is that

by "a suit of sables" is meant a dress ornamented with the costly

fur called "sable." Possibly, however, the word "for" in this place, as in " Henry V." Act III. Sc. 6,

"And, for achievement, offer ransom;" and in "Antony and Cleopatra," Act IV. Sc. 9,

"so bad a prayer as his was never yet for sleep; " was misprinted instead of 'fore. In the 1603 quarto of the present play, in place of ""T is not alone my inky cloak," &c., which is the accepted text, Hamlet is made to say, "'t is not the sable sule,"

&c.

So also in Act IV. Sc. 7,

"Than settled age his sables and his weeds." And it is not at all improbable that in the scene before us he was intended to accompany the words," Nay, then, let the devil wear black 'fore I'll wear a suit of sables," with the action of flinging off his mourning cloak. Since writing the above we find that Warburton long ago suggested, "fore I'll wear a suit of sables."

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, he must build churches, then; or else shall he 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, pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. 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 loth and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love.

The

[Exeunt.

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 holds quantity;
In neither aught, or in extremity.
Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
And as my love is siz'd, my fear is so.

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there
GONZ. Faith, must leave thee, love, and shortly

too;

My operant powers their functions leave to do:
And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honour'd, belov'd; and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou-

The instances that second marriage move,
Are base respects of thrift, but none of love;
A second time I kill my lord that's dead,
When second husband kisses me in bed.

GONZ. 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, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree;
But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.

Most necessary 't is 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 't is 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 advanc'd 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.
BAPT. 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!