POLONIUS. Ophelia, walk you here:-Gracious, so please you.
We will bestow ourselves;
Read on this book;
(To Ophelia.)
That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,-
'Tis too much prov'd, that, with devotion's visage,
And pious action, we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
O, 'tis too true! how smart
A lash that speech doth give my conscience!
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring 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; let's withdraw, my lord.
(Exeunt King and Polonius.)
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-ach, 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 despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
When he himself might his quietus make
To grunt and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
HAMLET. To be, or not to be, that is the question :- No traveller returns, puzzles the will;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The stings and arrows of outrageous fortune;
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?