cretion 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 mirrour 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.P Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o'er-weigh 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.

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." Go, make you ready. [Exeunt Players.

p

१

pressure.] Resemblance as in a print.-JOHNSON.

censure- -] i. e. Judgment, opinion.

66

nor man,] The folio reads, or Norman," Dr. Farmer proposes, "or Musselman."

t speak no more than is set down for them:] The clown very often addressed the audience in the middle of the play, and entered into a contest of raillery and sarcasm with such of the audience as chose to engage with him. It is to this absurd practice that Shakspeare alludes.-MALONE.

u In the first quarto edition of this play, which has recently been discovered, Hamlet here adds, "And then you have some again, that keep one suit of jests, as a man is known by one suit of apparel, and gentlemen quote his jests down in their tables before they come to the play, as thus: Cannot you stay till I eat my porridge?' and, You owe me a quarter's wages and, My coat wants a cullison: and, Your beer is sour:' and blabbering with his lips, and thus keeping in his cinkapace of jests, when God knows the warm clown cannot make a jest unless by chance, as the blind man catcheth a hare; masters, tell him of it."

Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

How now, my lord? will the king hear this piece of work? Pol. And the queen too, and that presently.

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

Both. Ay, my lord.

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

Ham. What, ho; Horatio!

Enter HORATIO.

Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service.

Ham. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man

As e'er my conversation cop'd withal.

Hor. O, my dear lord,

Ham.

Nay, do not think I flatter:

For what advancement may I hope from thee,

That no revenue hast, but thy good spirits,

To feed, and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatNo, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp;

[ter'd?

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,

She 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

Hast 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,

the pregnant hinges of the knee,] I believe the sense of pregnant in this place, is, quick, ready, prompt.-JOHNSON.

y Whose blood and judgment—] According to the doctrine of the four humours, desire and confidence were seated in the blood, and judgment in the phlegm, and the due mixture of the humours made a perfect character.-JOHNSON.

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 my 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 be idle : Get you a place.

Danish March.

A Flourish. Enter King, Queen, PoLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENStern, and others.

King. How fares our cousin Hamlet?

Ham. Excellent, i'faith; of the camelion's 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 in 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.

NARES.

a

stithy.] The shop containing the stith or anvil, now called smithy.

nor mine now.] A man's words, says the proverb, are his own no longer than he keeps them unspoken.-JOHNSON.

Pol. O ho! do you mark that?

[To the King.

Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

[Lying down at OPHELIA's Feet.

Oph. No, my lord.

Ham. I mean, my head upon your lap?

Oph. 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 maid's legs. Oph. What is, my lord?

Ham. Nothing.

Oph. You are merry, my lord.

Ham. Who, I?

Oph. Ay, my lord.

Ham. O! 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. Oph. Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.

Ham. So long? Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens! 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'rlady, he must build churches then: or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horsed whose epitaph is, For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot.

Trumpets sound. The dumb Show follows.

Enter a King and 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;

b - jig-maker.] i. e. Ballad-maker. A jig was a low, ludicrous dialogue in

metre.

ca suit of sables.] The richest dress that could be worn in Denmark.STEEVENS.

suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse:] Amongst the country May-games, there was a hobby-horse, which, when the puritanical humour of those times opposed and discredited these games, was brought by the poets and ballad-makers as an instance of the ridiculous zeal of the sectaries; from these ballads Hamlet quotes a line or two.-WARBURTON.

• The dumb-show-] This was in the old plays a very common part of the performance; they gradually," says Nares, "fell into disrepute, by the improvement of taste; so that in Shakspeare's time they seem to have been in favour only with the lower classes of spectators."

she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The poisoner, with some two or three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts; she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but, in the end, accepts his love. [Exeunt.

Oph. What means this, my lord?

Ham. Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.

Oph. Belike, this show imports the argument of the play.

Enter Prologue.

Ham. We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel; they'll tell all.

Oph. Will he tell us what this show meant?

Ham. Ay, or any show that you'll show him: Be not you ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means.

Oph. You are naught, you are naught; I'll mark the play.

Pro. For us, and for our tragedy.

Here stooping to your clemency,

We beg your hearing patiently.

Ham. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

Oph. 'Tis brief, my lord.

Ham. As woman's love.

Enter a King and a Queen.

[round

P. King. Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone Neptune's salt wash, and Tellus' orbed ground; And thirty dozen moons, with borrow'd sheen, About the world have times twelve thirties been;

miching mallecho ;] i. e. A skulking mischief, from to mich to lie hid, or skulk in a corner, and malheco, Spanish, an evil action.-MALONE.

Be not you ashamed to show, &c.] The conversation of Hamlet with Ophelia, which cannot fail to disgust every modern reader, is probably such as was peculiar to the young and fashionable of the age of Shakspeare, which was, by no means, the age of delicacy.-STEEVENS.

cart-] A chariot was anciently so called.-STEEVENS.
sheen,] Splendour, lustre.-JOHNSON.