Be you and I behind an arras" then ; * And keep a farm, and carters. KING. • But, 4tos. We will try it. Enter HAMLET, reading. QUEEN. But, look, where sadly the poor wretch comes reading. POL. Away, I do beseech you, both away; I'll boord him presently:-Ö, give me leave.⚫ bord. 4tos. [Exeunt King, Queen, and Attendants. How does my good lord Hamlet? HAM. Well, god-'a-mercy. POL. Do you know me, my lord? HAM. Excellent, excellent well; you are a fishmonger. POL. Not I, my lord. HAM. Then I would you were so honest a man. * HAM. Ay, sir: to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of two thousand. POL. That's very true, my lord. HAM. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion, daughter? POL. I have, my lord. Have you a HAM. Let her not walk i'the sun: conception is behind an arras] Hangings of the room. See I. H. IV. Pr. Hen. II. 4. I'll boord him presently] Accost, address. See Tw. N. I. 3. Sir Tob. E read 4tos. rogue 4tos. a blessing; but as your daughter may conceive,— friend, look to't. (22) POL. How say you by that? [Aside.] Still harping on my daughter:-yet he knew me not at first; he said, I was a fishmonger: He is far gone, far gone: and, truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again. What do you read, my lord? HAM. Words, words, words. POL. What is the matter, my lord? POL. I mean, the matter that you mean,* my lord. HAM. Slanders, sir: for the satirical slave* says here that old men have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes purging thick amber, and plum-tree gum; and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: All of which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down: for yourself, sir, shall be as old as I am, if like a crab, you could go backward. POL. Though this be madness, yet there's method in it. [Aside.] Will you walk out of the air, lord? my HAM. Into my grave? a Pol. Indeed, that is out o'the air.-How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter.-My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you. how pregnant his replies] Big with meaning. We have " dull and unpregnant" at the end of this scene. Haml. "Quick and pregnant capacities." Puttenham's Arte of Poesie. p. 154. HAM. You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal; except my life, except my life, except my life. POL. Fare you well, my lord. HAM. These tedious old fools! Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENStern. POL. You go to seek the lord Hamlet; there he is. Ros. God save you, sir! GUIL. My honour'd lord! Ros. My most dear lord!— [TO POLONIUS. [Exit POLONIUS. HAM. My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both? Ros. As the indifferent children of the earth. GUIL. Happy, in that we are not overhappy; On fortune's cap we are not the very button. HAM. Nor the soles of her shoe? Ros. Neither, my lord. HAM. Then you live about her waist, or in the wast,O. C. middle of her favours? GUIL. 'Faith, her privates we.b HAM. In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet. What news? Ros. None, my lord; but that the world's the indifferent children of the earth] Who, not lifted too high, are, as is said, indifferentlywell off. Faith, her privates we] One sense at least here is the military one, of not being in authority or command. HAM. Then is dooms-day near: But your news is not true. Let me question more in particular: What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither? GUIL. Prison, my lord! HAM. Denmark's a prison. Ros. Then is the world one. HAM. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons; Denmark being one of the worst. Ros. We think not so, my lord. HAM. Why, then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison. Ros. Why, then your ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your mind. HAM. O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space; were it not that I have bad dreams. GUIL. Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. (23) HAM. A dream itself is but a shadow. Ros. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow's shadow. HAM. Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs, and outstretch'd heroes, the beggars' shadows: Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason. Then are our beggars bodies-and our outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows] At this rate, and, if it be true, that lofty aims are no more than air, our beggars only have the nature of substance; and our monarchs and those who are blazoned so far abroad, as to be thought materially to fill so much space, are in fact shadows, and in imagination only gigantic. Ros. GUIL. We'll wait upon you. HAM. No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest of my servants; for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore? b Ros. To visit you, my lord; no other occasion. HAM. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear, a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, come; deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak. GUIL. What should we say, my lord? to the pur HAM. Why any thing-but to the purpose.* You So, 4tos. were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in thing. But your looks, which your modesties have not craft pose, 1623, enough to colour: I know, the good king and 32. queen have sent for you. Ros. To what end, my lord? But let me HAM. That you must teach me. conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for, or no? *beaten way of friendship] Plain track, open and unceremonious course. btoo dear a halfpenny] i. e. at a halfpenny; at so small, or, indeed at any price. If valued as the return for any thing, such cost is beyond their worth. rights of our fellowship and consonancy of our youth] Habits of familiar intercourse and correspondent years. d a better proposer] An advocate of more address in shaping his aims, who could make a stronger appeal. |