SCENE II.-The same.

the same.

Enter the KING, QUEEN, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants.

KING. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death

The memory be green; and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole
kingdom

To be contracted in one brow of woe;
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature,
That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
The imperial jointress of this warlike state,
Have we, as 't were with a defeated joy,-

marriage,

In equal scale weighing delight and dole,-
Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along:-for all, our thanks.
Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
Or thinking by our late dear brother's death,
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleagued with the dream of his advantage,-
He hath not fail'd to pester us with message,
Importing the surrender of those lands

Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother. So much for him.-
Now for ourself, and for this time of meeting,
Thus much the business is :-we have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,-
Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears

Of this his nephew's purpose,-to suppress
His further gait herein; in that the levies,
The lists, and full proportions, are all made
Out of his subject and we here dispatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand,
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway;
Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the king, more than the scope
Of these dilated articles allow.

Farewell; and let your haste commend your duty. COR., VOL. In that and all things will we show our duty.

KING. We doubt it nothing; heartily farewell.-
[Exeunt VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS.
And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?
You told us of some suit; what is 't, Laertes ?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane,
And lose your voice: what wouldst thou beg,
Laertes,

That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
What wouldst thou have, Laertes ?

LAER.
Dread my lord,
Your leave and favour to return to France;
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark,
To show my duty in your coronation ;
Yet now, I must confess, that duty done,

My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France,

And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.(3) KING. Have you your father's leave ?-What says Polonius?

POL. He hath, my lord, wrung from me my
slow leave

By laboursome petition; and, at last,
Upon his will I seal'd my hard consent:
I do beseech you, give him leave to go."
KING. Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be
thine,

And thy best graces spend it at thy will!-
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,-
HAM. [Aside.] A little more than kin, and less
than kind.b

KING. How is it that the clouds still hang on
you?

[off,

HAM. Not so, my lord; I am too much i'
the sun.
QUEEN. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
Thou know'st 't is common,-all that lives must
Passing through nature to eternity.

HAM. Ay, madam, it is common.
QUEEN.

If it be,

[die,

Why seems it so particular with thee? [seems.
HAM. Seems, madam! nay, it is; I know not
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes,* shows of grief,
That can denote me truly: these, indeed, seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These, but the trappings and the suits of woe.
KING. 'Tis sweet and commendable in your
nature, Hamlet,

To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his; and the survivor bound,
In filial obligation, for some term

d

To do obsequious sorrow: but to perséver,
In obstinate condolement, is a course

Of impious stubbornness; 't is unmanly grief:
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven;
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient;
An understanding simple and unschool'd:
For what we know must be, and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we, in our peevish opposition,
Take it to heart? Fie! 't is a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd; whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died to-day,
This must be so. We pray you, throw to earth
This unprevailing woe; and think of us
As of a father; for let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our throne;
And with no less nobility of love

е

Than that which dearest father bears his son,
Do I impart toward you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire:
And, we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
QUEEN. Let not thy mother lose her prayers,
Hamlet;

pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg. HAM. I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

HAM. O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O, God! O,
God!

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on 't! O, fie! 't is an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in

nature

Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead!-nay, not so much, not two;

So excellent a king; that was, to this,

Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother, That he might not beteem" the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,-— Let me not think on't-Frailty, thy name is

a O, that this too too solid flesh would melt.-] Mr. Halliwell has proved by numberless examples, culled from our early writers, that where too too occurred, in the generality of cases it formed a compound word, too-too, and when thus connected bore the meaning of exceeding. The present instance, however, must be regarded as an exception to the rule. Here the repetition of too is not only strikingly beautiful, rhetorically, but it admirably expresses that morbid condition of the mind which makes the unhappy prince deem all the uses of the world but "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable."

was

b beteem-] That is, vouchsafe, allow, suffer, and the like. c discourse of reason,-] By "discourse of reason" meant the comprehensive range, or discursiveness of reason, the retrospective and foreseeing faculties; thus in Act IV. Sc. 4, Hamlet remarks,

"Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and godlike reason

To fust in us unus'd."

a Had left the flushing-] The quarto, 1603, reads, "— their flushing."

HAM. I am glad to see you well: Horatio, or I do forget myself. HOR. The same, my lord, and your poor ser

vant ever.

HAM. Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you.

And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?— Marcellus?

MAR. My good lord,--

HAM. I am very glad to see you.-Good even,
sir,-

But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
HOR. A truant disposition, good my lord.
HAM. I would not hear your enemy say so;
Nor shall you do mine ear that violence,
To make it truster of your own report
Against yourself: I know you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore ?
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
HOR. My lord, I came to see your father's
funeral.

HAM. I pr'ythee, do not mock me, fellow-
student;

I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
HOR. Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon.
HAM. Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral bak'd
meats (5)

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest (6) foe in heaven
Ere ever I had seen that day, Horatio!—
My father, methinks, I see my father.
HOR. O, where, my lord?

HAM.
-In my mind's eye,g
g Horatio.
HOR. I saw him once; he was a goodly king.
HAM. He was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again.

HOR. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight. HAM. Saw who?

HOR. My lord, the king your

HAM.

father.

The king my father! HOR. Season your admiration for a while With an attentiveh ear; till I may deliver,

• And what make you-] We should now ask,-"What do you?" but the above was a household form of speech in Shakespeare's day; in the same manner, Hamlet subsequently demands of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,-"What make you at Elsinore?" in "Othello," Act I. Sc. 2, Cassio inquires of Iago,ancient, what makes he here?"

and in "Love's Labour's Lost," Act IV. Sc. 3, the king questions Costard,

"what makes treason here?"

f We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.] The reading of the 1603 quarto and of the folio 1623: the other old copies have,

"We'll teach you for to drink ere you depart."

g In my mind's eye, Horatio.] The expression was not unusual: "Ah why were the Eyes of my Mynde so dymned wyth the myste of fonde zeal, that I could not consyder the common Malyce of men now a dayes."-FINTON's Tragicall Discourses, 4to. 1567. Again, Let us consider and behold with the eyes of our soul his long suffering will."-I Epistle of St. Clement, cap. 19.

han attentive ear;] The folio and one of the quartos have, "an attent ear."

For God's love, let me hear. HOR. Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,

In the dead vast and middle of the night,

Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father, Armed at point, exactly, cap-à-pé,

b

Appears before them, and with solemn march Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes, Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distill'd

Almost to jelly with the act of fear,

Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did;

And I with them the third night kept the watch:
Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes. I knew your father;

These hands are not more like.

HAM.

But where was this? MAR. My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd.

HAM. Did you not speak to it?
HOR.

My lord, I did;
But answer made it none: yet once methought
It lifted up his head, and did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak:
But, even then, the morning cock crew loud;
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
And vanish'd from our sight.

HAM.

'Tis very strange. HOR. As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true And we did think it writ down in our duty To let you know of it.

HAM. Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles