Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends.

Pol. This is too long.

Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard.— Prithee, say on :-He's for a jig,a or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps:-say on: come to Hecuba.

1 Play. But who, O who, had seen the mobled queen,―― Ham. The mobled b queen ?

Pol. That's good: mobled queen is good.

1 Play. Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning the flame
With bisson rheum; a clout about that head,
Where late the diadem stood; and, for a robe,
About her lank and all o'er teemed loins,

A blanket, in the alarum of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst fortune's state would treason have pronounc'd:
But if the gods themselves did see her then,

When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport

In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
(Unless things mortal move them not at all,)

Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods.

Pol. Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in 's eyes.-Pray you, no more.

Ham. 'T is well; I'll have thee speak out the rest soon.-Good_my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstracts, and brief chronicles, of the time: After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you lived.

Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Ham. Odd's bodikin man, better: Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping! Use them after your own honour and dignity: The less they a Ajig, a ludicrous interlude.

b Mobled, mabled, is hastily muffled up.

deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them

in.

Pol. Come, sirs.

[Exit PoL. with some of the Players. Ham. Follow him, friends: we 'll hear a play tomorrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murther of Gonzago?

1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. We'll have 't to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down, and insert in 't? could you not?

1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. Very well.-Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exit Player.] My good friends, [To Ros. and GUIL.] I'll leave you till night: you are

welcome to Elsinore.

Ros. Good my lord!

[Exeunt Ros. and GUI.. Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' you: Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I ! Is it not monstrous, that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his whole conceit, That from her working, all his visage warm'd; Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing! For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion,

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,*
Confound the ignorant; and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

a Free-free from offence.

Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams,a unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property, and most dear life,
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha!

Why, I should take it for it cannot be,
But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter; or, ere this,
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O vengeance.

What an ass am I! ay, sure, this is most brave;
That I, the son of the dear murthered,

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a cursing, like a very drab,

A scullion!

Fye upon 't! foh! About, my brains! I have heard,
That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,

Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;

For muither, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murther of my father,
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick; if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen

a John-a-dreams-a sobriquet for a heavy, lethargic fellow.

May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
(As he is very potent with such spirits,)
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this: The play 's the thing,
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. [Exit.

ACT III.

SCENE I.-A Room in the Castle.

Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSEN-
CRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.

King. And can you, by no drift of circumstance,
Get from him, why he puts on this confusion;
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

Ros. He does confess he feels himself distracted; But from what cause he will by no means speak. Guil. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded; But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,

When we would bring him on to some confession
Of his true state.

Queen.

Did he receive you well? Ros. Most like a gentleman.

Guil. But with much forcing of his disposition. Ros. Niggard of question; but, of our demands, Most free in his reply.

Queen.

To any pastime?

Did you assay him

Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain players
We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him;
And there did seem in him a kind of joy
To hear of it: They are about the court;
And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.

Pol.

"T is most true:

And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties,

To hear and see the matter.

King. With all my heart; and it doth much content

me

To hear him so inclin'd.