About her lank and all o'erteemed loins, But if the gods themselves did see her then, Pol. Look whether he has not turn'd his color, and has tears in 's eyes.-Pr'ythee, no more. Ham. 'Tis well: I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon. Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time: After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live. Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert. Ham. Odd's bodikin, man, much better: Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping! Use them after your own honor and dignity: The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in. Pol. Come, sirs. With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this? Why, I should take it: for it cannot be, Why, what an ass am I? This is most brave; Fye upon't! foh! About my brains! Humph! I have heard, That guilty creatures, sitting at a play, ACT III. Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN. King. And can you, by no drift of conference, 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, • Milky. X To hear of it: They are about the court; King. With all my heart; and it doth much content me To hear him so inclin'd. Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Her father, and myself, (lawful espials,") Will so bestow ourselves, that seeing, unseen, I shall obey you: Oph. Madam, I wish it may. [Exit QUEEN. Pol. Ophelia, walk you here:- Gracious, so please you, We will bestow ourselves:-Read on this book; That show of such an exercise may color Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question: No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end rub; That patient merit of the unworthy takes, Oph. Good my lord, How does your honor for this many a day? Ham. I humbly thank you; well. Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours, That I have longed long to re-deliver; I pray you, now receive them. Ham. I never gave you aught. No, not I: Oph. My honor'd lord, you know right well, you did; And, with them, words of so sweet breath compos'd Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest? Ham. Are you fair? Oph. What means your lordship? Ham. That if you be honest and fair, you should admit no discourse to your beauty. Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty? Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness; this was some time a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once. Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. Ham. You should not have believed me: for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it: I lov'd you not. Oph. I was the more deceived. Ham. Get thee to a nunnery; Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things, that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck, than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in: What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven! We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us: Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father? Oph. At home, my lord. Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him; that he may play the fool no where but in 's own house. Farewell. Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens ! Ham. If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry; Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery; farewell: Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough, • Quiet. The ancient term for a small dagger. Pack, burden. 1 Boundary, limits. 9 Prayers. ง what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell. Oph. Heavenly powers, restore him! Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance: Go to; I'll no more of't; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages; those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. [Exit HAMLET. Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword: The expectancy and rose of the fair state, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see! Re-enter KING and POLONIUS. King. Love! his affections do not that way tend; Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little, Was not like madness. There's something in his soul, O'er which his melancholy sits on brood; Thus set it down; He shall with speed to England, To show his grief; let her be round' with him; King. SCENE II-A Hall in the same. Enter HAMLET, and certain Players. Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the Alienation of mind. • Reprimand him with freedom. groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipt for o'er-doing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: Pray you, avoid it. 1 Play. I warrant your honor. Ham. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'er-step 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 mirror 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. 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 villanous; and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. [Exeunt Players. Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUIL DENSTERN. How now, my lord? will the king hear this piece of work? Pol. And the queen too, and that presently. Will you two help to hasten them? [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 Ham. No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp; The meaner people then seem to have sat in the pit. . Approbation. Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and bless'd are those As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note: 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. 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'r-lady, he must build churches then: or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse; whose epitaph is, For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot. Trumpets sound. The dumb Show follows. Enter a King and a 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; 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 woos the Queen with gifts; she seems bath 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. P. King. Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round Neptune's salt wash, and Tellus' orbed ground; And thirty dozen moons, with borrowed sheen,' About the world have times twelve thirties been; Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands, Unite commutual in most sacred bands. P. Queen. So many journeys may the sun and moon Make us again count o'er, ere love be done! Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know; there. P. King. 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too; My operant powers their functions leave to do: Secret wickedness. The earth. Shining, lustre. 1 SCENE II. PRINCE OF DENMARK. Are base respects of thrift, but none of love; A second time I kill my husband dead, When second husband kisses me in bed. P. King. I do believe, you think what now you speak; But, what we do determine, oft we break. Of violent birth, but poor validity: Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree : To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt: But, orderly to end where I begun,- Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own: Sport and repose lock from me, day and night! Ham. If she should break it now, [TO OPHELIA. P. King. "Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile [Exit. Ham. Madam, how like you this play? King. Have you heard the argument? Is there Ham. No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; King. What do you call the play? • Anchoret. 4 the thing In which he'll catch the conscience of the king. cally. This play is the image of a murder done This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king. Oph. You are as good as a chorus, my lord. Ham. I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets dallying. Oph. You are keen, my lord, you are keen. Ham. It would cost you a groaning, to take off my edge. Oph. Still better, and worse. Ham. So you mistake your husbands.—Begin, murderer;-leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come -The croaking raven Doth bellow for revenge. Luc. Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and Confederate season, else no creature seeing; [Pours the Poison into the Sleeper's Ears. Ham. He poisons him i' the garden for his estate. His name's Gonzago: the story is extant, and written in very choice Italian: You shall see anon, how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife. Oph. The king rises. Ham. What! frighted with false fire? Pol. Give o'er the play. King. Give me some light:-away! [Exeunt all but HAMLET and HORATIO. Ham. "Why, let the strucken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play: For some must watch, while some must sleep; Thus runs the world away.Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, (if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me,) with two Provencial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry' of players, sir? Hor. Half a share. Ham. A whole one, I. For thou dost know, O Damon dear, Of Jove himself; and now reigns here Hor. You might have rhymed. Ham. O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound. Didst perceive? Hor. Very well, my lord. Ham. Upon the talk of the poisoning,- · Ham. Ah, ah!-Come, some music; come, the recorders. For if the king like not the comedy, Why then, belike, he likes it not, perdy.'Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Come, some music. Guil. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you. Ham. Sir, a whole history. Ham. Ay, sir, what of him? Pack, company. • Pur Dieu. |