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?

He does confess he feels himself distracted,

But from what cause he will by no means speak.

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.

Did he receive you well?

Most like a gentleman.

But with much forcing of his disposition.

Niggard of question, but of our demands,

Most free in his reply.

Did you assay him to any pastime?

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.

’Tis most true;

And he beseech’d me to entreat your Majesties

To hear and see the matter.

With all my heart; and it doth much content me

To hear him so inclin’d.

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,

And drive his purpose on to these delights.

We shall, my lord.

Sweet Gertrude, leave us too,

For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,

That he, as ’twere by accident, may here

Affront Ophelia.

Her father and myself, lawful espials,

Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,

We may of their encounter frankly judge,

And gather by him, as he is behav’d,

If’t be th’affliction of his love or no

That thus he suffers for.

I shall obey you.

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish

That your good beauties be the happy cause

Of Hamlet’s wildness: so shall I hope your virtues

Will bring him to his wonted way again,

To both your honours.

Madam, I wish it may.

Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please you,

We will bestow ourselves.—[_To Ophelia._] Read on this book,

That show of such an exercise may colour

Your loneliness.—We are oft to blame in this,

’Tis too much prov’d, that with devotion’s visage

And pious action we do sugar o’er

The devil himself.

[_Aside._] O ’tis too true!

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!

The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering art,

Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it

Than is my deed to my most painted word.

O heavy burden!

I hear him coming. Let’s withdraw, my lord.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die—to sleep,

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep.

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action. Soft you now,

The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remember’d.

Good my lord,

How does your honour for this many a day?

I humbly thank you; well, well, well.

My lord, I have remembrances of yours

That I have longed long to re-deliver.

I pray you, now receive them.

No, not I.

I never gave you aught.

My honour’d lord, you know right well you did,

And with them words of so sweet breath compos’d

As made the things more rich; their perfume lost,

Take these again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

There, my lord.

Ha, ha! Are you honest?

My lord?

Are you fair?

What means your lordship?

That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse

to your beauty.

Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

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 sometime a paradox, but now the time gives

it proof. I did love you once.

Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old

stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.

I was the more deceived.

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?

At home, my lord.

Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but

in’s own house. Farewell.

O help him, you sweet heavens!

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, go: farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a

fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To

a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell.

O heavenly powers, restore him!

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 nickname God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your

ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’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.

O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,

Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

Th’observ’d of all observers, quite, quite down!

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

That suck’d the honey of his music vows,

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,

Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh,

That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth

Blasted with ecstasy. O woe is me,

T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see.

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,

And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose

Will be some danger, which for to prevent,

I have in quick determination

Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England

For the demand of our neglected tribute:

Haply the seas and countries different,

With variable objects, shall expel

This something settled matter in his heart,

Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus

From fashion of himself. What think you on’t?

It shall do well. But yet do I believe

The origin and commencement of his grief

Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia?

You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said,

We heard it all. My lord, do as you please,

But if you hold it fit, after the play,

Let his queen mother all alone entreat him

To show his grief, let her be round with him,

And I’ll be plac’d, so please you, in the ear

Of all their conference. If she find him not,

To England send him; or confine him where

Your wisdom best shall think.

It shall be so.

Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on

the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of your 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 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 groundlings, who, for

the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and

noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant. It

out-Herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.

I warrant your honour.

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’erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything

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 the which one must in your allowance

o’erweigh 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.

I hope we have reform’d that indifferently with us, sir.

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 meantime 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.

How now, my lord?

Will the King hear this piece of work?

And the Queen too, and that presently.

Bid the players make haste.

Will you two help to hasten them?

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

We will, my lord.

What ho, Horatio!

Here, sweet lord, at your service.

Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man

As e’er my conversation cop’d withal.

O my dear lord.

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 flatter’d?

No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,

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

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 blessed are those

Whose blood and judgement 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 tonight before the King.

One scene of it comes near the circumstance

Which I have told thee, of my father’s death.

I prithee, when thou see’st that act a-foot,

Even with the very comment of thy soul

Observe mine 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 judgements join

In censure of his seeming.

Well, my lord.

If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,

And ’scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

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.

How fares our cousin Hamlet?

Excellent, i’ faith; of the chameleon’s dish: I eat the air,

promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.

I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not mine.

No, nor mine now. [_To Polonius._] My lord, you play’d once i’

th’university, you say?

That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.

What did you enact?

I did enact Julius Caesar. I was kill’d i’ th’ Capitol. Brutus killed

me.

It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there. Be the

players ready?

Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.

Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

No, good mother, here’s metal more attractive.

[_To the King._] O ho! do you mark that?

Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

No, my lord.

I mean, my head upon your lap?

Ay, my lord.

Do you think I meant country matters?

I think nothing, my lord.

That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.

What is, my lord?

Nothing.

You are merry, my lord.

Who, I?

Ay, my lord.

O God, 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’s two

hours.

Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.

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’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 enters.

_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, pours poison in the King’s ears, and

action. The Poisoner with some three or four Mutes, comes in again,

seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner

woos the Queen with gifts. She seems loth and unwilling awhile, but in

the end accepts his love._

What means this, my lord?

Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.

Belike this show imports the argument of the play.

We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel; they’ll

tell all.

Will they tell us what this show meant?

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.

You are naught, you are naught: I’ll mark the play.

_For us, and for our tragedy,

Here stooping to your clemency,

We beg your hearing patiently._

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

’Tis brief, my lord.

As woman’s love.

Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round

Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground,

And thirty dozen moons with borrow’d sheen

About the world have times twelve thirties been,

Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands

Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

So many journeys may the sun and moon

Make us again count o’er ere love be done.

But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,

So far from cheer and from your former state,

That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,

Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must:

For women’s fear and love holds quantity,

In neither aught, or in extremity.

Now what my love is, proof hath made you know,

And as my love is siz’d, my fear is so.

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;

Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too:

My operant powers their functions leave to do:

And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,

Honour’d, belov’d, and haply one as kind

For husband shalt thou—

O confound the rest.

Such love must needs be treason in my breast.

In second husband let me be accurst!

None wed the second but who kill’d the first.

[_Aside._] Wormwood, wormwood.

The instances that second marriage move

Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.

A second time I kill my husband dead,

When second husband kisses me in bed.

I do believe you think what now you speak;

But what we do determine, oft we break.

Purpose is but the slave to memory,

Of violent birth, but poor validity:

Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,

But fall unshaken when they mellow be.

Most necessary ’tis that we forget

To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.

What to ourselves in passion we propose,

The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.

The violence of either grief or joy

Their own enactures with themselves destroy.

Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;

Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.

This world is not for aye; nor ’tis not strange

That even our loves should with our fortunes change,

For ’tis a question left us yet to prove,

Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.

The great man down, you mark his favourite flies,

The poor advanc’d makes friends of enemies;

And hitherto doth love on fortune tend:

For who not needs shall never lack a friend,

And who in want a hollow friend doth try,

Directly seasons him his enemy.

But orderly to end where I begun,

Our wills and fates do so contrary run

That our devices still are overthrown.

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

So think thou wilt no second husband wed,

But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light,

Sport and repose lock from me day and night,

To desperation turn my trust and hope,

An anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope,

Each opposite that blanks the face of joy,

Meet what I would have well, and it destroy!

Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,

If, once a widow, ever I be wife.

[_To Ophelia._] If she should break it now.

’Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile.

My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile

The tedious day with sleep.

Sleep rock thy brain,

And never come mischance between us twain.

Madam, how like you this play?

The lady protests too much, methinks.

O, but she’ll keep her word.

Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in’t?

No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i’ th’ world.

What do you call the play?

_The Mousetrap._ Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a

murder done in Vienna. Gonzago is the Duke’s name, his wife Baptista:

you shall see anon; ’tis a knavish piece of work: but what o’ that?

Your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. Let the

gall’d jade wince; our withers are unwrung.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.

You are a good chorus, my lord.

I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets

dallying.

You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.

Still better, and worse.

So you mistake your husbands.—Begin, murderer. Pox, leave thy damnable

faces, and begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.

Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing,

Confederate season, else no creature seeing;

Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,

With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,

Thy natural magic and dire property

On wholesome life usurp immediately.

He poisons him i’ th’garden for’s 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.

The King rises.

What, frighted with false fire?

How fares my lord?

Give o’er the play.

Give me some light. Away.

All.

Lights, lights, lights.

Why, let the strucken deer go weep,

The hart ungalled play;

For some must watch, while some must sleep,

So 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 Provincial roses on my razed

shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?

Half a share.

A whole one, I.

For thou dost know, O Damon dear,

This realm dismantled was

Of Jove himself, and now reigns here

A very, very—pajock.

You might have rhymed.

O good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound. Didst

perceive?

Very well, my lord.

Upon the talk of the poisoning?

I did very well note him.

Ah, ha! Come, some music. Come, the recorders.

For if the king like not the comedy,

Why then, belike he likes it not, perdie.

Come, some music.

Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

Sir, a whole history.

The King, sir—

Ay, sir, what of him?

Is in his retirement, marvellous distempered.

With drink, sir?

No, my lord; rather with choler.

Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to the

doctor, for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him

into far more choler.

Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so

wildly from my affair.

I am tame, sir, pronounce.

The Queen your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me

to you.

You are welcome.

Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. If it shall

please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother’s

commandment; if not, your pardon and my return shall be the end of my

business.

Sir, I cannot.

What, my lord?

Make you a wholesome answer. My wit’s diseased. But, sir, such answer

as I can make, you shall command; or rather, as you say, my mother.

Therefore no more, but to the matter. My mother, you say,—

Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into amazement and

admiration.

O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother! But is there no sequel

at the heels of this mother’s admiration?

She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed.

We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any further

trade with us?

My lord, you once did love me.

And so I do still, by these pickers and stealers.

Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do surely bar the

door upon your own liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend.

Sir, I lack advancement.

How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself for your

succession in Denmark?

Ay, sir, but while the grass grows—the proverb is something musty.

O, the recorders. Let me see one.—To withdraw with you, why do you go

about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?

O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.

I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?

My lord, I cannot.

I pray you.

Believe me, I cannot.

I do beseech you.

I know no touch of it, my lord.

’Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your finger and

thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most

eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony. I have not the

skill.

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play

upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart

of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my

compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little

organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood, do you think I am easier

to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though

you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.

God bless you, sir.

My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.

Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?

By the mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.

Methinks it is like a weasel.

It is backed like a weasel.

Or like a whale.

Very like a whale.

Then will I come to my mother by and by.—They fool me to the top of my

bent.—I will come by and by.

I will say so.

By and by is easily said. Leave me, friends.

’Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,

And do such bitter business as the day

Would quake to look on. Soft now, to my mother.

O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever

The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:

Let me be cruel, not unnatural.

I will speak daggers to her, but use none;

My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.

How in my words somever she be shent,

To give them seals never, my soul, consent.

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us

To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you,

I your commission will forthwith dispatch,

And he to England shall along with you.

The terms of our estate may not endure

Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow

Out of his lunacies.

We will ourselves provide.

Most holy and religious fear it is

To keep those many many bodies safe

That live and feed upon your Majesty.

The single and peculiar life is bound

With all the strength and armour of the mind,

To keep itself from ’noyance; but much more

That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest

The lives of many. The cease of majesty

Dies not alone; but like a gulf doth draw

What’s near it with it. It is a massy wheel

Fix’d on the summit of the highest mount,

To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things

Are mortis’d and adjoin’d; which when it falls,

Each small annexment, petty consequence,

Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never alone

Did the King sigh, but with a general groan.

Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage;

For we will fetters put upon this fear,

Which now goes too free-footed.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

We will haste us.

My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet.

Behind the arras I’ll convey myself

To hear the process. I’ll warrant she’ll tax him home,

And as you said, and wisely was it said,

’Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,

Since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear

The speech of vantage. Fare you well, my liege,

I’ll call upon you ere you go to bed,

And tell you what I know.

Thanks, dear my lord.

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;

It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,—

A brother’s murder! Pray can I not,

Though inclination be as sharp as will:

My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,

And, like a man to double business bound,

I stand in pause where I shall first begin,

And both neglect. What if this cursed hand

Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,

Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy

But to confront the visage of offence?

And what’s in prayer but this twofold force,

To be forestalled ere we come to fall,

Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up.

My fault is past. But O, what form of prayer

Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder!

That cannot be; since I am still possess’d

Of those effects for which I did the murder,—

My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.

May one be pardon’d and retain th’offence?

In the corrupted currents of this world

Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,

And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself

Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above;

There is no shuffling, there the action lies

In his true nature, and we ourselves compell’d

Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,

To give in evidence. What then? What rests?

Try what repentance can. What can it not?

Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?

O wretched state! O bosom black as death!

O limed soul, that struggling to be free,

Art more engag’d! Help, angels! Make assay:

Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel,

Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.

All may be well.

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying.

And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven;

And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d:

A villain kills my father, and for that

I, his sole son, do this same villain send

To heaven. O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.

He took my father grossly, full of bread,

With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;

And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?

But in our circumstance and course of thought,

’Tis heavy with him. And am I then reveng’d,

To take him in the purging of his soul,

When he is fit and season’d for his passage? No.

Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent:

When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage,

Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed,

At gaming, swearing; or about some act

That has no relish of salvation in’t,

Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,

And that his soul may be as damn’d and black

As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.

This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

The King rises and advances.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

He will come straight. Look you lay home to him,

Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,

And that your Grace hath screen’d and stood between

Much heat and him. I’ll silence me e’en here.

Pray you be round with him.

[_Within._] Mother, mother, mother.

I’ll warrant you, Fear me not.

Withdraw, I hear him coming.

Now, mother, what’s the matter?

Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

Mother, you have my father much offended.

Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

Why, how now, Hamlet?

What’s the matter now?

Have you forgot me?

No, by the rood, not so.

You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,

And, would it were not so. You are my mother.

Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.

Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge.

You go not till I set you up a glass

Where you may see the inmost part of you.

What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?

Help, help, ho!

[_Behind._] What, ho! help, help, help!

How now? A rat? [_Draws._]

Dead for a ducat, dead!

[_Behind._] O, I am slain!

O me, what hast thou done?

Nay, I know not. Is it the King?

O what a rash and bloody deed is this!

A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother,

As kill a king and marry with his brother.

As kill a king?

Ay, lady, ’twas my word.—

[_To Polonius._] Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!

I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune,

Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.—

Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down,

And let me wring your heart, for so I shall,

If it be made of penetrable stuff;

If damned custom have not braz’d it so,

That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue

In noise so rude against me?

Such an act

That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,

Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose

From the fair forehead of an innocent love,

And sets a blister there. Makes marriage vows

As false as dicers’ oaths. O such a deed

As from the body of contraction plucks

The very soul, and sweet religion makes

A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face doth glow,

Yea this solidity and compound mass,

With tristful visage, as against the doom,

Is thought-sick at the act.

Ay me, what act,

That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

Look here upon this picture, and on this,

The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.

See what a grace was seated on this brow,

Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,

An eye like Mars, to threaten and command,

A station like the herald Mercury

New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill:

A combination and a form indeed,

Where every god did seem to set his seal,

To give the world assurance of a man.

This was your husband. Look you now what follows.

Here is your husband, like a mildew’d ear

Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?

Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,

And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?

You cannot call it love; for at your age

The hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,

And waits upon the judgement: and what judgement

Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,

Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense

Is apoplex’d, for madness would not err

Nor sense to ecstacy was ne’er so thrall’d

But it reserv’d some quantity of choice

To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t

That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?

Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,

Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,

Or but a sickly part of one true sense

Could not so mope. O shame! where is thy blush?

Rebellious hell,

If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,

To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,

And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame

When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,

Since frost itself as actively doth burn,

And reason panders will.

O Hamlet, speak no more.

Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,

And there I see such black and grained spots

As will not leave their tinct.

Nay, but to live

In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,

Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love

Over the nasty sty.

O speak to me no more;

These words like daggers enter in mine ears;

No more, sweet Hamlet.

A murderer and a villain;

A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe

Of your precedent lord. A vice of kings,

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,

That from a shelf the precious diadem stole

And put it in his pocket!

No more.

A king of shreds and patches!—

Save me and hover o’er me with your wings,

You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

Alas, he’s mad.

Do you not come your tardy son to chide,

That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go by

The important acting of your dread command?

O say!

Do not forget. This visitation

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

But look, amazement on thy mother sits.

O step between her and her fighting soul.

Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.

Speak to her, Hamlet.

How is it with you, lady?

Alas, how is’t with you,

That you do bend your eye on vacancy,

And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?

Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,

And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,

Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,

Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper

Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,

His form and cause conjoin’d, preaching to stones,

Would make them capable.—Do not look upon me,

Lest with this piteous action you convert

My stern effects. Then what I have to do

Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.

To whom do you speak this?

Do you see nothing there?

Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

Nor did you nothing hear?

No, nothing but ourselves.

Why, look you there! look how it steals away!

My father, in his habit as he liv’d!

Look where he goes even now out at the portal.

This is the very coinage of your brain.

This bodiless creation ecstasy

Is very cunning in.

Ecstasy!

My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,

And makes as healthful music. It is not madness

That I have utter’d. Bring me to the test,

And I the matter will re-word; which madness

Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul

That not your trespass, but my madness speaks.

It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,

Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,

Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven,

Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come;

And do not spread the compost on the weeds,

To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;

For in the fatness of these pursy times

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,

Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

O throw away the worser part of it,

And live the purer with the other half.

Good night. But go not to mine uncle’s bed.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

That monster custom, who all sense doth eat,

Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,

That to the use of actions fair and good

He likewise gives a frock or livery

That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence. The next more easy;

For use almost can change the stamp of nature,

And either curb the devil, or throw him out

With wondrous potency. Once more, good night,

And when you are desirous to be bles’d,

I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord

I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so,

To punish me with this, and this with me,

That I must be their scourge and minister.

I will bestow him, and will answer well

The death I gave him. So again, good night.

I must be cruel, only to be kind:

Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

One word more, good lady.

What shall I do?

Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:

Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed,

Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,

And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,

Or paddling in your neck with his damn’d fingers,

Make you to ravel all this matter out,

That I essentially am not in madness,

But mad in craft. ’Twere good you let him know,

For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,

Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,

Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?

No, in despite of sense and secrecy,

Unpeg the basket on the house’s top,

Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,

To try conclusions, in the basket creep

And break your own neck down.

Be thou assur’d, if words be made of breath,

And breath of life, I have no life to breathe

What thou hast said to me.

I must to England, you know that?

Alack,

I had forgot. ’Tis so concluded on.

There’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows,

Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,—

They bear the mandate, they must sweep my way

And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;

For ’tis the sport to have the enginer

Hoist with his own petard, and ’t shall go hard

But I will delve one yard below their mines

And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet,

When in one line two crafts directly meet.

This man shall set me packing.

I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.

Mother, good night. Indeed, this counsellor

Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,

Who was in life a foolish prating knave.

Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.

Good night, mother.