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+THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK
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+by William Shakespeare
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+Dramatis Personae
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+
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+ Claudius, King of Denmark.
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+ Marcellus, Officer.
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+ Hamlet, son to the former, and nephew to the present king.
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+ Polonius, Lord Chamberlain.
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+ Horatio, friend to Hamlet.
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+ Laertes, son to Polonius.
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+ Voltemand, courtier.
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+ Cornelius, courtier.
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+ Rosencrantz, courtier.
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+ Guildenstern, courtier.
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+ Osric, courtier.
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+ A Gentleman, courtier.
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+ A Priest.
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+ Marcellus, officer.
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+ Bernardo, officer.
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+ Francisco, a soldier
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+ Reynaldo, servant to Polonius.
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+ Players.
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+ Two Clowns, gravediggers.
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+ Fortinbras, Prince of Norway.
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+ A Norwegian Captain.
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+ English Ambassadors.
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+
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+ Getrude, Queen of Denmark, mother to Hamlet.
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+ Ophelia, daughter to Polonius.
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+
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+ Ghost of Hamlet's Father.
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+
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+ Lords, ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers, Attendants.
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+SCENE.- Elsinore.
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+
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+
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+ACT I. Scene I.
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+Elsinore. A platform before the Castle.
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+
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+Enter two Sentinels-[first,] Francisco, [who paces up and down
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+at his post; then] Bernardo, [who approaches him].
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+
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+ Ber. Who's there.?
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+ Fran. Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.
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+ Ber. Long live the King!
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+ Fran. Bernardo?
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+ Ber. He.
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+ Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour.
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+ Ber. 'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.
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+ Fran. For this relief much thanks. 'Tis bitter cold,
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+ And I am sick at heart.
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+ Ber. Have you had quiet guard?
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+ Fran. Not a mouse stirring.
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+ Ber. Well, good night.
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+ If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
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+ The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
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+
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+ Enter Horatio and Marcellus.
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+
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+ Fran. I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who is there?
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+ Hor. Friends to this ground.
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+ Mar. And liegemen to the Dane.
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+ Fran. Give you good night.
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+ Mar. O, farewell, honest soldier.
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+ Who hath reliev'd you?
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+ Fran. Bernardo hath my place.
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+ Give you good night. Exit.
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+ Mar. Holla, Bernardo!
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+ Ber. Say-
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+ What, is Horatio there ?
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+ Hor. A piece of him.
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+ Ber. Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.
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+ Mar. What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?
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+ Ber. I have seen nothing.
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+ Mar. Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,
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+ And will not let belief take hold of him
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+ Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us.
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+ Therefore I have entreated him along,
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+ With us to watch the minutes of this night,
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+ That, if again this apparition come,
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+ He may approve our eyes and speak to it.
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+ Hor. Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.
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+ Ber. Sit down awhile,
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+ And let us once again assail your ears,
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+ That are so fortified against our story,
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+ What we two nights have seen.
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+ Hor. Well, sit we down,
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+ And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.
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+ Ber. Last night of all,
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+ When yond same star that's westward from the pole
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+ Had made his course t' illume that part of heaven
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+ Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
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+ The bell then beating one-
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+
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+ Enter Ghost.
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+
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+ Mar. Peace! break thee off! Look where it comes again!
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+ Ber. In the same figure, like the King that's dead.
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+ Mar. Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.
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+ Ber. Looks it not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.
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+ Hor. Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.
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+ Ber. It would be spoke to.
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+ Mar. Question it, Horatio.
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+ Hor. What art thou that usurp'st this time of night
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+ Together with that fair and warlike form
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+ In which the majesty of buried Denmark
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+ Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee speak!
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+ Mar. It is offended.
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+ Ber. See, it stalks away!
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+ Hor. Stay! Speak, speak! I charge thee speak!
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+ Exit Ghost.
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+ Mar. 'Tis gone and will not answer.
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+ Ber. How now, Horatio? You tremble and look pale.
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+ Is not this something more than fantasy?
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+ What think you on't?
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+ Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe
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+ Without the sensible and true avouch
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+ Of mine own eyes.
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+ Mar. Is it not like the King?
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+ Hor. As thou art to thyself.
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+ Such was the very armour he had on
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+ When he th' ambitious Norway combated.
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+ So frown'd he once when, in an angry parle,
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+ He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
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+ 'Tis strange.
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+ Mar. Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
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+ With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
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+ Hor. In what particular thought to work I know not;
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+ But, in the gross and scope of my opinion,
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+ This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
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+ Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me he that knows,
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+ Why this same strict and most observant watch
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+ So nightly toils the subject of the land,
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+ And why such daily cast of brazen cannon
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+ And foreign mart for implements of war;
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+ Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
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+ Does not divide the Sunday from the week.
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+ What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
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+ Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day?
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+ Who is't that can inform me?
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+ Hor. That can I.
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+ At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,
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+ Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
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+ Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
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+ Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
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+ Dar'd to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
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+ (For so this side of our known world esteem'd him)
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+ Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by a seal'd compact,
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+ Well ratified by law and heraldry,
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+ Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
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+ Which he stood seiz'd of, to the conqueror;
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+ Against the which a moiety competent
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+ Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
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+ To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
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+ Had he been vanquisher, as, by the same comart
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+ And carriage of the article design'd,
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+ His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
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+ Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
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+ Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,
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+ Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
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+ For food and diet, to some enterprise
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+ That hath a stomach in't; which is no other,
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+ As it doth well appear unto our state,
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+ But to recover of us, by strong hand
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+ And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
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+ So by his father lost; and this, I take it,
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+ Is the main motive of our preparations,
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+ The source of this our watch, and the chief head
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+ Of this post-haste and romage in the land.
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+ Ber. I think it be no other but e'en so.
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+ Well may it sort that this portentous figure
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+ Comes armed through our watch, so like the King
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+ That was and is the question of these wars.
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+ Hor. A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
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+ In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
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+ A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
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+ The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
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+ Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;
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+ As stars with trains of fire, and dews of blood,
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+ Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
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+ Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
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+ Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
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+ And even the like precurse of fierce events,
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+ As harbingers preceding still the fates
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+ And prologue to the omen coming on,
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+ Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
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+ Unto our climature and countrymen.
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+
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+ Enter Ghost again.
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+
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+ But soft! behold! Lo, where it comes again!
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+ I'll cross it, though it blast me.- Stay illusion!
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+ Spreads his arms.
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+ If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
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+ Speak to me.
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+ If there be any good thing to be done,
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+ That may to thee do ease, and, race to me,
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+ Speak to me.
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+ If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
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+ Which happily foreknowing may avoid,
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+ O, speak!
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+ Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
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+ Extorted treasure in the womb of earth
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+ (For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death),
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+ The cock crows.
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+ Speak of it! Stay, and speak!- Stop it, Marcellus!
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+ Mar. Shall I strike at it with my partisan?
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+ Hor. Do, if it will not stand.
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+ Ber. 'Tis here!
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+ Hor. 'Tis here!
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+ Mar. 'Tis gone!
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+ Exit Ghost.
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+ We do it wrong, being so majestical,
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+ To offer it the show of violence;
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+ For it is as the air, invulnerable,
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+ And our vain blows malicious mockery.
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+ Ber. It was about to speak, when the cock crew.
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+ Hor. And then it started, like a guilty thing
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+ Upon a fearful summons. I have heard
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+ The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
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+ Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
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+ Awake the god of day; and at his warning,
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+ Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
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+ Th' extravagant and erring spirit hies
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+ To his confine; and of the truth herein
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+ This present object made probation.
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+ Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock.
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+ Some say that ever, 'gainst that season comes
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+ Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
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+ The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
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+ And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
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+ The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
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+ No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
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+ So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
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+ Hor. So have I heard and do in part believe it.
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+ But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
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+ Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.
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+ Break we our watch up; and by my advice
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+ Let us impart what we have seen to-night
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+ Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
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+ This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
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+ Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
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+ As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?
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+ Let's do't, I pray; and I this morning know
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+ Where we shall find him most conveniently. Exeunt.
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+Scene II.
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+Elsinore. A room of state in the Castle.
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+
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+Flourish. [Enter Claudius, King of Denmark, Gertrude the Queen, Hamlet,
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+Polonius, Laertes and his sister Ophelia, [Voltemand, Cornelius,]
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+Lords Attendant.
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+
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+ King. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
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+ The memory be green, and that it us befitted
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+ To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
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+ To be contracted in one brow of woe,
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+ Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
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+ That we with wisest sorrow think on him
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+ Together with remembrance of ourselves.
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+ Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
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+ Th' imperial jointress to this warlike state,
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+ Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,
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+ With an auspicious, and a dropping eye,
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+ With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
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+ In equal scale weighing delight and dole,
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+ Taken to wife; nor have we herein barr'd
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+ Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
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+ With this affair along. For all, our thanks.
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+ Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,
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+ Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
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+ Or thinking by our late dear brother's death
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+ Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
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+ Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,
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+ He hath not fail'd to pester us with message
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+ Importing the surrender of those lands
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+ Lost by his father, with all bands of law,
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+ To our most valiant brother. So much for him.
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+ Now for ourself and for this time of meeting.
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+ Thus much the business is: we have here writ
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+ To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,
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+ Who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears
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+ Of this his nephew's purpose, to suppress
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+ His further gait herein, in that the levies,
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+ The lists, and full proportions are all made
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+ Out of his subject; and we here dispatch
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+ You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,
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+ For bearers of this greeting to old Norway,
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+ Giving to you no further personal power
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+ To business with the King, more than the scope
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+ Of these dilated articles allow. [Gives a paper.]
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+ Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.
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+ Cor., Volt. In that, and all things, will we show our duty.
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+ King. We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell.
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+ Exeunt Voltemand and Cornelius.
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+ And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?
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+ You told us of some suit. What is't, Laertes?
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+ You cannot speak of reason to the Dane
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+ And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
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+ That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
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+ The head is not more native to the heart,
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+ The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
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+ Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
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+ What wouldst thou have, Laertes?
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+ Laer. My dread lord,
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+ Your leave and favour to return to France;
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+ From whence though willingly I came to Denmark
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+ To show my duty in your coronation,
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+ Yet now I must confess, that duty done,
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+ My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France
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+ And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
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+ King. Have you your father's leave? What says Polonius?
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+ Pol. He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
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+ By laboursome petition, and at last
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+ Upon his will I seal'd my hard consent.
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+ I do beseech you give him leave to go.
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+ King. Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine,
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+ And thy best graces spend it at thy will!
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+ But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son-
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+ Ham. [aside] A little more than kin, and less than kind!
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+ King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
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+ Ham. Not so, my lord. I am too much i' th' sun.
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+ Queen. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
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+ And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
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+ Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
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+ Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
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+ Thou know'st 'tis common. All that lives must die,
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+ Passing through nature to eternity.
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+ Ham. Ay, madam, it is common.
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+ Queen. If it be,
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+ Why seems it so particular with thee?
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+ Ham. Seems, madam, Nay, it is. I know not 'seems.'
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+ 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
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+ Nor customary suits of solemn black,
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+ Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath,
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+ No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
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+ Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
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+ Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
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+ 'That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
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+ For they are actions that a man might play;
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+ But I have that within which passeth show-
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+ These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
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+ King. 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
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+ To give these mourning duties to your father;
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+ But you must know, your father lost a father;
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+ That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
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+ In filial obligation for some term
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+ To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever
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+ In obstinate condolement is a course
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+ Of impious stubbornness. 'Tis unmanly grief;
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+ It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
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+ A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
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+ An understanding simple and unschool'd;
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+ For what we know must be, and is as common
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+ As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
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+ Why should we in our peevish opposition
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+ Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
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+ A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
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+ To reason most absurd, whose common theme
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+ Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
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+ From the first corse till he that died to-day,
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+ 'This must be so.' We pray you throw to earth
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+ This unprevailing woe, and think of us
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+ As of a father; for let the world take note
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+ You are the most immediate to our throne,
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+ And with no less nobility of love
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+ Than that which dearest father bears his son
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+ Do I impart toward you. For your intent
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+ In going back to school in Wittenberg,
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+ 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.
|
|
|
+ I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
|
|
|
+ King. Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply.
|
|
|
+ Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come.
|
|
|
+ This gentle and unforc'd accord of Hamlet
|
|
|
+ Sits smiling to my heart; in grace whereof,
|
|
|
+ No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day
|
|
|
+ But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
|
|
|
+ And the King's rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
|
|
|
+ Respeaking earthly thunder. Come away.
|
|
|
+ Flourish. Exeunt all but Hamlet.
|
|
|
+ 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! God!
|
|
|
+ How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
|
|
|
+ Seem to me all the uses of this world!
|
|
|
+ Fie on't! ah, fie! 'Tis 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 woman!-
|
|
|
+ A little month, or ere those shoes were old
|
|
|
+ With which she followed my poor father's body
|
|
|
+ Like Niobe, all tears- why she, even she
|
|
|
+ (O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason
|
|
|
+ Would have mourn'd longer) married with my uncle;
|
|
|
+ My father's brother, but no more like my father
|
|
|
+ Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
|
|
|
+ Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
|
|
|
+ Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
|
|
|
+ She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
|
|
|
+ With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
|
|
|
+ It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
|
|
|
+ But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue!
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Hor. Hail to your lordship!
|
|
|
+ Ham. I am glad to see you well.
|
|
|
+ Horatio!- or I do forget myself.
|
|
|
+ Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant 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.- [To Bernardo] 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 my 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 prithee do not mock me, fellow student.
|
|
|
+ I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak'd meats
|
|
|
+ Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
|
|
|
+ Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
|
|
|
+ Or 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, 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 father.
|
|
|
+ Ham. The King my father?
|
|
|
+ Hor. Season your admiration for a while
|
|
|
+ With an attent ear, till I may deliver
|
|
|
+ Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
|
|
|
+ This marvel to you.
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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 encount'red. A figure like your father,
|
|
|
+ Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,
|
|
|
+ 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 it 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 me.
|
|
|
+ Hold you the watch to-night?
|
|
|
+ Both [Mar. and Ber.] We do, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Arm'd, say you?
|
|
|
+ Both. Arm'd, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. From top to toe?
|
|
|
+ Both. My lord, from head to foot.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Then saw you not his face?
|
|
|
+ Hor. O, yes, my lord! He wore his beaver up.
|
|
|
+ Ham. What, look'd he frowningly.
|
|
|
+ Hor. A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Pale or red?
|
|
|
+ Hor. Nay, very pale.
|
|
|
+ Ham. And fix'd his eyes upon you?
|
|
|
+ Hor. Most constantly.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I would I had been there.
|
|
|
+ Hor. It would have much amaz'd you.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Very like, very like. Stay'd it long?
|
|
|
+ Hor. While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.
|
|
|
+ Both. Longer, longer.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Not when I saw't.
|
|
|
+ Ham. His beard was grizzled- no?
|
|
|
+ Hor. It was, as I have seen it in his life,
|
|
|
+ A sable silver'd.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I will watch to-night.
|
|
|
+ Perchance 'twill walk again.
|
|
|
+ Hor. I warr'nt it will.
|
|
|
+ Ham. If it assume my noble father's person,
|
|
|
+ I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape
|
|
|
+ And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
|
|
|
+ If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight,
|
|
|
+ Let it be tenable in your silence still;
|
|
|
+ And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,
|
|
|
+ Give it an understanding but no tongue.
|
|
|
+ I will requite your loves. So, fare you well.
|
|
|
+ Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve,
|
|
|
+ I'll visit you.
|
|
|
+ All. Our duty to your honour.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Your loves, as mine to you. Farewell.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt [all but Hamlet].
|
|
|
+ My father's spirit- in arms? All is not well.
|
|
|
+ I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come!
|
|
|
+ Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise,
|
|
|
+ Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
|
|
|
+Exit.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Scene III.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. A room in the house of Polonius.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter Laertes and Ophelia.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Laer. My necessaries are embark'd. Farewell.
|
|
|
+ And, sister, as the winds give benefit
|
|
|
+ And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,
|
|
|
+ But let me hear from you.
|
|
|
+ Oph. Do you doubt that?
|
|
|
+ Laer. For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour,
|
|
|
+ Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood;
|
|
|
+ A violet in the youth of primy nature,
|
|
|
+ Forward, not permanent- sweet, not lasting;
|
|
|
+ The perfume and suppliance of a minute;
|
|
|
+ No more.
|
|
|
+ Oph. No more but so?
|
|
|
+ Laer. Think it no more.
|
|
|
+ For nature crescent does not grow alone
|
|
|
+ In thews and bulk; but as this temple waxes,
|
|
|
+ The inward service of the mind and soul
|
|
|
+ Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
|
|
|
+ And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
|
|
|
+ The virtue of his will; but you must fear,
|
|
|
+ His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own;
|
|
|
+ For he himself is subject to his birth.
|
|
|
+ He may not, as unvalued persons do,
|
|
|
+ Carve for himself, for on his choice depends
|
|
|
+ The safety and health of this whole state,
|
|
|
+ And therefore must his choice be circumscrib'd
|
|
|
+ Unto the voice and yielding of that body
|
|
|
+ Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,
|
|
|
+ It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
|
|
|
+ As he in his particular act and place
|
|
|
+ May give his saying deed; which is no further
|
|
|
+ Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
|
|
|
+ Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain
|
|
|
+ If with too credent ear you list his songs,
|
|
|
+ Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
|
|
|
+ To his unmast'red importunity.
|
|
|
+ Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
|
|
|
+ And keep you in the rear of your affection,
|
|
|
+ Out of the shot and danger of desire.
|
|
|
+ The chariest maid is prodigal enough
|
|
|
+ If she unmask her beauty to the moon.
|
|
|
+ Virtue itself scopes not calumnious strokes.
|
|
|
+ The canker galls the infants of the spring
|
|
|
+ Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd,
|
|
|
+ And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
|
|
|
+ Contagious blastments are most imminent.
|
|
|
+ Be wary then; best safety lies in fear.
|
|
|
+ Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.
|
|
|
+ Oph. I shall th' effect of this good lesson keep
|
|
|
+ As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
|
|
|
+ Do not as some ungracious pastors do,
|
|
|
+ Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
|
|
|
+ Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
|
|
|
+ Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
|
|
|
+ And recks not his own rede.
|
|
|
+ Laer. O, fear me not!
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Polonius.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ I stay too long. But here my father comes.
|
|
|
+ A double blessing is a double grace;
|
|
|
+ Occasion smiles upon a second leave.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!
|
|
|
+ The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
|
|
|
+ And you are stay'd for. There- my blessing with thee!
|
|
|
+ And these few precepts in thy memory
|
|
|
+ Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
|
|
|
+ Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
|
|
|
+ Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
|
|
|
+ Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
|
|
|
+ Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;
|
|
|
+ But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
|
|
|
+ Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
|
|
|
+ Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
|
|
|
+ Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
|
|
|
+ Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
|
|
|
+ Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
|
|
|
+ Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
|
|
|
+ But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
|
|
|
+ For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
|
|
|
+ And they in France of the best rank and station
|
|
|
+ Are most select and generous, chief in that.
|
|
|
+ Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
|
|
|
+ For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
|
|
|
+ And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
|
|
|
+ This above all- to thine own self be true,
|
|
|
+ And it must follow, as the night the day,
|
|
|
+ Thou canst not then be false to any man.
|
|
|
+ Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!
|
|
|
+ Laer. Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Pol. The time invites you. Go, your servants tend.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well
|
|
|
+ What I have said to you.
|
|
|
+ Oph. 'Tis in my memory lock'd,
|
|
|
+ And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Farewell. Exit.
|
|
|
+ Pol. What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?
|
|
|
+ Oph. So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Marry, well bethought!
|
|
|
+ 'Tis told me he hath very oft of late
|
|
|
+ Given private time to you, and you yourself
|
|
|
+ Have of your audience been most free and bounteous.
|
|
|
+ If it be so- as so 'tis put on me,
|
|
|
+ And that in way of caution- I must tell you
|
|
|
+ You do not understand yourself so clearly
|
|
|
+ As it behooves my daughter and your honour.
|
|
|
+ What is between you? Give me up the truth.
|
|
|
+ Oph. He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
|
|
|
+ Of his affection to me.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Affection? Pooh! You speak like a green girl,
|
|
|
+ Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
|
|
|
+ Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?
|
|
|
+ Oph. I do not know, my lord, what I should think,
|
|
|
+ Pol. Marry, I will teach you! Think yourself a baby
|
|
|
+ That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,
|
|
|
+ Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly,
|
|
|
+ Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
|
|
|
+ Running it thus) you'll tender me a fool.
|
|
|
+ Oph. My lord, he hath importun'd me with love
|
|
|
+ In honourable fashion.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Ay, fashion you may call it. Go to, go to!
|
|
|
+ Oph. And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
|
|
|
+ With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks! I do know,
|
|
|
+ When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
|
|
|
+ Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter,
|
|
|
+ Giving more light than heat, extinct in both
|
|
|
+ Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
|
|
|
+ You must not take for fire. From this time
|
|
|
+ Be something scanter of your maiden presence.
|
|
|
+ Set your entreatments at a higher rate
|
|
|
+ Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
|
|
|
+ Believe so much in him, that he is young,
|
|
|
+ And with a larger tether may he walk
|
|
|
+ Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,
|
|
|
+ Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
|
|
|
+ Not of that dye which their investments show,
|
|
|
+ But mere implorators of unholy suits,
|
|
|
+ Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
|
|
|
+ The better to beguile. This is for all:
|
|
|
+ I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth
|
|
|
+ Have you so slander any moment leisure
|
|
|
+ As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
|
|
|
+ Look to't, I charge you. Come your ways.
|
|
|
+ Oph. I shall obey, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Scene IV.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. The platform before the Castle.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
|
|
|
+ Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air.
|
|
|
+ Ham. What hour now?
|
|
|
+ Hor. I think it lacks of twelve.
|
|
|
+ Mar. No, it is struck.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Indeed? I heard it not. It then draws near the season
|
|
|
+ Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
|
|
|
+ A flourish of trumpets, and two pieces go off.
|
|
|
+ What does this mean, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. The King doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
|
|
|
+ Keeps wassail, and the swagg'ring upspring reels,
|
|
|
+ And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
|
|
|
+ The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out
|
|
|
+ The triumph of his pledge.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Is it a custom?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Ay, marry, is't;
|
|
|
+ But to my mind, though I am native here
|
|
|
+ And to the manner born, it is a custom
|
|
|
+ More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
|
|
|
+ This heavy-headed revel east and west
|
|
|
+ Makes us traduc'd and tax'd of other nations;
|
|
|
+ They clip us drunkards and with swinish phrase
|
|
|
+ Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
|
|
|
+ From our achievements, though perform'd at height,
|
|
|
+ The pith and marrow of our attribute.
|
|
|
+ So oft it chances in particular men
|
|
|
+ That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,
|
|
|
+ As in their birth,- wherein they are not guilty,
|
|
|
+ Since nature cannot choose his origin,-
|
|
|
+ By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,
|
|
|
+ Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
|
|
|
+ Or by some habit that too much o'erleavens
|
|
|
+ The form of plausive manners, that these men
|
|
|
+ Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
|
|
|
+ Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,
|
|
|
+ Their virtues else- be they as pure as grace,
|
|
|
+ As infinite as man may undergo-
|
|
|
+ Shall in the general censure take corruption
|
|
|
+ From that particular fault. The dram of e'il
|
|
|
+ Doth all the noble substance often dout To his own scandal.
|
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+
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+ Enter Ghost.
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+
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+ Hor. Look, my lord, it comes!
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+ Ham. Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
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+ Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
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+ Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
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+ Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
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+ Thou com'st in such a questionable shape
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+ That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet,
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+ King, father, royal Dane. O, answer me?
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+ Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell
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+ Why thy canoniz'd bones, hearsed in death,
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+ Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre
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+ Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
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+ Hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws
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+ To cast thee up again. What may this mean
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+ That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel,
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+ Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon,
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+ Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
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+ So horridly to shake our disposition
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+ With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
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+ Say, why is this? wherefore? What should we do?
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+ Ghost beckons Hamlet.
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+ Hor. It beckons you to go away with it,
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+ As if it some impartment did desire
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+ To you alone.
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+ Mar. Look with what courteous action
|
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+ It waves you to a more removed ground.
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+ But do not go with it!
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+ Hor. No, by no means!
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+ Ham. It will not speak. Then will I follow it.
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+ Hor. Do not, my lord!
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+ Ham. Why, what should be the fear?
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+ I do not set my life at a pin's fee;
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+ And for my soul, what can it do to that,
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+ Being a thing immortal as itself?
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+ It waves me forth again. I'll follow it.
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+ Hor. What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
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+ Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
|
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+ That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
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+ And there assume some other, horrible form
|
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+ Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
|
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+ And draw you into madness? Think of it.
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+ The very place puts toys of desperation,
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+ Without more motive, into every brain
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+ That looks so many fadoms to the sea
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+ And hears it roar beneath.
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+ Ham. It waves me still.
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+ Go on. I'll follow thee.
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+ Mar. You shall not go, my lord.
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+ Ham. Hold off your hands!
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+ Hor. Be rul'd. You shall not go.
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+ Ham. My fate cries out
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+ And makes each petty artire in this body
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+ As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.
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+ [Ghost beckons.]
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+ Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen.
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+ By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me!-
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+ I say, away!- Go on. I'll follow thee.
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+ Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet.
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+ Hor. He waxes desperate with imagination.
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+ Mar. Let's follow. 'Tis not fit thus to obey him.
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+ Hor. Have after. To what issue wail this come?
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+ Mar. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
|
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+ Hor. Heaven will direct it.
|
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+ Mar. Nay, let's follow him.
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+ Exeunt.
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+Scene V.
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|
+Elsinore. The Castle. Another part of the fortifications.
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+
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+Enter Ghost and Hamlet.
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+
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+ Ham. Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak! I'll go no further.
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+ Ghost. Mark me.
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+ Ham. I will.
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+ Ghost. My hour is almost come,
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+ When I to sulph'rous and tormenting flames
|
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+ Must render up myself.
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+ Ham. Alas, poor ghost!
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+ Ghost. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
|
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+ To what I shall unfold.
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+ Ham. Speak. I am bound to hear.
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+ Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.
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+ Ham. What?
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+ Ghost. I am thy father's spirit,
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+ Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
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+ And for the day confin'd to fast in fires,
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+ Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
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+ Are burnt and purg'd away. But that I am forbid
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+ To tell the secrets of my prison house,
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+ I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
|
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+ Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
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+ Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
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+ Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
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+ And each particular hair to stand an end
|
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+ Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
|
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+ But this eternal blazon must not be
|
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+ To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
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+ If thou didst ever thy dear father love-
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+ Ham. O God!
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+ Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murther.
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+ Ham. Murther?
|
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+ Ghost. Murther most foul, as in the best it is;
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+ But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
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+ Ham. Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift
|
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+ As meditation or the thoughts of love,
|
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|
+ May sweep to my revenge.
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+ Ghost. I find thee apt;
|
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+ And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
|
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|
+ That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
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+ Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear.
|
|
|
+ 'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
|
|
|
+ A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark
|
|
|
+ Is by a forged process of my death
|
|
|
+ Rankly abus'd. But know, thou noble youth,
|
|
|
+ The serpent that did sting thy father's life
|
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|
+ Now wears his crown.
|
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|
+ Ham. O my prophetic soul!
|
|
|
+ My uncle?
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|
+ Ghost. Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
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|
+ With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts-
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|
+ O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
|
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|
+ So to seduce!- won to his shameful lust
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|
+ The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.
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|
+ O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there,
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|
+ From me, whose love was of that dignity
|
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|
+ That it went hand in hand even with the vow
|
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|
+ I made to her in marriage, and to decline
|
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|
+ Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
|
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|
+ To those of mine!
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|
|
+ But virtue, as it never will be mov'd,
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|
+ Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
|
|
|
+ So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
|
|
|
+ Will sate itself in a celestial bed
|
|
|
+ And prey on garbage.
|
|
|
+ But soft! methinks I scent the morning air.
|
|
|
+ Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
|
|
|
+ My custom always of the afternoon,
|
|
|
+ Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
|
|
|
+ With juice of cursed hebona in a vial,
|
|
|
+ And in the porches of my ears did pour
|
|
|
+ The leperous distilment; whose effect
|
|
|
+ Holds such an enmity with blood of man
|
|
|
+ That swift as quicksilverr it courses through
|
|
|
+ The natural gates and alleys of the body,
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|
|
+ And with a sudden vigour it doth posset
|
|
|
+ And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
|
|
|
+ The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine;
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|
|
+ And a most instant tetter bark'd about,
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|
+ Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust
|
|
|
+ All my smooth body.
|
|
|
+ Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand
|
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|
+ Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd;
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|
+ Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
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|
|
+ Unhous'led, disappointed, unanel'd,
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|
|
+ No reckoning made, but sent to my account
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+ With all my imperfections on my head.
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+ Ham. O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
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|
|
+ Ghost. If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.
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|
|
+ Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
|
|
|
+ A couch for luxury and damned incest.
|
|
|
+ But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,
|
|
|
+ Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
|
|
|
+ Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven,
|
|
|
+ And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge
|
|
|
+ To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once.
|
|
|
+ The glowworm shows the matin to be near
|
|
|
+ And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
|
|
|
+ Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me. Exit.
|
|
|
+ Ham. O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?
|
|
|
+ And shall I couple hell? Hold, hold, my heart!
|
|
|
+ And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
|
|
|
+ But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?
|
|
|
+ Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
|
|
|
+ In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
|
|
|
+ Yea, from the table of my memory
|
|
|
+ I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
|
|
|
+ All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
|
|
|
+ That youth and observation copied there,
|
|
|
+ And thy commandment all alone shall live
|
|
|
+ Within the book and volume of my brain,
|
|
|
+ Unmix'd with baser matter. Yes, by heaven!
|
|
|
+ O most pernicious woman!
|
|
|
+ O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
|
|
|
+ My tables! Meet it is I set it down
|
|
|
+ That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
|
|
|
+ At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark. [Writes.]
|
|
|
+ So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word:
|
|
|
+ It is 'Adieu, adieu! Remember me.'
|
|
|
+ I have sworn't.
|
|
|
+ Hor. (within) My lord, my lord!
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Horatio and Marcellus.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Mar. Lord Hamlet!
|
|
|
+ Hor. Heaven secure him!
|
|
|
+ Ham. So be it!
|
|
|
+ Mar. Illo, ho, ho, my lord!
|
|
|
+ Ham. Hillo, ho, ho, boy! Come, bird, come.
|
|
|
+ Mar. How is't, my noble lord?
|
|
|
+ Hor. What news, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Mar. O, wonderful!
|
|
|
+ Hor. Good my lord, tell it.
|
|
|
+ Ham. No, you will reveal it.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Not I, my lord, by heaven!
|
|
|
+ Mar. Nor I, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. How say you then? Would heart of man once think it?
|
|
|
+ But you'll be secret?
|
|
|
+ Both. Ay, by heaven, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. There's neer a villain dwelling in all Denmark
|
|
|
+ But he's an arrant knave.
|
|
|
+ Hor. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
|
|
|
+ To tell us this.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Why, right! You are in the right!
|
|
|
+ And so, without more circumstance at all,
|
|
|
+ I hold it fit that we shake hands and part;
|
|
|
+ You, as your business and desires shall point you,
|
|
|
+ For every man hath business and desire,
|
|
|
+ Such as it is; and for my own poor part,
|
|
|
+ Look you, I'll go pray.
|
|
|
+ Hor. These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I am sorry they offend you, heartily;
|
|
|
+ Yes, faith, heartily.
|
|
|
+ Hor. There's no offence, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
|
|
|
+ And much offence too. Touching this vision here,
|
|
|
+ It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you.
|
|
|
+ For your desire to know what is between us,
|
|
|
+ O'ermaster't as you may. And now, good friends,
|
|
|
+ As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,
|
|
|
+ Give me one poor request.
|
|
|
+ Hor. What is't, my lord? We will.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Never make known what you have seen to-night.
|
|
|
+ Both. My lord, we will not.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Nay, but swear't.
|
|
|
+ Hor. In faith,
|
|
|
+ My lord, not I.
|
|
|
+ Mar. Nor I, my lord- in faith.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Upon my sword.
|
|
|
+ Mar. We have sworn, my lord, already.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ghost cries under the stage.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ghost. Swear.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Aha boy, say'st thou so? Art thou there, truepenny?
|
|
|
+ Come on! You hear this fellow in the cellarage.
|
|
|
+ Consent to swear.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Propose the oath, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Never to speak of this that you have seen.
|
|
|
+ Swear by my sword.
|
|
|
+ Ghost. [beneath] Swear.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Hic et ubique? Then we'll shift our ground.
|
|
|
+ Come hither, gentlemen,
|
|
|
+ And lay your hands again upon my sword.
|
|
|
+ Never to speak of this that you have heard:
|
|
|
+ Swear by my sword.
|
|
|
+ Ghost. [beneath] Swear by his sword.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Well said, old mole! Canst work i' th' earth so fast?
|
|
|
+ A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends."
|
|
|
+ Hor. O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
|
|
|
+ Ham. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
|
|
|
+ There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
|
|
|
+ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
|
|
|
+ But come!
|
|
|
+ Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
|
|
|
+ How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself
|
|
|
+ (As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
|
|
|
+ To put an antic disposition on),
|
|
|
+ That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
|
|
|
+ With arms encumb'red thus, or this head-shake,
|
|
|
+ Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
|
|
|
+ As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,'
|
|
|
+ Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,'
|
|
|
+ Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
|
|
|
+ That you know aught of me- this is not to do,
|
|
|
+ So grace and mercy at your most need help you,
|
|
|
+ Swear.
|
|
|
+ Ghost. [beneath] Swear.
|
|
|
+ [They swear.]
|
|
|
+ Ham. Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! So, gentlemen,
|
|
|
+ With all my love I do commend me to you;
|
|
|
+ And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
|
|
|
+ May do t' express his love and friending to you,
|
|
|
+ God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;
|
|
|
+ And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
|
|
|
+ The time is out of joint. O cursed spite
|
|
|
+ That ever I was born to set it right!
|
|
|
+ Nay, come, let's go together.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Act II. Scene I.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. A room in the house of Polonius.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter Polonius and Reynaldo.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Pol. Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.
|
|
|
+ Rey. I will, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Pol. You shall do marvell's wisely, good Reynaldo,
|
|
|
+ Before You visit him, to make inquire
|
|
|
+ Of his behaviour.
|
|
|
+ Rey. My lord, I did intend it.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Marry, well said, very well said. Look you, sir,
|
|
|
+ Enquire me first what Danskers are in Paris;
|
|
|
+ And how, and who, what means, and where they keep,
|
|
|
+ What company, at what expense; and finding
|
|
|
+ By this encompassment and drift of question
|
|
|
+ That they do know my son, come you more nearer
|
|
|
+ Than your particular demands will touch it.
|
|
|
+ Take you, as 'twere, some distant knowledge of him;
|
|
|
+ As thus, 'I know his father and his friends,
|
|
|
+ And in part him.' Do you mark this, Reynaldo?
|
|
|
+ Rey. Ay, very well, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Pol. 'And in part him, but,' you may say, 'not well.
|
|
|
+ But if't be he I mean, he's very wild
|
|
|
+ Addicted so and so'; and there put on him
|
|
|
+ What forgeries you please; marry, none so rank
|
|
|
+ As may dishonour him- take heed of that;
|
|
|
+ But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips
|
|
|
+ As are companions noted and most known
|
|
|
+ To youth and liberty.
|
|
|
+ Rey. As gaming, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling,
|
|
|
+ Drabbing. You may go so far.
|
|
|
+ Rey. My lord, that would dishonour him.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Faith, no, as you may season it in the charge.
|
|
|
+ You must not put another scandal on him,
|
|
|
+ That he is open to incontinency.
|
|
|
+ That's not my meaning. But breathe his faults so quaintly
|
|
|
+ That they may seem the taints of liberty,
|
|
|
+ The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,
|
|
|
+ A savageness in unreclaimed blood,
|
|
|
+ Of general assault.
|
|
|
+ Rey. But, my good lord-
|
|
|
+ Pol. Wherefore should you do this?
|
|
|
+ Rey. Ay, my lord,
|
|
|
+ I would know that.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Marry, sir, here's my drift,
|
|
|
+ And I believe it is a fetch of warrant.
|
|
|
+ You laying these slight sullies on my son
|
|
|
+ As 'twere a thing a little soil'd i' th' working,
|
|
|
+ Mark you,
|
|
|
+ Your party in converse, him you would sound,
|
|
|
+ Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes
|
|
|
+ The youth you breathe of guilty, be assur'd
|
|
|
+ He closes with you in this consequence:
|
|
|
+ 'Good sir,' or so, or 'friend,' or 'gentleman'-
|
|
|
+ According to the phrase or the addition
|
|
|
+ Of man and country-
|
|
|
+ Rey. Very good, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Pol. And then, sir, does 'a this- 'a does- What was I about to say?
|
|
|
+ By the mass, I was about to say something! Where did I leave?
|
|
|
+ Rey. At 'closes in the consequence,' at 'friend or so,' and
|
|
|
+ gentleman.'
|
|
|
+ Pol. At 'closes in the consequence'- Ay, marry!
|
|
|
+ He closes thus: 'I know the gentleman.
|
|
|
+ I saw him yesterday, or t'other day,
|
|
|
+ Or then, or then, with such or such; and, as you say,
|
|
|
+ There was 'a gaming; there o'ertook in's rouse;
|
|
|
+ There falling out at tennis'; or perchance,
|
|
|
+ 'I saw him enter such a house of sale,'
|
|
|
+ Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth.
|
|
|
+ See you now-
|
|
|
+ Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth;
|
|
|
+ And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
|
|
|
+ With windlasses and with assays of bias,
|
|
|
+ By indirections find directions out.
|
|
|
+ So, by my former lecture and advice,
|
|
|
+ Shall you my son. You have me, have you not
|
|
|
+ Rey. My lord, I have.
|
|
|
+ Pol. God b' wi' ye, fare ye well!
|
|
|
+ Rey. Good my lord! [Going.]
|
|
|
+ Pol. Observe his inclination in yourself.
|
|
|
+ Rey. I shall, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Pol. And let him ply his music.
|
|
|
+ Rey. Well, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Farewell!
|
|
|
+ Exit Reynaldo.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Ophelia.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ How now, Ophelia? What's the matter?
|
|
|
+ Oph. O my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted!
|
|
|
+ Pol. With what, i' th' name of God I
|
|
|
+ Oph. My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
|
|
|
+ Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd,
|
|
|
+ No hat upon his head, his stockings foul'd,
|
|
|
+ Ungart'red, and down-gyved to his ankle;
|
|
|
+ Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
|
|
|
+ And with a look so piteous in purport
|
|
|
+ As if he had been loosed out of hell
|
|
|
+ To speak of horrors- he comes before me.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Mad for thy love?
|
|
|
+ Oph. My lord, I do not know,
|
|
|
+ But truly I do fear it.
|
|
|
+ Pol. What said he?
|
|
|
+ Oph. He took me by the wrist and held me hard;
|
|
|
+ Then goes he to the length of all his arm,
|
|
|
+ And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
|
|
|
+ He falls to such perusal of my face
|
|
|
+ As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so.
|
|
|
+ At last, a little shaking of mine arm,
|
|
|
+ And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
|
|
|
+ He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound
|
|
|
+ As it did seem to shatter all his bulk
|
|
|
+ And end his being. That done, he lets me go,
|
|
|
+ And with his head over his shoulder turn'd
|
|
|
+ He seem'd to find his way without his eyes,
|
|
|
+ For out o' doors he went without their help
|
|
|
+ And to the last bended their light on me.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Come, go with me. I will go seek the King.
|
|
|
+ This is the very ecstasy of love,
|
|
|
+ Whose violent property fordoes itself
|
|
|
+ And leads the will to desperate undertakings
|
|
|
+ As oft as any passion under heaven
|
|
|
+ That does afflict our natures. I am sorry.
|
|
|
+ What, have you given him any hard words of late?
|
|
|
+ Oph. No, my good lord; but, as you did command,
|
|
|
+ I did repel his letters and denied
|
|
|
+ His access to me.
|
|
|
+ Pol. That hath made him mad.
|
|
|
+ I am sorry that with better heed and judgment
|
|
|
+ I had not quoted him. I fear'd he did but trifle
|
|
|
+ And meant to wrack thee; but beshrew my jealousy!
|
|
|
+ By heaven, it is as proper to our age
|
|
|
+ To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
|
|
|
+ As it is common for the younger sort
|
|
|
+ To lack discretion. Come, go we to the King.
|
|
|
+ This must be known; which, being kept close, might move
|
|
|
+ More grief to hide than hate to utter love.
|
|
|
+ Come.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Scene II.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. A room in the Castle.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Flourish. [Enter King and Queen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, cum aliis.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ King. Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
|
|
|
+ Moreover that we much did long to see you,
|
|
|
+ The need we have to use you did provoke
|
|
|
+ Our hasty sending. Something have you heard
|
|
|
+ Of Hamlet's transformation. So I call it,
|
|
|
+ Sith nor th' exterior nor the inward man
|
|
|
+ Resembles that it was. What it should be,
|
|
|
+ More than his father's death, that thus hath put him
|
|
|
+ So much from th' understanding of himself,
|
|
|
+ I cannot dream of. I entreat you both
|
|
|
+ That, being of so young clays brought up with him,
|
|
|
+ And since so neighbour'd to his youth and haviour,
|
|
|
+ That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court
|
|
|
+ Some little time; so by your companies
|
|
|
+ To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather
|
|
|
+ So much as from occasion you may glean,
|
|
|
+ Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus
|
|
|
+ That, open'd, lies within our remedy.
|
|
|
+ Queen. Good gentlemen, he hath much talk'd of you,
|
|
|
+ And sure I am two men there are not living
|
|
|
+ To whom he more adheres. If it will please you
|
|
|
+ To show us so much gentry and good will
|
|
|
+ As to expend your time with us awhile
|
|
|
+ For the supply and profit of our hope,
|
|
|
+ Your visitation shall receive such thanks
|
|
|
+ As fits a king's remembrance.
|
|
|
+ Ros. Both your Majesties
|
|
|
+ Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,
|
|
|
+ Put your dread pleasures more into command
|
|
|
+ Than to entreaty.
|
|
|
+ Guil. But we both obey,
|
|
|
+ And here give up ourselves, in the full bent,
|
|
|
+ To lay our service freely at your feet,
|
|
|
+ To be commanded.
|
|
|
+ King. Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.
|
|
|
+ Queen. Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.
|
|
|
+ And I beseech you instantly to visit
|
|
|
+ My too much changed son.- Go, some of you,
|
|
|
+ And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.
|
|
|
+ Guil. Heavens make our presence and our practices
|
|
|
+ Pleasant and helpful to him!
|
|
|
+ Queen. Ay, amen!
|
|
|
+ Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, [with some
|
|
|
+ Attendants].
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Polonius.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Pol. Th' ambassadors from Norway, my good lord,
|
|
|
+ Are joyfully return'd.
|
|
|
+ King. Thou still hast been the father of good news.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege,
|
|
|
+ I hold my duty as I hold my soul,
|
|
|
+ Both to my God and to my gracious king;
|
|
|
+ And I do think- or else this brain of mine
|
|
|
+ Hunts not the trail of policy so sure
|
|
|
+ As it hath us'd to do- that I have found
|
|
|
+ The very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.
|
|
|
+ King. O, speak of that! That do I long to hear.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Give first admittance to th' ambassadors.
|
|
|
+ My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.
|
|
|
+ King. Thyself do grace to them, and bring them in.
|
|
|
+ [Exit Polonius.]
|
|
|
+ He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found
|
|
|
+ The head and source of all your son's distemper.
|
|
|
+ Queen. I doubt it is no other but the main,
|
|
|
+ His father's death and our o'erhasty marriage.
|
|
|
+ King. Well, we shall sift him.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Polonius, Voltemand, and Cornelius.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Welcome, my good friends.
|
|
|
+ Say, Voltemand, what from our brother Norway?
|
|
|
+ Volt. Most fair return of greetings and desires.
|
|
|
+ Upon our first, he sent out to suppress
|
|
|
+ His nephew's levies; which to him appear'd
|
|
|
+ To be a preparation 'gainst the Polack,
|
|
|
+ But better look'd into, he truly found
|
|
|
+ It was against your Highness; whereat griev'd,
|
|
|
+ That so his sickness, age, and impotence
|
|
|
+ Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests
|
|
|
+ On Fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys,
|
|
|
+ Receives rebuke from Norway, and, in fine,
|
|
|
+ Makes vow before his uncle never more
|
|
|
+ To give th' assay of arms against your Majesty.
|
|
|
+ Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,
|
|
|
+ Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee
|
|
|
+ And his commission to employ those soldiers,
|
|
|
+ So levied as before, against the Polack;
|
|
|
+ With an entreaty, herein further shown,
|
|
|
+ [Gives a paper.]
|
|
|
+ That it might please you to give quiet pass
|
|
|
+ Through your dominions for this enterprise,
|
|
|
+ On such regards of safety and allowance
|
|
|
+ As therein are set down.
|
|
|
+ King. It likes us well;
|
|
|
+ And at our more consider'd time we'll read,
|
|
|
+ Answer, and think upon this business.
|
|
|
+ Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour.
|
|
|
+ Go to your rest; at night we'll feast together.
|
|
|
+ Most welcome home! Exeunt Ambassadors.
|
|
|
+ Pol. This business is well ended.
|
|
|
+ My liege, and madam, to expostulate
|
|
|
+ What majesty should be, what duty is,
|
|
|
+ Why day is day, night is night, and time is time.
|
|
|
+ Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time.
|
|
|
+ Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
|
|
|
+ And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
|
|
|
+ I will be brief. Your noble son is mad.
|
|
|
+ Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
|
|
|
+ What is't but to be nothing else but mad?
|
|
|
+ But let that go.
|
|
|
+ Queen. More matter, with less art.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
|
|
|
+ That he is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity;
|
|
|
+ And pity 'tis 'tis true. A foolish figure!
|
|
|
+ But farewell it, for I will use no art.
|
|
|
+ Mad let us grant him then. And now remains
|
|
|
+ That we find out the cause of this effect-
|
|
|
+ Or rather say, the cause of this defect,
|
|
|
+ For this effect defective comes by cause.
|
|
|
+ Thus it remains, and the remainder thus.
|
|
|
+ Perpend.
|
|
|
+ I have a daughter (have while she is mine),
|
|
|
+ Who in her duty and obedience, mark,
|
|
|
+ Hath given me this. Now gather, and surmise.
|
|
|
+ [Reads] the letter.
|
|
|
+ 'To the celestial, and my soul's idol, the most beautified
|
|
|
+ Ophelia,'-
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ That's an ill phrase, a vile phrase; 'beautified' is a vile
|
|
|
+ phrase.
|
|
|
+ But you shall hear. Thus:
|
|
|
+ [Reads.]
|
|
|
+ 'In her excellent white bosom, these, &c.'
|
|
|
+ Queen. Came this from Hamlet to her?
|
|
|
+ Pol. Good madam, stay awhile. I will be faithful. [Reads.]
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 'Doubt thou the stars are fire;
|
|
|
+ Doubt that the sun doth move;
|
|
|
+ Doubt truth to be a liar;
|
|
|
+ But never doubt I love.
|
|
|
+ 'O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers; I have not art to
|
|
|
+ reckon my groans; but that I love thee best, O most best, believe
|
|
|
+ it. Adieu.
|
|
|
+ 'Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him,
|
|
|
+ HAMLET.'
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me;
|
|
|
+ And more above, hath his solicitings,
|
|
|
+ As they fell out by time, by means, and place,
|
|
|
+ All given to mine ear.
|
|
|
+ King. But how hath she
|
|
|
+ Receiv'd his love?
|
|
|
+ Pol. What do you think of me?
|
|
|
+ King. As of a man faithful and honourable.
|
|
|
+ Pol. I would fain prove so. But what might you think,
|
|
|
+ When I had seen this hot love on the wing
|
|
|
+ (As I perceiv'd it, I must tell you that,
|
|
|
+ Before my daughter told me), what might you,
|
|
|
+ Or my dear Majesty your queen here, think,
|
|
|
+ If I had play'd the desk or table book,
|
|
|
+ Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb,
|
|
|
+ Or look'd upon this love with idle sight?
|
|
|
+ What might you think? No, I went round to work
|
|
|
+ And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:
|
|
|
+ 'Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star.
|
|
|
+ This must not be.' And then I prescripts gave her,
|
|
|
+ That she should lock herself from his resort,
|
|
|
+ Admit no messengers, receive no tokens.
|
|
|
+ Which done, she took the fruits of my advice,
|
|
|
+ And he, repulsed, a short tale to make,
|
|
|
+ Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,
|
|
|
+ Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
|
|
|
+ Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,
|
|
|
+ Into the madness wherein now he raves,
|
|
|
+ And all we mourn for.
|
|
|
+ King. Do you think 'tis this?
|
|
|
+ Queen. it may be, very like.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Hath there been such a time- I would fain know that-
|
|
|
+ That I have Positively said ''Tis so,'
|
|
|
+ When it prov'd otherwise.?
|
|
|
+ King. Not that I know.
|
|
|
+ Pol. [points to his head and shoulder] Take this from this, if this
|
|
|
+ be otherwise.
|
|
|
+ If circumstances lead me, I will find
|
|
|
+ Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
|
|
|
+ Within the centre.
|
|
|
+ King. How may we try it further?
|
|
|
+ Pol. You know sometimes he walks four hours together
|
|
|
+ Here in the lobby.
|
|
|
+ Queen. So he does indeed.
|
|
|
+ Pol. At such a time I'll loose my daughter to him.
|
|
|
+ Be you and I behind an arras then.
|
|
|
+ Mark the encounter. If he love her not,
|
|
|
+ And he not from his reason fall'n thereon
|
|
|
+ Let me be no assistant for a state,
|
|
|
+ But keep a farm and carters.
|
|
|
+ King. We will try it.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Hamlet, reading on a book.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Queen. But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Away, I do beseech you, both away
|
|
|
+ I'll board him presently. O, give me leave.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt King and Queen, [with Attendants].
|
|
|
+ How does my good Lord Hamlet?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Well, God-a-mercy.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Do you know me, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Not I, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Honest, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Ay, sir. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man
|
|
|
+ pick'd out of ten thousand.
|
|
|
+ Pol. That's very true, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god
|
|
|
+ kissing carrion- Have you a daughter?
|
|
|
+ Pol. I have, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Let her not walk i' th' sun. Conception is a blessing, but not
|
|
|
+ as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to't.
|
|
|
+ Pol. [aside] How say you by that? 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 suff'red 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?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Between who?
|
|
|
+ Pol. I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue 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 which,
|
|
|
+ sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it
|
|
|
+ not honesty to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir,
|
|
|
+ should be old as I am if, like a crab, you could go backward.
|
|
|
+ Pol. [aside] Though this be madness, yet there is a method in't.-
|
|
|
+ Will You walk out of the air, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Into my grave?
|
|
|
+ Pol. Indeed, that is out o' th' air. [Aside] 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.
|
|
|
+ Ham. You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more
|
|
|
+ willingly part withal- except my life, except my life, except my
|
|
|
+ life,
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Pol. Fare you well, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. These tedious old fools!
|
|
|
+ Pol. You go to seek the Lord Hamlet. There he is.
|
|
|
+ Ros. [to Polonius] God save you, sir!
|
|
|
+ Exit [Polonius].
|
|
|
+ Guil. My honour'd lord!
|
|
|
+ Ros. My most dear lord!
|
|
|
+ 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 over-happy.
|
|
|
+ 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 middle of her
|
|
|
+ favours?
|
|
|
+ Guil. Faith, her privates we.
|
|
|
+ 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 grown honest.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Then is doomsday 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 o' th' 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.
|
|
|
+ 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 th' court? for, by my
|
|
|
+ fay, I cannot reason.
|
|
|
+ Both. 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?
|
|
|
+ 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, deal justly with me. Come, come! Nay, speak.
|
|
|
+ Guil. What should we say, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Why, anything- but to th' purpose. You were sent for; and
|
|
|
+ there is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties
|
|
|
+ have not craft enough to colour. I know the good King and Queen
|
|
|
+ have sent for you.
|
|
|
+ Ros. To what end, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. That you must teach me. But let 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.
|
|
|
+ Ros. [aside to Guildenstern] What say you?
|
|
|
+ Ham. [aside] Nay then, I have an eye of you.- If you love me, hold
|
|
|
+ not off.
|
|
|
+ Guil. My lord, we were sent for.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I will tell you why. So shall my anticipation prevent your
|
|
|
+ discovery, and your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no
|
|
|
+ feather. I have of late- but wherefore I know not- lost all my
|
|
|
+ mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so
|
|
|
+ heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth,
|
|
|
+ seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the
|
|
|
+ air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical
|
|
|
+ roof fretted with golden fire- why, it appeareth no other thing
|
|
|
+ to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a
|
|
|
+ piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in
|
|
|
+ faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in
|
|
|
+ action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the
|
|
|
+ beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what
|
|
|
+ is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me- no, nor woman
|
|
|
+ neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
|
|
|
+ Ros. My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Why did you laugh then, when I said 'Man delights not me'?
|
|
|
+ Ros. To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten
|
|
|
+ entertainment the players shall receive from you. We coted them
|
|
|
+ on the way, and hither are they coming to offer you service.
|
|
|
+ Ham. He that plays the king shall be welcome- his Majesty shall
|
|
|
+ have tribute of me; the adventurous knight shall use his foil and
|
|
|
+ target; the lover shall not sigh gratis; the humorous man shall
|
|
|
+ end his part in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose
|
|
|
+ lungs are tickle o' th' sere; and the lady shall say her mind
|
|
|
+ freely, or the blank verse shall halt fort. What players are
|
|
|
+ they?
|
|
|
+ Ros. Even those you were wont to take such delight in, the
|
|
|
+ tragedians of the city.
|
|
|
+ Ham. How chances it they travel? Their residence, both in
|
|
|
+ reputation and profit, was better both ways.
|
|
|
+ Ros. I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late
|
|
|
+ innovation.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the
|
|
|
+ city? Are they so follow'd?
|
|
|
+ Ros. No indeed are they not.
|
|
|
+ Ham. How comes it? Do they grow rusty?
|
|
|
+ Ros. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace; but there is,
|
|
|
+ sir, an eyrie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top
|
|
|
+ of question and are most tyrannically clapp'd fort. These are now
|
|
|
+ the fashion, and so berattle the common stages (so they call
|
|
|
+ them) that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills and
|
|
|
+ dare scarce come thither.
|
|
|
+ Ham. What, are they children? Who maintains 'em? How are they
|
|
|
+ escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can
|
|
|
+ sing? Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow
|
|
|
+ themselves to common players (as it is most like, if their means
|
|
|
+ are no better), their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim
|
|
|
+ against their own succession.
|
|
|
+ Ros. Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the nation
|
|
|
+ holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy. There was, for a
|
|
|
+ while, no money bid for argument unless the poet and the player
|
|
|
+ went to cuffs in the question.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Is't possible?
|
|
|
+ Guil. O, there has been much throwing about of brains.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Do the boys carry it away?
|
|
|
+ Ros. Ay, that they do, my lord- Hercules and his load too.
|
|
|
+ Ham. It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, and
|
|
|
+ those that would make mows at him while my father lived give
|
|
|
+ twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in
|
|
|
+ little. 'Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if
|
|
|
+ philosophy could find it out.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Flourish for the Players.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Guil. There are the players.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come! Th'
|
|
|
+ appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply
|
|
|
+ with you in this garb, lest my extent to the players (which I
|
|
|
+ tell you must show fairly outwards) should more appear like
|
|
|
+ entertainment than yours. You are welcome. But my uncle-father
|
|
|
+ and aunt-mother are deceiv'd.
|
|
|
+ Guil. In what, my dear lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly I
|
|
|
+ know a hawk from a handsaw.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Polonius.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Pol. Well be with you, gentlemen!
|
|
|
+ Ham. Hark you, Guildenstern- and you too- at each ear a hearer!
|
|
|
+ That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling
|
|
|
+ clouts.
|
|
|
+ Ros. Happily he's the second time come to them; for they say an old
|
|
|
+ man is twice a child.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players. Mark it.-
|
|
|
+ You say right, sir; a Monday morning; twas so indeed.
|
|
|
+ Pol. My lord, I have news to tell you.
|
|
|
+ Ham. My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in
|
|
|
+ Rome-
|
|
|
+ Pol. The actors are come hither, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Buzz, buzz!
|
|
|
+ Pol. Upon my honour-
|
|
|
+ Ham. Then came each actor on his ass-
|
|
|
+ Pol. The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy,
|
|
|
+ history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral,
|
|
|
+ tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral; scene
|
|
|
+ individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor
|
|
|
+ Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are
|
|
|
+ the only men.
|
|
|
+ Ham. O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!
|
|
|
+ Pol. What treasure had he, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Why,
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 'One fair daughter, and no more,
|
|
|
+ The which he loved passing well.'
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Pol. [aside] Still on my daughter.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Am I not i' th' right, old Jephthah?
|
|
|
+ Pol. If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I
|
|
|
+ love passing well.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Nay, that follows not.
|
|
|
+ Pol. What follows then, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Why,
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 'As by lot, God wot,'
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ and then, you know,
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 'It came to pass, as most like it was.'
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ The first row of the pious chanson will show you more; for look
|
|
|
+ where my abridgment comes.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter four or five Players.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ You are welcome, masters; welcome, all.- I am glad to see thee
|
|
|
+ well.- Welcome, good friends.- O, my old friend? Why, thy face is
|
|
|
+ valanc'd since I saw thee last. Com'st' thou to' beard me in
|
|
|
+ Denmark?- What, my young lady and mistress? By'r Lady, your
|
|
|
+ ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the
|
|
|
+ altitude of a chopine. Pray God your voice, like a piece of
|
|
|
+ uncurrent gold, be not crack'd within the ring.- Masters, you are
|
|
|
+ all welcome. We'll e'en to't like French falconers, fly at
|
|
|
+ anything we see. We'll have a speech straight. Come, give us a
|
|
|
+ taste of your quality. Come, a passionate speech.
|
|
|
+ 1. Play. What speech, my good lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted;
|
|
|
+ or if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleas'd
|
|
|
+ not the million, 'twas caviary to the general; but it was (as I
|
|
|
+ receiv'd it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in
|
|
|
+ the top of mine) an excellent play, well digested in the scenes,
|
|
|
+ set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember one said
|
|
|
+ there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury,
|
|
|
+ nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of
|
|
|
+ affectation; but call'd it an honest method, as wholesome as
|
|
|
+ sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in't
|
|
|
+ I chiefly lov'd. 'Twas AEneas' tale to Dido, and thereabout of it
|
|
|
+ especially where he speaks of Priam's slaughter. If it live in
|
|
|
+ your memory, begin at this line- let me see, let me see:
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 'The rugged Pyrrhus, like th' Hyrcanian beast-'
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 'Tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus:
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
|
|
|
+ Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
|
|
|
+ When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
|
|
|
+ Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
|
|
|
+ With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot
|
|
|
+ Now is be total gules, horridly trick'd
|
|
|
+ With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
|
|
|
+ Bak'd and impasted with the parching streets,
|
|
|
+ That lend a tyrannous and a damned light
|
|
|
+ To their lord's murther. Roasted in wrath and fire,
|
|
|
+ And thus o'ersized with coagulate gore,
|
|
|
+ With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
|
|
|
+ Old grandsire Priam seeks.'
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ So, proceed you.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good
|
|
|
+ discretion.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 1. Play. 'Anon he finds him,
|
|
|
+ Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword,
|
|
|
+ Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
|
|
|
+ Repugnant to command. Unequal match'd,
|
|
|
+ Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide;
|
|
|
+ But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
|
|
|
+ Th' unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
|
|
|
+ Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
|
|
|
+ Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
|
|
|
+ Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear. For lo! his sword,
|
|
|
+ Which was declining on the milky head
|
|
|
+ Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' th' air to stick.
|
|
|
+ So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
|
|
|
+ And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
|
|
|
+ Did nothing.
|
|
|
+ But, as we often see, against some storm,
|
|
|
+ A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
|
|
|
+ The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
|
|
|
+ As hush as death- anon the dreadful thunder
|
|
|
+ Doth rend the region; so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
|
|
|
+ Aroused vengeance sets him new awork;
|
|
|
+ And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
|
|
|
+ On Mars's armour, forg'd for proof eterne,
|
|
|
+ With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
|
|
|
+ Now falls on Priam.
|
|
|
+ Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods,
|
|
|
+ In general synod take away her power;
|
|
|
+ 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 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 queen'?
|
|
|
+ Pol. That's good! 'Mobled queen' is good.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 1. Play. 'Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning the flames
|
|
|
+ With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
|
|
|
+ Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
|
|
|
+ About her lank and all o'erteemed loins,
|
|
|
+ A blanket, in the alarm 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, whe'r he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in's
|
|
|
+ eyes. Prithee 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 bestow'd? Do you
|
|
|
+ hear? Let them be well us'd; 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. God's bodykins, man, much better! Use every man after his
|
|
|
+ desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own
|
|
|
+ honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in
|
|
|
+ your bounty. Take them in.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Come, sirs.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Follow him, friends. We'll hear a play to-morrow.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt Polonius and Players [except the First].
|
|
|
+ Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play 'The Murther of
|
|
|
+ Gonzago'?
|
|
|
+ 1. Play. Ay, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. We'll ha'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 First Player.]
|
|
|
+ My good friends, I'll leave you till night. You are welcome to
|
|
|
+ Elsinore.
|
|
|
+ Ros. Good my lord!
|
|
|
+ Ham. Ay, so, God b' wi' ye!
|
|
|
+ [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
|
|
|
+ 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 own conceit
|
|
|
+ That, from her working, all his visage wann'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.
|
|
|
+ Yet I,
|
|
|
+ A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
|
|
|
+ Like John-a-dreams, 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 th' nose? gives me the lie i' th' throat
|
|
|
+ As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this, ha?
|
|
|
+ 'Swounds, 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!
|
|
|
+ Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
|
|
|
+ That I, the son of a dear father murther'd,
|
|
|
+ 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!
|
|
|
+ Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! Hum, 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 murther, 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
|
|
|
+ May be a devil; and the devil hath power
|
|
|
+ T' 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.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. A room in the Castle.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Lords.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 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. Did you assay him
|
|
|
+ To any pastime?
|
|
|
+ Ros. Madam, it so fell out that certain players
|
|
|
+ We o'erraught on the way. Of these we told him,
|
|
|
+ And there did seem in him a kind of joy
|
|
|
+ To hear of it. They are here about the court,
|
|
|
+ And, as I think, they have already order
|
|
|
+ This night to play before him.
|
|
|
+ Pol. 'Tis 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.
|
|
|
+ Good gentlemen, give him a further edge
|
|
|
+ And drive his purpose on to these delights.
|
|
|
+ Ros. We shall, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
|
|
|
+ King. 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.
|
|
|
+ Queen. 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.
|
|
|
+ Oph. Madam, I wish it may.
|
|
|
+ [Exit Queen.]
|
|
|
+ Pol. 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.
|
|
|
+ King. [aside] O, 'tis too true!
|
|
|
+ How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
|
|
|
+ The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art,
|
|
|
+ Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
|
|
|
+ Than is my deed to my most painted word.
|
|
|
+ O heavy burthen!
|
|
|
+ Pol. I hear him coming. Let's withdraw, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt King and Polonius].
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Hamlet.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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 heartache, 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,
|
|
|
+ Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
|
|
|
+ The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
|
|
|
+ The insolence of office, and the spurns
|
|
|
+ That patient merit of th' 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 rememb'red.
|
|
|
+ Oph. Good my lord,
|
|
|
+ How does your honour for this many a day?
|
|
|
+ Ham. I humbly thank you; well, well, well.
|
|
|
+ Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours
|
|
|
+ That I have longed long to re-deliver.
|
|
|
+ I pray you, now receive them.
|
|
|
+ Ham. No, not I!
|
|
|
+ I never gave you aught.
|
|
|
+ Oph. 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.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Ha, ha! Are you honest?
|
|
|
+ Oph. My lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Are you fair?
|
|
|
+ Oph. What means your lordship?
|
|
|
+ Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty 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 sometime 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 believ'd me; for virtue cannot so
|
|
|
+ inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved 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
|
|
|
+ nowhere 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. 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.
|
|
|
+ Oph. O 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; you 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 moe marriages. Those that are
|
|
|
+ married already- all but one- shall live; the rest shall keep as
|
|
|
+ they are. To a nunnery, go. Exit.
|
|
|
+ Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
|
|
|
+ The courtier's, scholar's, soldier'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!
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 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;
|
|
|
+ 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?
|
|
|
+ Pol. 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.
|
|
|
+ King. It shall be so.
|
|
|
+ Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go. Exeunt.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Scene II.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. hall in the Castle.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter Hamlet and three of the Players.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you,
|
|
|
+ trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our
|
|
|
+ players do, I had as live 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 cars of the groundlings, who
|
|
|
+ (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb
|
|
|
+ shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipp'd for o'erdoing
|
|
|
+ Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.
|
|
|
+ Player. I warrant your honour.
|
|
|
+ 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'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.
|
|
|
+ Player. I hope we have reform'd that indifferently with us, sir.
|
|
|
+ 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 Guildenstern.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ How now, my lord? Will the King hear this piece of work?
|
|
|
+ Pol. And the Queen too, and that presently.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Bid the players make haste, [Exit Polonius.] Will you two
|
|
|
+ help to hasten them?
|
|
|
+ Both. We will, my lord. Exeunt they two.
|
|
|
+ Ham. What, ho, Horatio!
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Horatio.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
|
|
|
+ As e'er my conversation cop'd withal.
|
|
|
+ Hor. O, my dear lord!
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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 scald thee for herself. For thou hast been
|
|
|
+ As one, in suff'ring all, that suffers nothing;
|
|
|
+ A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards
|
|
|
+ Hast ta'en with equal thanks; and blest are those
|
|
|
+ Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled
|
|
|
+ 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 I
|
|
|
+ There is a play to-night 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 seest that act afoot,
|
|
|
+ Even with the very comment of thy soul
|
|
|
+ Observe my 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 judgments join
|
|
|
+ In censure of his seeming.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Well, my lord.
|
|
|
+ If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,
|
|
|
+ And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Sound a flourish. [Enter Trumpets and Kettledrums. Danish
|
|
|
+ march. [Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz,
|
|
|
+ Guildenstern, and other Lords attendant, with the Guard
|
|
|
+ carrying torches.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. They are coming to the play. I must be idle.
|
|
|
+ Get you a place.
|
|
|
+ King. How fares our cousin Hamlet?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish. I eat the air,
|
|
|
+ promise-cramm'd. You cannot feed capons so.
|
|
|
+ King. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. These words are not
|
|
|
+ mine.
|
|
|
+ Ham. No, nor mine now. [To Polonius] My lord, you play'd once
|
|
|
+ i' th' university, you say?
|
|
|
+ Pol. That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.
|
|
|
+ Ham. What did you enact?
|
|
|
+ Pol. I did enact Julius Caesar; I was kill'd i' th' Capitol; Brutus
|
|
|
+ kill'd 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.
|
|
|
+ Pol. [to the King] O, ho! do you mark that?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
|
|
|
+ [Sits down at Ophelia's feet.]
|
|
|
+ Oph. No, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I mean, my head upon your lap?
|
|
|
+ Oph. Ay, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Do you think I meant country matters?
|
|
|
+ Oph. I think nothing, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
|
|
|
+ Oph. What is, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Nothing.
|
|
|
+ Oph. You are merry, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Who, I?
|
|
|
+ Oph. Ay, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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.
|
|
|
+ Oph. Nay 'tis twice two months, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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!'
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Hautboys play. 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. He 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 sleeper's ears, and
|
|
|
+ leaves him. The Queen returns, finds the King dead, and makes
|
|
|
+ passionate action. The Poisoner with some three or four Mutes,
|
|
|
+ comes in again, seem to condole with her. The dead body is
|
|
|
+ carried away. The Poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts; she
|
|
|
+ seems harsh and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts
|
|
|
+ his love.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Oph. What means this, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Marry, this is miching malhecho; 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 asham'd 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. [Exit.]
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
|
|
|
+ Oph. 'Tis brief, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. As woman's love.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter [two Players as] King and Queen.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ King. Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
|
|
|
+ Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,
|
|
|
+ And thirty dozed moons with borrowed sheen
|
|
|
+ About the world have times twelve thirties been,
|
|
|
+ Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands,
|
|
|
+ Unite comutual in most sacred bands.
|
|
|
+ Queen. 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.
|
|
|
+ King. 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-
|
|
|
+ Queen. O, confound the rest!
|
|
|
+ Such love must needs be treason in my breast.
|
|
|
+ When second husband let me be accurst!
|
|
|
+ None wed the second but who killed the first.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. [aside] Wormwood, wormwood!
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Queen. 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.
|
|
|
+ King. 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 fill 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.
|
|
|
+ Queen. 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!
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. If she should break it now!
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ King. 'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile.
|
|
|
+ My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
|
|
|
+ The tedious day with sleep.
|
|
|
+ Queen. Sleep rock thy brain,
|
|
|
+ [He] sleeps.
|
|
|
+ And never come mischance between us twain!
|
|
|
+Exit.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. Madam, how like you this play?
|
|
|
+ Queen. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
|
|
|
+ Ham. O, but she'll keep her word.
|
|
|
+ King. Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in't?
|
|
|
+ Ham. No, no! They do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i' th'
|
|
|
+ world.
|
|
|
+ King. What do you call the play?
|
|
|
+ Ham. 'The Mousetrap.' Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the
|
|
|
+ image of a murther 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 winch; our withers
|
|
|
+ are unwrung.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Lucianus.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 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 must take your husbands.- Begin, murtherer. Pox, leave
|
|
|
+ thy damnable faces, and begin! Come, the croaking raven doth
|
|
|
+ bellow for revenge.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Luc. 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.
|
|
|
+ Pours the poison in his ears.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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 murtherer gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
|
|
|
+ Oph. The King rises.
|
|
|
+ Ham. What, frighted with false fire?
|
|
|
+ Queen. How fares my lord?
|
|
|
+ Pol. Give o'er the play.
|
|
|
+ King. Give me some light! Away!
|
|
|
+ All. Lights, lights, lights!
|
|
|
+ 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 Provincial roses on my raz'd
|
|
|
+ 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,
|
|
|
+ This realm dismantled was
|
|
|
+ Of Jove himself; and now reigns here
|
|
|
+ A very, very- pajock.
|
|
|
+ Hor. You might have rhym'd.
|
|
|
+ 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?
|
|
|
+ Hor. I did very well note him.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Aha! Come, some music! Come, the recorders!
|
|
|
+ For if the King like not the comedy,
|
|
|
+ Why then, belike he likes it not, perdy.
|
|
|
+ Come, some music!
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Guil. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Sir, a whole history.
|
|
|
+ Guil. The King, sir-
|
|
|
+ Ham. Ay, sir, what of him?
|
|
|
+ Guil. Is in his retirement, marvellous distemper'd.
|
|
|
+ Ham. With drink, sir?
|
|
|
+ Guil. No, my lord; rather with choler.
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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.
|
|
|
+ Guil. Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start
|
|
|
+ not so wildly from my affair.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I am tame, sir; pronounce.
|
|
|
+ Guil. The Queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit
|
|
|
+ hath sent me to you.
|
|
|
+ Ham. You are welcome.
|
|
|
+ Guil. 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.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Sir, I cannot.
|
|
|
+ Guil. What, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseas'd. But, sir, such
|
|
|
+ answer is I can make, you shall command; or rather, as you say,
|
|
|
+ my mother. Therefore no more, but to the matter! My mother, you
|
|
|
+ say-
|
|
|
+ Ros. Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into
|
|
|
+ amazement and admiration.
|
|
|
+ Ham. O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother! But is there no
|
|
|
+ sequel at the heels of this mother's admiration? Impart.
|
|
|
+ Ros. She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed.
|
|
|
+ Ham. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any
|
|
|
+ further trade with us?
|
|
|
+ Ros. My lord, you once did love me.
|
|
|
+ Ham. And do still, by these pickers and stealers!
|
|
|
+ Ros. 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.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Sir, I lack advancement.
|
|
|
+ Ros. How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself
|
|
|
+ for your succession in Denmark?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Ay, sir, but 'while the grass grows'- the proverb is something
|
|
|
+ musty.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter the Players with recorders.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 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?
|
|
|
+ Guil. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?
|
|
|
+ Guil. My lord, I cannot.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I pray you.
|
|
|
+ Guil. Believe me, I cannot.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I do beseech you.
|
|
|
+ Guil. I know, no touch of it, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. It is as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your
|
|
|
+ fingers and thumbs, give it breath with your mouth, and it will
|
|
|
+ discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.
|
|
|
+ Guil. But these cannot I command to any utt'rance of harmony. I
|
|
|
+ have not the skill.
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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 play'd on than a
|
|
|
+ pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me,
|
|
|
+ you cannot play upon me.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Polonius.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ God bless you, sir!
|
|
|
+ Pol. My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
|
|
|
+ Pol. By th' mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel.
|
|
|
+ Pol. It is back'd like a weasel.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Or like a whale.
|
|
|
+ Pol. Very like a whale.
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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.
|
|
|
+ Pol. I will say so. Exit.
|
|
|
+ Ham. 'By-and-by' is easily said.- Leave me, friends.
|
|
|
+ [Exeunt all but Hamlet.]
|
|
|
+ '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! Exit.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Scene III.
|
|
|
+A room in the Castle.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter King, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ King. 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.
|
|
|
+ Guil. 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.
|
|
|
+ Ros. 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 depends and rests
|
|
|
+ The lives of many. The cesse 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.
|
|
|
+ King. Arm you, I pray you, to th', speedy voyage;
|
|
|
+ For we will fetters put upon this fear,
|
|
|
+ Which now goes too free-footed.
|
|
|
+ Both. We will haste us.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt Gentlemen.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Polonius.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Pol. 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.
|
|
|
+ King. Thanks, dear my lord.
|
|
|
+ Exit [Polonius].
|
|
|
+ O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
|
|
|
+ It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,
|
|
|
+ A brother's murther! 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 murther'?
|
|
|
+ That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
|
|
|
+ Of those effects for which I did the murther-
|
|
|
+ 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. He kneels.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Hamlet.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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.
|
|
|
+ Why, 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 seasoned 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. Exit.
|
|
|
+ King. [rises] My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
|
|
|
+ Words without thoughts never to heaven go. Exit.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Scene IV.
|
|
|
+The Queen's closet.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter Queen and Polonius.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Pol. 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 even here.
|
|
|
+ Pray you be round with him.
|
|
|
+ Ham. (within) Mother, mother, mother!
|
|
|
+ Queen. I'll warrant you; fear me not. Withdraw; I hear him coming.
|
|
|
+ [Polonius hides behind the arras.]
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Hamlet.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. Now, mother, what's the matter?
|
|
|
+ Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Mother, you have my father much offended.
|
|
|
+ Queen. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
|
|
|
+ Queen. Why, how now, Hamlet?
|
|
|
+ Ham. What's the matter now?
|
|
|
+ Queen. Have you forgot me?
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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.
|
|
|
+ Queen. Nay, then I'll set those to you that can speak.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge I
|
|
|
+ You go not till I set you up a glass
|
|
|
+ Where you may see the inmost part of you.
|
|
|
+ Queen. What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murther me?
|
|
|
+ Help, help, ho!
|
|
|
+ Pol. [behind] What, ho! help, help, help!
|
|
|
+ Ham. [draws] How now? a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!
|
|
|
+ [Makes a pass through the arras and] kills Polonius.
|
|
|
+ Pol. [behind] O, I am slain!
|
|
|
+ Queen. O me, what hast thou done?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
|
|
|
+ Queen. O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
|
|
|
+ Ham. A bloody deed- almost as bad, good mother,
|
|
|
+ As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
|
|
|
+ Queen. As kill a king?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Ay, lady, it was my word.
|
|
|
+ [Lifts up the arras and sees 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 hinds. 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.
|
|
|
+ Queen. What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue
|
|
|
+ In noise so rude against me?
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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.
|
|
|
+ Queen. Ay me, what act,
|
|
|
+ That roars so loud and thunders in the index?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Look here upon th's 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 heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble,
|
|
|
+ And waits upon the judgment; and what judgment
|
|
|
+ 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.
|
|
|
+ Queen. 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.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Nay, but to live
|
|
|
+ In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
|
|
|
+ Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
|
|
|
+ Over the nasty sty!
|
|
|
+ Queen. O, speak to me no more!
|
|
|
+ These words like daggers enter in mine ears.
|
|
|
+ No more, sweet Hamlet!
|
|
|
+ Ham. A murtherer 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!
|
|
|
+ Queen. No more!
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter the Ghost in his nightgown.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. A king of shreds and patches!-
|
|
|
+ Save me and hover o'er me with your wings,
|
|
|
+ You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
|
|
|
+ Queen. Alas, he's mad!
|
|
|
+ Ham. Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
|
|
|
+ That, laps'd in time and passion, lets go by
|
|
|
+ Th' important acting of your dread command?
|
|
|
+ O, say!
|
|
|
+ Ghost. 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.
|
|
|
+ Ham. How is it with you, lady?
|
|
|
+ Queen. Alas, how is't with you,
|
|
|
+ That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
|
|
|
+ And with th' encorporal air do hold discourse?
|
|
|
+ Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
|
|
|
+ And, as the sleeping soldiers in th' alarm,
|
|
|
+ Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,
|
|
|
+ Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,
|
|
|
+ Upon the beat and flame of thy distemper
|
|
|
+ Sprinkle cool patience! Whereon do you look?
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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.
|
|
|
+ Queen. To whom do you speak this?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Do you see nothing there?
|
|
|
+ Queen. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Nor did you nothing hear?
|
|
|
+ Queen. No, nothing but ourselves.
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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!
|
|
|
+ Exit Ghost.
|
|
|
+ Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain.
|
|
|
+ This bodiless creation ecstasy
|
|
|
+ Is very cunning in.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Ecstasy?
|
|
|
+ My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
|
|
|
+ And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
|
|
|
+ That I have utt'red. Bring me to the test,
|
|
|
+ And I the matter will reword; 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,
|
|
|
+ Whiles 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.
|
|
|
+ Queen. O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
|
|
|
+ Ham. O, throw away the worser part of it,
|
|
|
+ And live the purer with the other half,
|
|
|
+ Good night- but go not to my 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 to-night,
|
|
|
+ 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 [master] the devil, or throw him out
|
|
|
+ With wondrous potency. Once more, good night;
|
|
|
+ And when you are desirous to be blest,
|
|
|
+ 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.
|
|
|
+ Queen. What shall I do?
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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.
|
|
|
+ Queen. 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.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I must to England; you know that?
|
|
|
+ Queen. Alack,
|
|
|
+ I had forgot! 'Tis so concluded on.
|
|
|
+ Ham. 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 petar; 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 peating knave.
|
|
|
+ Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
|
|
|
+ Good night, mother.
|
|
|
+ [Exit the Queen. Then] Exit Hamlet, tugging in
|
|
|
+ Polonius.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ACT IV. Scene I.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. A room in the Castle.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter King and Queen, with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ King. There's matter in these sighs. These profound heaves
|
|
|
+ You must translate; 'tis fit we understand them.
|
|
|
+ Where is your son?
|
|
|
+ Queen. Bestow this place on us a little while.
|
|
|
+ [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]
|
|
|
+ Ah, mine own lord, what have I seen to-night!
|
|
|
+ King. What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?
|
|
|
+ Queen. Mad as the sea and wind when both contend
|
|
|
+ Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit
|
|
|
+ Behind the arras hearing something stir,
|
|
|
+ Whips out his rapier, cries 'A rat, a rat!'
|
|
|
+ And in this brainish apprehension kills
|
|
|
+ The unseen good old man.
|
|
|
+ King. O heavy deed!
|
|
|
+ It had been so with us, had we been there.
|
|
|
+ His liberty is full of threats to all-
|
|
|
+ To you yourself, to us, to every one.
|
|
|
+ Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd?
|
|
|
+ It will be laid to us, whose providence
|
|
|
+ Should have kept short, restrain'd, and out of haunt
|
|
|
+ This mad young man. But so much was our love
|
|
|
+ We would not understand what was most fit,
|
|
|
+ But, like the owner of a foul disease,
|
|
|
+ To keep it from divulging, let it feed
|
|
|
+ Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?
|
|
|
+ Queen. To draw apart the body he hath kill'd;
|
|
|
+ O'er whom his very madness, like some ore
|
|
|
+ Among a mineral of metals base,
|
|
|
+ Shows itself pure. He weeps for what is done.
|
|
|
+ King. O Gertrude, come away!
|
|
|
+ The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch
|
|
|
+ But we will ship him hence; and this vile deed
|
|
|
+ We must with all our majesty and skill
|
|
|
+ Both countenance and excuse. Ho, Guildenstern!
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Friends both, go join you with some further aid.
|
|
|
+ Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
|
|
|
+ And from his mother's closet hath he dragg'd him.
|
|
|
+ Go seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body
|
|
|
+ Into the chapel. I pray you haste in this.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern].
|
|
|
+ Come, Gertrude, we'll call up our wisest friends
|
|
|
+ And let them know both what we mean to do
|
|
|
+ And what's untimely done. [So haply slander-]
|
|
|
+ Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter,
|
|
|
+ As level as the cannon to his blank,
|
|
|
+ Transports his poisoned shot- may miss our name
|
|
|
+ And hit the woundless air.- O, come away!
|
|
|
+ My soul is full of discord and dismay.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Scene II.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. A passage in the Castle.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter Hamlet.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. Safely stow'd.
|
|
|
+ Gentlemen. (within) Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!
|
|
|
+ Ham. But soft! What noise? Who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ros. What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.
|
|
|
+ Ros. Tell us where 'tis, that we may take it thence
|
|
|
+ And bear it to the chapel.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Do not believe it.
|
|
|
+ Ros. Believe what?
|
|
|
+ Ham. That I can keep your counsel, and not mine own. Besides, to be
|
|
|
+ demanded of a sponge, what replication should be made by the son
|
|
|
+ of a king?
|
|
|
+ Ros. Take you me for a sponge, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Ay, sir; that soaks up the King's countenance, his rewards,
|
|
|
+ his authorities. But such officers do the King best service in
|
|
|
+ the end. He keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw;
|
|
|
+ first mouth'd, to be last Swallowed. When he needs what you have
|
|
|
+ glean'd, it is but squeezing you and, sponge, you shall be dry
|
|
|
+ again.
|
|
|
+ Ros. I understand you not, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I am glad of it. A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.
|
|
|
+ Ros. My lord, you must tell us where the body is and go with us to
|
|
|
+ the King.
|
|
|
+ Ham. The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body.
|
|
|
+ The King is a thing-
|
|
|
+ Guil. A thing, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Scene III.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. A room in the Castle.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter King.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ King. I have sent to seek him and to find the body.
|
|
|
+ How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!
|
|
|
+ Yet must not we put the strong law on him.
|
|
|
+ He's lov'd of the distracted multitude,
|
|
|
+ Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes;
|
|
|
+ And where 'tis so, th' offender's scourge is weigh'd,
|
|
|
+ But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,
|
|
|
+ This sudden sending him away must seem
|
|
|
+ Deliberate pause. Diseases desperate grown
|
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|
+ By desperate appliance are reliev'd,
|
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|
+ Or not at all.
|
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|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Rosencrantz.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ How now O What hath befall'n?
|
|
|
+ Ros. Where the dead body is bestow'd, my lord,
|
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|
+ We cannot get from him.
|
|
|
+ King. But where is he?
|
|
|
+ Ros. Without, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure.
|
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|
+ King. Bring him before us.
|
|
|
+ Ros. Ho, Guildenstern! Bring in my lord.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Hamlet and Guildenstern [with Attendants].
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ King. Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?
|
|
|
+ Ham. At supper.
|
|
|
+ King. At supper? Where?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain
|
|
|
+ convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your
|
|
|
+ only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and
|
|
|
+ we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar
|
|
|
+ is but variable service- two dishes, but to one table. That's the
|
|
|
+ end.
|
|
|
+ King. Alas, alas!
|
|
|
+ Ham. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat
|
|
|
+ of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
|
|
|
+ King. What dost thou mean by this?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through
|
|
|
+ the guts of a beggar.
|
|
|
+ King. Where is Polonius?
|
|
|
+ Ham. In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not
|
|
|
+ there, seek him i' th' other place yourself. But indeed, if you
|
|
|
+ find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up
|
|
|
+ the stair, into the lobby.
|
|
|
+ King. Go seek him there. [To Attendants.]
|
|
|
+ Ham. He will stay till you come.
|
|
|
+ [Exeunt Attendants.]
|
|
|
+ King. Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,-
|
|
|
+ Which we do tender as we dearly grieve
|
|
|
+ For that which thou hast done,- must send thee hence
|
|
|
+ With fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself.
|
|
|
+ The bark is ready and the wind at help,
|
|
|
+ Th' associates tend, and everything is bent
|
|
|
+ For England.
|
|
|
+ Ham. For England?
|
|
|
+ King. Ay, Hamlet.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Good.
|
|
|
+ King. So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I see a cherub that sees them. But come, for England!
|
|
|
+ Farewell, dear mother.
|
|
|
+ King. Thy loving father, Hamlet.
|
|
|
+ Ham. My mother! Father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is
|
|
|
+ one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England!
|
|
|
+Exit.
|
|
|
+ King. Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard.
|
|
|
+ Delay it not; I'll have him hence to-night.
|
|
|
+ Away! for everything is seal'd and done
|
|
|
+ That else leans on th' affair. Pray you make haste.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern]
|
|
|
+ And, England, if my love thou hold'st at aught,-
|
|
|
+ As my great power thereof may give thee sense,
|
|
|
+ Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red
|
|
|
+ After the Danish sword, and thy free awe
|
|
|
+ Pays homage to us,- thou mayst not coldly set
|
|
|
+ Our sovereign process, which imports at full,
|
|
|
+ By letters congruing to that effect,
|
|
|
+ The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England;
|
|
|
+ For like the hectic in my blood he rages,
|
|
|
+ And thou must cure me. Till I know 'tis done,
|
|
|
+ Howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun. Exit.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Scene IV.
|
|
|
+Near Elsinore.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter Fortinbras with his Army over the stage.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ For. Go, Captain, from me greet the Danish king.
|
|
|
+ Tell him that by his license Fortinbras
|
|
|
+ Craves the conveyance of a promis'd march
|
|
|
+ Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.
|
|
|
+ if that his Majesty would aught with us,
|
|
|
+ We shall express our duty in his eye;
|
|
|
+ And let him know so.
|
|
|
+ Capt. I will do't, my lord.
|
|
|
+ For. Go softly on.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt [all but the Captain].
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, [Guildenstern,] and others.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. Good sir, whose powers are these?
|
|
|
+ Capt. They are of Norway, sir.
|
|
|
+ Ham. How purpos'd, sir, I pray you?
|
|
|
+ Capt. Against some part of Poland.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Who commands them, sir?
|
|
|
+ Capt. The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
|
|
|
+ Or for some frontier?
|
|
|
+ Capt. Truly to speak, and with no addition,
|
|
|
+ We go to gain a little patch of ground
|
|
|
+ That hath in it no profit but the name.
|
|
|
+ To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
|
|
|
+ Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
|
|
|
+ A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Why, then the Polack never will defend it.
|
|
|
+ Capt. Yes, it is already garrison'd.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
|
|
|
+ Will not debate the question of this straw.
|
|
|
+ This is th' imposthume of much wealth and peace,
|
|
|
+ That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
|
|
|
+ Why the man dies.- I humbly thank you, sir.
|
|
|
+ Capt. God b' wi' you, sir. [Exit.]
|
|
|
+ Ros. Will't please you go, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. I'll be with you straight. Go a little before.
|
|
|
+ [Exeunt all but Hamlet.]
|
|
|
+ How all occasions do inform against me
|
|
|
+ And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
|
|
|
+ If his chief good and market of his time
|
|
|
+ Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
|
|
|
+ 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. Now, whether it be
|
|
|
+ Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
|
|
|
+ Of thinking too precisely on th' event,-
|
|
|
+ A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
|
|
|
+ And ever three parts coward,- I do not know
|
|
|
+ Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do,'
|
|
|
+ Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
|
|
|
+ To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me.
|
|
|
+ Witness this army of such mass and charge,
|
|
|
+ Led by a delicate and tender prince,
|
|
|
+ Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff'd,
|
|
|
+ Makes mouths at the invisible event,
|
|
|
+ Exposing what is mortal and unsure
|
|
|
+ To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
|
|
|
+ Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great
|
|
|
+ Is not to stir without great argument,
|
|
|
+ But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
|
|
|
+ When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
|
|
|
+ That have a father klll'd, a mother stain'd,
|
|
|
+ Excitements of my reason and my blood,
|
|
|
+ And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
|
|
|
+ The imminent death of twenty thousand men
|
|
|
+ That for a fantasy and trick of fame
|
|
|
+ Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
|
|
|
+ Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
|
|
|
+ Which is not tomb enough and continent
|
|
|
+ To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
|
|
|
+ My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! Exit.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Scene V.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. A room in the Castle.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter Horatio, Queen, and a Gentleman.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Queen. I will not speak with her.
|
|
|
+ Gent. She is importunate, indeed distract.
|
|
|
+ Her mood will needs be pitied.
|
|
|
+ Queen. What would she have?
|
|
|
+ Gent. She speaks much of her father; says she hears
|
|
|
+ There's tricks i' th' world, and hems, and beats her heart;
|
|
|
+ Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,
|
|
|
+ That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
|
|
|
+ Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
|
|
|
+ The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
|
|
|
+ And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
|
|
|
+ Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,
|
|
|
+ Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
|
|
|
+ Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
|
|
|
+ Hor. 'Twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew
|
|
|
+ Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
|
|
|
+ Queen. Let her come in.
|
|
|
+ [Exit Gentleman.]
|
|
|
+ [Aside] To my sick soul (as sin's true nature is)
|
|
|
+ Each toy seems Prologue to some great amiss.
|
|
|
+ So full of artless jealousy is guilt
|
|
|
+ It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Ophelia distracted.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Oph. Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?
|
|
|
+ Queen. How now, Ophelia?
|
|
|
+ Oph. (sings)
|
|
|
+ How should I your true-love know
|
|
|
+ From another one?
|
|
|
+ By his cockle bat and' staff
|
|
|
+ And his sandal shoon.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Queen. Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
|
|
|
+ Oph. Say you? Nay, pray You mark.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ (Sings) He is dead and gone, lady,
|
|
|
+ He is dead and gone;
|
|
|
+ At his head a grass-green turf,
|
|
|
+ At his heels a stone.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ O, ho!
|
|
|
+ Queen. Nay, but Ophelia-
|
|
|
+ Oph. Pray you mark.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ (Sings) White his shroud as the mountain snow-
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter King.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Queen. Alas, look here, my lord!
|
|
|
+ Oph. (Sings)
|
|
|
+ Larded all with sweet flowers;
|
|
|
+ Which bewept to the grave did not go
|
|
|
+ With true-love showers.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ King. How do you, pretty lady?
|
|
|
+ Oph. Well, God dild you! They say the owl was a baker's daughter.
|
|
|
+ Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at
|
|
|
+ your table!
|
|
|
+ King. Conceit upon her father.
|
|
|
+ Oph. Pray let's have no words of this; but when they ask, you what
|
|
|
+ it means, say you this:
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ (Sings) To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
|
|
|
+ All in the morning bedtime,
|
|
|
+ And I a maid at your window,
|
|
|
+ To be your Valentine.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Then up he rose and donn'd his clo'es
|
|
|
+ And dupp'd the chamber door,
|
|
|
+ Let in the maid, that out a maid
|
|
|
+ Never departed more.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ King. Pretty Ophelia!
|
|
|
+ Oph. Indeed, la, without an oath, I'll make an end on't!
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ [Sings] By Gis and by Saint Charity,
|
|
|
+ Alack, and fie for shame!
|
|
|
+ Young men will do't if they come to't
|
|
|
+ By Cock, they are to blame.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Quoth she, 'Before you tumbled me,
|
|
|
+ You promis'd me to wed.'
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ He answers:
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ 'So would I 'a' done, by yonder sun,
|
|
|
+ An thou hadst not come to my bed.'
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ King. How long hath she been thus?
|
|
|
+ Oph. I hope all will be well. We must be patient; but I cannot
|
|
|
+ choose but weep to think they would lay him i' th' cold ground.
|
|
|
+ My brother shall know of it; and so I thank you for your good
|
|
|
+ counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies. Good night, sweet
|
|
|
+ ladies. Good night, good night. Exit
|
|
|
+ King. Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.
|
|
|
+ [Exit Horatio.]
|
|
|
+ O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
|
|
|
+ All from her father's death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
|
|
|
+ When sorrows come, they come not single spies.
|
|
|
+ But in battalions! First, her father slain;
|
|
|
+ Next, Your son gone, and he most violent author
|
|
|
+ Of his own just remove; the people muddied,
|
|
|
+ Thick and and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers
|
|
|
+ For good Polonius' death, and we have done but greenly
|
|
|
+ In hugger-mugger to inter him; Poor Ophelia
|
|
|
+ Divided from herself and her fair-judgment,
|
|
|
+ Without the which we are Pictures or mere beasts;
|
|
|
+ Last, and as such containing as all these,
|
|
|
+ Her brother is in secret come from France;
|
|
|
+ And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
|
|
|
+ Feeds on his wonder, keep, himself in clouds,
|
|
|
+ With pestilent speeches of his father's death,
|
|
|
+ Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
|
|
|
+ Will nothing stick Our person to arraign
|
|
|
+ In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
|
|
|
+ Like to a murd'ring piece, in many places
|
|
|
+ Give, me superfluous death. A noise within.
|
|
|
+ Queen. Alack, what noise is this?
|
|
|
+ King. Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter a Messenger.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ What is the matter?
|
|
|
+ Mess. Save Yourself, my lord:
|
|
|
+ The ocean, overpeering of his list,
|
|
|
+ Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
|
|
|
+ Than Young Laertes, in a riotous head,
|
|
|
+ O'erbears Your offices. The rabble call him lord;
|
|
|
+ And, as the world were now but to begin,
|
|
|
+ Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
|
|
|
+ The ratifiers and props of every word,
|
|
|
+ They cry 'Choose we! Laertes shall be king!'
|
|
|
+ Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,
|
|
|
+ 'Laertes shall be king! Laertes king!'
|
|
|
+ A noise within.
|
|
|
+ Queen. How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
|
|
|
+ O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!
|
|
|
+ King. The doors are broke.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Laertes with others.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Laer. Where is this king?- Sirs, staid you all without.
|
|
|
+ All. No, let's come in!
|
|
|
+ Laer. I pray you give me leave.
|
|
|
+ All. We will, we will!
|
|
|
+ Laer. I thank you. Keep the door. [Exeunt his Followers.]
|
|
|
+ O thou vile king,
|
|
|
+ Give me my father!
|
|
|
+ Queen. Calmly, good Laertes.
|
|
|
+ Laer. That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard;
|
|
|
+ Cries cuckold to my father; brands the harlot
|
|
|
+ Even here between the chaste unsmirched brows
|
|
|
+ Of my true mother.
|
|
|
+ King. What is the cause, Laertes,
|
|
|
+ That thy rebellion looks so giantlike?
|
|
|
+ Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.
|
|
|
+ There's such divinity doth hedge a king
|
|
|
+ That treason can but peep to what it would,
|
|
|
+ Acts little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,
|
|
|
+ Why thou art thus incens'd. Let him go, Gertrude.
|
|
|
+ Speak, man.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Where is my father?
|
|
|
+ King. Dead.
|
|
|
+ Queen. But not by him!
|
|
|
+ King. Let him demand his fill.
|
|
|
+ Laer. How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
|
|
|
+ To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil
|
|
|
+ Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
|
|
|
+ I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
|
|
|
+ That both the world, I give to negligence,
|
|
|
+ Let come what comes; only I'll be reveng'd
|
|
|
+ Most throughly for my father.
|
|
|
+ King. Who shall stay you?
|
|
|
+ Laer. My will, not all the world!
|
|
|
+ And for my means, I'll husband them so well
|
|
|
+ They shall go far with little.
|
|
|
+ King. Good Laertes,
|
|
|
+ If you desire to know the certainty
|
|
|
+ Of your dear father's death, is't writ in Your revenge
|
|
|
+ That swoopstake you will draw both friend and foe,
|
|
|
+ Winner and loser?
|
|
|
+ Laer. None but his enemies.
|
|
|
+ King. Will you know them then?
|
|
|
+ Laer. To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms
|
|
|
+ And, like the kind life-rend'ring pelican,
|
|
|
+ Repast them with my blood.
|
|
|
+ King. Why, now You speak
|
|
|
+ Like a good child and a true gentleman.
|
|
|
+ That I am guiltless of your father's death,
|
|
|
+ And am most sensibly in grief for it,
|
|
|
+ It shall as level to your judgment pierce
|
|
|
+ As day does to your eye.
|
|
|
+ A noise within: 'Let her come in.'
|
|
|
+ Laer. How now? What noise is that?
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Ophelia.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ O heat, dry up my brains! Tears seven times salt
|
|
|
+ Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
|
|
|
+ By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight
|
|
|
+ Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
|
|
|
+ Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
|
|
|
+ O heavens! is't possible a young maid's wits
|
|
|
+ Should be as mortal as an old man's life?
|
|
|
+ Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine,
|
|
|
+ It sends some precious instance of itself
|
|
|
+ After the thing it loves.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Oph. (sings)
|
|
|
+ They bore him barefac'd on the bier
|
|
|
+ (Hey non nony, nony, hey nony)
|
|
|
+ And in his grave rain'd many a tear.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Fare you well, my dove!
|
|
|
+ Laer. Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
|
|
|
+ It could not move thus.
|
|
|
+ Oph. You must sing 'A-down a-down, and you call him a-down-a.' O,
|
|
|
+ how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that stole his
|
|
|
+ master's daughter.
|
|
|
+ Laer. This nothing's more than matter.
|
|
|
+ Oph. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love,
|
|
|
+ remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts.
|
|
|
+ Laer. A document in madness! Thoughts and remembrance fitted.
|
|
|
+ Oph. There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you,
|
|
|
+ and here's some for me. We may call it herb of grace o' Sundays.
|
|
|
+ O, you must wear your rue with a difference! There's a daisy. I
|
|
|
+ would give you some violets, but they wither'd all when my father
|
|
|
+ died. They say he made a good end.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ [Sings] For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Laer. Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
|
|
|
+ She turns to favour and to prettiness.
|
|
|
+ Oph. (sings)
|
|
|
+ And will he not come again?
|
|
|
+ And will he not come again?
|
|
|
+ No, no, he is dead;
|
|
|
+ Go to thy deathbed;
|
|
|
+ He never will come again.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ His beard was as white as snow,
|
|
|
+ All flaxen was his poll.
|
|
|
+ He is gone, he is gone,
|
|
|
+ And we cast away moan.
|
|
|
+ God 'a'mercy on his soul!
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God b' wi', you.
|
|
|
+Exit.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Do you see this, O God?
|
|
|
+ King. Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
|
|
|
+ Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
|
|
|
+ Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
|
|
|
+ And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me.
|
|
|
+ If by direct or by collateral hand
|
|
|
+ They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give,
|
|
|
+ Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
|
|
|
+ To you in satisfaction; but if not,
|
|
|
+ Be you content to lend your patience to us,
|
|
|
+ And we shall jointly labour with your soul
|
|
|
+ To give it due content.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Let this be so.
|
|
|
+ His means of death, his obscure funeral-
|
|
|
+ No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
|
|
|
+ No noble rite nor formal ostentation,-
|
|
|
+ Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
|
|
|
+ That I must call't in question.
|
|
|
+ King. So you shall;
|
|
|
+ And where th' offence is let the great axe fall.
|
|
|
+ I pray you go with me.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Scene VI.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. Another room in the Castle.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter Horatio with an Attendant.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Hor. What are they that would speak with me?
|
|
|
+ Servant. Seafaring men, sir. They say they have letters for you.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Let them come in.
|
|
|
+ [Exit Attendant.]
|
|
|
+ I do not know from what part of the world
|
|
|
+ I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Sailors.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Sailor. God bless you, sir.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Let him bless thee too.
|
|
|
+ Sailor. 'A shall, sir, an't please him. There's a letter for you,
|
|
|
+ sir,- it comes from th' ambassador that was bound for England- if
|
|
|
+ your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is.
|
|
|
+ Hor. (reads the letter) 'Horatio, when thou shalt have overlook'd
|
|
|
+ this, give these fellows some means to the King. They have
|
|
|
+ letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of
|
|
|
+ very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too
|
|
|
+ slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour, and in the grapple I
|
|
|
+ boarded them. On the instant they got clear of our ship; so I
|
|
|
+ alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves
|
|
|
+ of mercy; but they knew what they did: I am to do a good turn for
|
|
|
+ them. Let the King have the letters I have sent, and repair thou
|
|
|
+ to me with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death. I have words
|
|
|
+ to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are they much too
|
|
|
+ light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows will bring
|
|
|
+ thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course
|
|
|
+ for England. Of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell.
|
|
|
+ 'He that thou knowest thine, HAMLET.'
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Come, I will give you way for these your letters,
|
|
|
+ And do't the speedier that you may direct me
|
|
|
+ To him from whom you brought them. Exeunt.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Scene VII.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. Another room in the Castle.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter King and Laertes.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ King. Now must your conscience my acquittance seal,
|
|
|
+ And You must put me in your heart for friend,
|
|
|
+ Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
|
|
|
+ That he which hath your noble father slain
|
|
|
+ Pursued my life.
|
|
|
+ Laer. It well appears. But tell me
|
|
|
+ Why you proceeded not against these feats
|
|
|
+ So crimeful and so capital in nature,
|
|
|
+ As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
|
|
|
+ You mainly were stirr'd up.
|
|
|
+ King. O, for two special reasons,
|
|
|
+ Which may to you, perhaps, seein much unsinew'd,
|
|
|
+ But yet to me they are strong. The Queen his mother
|
|
|
+ Lives almost by his looks; and for myself,-
|
|
|
+ My virtue or my plague, be it either which,-
|
|
|
+ She's so conjunctive to my life and soul
|
|
|
+ That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
|
|
|
+ I could not but by her. The other motive
|
|
|
+ Why to a public count I might not go
|
|
|
+ Is the great love the general gender bear him,
|
|
|
+ Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
|
|
|
+ Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
|
|
|
+ Convert his gives to graces; so that my arrows,
|
|
|
+ Too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind,
|
|
|
+ Would have reverted to my bow again,
|
|
|
+ And not where I had aim'd them.
|
|
|
+ Laer. And so have I a noble father lost;
|
|
|
+ A sister driven into desp'rate terms,
|
|
|
+ Whose worth, if praises may go back again,
|
|
|
+ Stood challenger on mount of all the age
|
|
|
+ For her perfections. But my revenge will come.
|
|
|
+ King. Break not your sleeps for that. You must not think
|
|
|
+ That we are made of stuff so flat and dull
|
|
|
+ That we can let our beard be shook with danger,
|
|
|
+ And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more.
|
|
|
+ I lov'd your father, and we love ourself,
|
|
|
+ And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine-
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter a Messenger with letters.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ How now? What news?
|
|
|
+ Mess. Letters, my lord, from Hamlet:
|
|
|
+ This to your Majesty; this to the Queen.
|
|
|
+ King. From Hamlet? Who brought them?
|
|
|
+ Mess. Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not.
|
|
|
+ They were given me by Claudio; he receiv'd them
|
|
|
+ Of him that brought them.
|
|
|
+ King. Laertes, you shall hear them.
|
|
|
+ Leave us.
|
|
|
+ Exit Messenger.
|
|
|
+ [Reads]'High and Mighty,-You shall know I am set naked on your
|
|
|
+ kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes;
|
|
|
+ when I shall (first asking your pardon thereunto) recount the
|
|
|
+ occasion of my sudden and more strange return.
|
|
|
+ 'HAMLET.'
|
|
|
+ What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
|
|
|
+ Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?
|
|
|
+ Laer. Know you the hand?
|
|
|
+ King. 'Tis Hamlet's character. 'Naked!'
|
|
|
+ And in a postscript here, he says 'alone.'
|
|
|
+ Can you advise me?
|
|
|
+ Laer. I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come!
|
|
|
+ It warms the very sickness in my heart
|
|
|
+ That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,
|
|
|
+ 'Thus didest thou.'
|
|
|
+ King. If it be so, Laertes
|
|
|
+ (As how should it be so? how otherwise?),
|
|
|
+ Will you be rul'd by me?
|
|
|
+ Laer. Ay my lord,
|
|
|
+ So you will not o'errule me to a peace.
|
|
|
+ King. To thine own peace. If he be now return'd
|
|
|
+ As checking at his voyage, and that he means
|
|
|
+ No more to undertake it, I will work him
|
|
|
+ To exploit now ripe in my device,
|
|
|
+ Under the which he shall not choose but fall;
|
|
|
+ And for his death no wind
|
|
|
+ But even his mother shall uncharge the practice
|
|
|
+ And call it accident.
|
|
|
+ Laer. My lord, I will be rul'd;
|
|
|
+ The rather, if you could devise it so
|
|
|
+ That I might be the organ.
|
|
|
+ King. It falls right.
|
|
|
+ You have been talk'd of since your travel much,
|
|
|
+ And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality
|
|
|
+ Wherein they say you shine, Your sun of parts
|
|
|
+ Did not together pluck such envy from him
|
|
|
+ As did that one; and that, in my regard,
|
|
|
+ Of the unworthiest siege.
|
|
|
+ Laer. What part is that, my lord?
|
|
|
+ King. A very riband in the cap of youth-
|
|
|
+ Yet needfull too; for youth no less becomes
|
|
|
+ The light and careless livery that it wears
|
|
|
+ Thin settled age his sables and his weeds,
|
|
|
+ Importing health and graveness. Two months since
|
|
|
+ Here was a gentleman of Normandy.
|
|
|
+ I have seen myself, and serv'd against, the French,
|
|
|
+ And they can well on horseback; but this gallant
|
|
|
+ Had witchcraft in't. He grew unto his seat,
|
|
|
+ And to such wondrous doing brought his horse
|
|
|
+ As had he been incorps'd and demi-natur'd
|
|
|
+ With the brave beast. So far he topp'd my thought
|
|
|
+ That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,
|
|
|
+ Come short of what he did.
|
|
|
+ Laer. A Norman was't?
|
|
|
+ King. A Norman.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Upon my life, Lamound.
|
|
|
+ King. The very same.
|
|
|
+ Laer. I know him well. He is the broach indeed
|
|
|
+ And gem of all the nation.
|
|
|
+ King. He made confession of you;
|
|
|
+ And gave you such a masterly report
|
|
|
+ For art and exercise in your defence,
|
|
|
+ And for your rapier most especially,
|
|
|
+ That he cried out 'twould be a sight indeed
|
|
|
+ If one could match you. The scrimers of their nation
|
|
|
+ He swore had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
|
|
|
+ If you oppos'd them. Sir, this report of his
|
|
|
+ Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy
|
|
|
+ That he could nothing do but wish and beg
|
|
|
+ Your sudden coming o'er to play with you.
|
|
|
+ Now, out of this-
|
|
|
+ Laer. What out of this, my lord?
|
|
|
+ King. Laertes, was your father dear to you?
|
|
|
+ Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
|
|
|
+ A face without a heart,'
|
|
|
+ Laer. Why ask you this?
|
|
|
+ King. Not that I think you did not love your father;
|
|
|
+ But that I know love is begun by time,
|
|
|
+ And that I see, in passages of proof,
|
|
|
+ Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
|
|
|
+ There lives within the very flame of love
|
|
|
+ A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
|
|
|
+ And nothing is at a like goodness still;
|
|
|
+ For goodness, growing to a plurisy,
|
|
|
+ Dies in his own too-much. That we would do,
|
|
|
+ We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes,
|
|
|
+ And hath abatements and delays as many
|
|
|
+ As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
|
|
|
+ And then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh,
|
|
|
+ That hurts by easing. But to the quick o' th' ulcer!
|
|
|
+ Hamlet comes back. What would you undertake
|
|
|
+ To show yourself your father's son in deed
|
|
|
+ More than in words?
|
|
|
+ Laer. To cut his throat i' th' church!
|
|
|
+ King. No place indeed should murther sanctuarize;
|
|
|
+ Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,
|
|
|
+ Will you do this? Keep close within your chamber.
|
|
|
+ Will return'd shall know you are come home.
|
|
|
+ We'll put on those shall praise your excellence
|
|
|
+ And set a double varnish on the fame
|
|
|
+ The Frenchman gave you; bring you in fine together
|
|
|
+ And wager on your heads. He, being remiss,
|
|
|
+ Most generous, and free from all contriving,
|
|
|
+ Will not peruse the foils; so that with ease,
|
|
|
+ Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
|
|
|
+ A sword unbated, and, in a pass of practice,
|
|
|
+ Requite him for your father.
|
|
|
+ Laer. I will do't!
|
|
|
+ And for that purpose I'll anoint my sword.
|
|
|
+ I bought an unction of a mountebank,
|
|
|
+ So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
|
|
|
+ Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
|
|
|
+ Collected from all simples that have virtue
|
|
|
+ Under the moon, can save the thing from death
|
|
|
+ This is but scratch'd withal. I'll touch my point
|
|
|
+ With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
|
|
|
+ It may be death.
|
|
|
+ King. Let's further think of this,
|
|
|
+ Weigh what convenience both of time and means
|
|
|
+ May fit us to our shape. If this should fall,
|
|
|
+ And that our drift look through our bad performance.
|
|
|
+ 'Twere better not assay'd. Therefore this project
|
|
|
+ Should have a back or second, that might hold
|
|
|
+ If this did blast in proof. Soft! let me see.
|
|
|
+ We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings-
|
|
|
+ I ha't!
|
|
|
+ When in your motion you are hot and dry-
|
|
|
+ As make your bouts more violent to that end-
|
|
|
+ And that he calls for drink, I'll have prepar'd him
|
|
|
+ A chalice for the nonce; whereon but sipping,
|
|
|
+ If he by chance escape your venom'd stuck,
|
|
|
+ Our purpose may hold there.- But stay, what noise,
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Queen.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ How now, sweet queen?
|
|
|
+ Queen. One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
|
|
|
+ So fast they follow. Your sister's drown'd, Laertes.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Drown'd! O, where?
|
|
|
+ Queen. There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
|
|
|
+ That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
|
|
|
+ There with fantastic garlands did she come
|
|
|
+ Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
|
|
|
+ That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
|
|
|
+ But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
|
|
|
+ There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
|
|
|
+ Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
|
|
|
+ When down her weedy trophies and herself
|
|
|
+ Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide
|
|
|
+ And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;
|
|
|
+ Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes,
|
|
|
+ As one incapable of her own distress,
|
|
|
+ Or like a creature native and indued
|
|
|
+ Unto that element; but long it could not be
|
|
|
+ Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
|
|
|
+ Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
|
|
|
+ To muddy death.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Alas, then she is drown'd?
|
|
|
+ Queen. Drown'd, drown'd.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
|
|
|
+ And therefore I forbid my tears; but yet
|
|
|
+ It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
|
|
|
+ Let shame say what it will. When these are gone,
|
|
|
+ The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord.
|
|
|
+ I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze
|
|
|
+ But that this folly douts it. Exit.
|
|
|
+ King. Let's follow, Gertrude.
|
|
|
+ How much I had to do to calm his rage I
|
|
|
+ Now fear I this will give it start again;
|
|
|
+ Therefore let's follow.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ACT V. Scene I.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. A churchyard.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter two Clowns, [with spades and pickaxes].
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Clown. Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she wilfully
|
|
|
+ seeks her own salvation?
|
|
|
+ Other. I tell thee she is; therefore make her grave straight.
|
|
|
+ The crowner hath sate on her, and finds it Christian burial.
|
|
|
+ Clown. How can that be, unless she drown'd herself in her own
|
|
|
+ defence?
|
|
|
+ Other. Why, 'tis found so.
|
|
|
+ Clown. It must be se offendendo; it cannot be else. For here lies
|
|
|
+ the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act; and an
|
|
|
+ act hath three branches-it is to act, to do, and to perform;
|
|
|
+ argal, she drown'd herself wittingly.
|
|
|
+ Other. Nay, but hear you, Goodman Delver!
|
|
|
+ Clown. Give me leave. Here lies the water; good. Here stands the
|
|
|
+ man; good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is,
|
|
|
+ will he nill he, he goes- mark you that. But if the water come to
|
|
|
+ him and drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not
|
|
|
+ guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.
|
|
|
+ Other. But is this law?
|
|
|
+ Clown. Ay, marry, is't- crowner's quest law.
|
|
|
+ Other. Will you ha' the truth an't? If this had not been a
|
|
|
+ gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o' Christian burial.
|
|
|
+ Clown. Why, there thou say'st! And the more pity that great folk
|
|
|
+ should have count'nance in this world to drown or hang themselves
|
|
|
+ more than their even-Christen. Come, my spade! There is no
|
|
|
+ ancient gentlemen but gard'ners, ditchers, and grave-makers. They
|
|
|
+ hold up Adam's profession.
|
|
|
+ Other. Was he a gentleman?
|
|
|
+ Clown. 'A was the first that ever bore arms.
|
|
|
+ Other. Why, he had none.
|
|
|
+ Clown. What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture?
|
|
|
+ The Scripture says Adam digg'd. Could he dig without arms? I'll
|
|
|
+ put another question to thee. If thou answerest me not to the
|
|
|
+ purpose, confess thyself-
|
|
|
+ Other. Go to!
|
|
|
+ Clown. What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the
|
|
|
+ shipwright, or the carpenter?
|
|
|
+ Other. The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand
|
|
|
+ tenants.
|
|
|
+ Clown. I like thy wit well, in good faith. The gallows does well.
|
|
|
+ But how does it well? It does well to those that do ill. Now,
|
|
|
+ thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the
|
|
|
+ church. Argal, the gallows may do well to thee. To't again, come!
|
|
|
+ Other. Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a
|
|
|
+ carpenter?
|
|
|
+ Clown. Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.
|
|
|
+ Other. Marry, now I can tell!
|
|
|
+ Clown. To't.
|
|
|
+ Other. Mass, I cannot tell.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Hamlet and Horatio afar off.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Clown. Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will
|
|
|
+ not mend his pace with beating; and when you are ask'd this
|
|
|
+ question next, say 'a grave-maker.' The houses he makes lasts
|
|
|
+ till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan; fetch me a stoup of
|
|
|
+ liquor.
|
|
|
+ [Exit Second Clown.]
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ [Clown digs and] sings.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ In youth when I did love, did love,
|
|
|
+ Methought it was very sweet;
|
|
|
+ To contract- O- the time for- a- my behove,
|
|
|
+ O, methought there- a- was nothing- a- meet.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at
|
|
|
+ grave-making?
|
|
|
+ Hor. Custom hath made it in him a Property of easiness.
|
|
|
+ Ham. 'Tis e'en so. The hand of little employment hath the daintier
|
|
|
+ sense.
|
|
|
+ Clown. (sings)
|
|
|
+ But age with his stealing steps
|
|
|
+ Hath clawed me in his clutch,
|
|
|
+ And hath shipped me intil the land,
|
|
|
+ As if I had never been such.
|
|
|
+ [Throws up a skull.]
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the
|
|
|
+ knave jowls it to the ground,as if 'twere Cain's jawbone, that
|
|
|
+ did the first murther! This might be the pate of a Politician,
|
|
|
+ which this ass now o'erreaches; one that would circumvent God,
|
|
|
+ might it not?
|
|
|
+ Hor. It might, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Or of a courtier, which could say 'Good morrow, sweet lord!
|
|
|
+ How dost thou, good lord?' This might be my Lord Such-a-one, that
|
|
|
+ prais'd my Lord Such-a-one's horse when he meant to beg it- might
|
|
|
+ it not?
|
|
|
+ Hor. Ay, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Why, e'en so! and now my Lady Worm's, chapless, and knock'd
|
|
|
+ about the mazzard with a sexton's spade. Here's fine revolution,
|
|
|
+ and we had the trick to see't. Did these bones cost no more the
|
|
|
+ breeding but to play at loggets with 'em? Mine ache to think
|
|
|
+ on't.
|
|
|
+ Clown. (Sings)
|
|
|
+ A pickaxe and a spade, a spade,
|
|
|
+ For and a shrouding sheet;
|
|
|
+ O, a Pit of clay for to be made
|
|
|
+ For such a guest is meet.
|
|
|
+ Throws up [another skull].
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. There's another. Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer?
|
|
|
+ Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures,
|
|
|
+ and his tricks? Why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock
|
|
|
+ him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him
|
|
|
+ of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in's time a
|
|
|
+ great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his
|
|
|
+ fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries. Is this the fine of
|
|
|
+ his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine
|
|
|
+ pate full of fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of
|
|
|
+ his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth
|
|
|
+ of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will
|
|
|
+ scarcely lie in this box; and must th' inheritor himself have no
|
|
|
+ more, ha?
|
|
|
+ Hor. Not a jot more, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Is not parchment made of sheepskins?
|
|
|
+ Hor. Ay, my lord, And of calveskins too.
|
|
|
+ Ham. They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I
|
|
|
+ will speak to this fellow. Whose grave's this, sirrah?
|
|
|
+ Clown. Mine, sir.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ [Sings] O, a pit of clay for to be made
|
|
|
+ For such a guest is meet.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in't.
|
|
|
+ Clown. You lie out on't, sir, and therefore 'tis not yours.
|
|
|
+ For my part, I do not lie in't, yet it is mine.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Thou dost lie in't, to be in't and say it is thine. 'Tis for
|
|
|
+ the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.
|
|
|
+ Clown. 'Tis a quick lie, sir; 'twill away again from me to you.
|
|
|
+ Ham. What man dost thou dig it for?
|
|
|
+ Clown. For no man, sir.
|
|
|
+ Ham. What woman then?
|
|
|
+ Clown. For none neither.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Who is to be buried in't?
|
|
|
+ Clown. One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she's dead.
|
|
|
+ Ham. How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or
|
|
|
+ equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, this three years
|
|
|
+ I have taken note of it, the age is grown so picked that the toe
|
|
|
+ of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls
|
|
|
+ his kibe.- How long hast thou been a grave-maker?
|
|
|
+ Clown. Of all the days i' th' year, I came to't that day that our
|
|
|
+ last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.
|
|
|
+ Ham. How long is that since?
|
|
|
+ Clown. Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that. It was the
|
|
|
+ very day that young Hamlet was born- he that is mad, and sent
|
|
|
+ into England.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Ay, marry, why was be sent into England?
|
|
|
+ Clown. Why, because 'a was mad. 'A shall recover his wits there;
|
|
|
+ or, if 'a do not, 'tis no great matter there.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Why?
|
|
|
+ Clown. 'Twill not he seen in him there. There the men are as mad as
|
|
|
+ he.
|
|
|
+ Ham. How came he mad?
|
|
|
+ Clown. Very strangely, they say.
|
|
|
+ Ham. How strangely?
|
|
|
+ Clown. Faith, e'en with losing his wits.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Upon what ground?
|
|
|
+ Clown. Why, here in Denmark. I have been sexton here, man and boy
|
|
|
+ thirty years.
|
|
|
+ Ham. How long will a man lie i' th' earth ere he rot?
|
|
|
+ Clown. Faith, if 'a be not rotten before 'a die (as we have many
|
|
|
+ pocky corses now-a-days that will scarce hold the laying in, I
|
|
|
+ will last you some eight year or nine year. A tanner will last
|
|
|
+ you nine year.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Why he more than another?
|
|
|
+ Clown. Why, sir, his hide is so tann'd with his trade that 'a will
|
|
|
+ keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of
|
|
|
+ your whoreson dead body. Here's a skull now. This skull hath lien
|
|
|
+ you i' th' earth three-and-twenty years.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Whose was it?
|
|
|
+ Clown. A whoreson, mad fellow's it was. Whose do you think it was?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Nay, I know not.
|
|
|
+ Clown. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! 'A pour'd a flagon of
|
|
|
+ Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick's
|
|
|
+ skull, the King's jester.
|
|
|
+ Ham. This?
|
|
|
+ Clown. E'en that.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Let me see. [Takes the skull.] Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him,
|
|
|
+ Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He
|
|
|
+ hath borne me on his back a thousand tunes. And now how abhorred
|
|
|
+ in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those
|
|
|
+ lips that I have kiss'd I know not how oft. Where be your gibes
|
|
|
+ now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that
|
|
|
+ were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your
|
|
|
+ own grinning? Quite chap- fall'n? Now get you to my lady's
|
|
|
+ chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this
|
|
|
+ favour she must come. Make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio,
|
|
|
+ tell me one thing.
|
|
|
+ Hor. What's that, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Dost thou think Alexander look'd o' this fashion i' th' earth?
|
|
|
+ Hor. E'en so.
|
|
|
+ Ham. And smelt so? Pah!
|
|
|
+ [Puts down the skull.]
|
|
|
+ Hor. E'en so, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not
|
|
|
+ imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it
|
|
|
+ stopping a bunghole?
|
|
|
+ Hor. 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.
|
|
|
+ Ham. No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty
|
|
|
+ enough, and likelihood to lead it; as thus: Alexander died,
|
|
|
+ Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is
|
|
|
+ earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam (whereto he
|
|
|
+ was converted) might they not stop a beer barrel?
|
|
|
+ Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
|
|
|
+ Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
|
|
|
+ O, that that earth which kept the world in awe
|
|
|
+ Should patch a wall t' expel the winter's flaw!
|
|
|
+ But soft! but soft! aside! Here comes the King-
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter [priests with] a coffin [in funeral procession], King,
|
|
|
+ Queen, Laertes, with Lords attendant.]
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ The Queen, the courtiers. Who is this they follow?
|
|
|
+ And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken
|
|
|
+ The corse they follow did with desp'rate hand
|
|
|
+ Fordo it own life. 'Twas of some estate.
|
|
|
+ Couch we awhile, and mark.
|
|
|
+ [Retires with Horatio.]
|
|
|
+ Laer. What ceremony else?
|
|
|
+ Ham. That is Laertes,
|
|
|
+ A very noble youth. Mark.
|
|
|
+ Laer. What ceremony else?
|
|
|
+ Priest. Her obsequies have been as far enlarg'd
|
|
|
+ As we have warranty. Her death was doubtful;
|
|
|
+ And, but that great command o'ersways the order,
|
|
|
+ She should in ground unsanctified have lodg'd
|
|
|
+ Till the last trumpet. For charitable prayers,
|
|
|
+ Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.
|
|
|
+ Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants,
|
|
|
+ Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home
|
|
|
+ Of bell and burial.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Must there no more be done?
|
|
|
+ Priest. No more be done.
|
|
|
+ We should profane the service of the dead
|
|
|
+ To sing a requiem and such rest to her
|
|
|
+ As to peace-parted souls.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Lay her i' th' earth;
|
|
|
+ And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
|
|
|
+ May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
|
|
|
+ A minist'ring angel shall my sister be
|
|
|
+ When thou liest howling.
|
|
|
+ Ham. What, the fair Ophelia?
|
|
|
+ Queen. Sweets to the sweet! Farewell.
|
|
|
+ [Scatters flowers.]
|
|
|
+ I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;
|
|
|
+ I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
|
|
|
+ And not have strew'd thy grave.
|
|
|
+ Laer. O, treble woe
|
|
|
+ Fall ten times treble on that cursed head
|
|
|
+ Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense
|
|
|
+ Depriv'd thee of! Hold off the earth awhile,
|
|
|
+ Till I have caught her once more in mine arms.
|
|
|
+ Leaps in the grave.
|
|
|
+ Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead
|
|
|
+ Till of this flat a mountain you have made
|
|
|
+ T' o'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head
|
|
|
+ Of blue Olympus.
|
|
|
+ Ham. [comes forward] What is he whose grief
|
|
|
+ Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow
|
|
|
+ Conjures the wand'ring stars, and makes them stand
|
|
|
+ Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,
|
|
|
+ Hamlet the Dane. [Leaps in after Laertes.
|
|
|
+ Laer. The devil take thy soul!
|
|
|
+ [Grapples with him].
|
|
|
+ Ham. Thou pray'st not well.
|
|
|
+ I prithee take thy fingers from my throat;
|
|
|
+ For, though I am not splenitive and rash,
|
|
|
+ Yet have I in me something dangerous,
|
|
|
+ Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand!
|
|
|
+ King. Pluck thein asunder.
|
|
|
+ Queen. Hamlet, Hamlet!
|
|
|
+ All. Gentlemen!
|
|
|
+ Hor. Good my lord, be quiet.
|
|
|
+ [The Attendants part them, and they come out of the
|
|
|
+ grave.]
|
|
|
+ Ham. Why, I will fight with him upon this theme
|
|
|
+ Until my eyelids will no longer wag.
|
|
|
+ Queen. O my son, what theme?
|
|
|
+ Ham. I lov'd Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers
|
|
|
+ Could not (with all their quantity of love)
|
|
|
+ Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?
|
|
|
+ King. O, he is mad, Laertes.
|
|
|
+ Queen. For love of God, forbear him!
|
|
|
+ Ham. 'Swounds, show me what thou't do.
|
|
|
+ Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself?
|
|
|
+ Woo't drink up esill? eat a crocodile?
|
|
|
+ I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine?
|
|
|
+ To outface me with leaping in her grave?
|
|
|
+ Be buried quick with her, and so will I.
|
|
|
+ And if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
|
|
|
+ Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
|
|
|
+ Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
|
|
|
+ Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
|
|
|
+ I'll rant as well as thou.
|
|
|
+ Queen. This is mere madness;
|
|
|
+ And thus a while the fit will work on him.
|
|
|
+ Anon, as patient as the female dove
|
|
|
+ When that her golden couplets are disclos'd,
|
|
|
+ His silence will sit drooping.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Hear you, sir!
|
|
|
+ What is the reason that you use me thus?
|
|
|
+ I lov'd you ever. But it is no matter.
|
|
|
+ Let Hercules himself do what he may,
|
|
|
+ The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.
|
|
|
+Exit.
|
|
|
+ King. I pray thee, good Horatio, wait upon him.
|
|
|
+ Exit Horatio.
|
|
|
+ [To Laertes] Strengthen your patience in our last night's speech.
|
|
|
+ We'll put the matter to the present push.-
|
|
|
+ Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.-
|
|
|
+ This grave shall have a living monument.
|
|
|
+ An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;
|
|
|
+ Till then in patience our proceeding be.
|
|
|
+ Exeunt.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Scene II.
|
|
|
+Elsinore. A hall in the Castle.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Enter Hamlet and Horatio.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Ham. So much for this, sir; now shall you see the other.
|
|
|
+ You do remember all the circumstance?
|
|
|
+ Hor. Remember it, my lord!
|
|
|
+ Ham. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
|
|
|
+ That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay
|
|
|
+ Worse than the mutinies in the bilboes. Rashly-
|
|
|
+ And prais'd be rashness for it; let us know,
|
|
|
+ Our indiscretion sometime serves us well
|
|
|
+ When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us
|
|
|
+ There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
|
|
|
+ Rough-hew them how we will-
|
|
|
+ Hor. That is most certain.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Up from my cabin,
|
|
|
+ My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark
|
|
|
+ Grop'd I to find out them; had my desire,
|
|
|
+ Finger'd their packet, and in fine withdrew
|
|
|
+ To mine own room again; making so bold
|
|
|
+ (My fears forgetting manners) to unseal
|
|
|
+ Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio
|
|
|
+ (O royal knavery!), an exact command,
|
|
|
+ Larded with many several sorts of reasons,
|
|
|
+ Importing Denmark's health, and England's too,
|
|
|
+ With, hoo! such bugs and goblins in my life-
|
|
|
+ That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,
|
|
|
+ No, not to stay the finding of the axe,
|
|
|
+ My head should be struck off.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Is't possible?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Here's the commission; read it at more leisure.
|
|
|
+ But wilt thou bear me how I did proceed?
|
|
|
+ Hor. I beseech you.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Being thus benetted round with villanies,
|
|
|
+ Or I could make a prologue to my brains,
|
|
|
+ They had begun the play. I sat me down;
|
|
|
+ Devis'd a new commission; wrote it fair.
|
|
|
+ I once did hold it, as our statists do,
|
|
|
+ A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much
|
|
|
+ How to forget that learning; but, sir, now
|
|
|
+ It did me yeoman's service. Wilt thou know
|
|
|
+ Th' effect of what I wrote?
|
|
|
+ Hor. Ay, good my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. An earnest conjuration from the King,
|
|
|
+ As England was his faithful tributary,
|
|
|
+ As love between them like the palm might flourish,
|
|
|
+ As peace should still her wheaten garland wear
|
|
|
+ And stand a comma 'tween their amities,
|
|
|
+ And many such-like as's of great charge,
|
|
|
+ That, on the view and knowing of these contents,
|
|
|
+ Without debatement further, more or less,
|
|
|
+ He should the bearers put to sudden death,
|
|
|
+ Not shriving time allow'd.
|
|
|
+ Hor. How was this seal'd?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.
|
|
|
+ I had my father's signet in my purse,
|
|
|
+ which was the model of that Danish seal;
|
|
|
+ Folded the writ up in the form of th' other,
|
|
|
+ Subscrib'd it, gave't th' impression, plac'd it safely,
|
|
|
+ The changeling never known. Now, the next day
|
|
|
+ Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent
|
|
|
+ Thou know'st already.
|
|
|
+ Hor. So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to't.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Why, man, they did make love to this employment!
|
|
|
+ They are not near my conscience; their defeat
|
|
|
+ Does by their own insinuation grow.
|
|
|
+ 'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
|
|
|
+ Between the pass and fell incensed points
|
|
|
+ Of mighty opposites.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Why, what a king is this!
|
|
|
+ Ham. Does it not, thinks't thee, stand me now upon-
|
|
|
+ He that hath kill'd my king, and whor'd my mother;
|
|
|
+ Popp'd in between th' election and my hopes;
|
|
|
+ Thrown out his angle for my Proper life,
|
|
|
+ And with such coz'nage- is't not perfect conscience
|
|
|
+ To quit him with this arm? And is't not to be damn'd
|
|
|
+ To let this canker of our nature come
|
|
|
+ In further evil?
|
|
|
+ Hor. It must be shortly known to him from England
|
|
|
+ What is the issue of the business there.
|
|
|
+ Ham. It will be short; the interim is mine,
|
|
|
+ And a man's life is no more than to say 'one.'
|
|
|
+ But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
|
|
|
+ That to Laertes I forgot myself,
|
|
|
+ For by the image of my cause I see
|
|
|
+ The portraiture of his. I'll court his favours.
|
|
|
+ But sure the bravery of his grief did put me
|
|
|
+ Into a tow'ring passion.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Peace! Who comes here?
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter young Osric, a courtier.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Osr. Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I humbly thank you, sir. [Aside to Horatio] Dost know this
|
|
|
+ waterfly?
|
|
|
+ Hor. [aside to Hamlet] No, my good lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. [aside to Horatio] Thy state is the more gracious; for 'tis a
|
|
|
+ vice to know him. He hath much land, and fertile. Let a beast be
|
|
|
+ lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's mess. 'Tis
|
|
|
+ a chough; but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.
|
|
|
+ Osr. Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should impart
|
|
|
+ a thing to you from his Majesty.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of spirit. Put your
|
|
|
+ bonnet to his right use. 'Tis for the head.
|
|
|
+ Osr. I thank your lordship, it is very hot.
|
|
|
+ Ham. No, believe me, 'tis very cold; the wind is northerly.
|
|
|
+ Osr. It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.
|
|
|
+ Ham. But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my complexion.
|
|
|
+ Osr. Exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry, as 'twere- I cannot
|
|
|
+ tell how. But, my lord, his Majesty bade me signify to you that
|
|
|
+ he has laid a great wager on your head. Sir, this is the matter-
|
|
|
+ Ham. I beseech you remember.
|
|
|
+ [Hamlet moves him to put on his hat.]
|
|
|
+ Osr. Nay, good my lord; for mine ease, in good faith. Sir, here is
|
|
|
+ newly come to court Laertes; believe me, an absolute gentleman,
|
|
|
+ full of most excellent differences, of very soft society and
|
|
|
+ great showing. Indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the card
|
|
|
+ or calendar of gentry; for you shall find in him the continent of
|
|
|
+ what part a gentleman would see.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; though, I
|
|
|
+ know, to divide him inventorially would dozy th' arithmetic of
|
|
|
+ memory, and yet but yaw neither in respect of his quick sail.
|
|
|
+ But, in the verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great
|
|
|
+ article, and his infusion of such dearth and rareness as, to make
|
|
|
+ true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror, and who else
|
|
|
+ would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more.
|
|
|
+ Osr. Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him.
|
|
|
+ Ham. The concernancy, sir? Why do we wrap the gentleman in our more
|
|
|
+ rawer breath
|
|
|
+ Osr. Sir?
|
|
|
+ Hor [aside to Hamlet] Is't not possible to understand in another
|
|
|
+ tongue? You will do't, sir, really.
|
|
|
+ Ham. What imports the nomination of this gentleman
|
|
|
+ Osr. Of Laertes?
|
|
|
+ Hor. [aside] His purse is empty already. All's golden words are
|
|
|
+ spent.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Of him, sir.
|
|
|
+ Osr. I know you are not ignorant-
|
|
|
+ Ham. I would you did, sir; yet, in faith, if you did, it would not
|
|
|
+ much approve me. Well, sir?
|
|
|
+ Osr. You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is-
|
|
|
+ Ham. I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with him in
|
|
|
+ excellence; but to know a man well were to know himself.
|
|
|
+ Osr. I mean, sir, for his weapon; but in the imputation laid on him
|
|
|
+ by them, in his meed he's unfellowed.
|
|
|
+ Ham. What's his weapon?
|
|
|
+ Osr. Rapier and dagger.
|
|
|
+ Ham. That's two of his weapons- but well.
|
|
|
+ Osr. The King, sir, hath wager'd with him six Barbary horses;
|
|
|
+ against the which he has impon'd, as I take it, six French
|
|
|
+ rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdle, hangers, and
|
|
|
+ so. Three of the carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy,
|
|
|
+ very responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and of
|
|
|
+ very liberal conceit.
|
|
|
+ Ham. What call you the carriages?
|
|
|
+ Hor. [aside to Hamlet] I knew you must be edified by the margent
|
|
|
+ ere you had done.
|
|
|
+ Osr. The carriages, sir, are the hangers.
|
|
|
+ Ham. The phrase would be more germane to the matter if we could
|
|
|
+ carry cannon by our sides. I would it might be hangers till then.
|
|
|
+ But on! Six Barbary horses against six French swords, their
|
|
|
+ assigns, and three liberal-conceited carriages: that's the French
|
|
|
+ bet against the Danish. Why is this all impon'd, as you call it?
|
|
|
+ Osr. The King, sir, hath laid that, in a dozen passes between
|
|
|
+ yourself and him, he shall not exceed you three hits; he hath
|
|
|
+ laid on twelve for nine, and it would come to immediate trial
|
|
|
+ if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer.
|
|
|
+ Ham. How if I answer no?
|
|
|
+ Osr. I mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in trial.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Sir, I will walk here in the hall. If it please his Majesty,
|
|
|
+ it is the breathing time of day with me. Let the foils be
|
|
|
+ brought, the gentleman willing, and the King hold his purpose,
|
|
|
+ I will win for him if I can; if not, I will gain nothing but my
|
|
|
+ shame and the odd hits.
|
|
|
+ Osr. Shall I redeliver you e'en so?
|
|
|
+ Ham. To this effect, sir, after what flourish your nature will.
|
|
|
+ Osr. I commend my duty to your lordship.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Yours, yours. [Exit Osric.] He does well to commend it
|
|
|
+ himself; there are no tongues else for's turn.
|
|
|
+ Hor. This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.
|
|
|
+ Ham. He did comply with his dug before he suck'd it. Thus has he,
|
|
|
+ and many more of the same bevy that I know the drossy age dotes
|
|
|
+ on, only got the tune of the time and outward habit of encounter-
|
|
|
+ a kind of yesty collection, which carries them through and
|
|
|
+ through the most fann'd and winnowed opinions; and do but blow
|
|
|
+ them to their trial-the bubbles are out,
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter a Lord.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Lord. My lord, his Majesty commended him to you by young Osric, who
|
|
|
+ brings back to him, that you attend him in the hall. He sends to
|
|
|
+ know if your pleasure hold to play with Laertes, or that you will
|
|
|
+ take longer time.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I am constant to my purposes; they follow the King's pleasure.
|
|
|
+ If his fitness speaks, mine is ready; now or whensoever, provided
|
|
|
+ I be so able as now.
|
|
|
+ Lord. The King and Queen and all are coming down.
|
|
|
+ Ham. In happy time.
|
|
|
+ Lord. The Queen desires you to use some gentle entertainment to
|
|
|
+ Laertes before you fall to play.
|
|
|
+ Ham. She well instructs me.
|
|
|
+ [Exit Lord.]
|
|
|
+ Hor. You will lose this wager, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I do not think so. Since he went into France I have been in
|
|
|
+ continual practice. I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not
|
|
|
+ think how ill all's here about my heart. But it is no matter.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Nay, good my lord -
|
|
|
+ Ham. It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gaingiving as
|
|
|
+ would perhaps trouble a woman.
|
|
|
+ Hor. If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestall their
|
|
|
+ repair hither and say you are not fit.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Not a whit, we defy augury; there's a special providence in
|
|
|
+ the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come', if it be
|
|
|
+ not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come:
|
|
|
+ the readiness is all. Since no man knows aught of what he leaves,
|
|
|
+ what is't to leave betimes? Let be.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter King, Queen, Laertes, Osric, and Lords, with other
|
|
|
+ Attendants with foils and gauntlets.
|
|
|
+ A table and flagons of wine on it.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ King. Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.
|
|
|
+ [The King puts Laertes' hand into Hamlet's.]
|
|
|
+ Ham. Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong;
|
|
|
+ But pardon't, as you are a gentleman.
|
|
|
+ This presence knows,
|
|
|
+ And you must needs have heard, how I am punish'd
|
|
|
+ With sore distraction. What I have done
|
|
|
+ That might your nature, honour, and exception
|
|
|
+ Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
|
|
|
+ Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet.
|
|
|
+ If Hamlet from himself be taken away,
|
|
|
+ And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes,
|
|
|
+ Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
|
|
|
+ Who does it, then? His madness. If't be so,
|
|
|
+ Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd;
|
|
|
+ His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy.
|
|
|
+ Sir, in this audience,
|
|
|
+ Let my disclaiming from a purpos'd evil
|
|
|
+ Free me so far in your most generous thoughts
|
|
|
+ That I have shot my arrow o'er the house
|
|
|
+ And hurt my brother.
|
|
|
+ Laer. I am satisfied in nature,
|
|
|
+ Whose motive in this case should stir me most
|
|
|
+ To my revenge. But in my terms of honour
|
|
|
+ I stand aloof, and will no reconcilement
|
|
|
+ Till by some elder masters of known honour
|
|
|
+ I have a voice and precedent of peace
|
|
|
+ To keep my name ungor'd. But till that time
|
|
|
+ I do receive your offer'd love like love,
|
|
|
+ And will not wrong it.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I embrace it freely,
|
|
|
+ And will this brother's wager frankly play.
|
|
|
+ Give us the foils. Come on.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Come, one for me.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I'll be your foil, Laertes. In mine ignorance
|
|
|
+ Your skill shall, like a star i' th' darkest night,
|
|
|
+ Stick fiery off indeed.
|
|
|
+ Laer. You mock me, sir.
|
|
|
+ Ham. No, by this bad.
|
|
|
+ King. Give them the foils, young Osric. Cousin Hamlet,
|
|
|
+ You know the wager?
|
|
|
+ Ham. Very well, my lord.
|
|
|
+ Your Grace has laid the odds o' th' weaker side.
|
|
|
+ King. I do not fear it, I have seen you both;
|
|
|
+ But since he is better'd, we have therefore odds.
|
|
|
+ Laer. This is too heavy; let me see another.
|
|
|
+ Ham. This likes me well. These foils have all a length?
|
|
|
+ Prepare to play.
|
|
|
+ Osr. Ay, my good lord.
|
|
|
+ King. Set me the stoups of wine upon that table.
|
|
|
+ If Hamlet give the first or second hit,
|
|
|
+ Or quit in answer of the third exchange,
|
|
|
+ Let all the battlements their ordnance fire;
|
|
|
+ The King shall drink to Hamlet's better breath,
|
|
|
+ And in the cup an union shall he throw
|
|
|
+ Richer than that which four successive kings
|
|
|
+ In Denmark's crown have worn. Give me the cups;
|
|
|
+ And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
|
|
|
+ The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
|
|
|
+ The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth,
|
|
|
+ 'Now the King drinks to Hamlet.' Come, begin.
|
|
|
+ And you the judges, bear a wary eye.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Come on, sir.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Come, my lord. They play.
|
|
|
+ Ham. One.
|
|
|
+ Laer. No.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Judgment!
|
|
|
+ Osr. A hit, a very palpable hit.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Well, again!
|
|
|
+ King. Stay, give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine;
|
|
|
+ Here's to thy health.
|
|
|
+ [Drum; trumpets sound; a piece goes off [within].
|
|
|
+ Give him the cup.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I'll play this bout first; set it by awhile.
|
|
|
+ Come. (They play.) Another hit. What say you?
|
|
|
+ Laer. A touch, a touch; I do confess't.
|
|
|
+ King. Our son shall win.
|
|
|
+ Queen. He's fat, and scant of breath.
|
|
|
+ Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows.
|
|
|
+ The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Good madam!
|
|
|
+ King. Gertrude, do not drink.
|
|
|
+ Queen. I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me. Drinks.
|
|
|
+ King. [aside] It is the poison'd cup; it is too late.
|
|
|
+ Ham. I dare not drink yet, madam; by-and-by.
|
|
|
+ Queen. Come, let me wipe thy face.
|
|
|
+ Laer. My lord, I'll hit him now.
|
|
|
+ King. I do not think't.
|
|
|
+ Laer. [aside] And yet it is almost against my conscience.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Come for the third, Laertes! You but dally.
|
|
|
+ pray You Pass with your best violence;
|
|
|
+ I am afeard You make a wanton of me.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Say you so? Come on. Play.
|
|
|
+ Osr. Nothing neither way.
|
|
|
+ Laer. Have at you now!
|
|
|
+ [Laertes wounds Hamlet; then] in scuffling, they
|
|
|
+ change rapiers, [and Hamlet wounds Laertes].
|
|
|
+ King. Part them! They are incens'd.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Nay come! again! The Queen falls.
|
|
|
+ Osr. Look to the Queen there, ho!
|
|
|
+ Hor. They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?
|
|
|
+ Osr. How is't, Laertes?
|
|
|
+ Laer. Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric.
|
|
|
+ I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery.
|
|
|
+ Ham. How does the Queen?
|
|
|
+ King. She sounds to see them bleed.
|
|
|
+ Queen. No, no! the drink, the drink! O my dear Hamlet!
|
|
|
+ The drink, the drink! I am poison'd. [Dies.]
|
|
|
+ Ham. O villany! Ho! let the door be lock'd.
|
|
|
+ Treachery! Seek it out.
|
|
|
+ [Laertes falls.]
|
|
|
+ Laer. It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain;
|
|
|
+ No medicine in the world can do thee good.
|
|
|
+ In thee there is not half an hour of life.
|
|
|
+ The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
|
|
|
+ Unbated and envenom'd. The foul practice
|
|
|
+ Hath turn'd itself on me. Lo, here I lie,
|
|
|
+ Never to rise again. Thy mother's poison'd.
|
|
|
+ I can no more. The King, the King's to blame.
|
|
|
+ Ham. The point envenom'd too?
|
|
|
+ Then, venom, to thy work. Hurts the King.
|
|
|
+ All. Treason! treason!
|
|
|
+ King. O, yet defend me, friends! I am but hurt.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Here, thou incestuous, murd'rous, damned Dane,
|
|
|
+ Drink off this potion! Is thy union here?
|
|
|
+ Follow my mother. King dies.
|
|
|
+ Laer. He is justly serv'd.
|
|
|
+ It is a poison temper'd by himself.
|
|
|
+ Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.
|
|
|
+ Mine and my father's death come not upon thee,
|
|
|
+ Nor thine on me! Dies.
|
|
|
+ Ham. Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.
|
|
|
+ I am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu!
|
|
|
+ You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
|
|
|
+ That are but mutes or audience to this act,
|
|
|
+ Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death,
|
|
|
+ Is strict in his arrest) O, I could tell you-
|
|
|
+ But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;
|
|
|
+ Thou liv'st; report me and my cause aright
|
|
|
+ To the unsatisfied.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Never believe it.
|
|
|
+ I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.
|
|
|
+ Here's yet some liquor left.
|
|
|
+ Ham. As th'art a man,
|
|
|
+ Give me the cup. Let go! By heaven, I'll ha't.
|
|
|
+ O good Horatio, what a wounded name
|
|
|
+ (Things standing thus unknown) shall live behind me!
|
|
|
+ If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
|
|
|
+ Absent thee from felicity awhile,
|
|
|
+ And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
|
|
|
+ To tell my story. [March afar off, and shot within.]
|
|
|
+ What warlike noise is this?
|
|
|
+ Osr. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,
|
|
|
+ To the ambassadors of England gives
|
|
|
+ This warlike volley.
|
|
|
+ Ham. O, I die, Horatio!
|
|
|
+ The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit.
|
|
|
+ I cannot live to hear the news from England,
|
|
|
+ But I do prophesy th' election lights
|
|
|
+ On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice.
|
|
|
+ So tell him, with th' occurrents, more and less,
|
|
|
+ Which have solicited- the rest is silence. Dies.
|
|
|
+ Hor. Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,
|
|
|
+ And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
|
|
|
+ [March within.]
|
|
|
+ Why does the drum come hither?
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Enter Fortinbras and English Ambassadors, with Drum,
|
|
|
+ Colours, and Attendants.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+ Fort. Where is this sight?
|
|
|
+ Hor. What is it you will see?
|
|
|
+ If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.
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+ Fort. This quarry cries on havoc. O proud Death,
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+ What feast is toward in thine eternal cell
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+ That thou so many princes at a shot
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+ So bloodily hast struck.
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+ Ambassador. The sight is dismal;
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+ And our affairs from England come too late.
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+ The ears are senseless that should give us bearing
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+ To tell him his commandment is fulfill'd
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+ That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
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+ Where should We have our thanks?
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+ Hor. Not from his mouth,
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+ Had it th' ability of life to thank you.
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+ He never gave commandment for their death.
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+ But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
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+ You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
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+ Are here arriv'd, give order that these bodies
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+ High on a stage be placed to the view;
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+ And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
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+ How these things came about. So shall You hear
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+ Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts;
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+ Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;
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+ Of deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause;
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+ And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
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+ Fall'n on th' inventors' heads. All this can I
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+ Truly deliver.
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+ Fort. Let us haste to hear it,
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+ And call the noblest to the audience.
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+ For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune.
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+ I have some rights of memory in this kingdom
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+ Which now, to claim my vantage doth invite me.
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+ Hor. Of that I shall have also cause to speak,
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+ And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more.
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+ But let this same be presently perform'd,
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+ Even while men's minds are wild, lest more mischance
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+ On plots and errors happen.
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+ Fort. Let four captains
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+ Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage;
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+ For he was likely, had he been put on,
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+ To have prov'd most royally; and for his passage
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+ The soldiers' music and the rites of war
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+ Speak loudly for him.
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+ Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this
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+ Becomes the field but here shows much amiss.
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+ Go, bid the soldiers shoot.
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+ Exeunt marching; after the which a peal of ordnance
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+ are shot off.
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+
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+
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+THE END
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