Il Testo

BERNARDO – In the same figure, like the king that’s dead.

MARCELLUS – Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

BERNARDO – Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.

HORATIO – Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.

BERNARDO – It would be spoke to.

MARCELLUS – Question it, Horatio.

HORATIO – What art thou that usurp’st this time of night, Together with that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!

MARCELLUS – It is offended.

BERNARDO – See, it stalks away!

HORATIO – Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!

Exit Ghost

MARCELLUS – ‘Tis gone, and will not answer.

BERNARDO – How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale: Is not this something more than fantasy? What think you on’t?

HORATIO – Before my God, I might not this believe Without the sensible and true avouch Of mine own eyes.

MARCELLUS – Is it not like the king?

HORATIO – As thou art to thyself: Such was the very armour he had on When he the ambitious Norway combated; So frown’d he once, when, in an angry parle, He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice. ‘Tis strange.

MARCELLUS – Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour, With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

HORATIO – In what particular thought to work I know not; But in the gross and scope of my opinion, This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

MARCELLUS – Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows, Why this same strict and most observant watch So nightly toils the subject of the land, And why such daily cast of brazen cannon, And foreign mart for implements of war; Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task Does not divide the Sunday from the week; What might be toward, that this sweaty haste Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day: Who is’t that can inform me?

HORATIO – That can I; At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king, Whose image even but now appear’d to us, Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway, Thereto prick’d on by a most emulate pride, Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet– For so this side of our known world esteem’d him– Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal’d compact, Well ratified by law and heraldry, Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror: Against the which, a moiety competent Was gaged by our king; which had return’d To the inheritance of Fortinbras, Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant, And carriage of the article design’d, His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras, Of unimproved mettle hot and full, Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there Shark’d up a list of lawless resolutes, For food and diet, to some enterprise That hath a stomach in’t; which is no other– As it doth well appear unto our state– But to recover of us, by strong hand And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands So by his father lost: and this, I take it, Is the main motive of our preparations, The source of this our watch and the chief head Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

BERNARDO – I think it be no other but e’en so: Well may it sort that this portentous figure Comes armed through our watch; so like the king That was and is the question of these wars.

HORATIO – A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye. In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets: As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse: And even the like precurse of fierce events, As harbingers preceding still the fates And prologue to the omen coming on, Have heaven and earth together demonstrated Unto our climatures and countrymen.– But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!

Re-enter Ghost

I’ll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion! If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, Speak to me: If there be any good thing to be done, That may to thee do ease and grace to me, Speak to me:

Cock crows

If thou art privy to thy country’s fate, Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak! Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, Speak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it, Marcellus.

MARCELLUS – Shall I strike at it with my partisan?

HORATIO – Do, if it will not stand.

BERNARDO – ‘Tis here!

HORATIO – ‘Tis here!

MARCELLUS – ‘Tis gone!

Exit Ghost

We do it wrong, being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence; For it is, as the air, invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery.

BERNARDO – It was about to speak, when the cock crew.

HORATIO – And then it started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons. I have heard, The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the god of day; and, at his warning, Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, The extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine: and of the truth herein This present object made probation.

MARCELLUS – It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

HORATIO – So have I heard and do in part believe it. But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill: Break we our watch up; and by my advice, Let us impart what we have seen to-night Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life, This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it, As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

MARCELLUS – Let’s do’t, I pray; and I this morning know Where we shall find him most conveniently.

Exeunt

A room of state in the castle.

Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants

KING CLAUDIUS – Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death The memory be green, and that it us befitted To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom To be contracted in one brow of woe, Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature That we with wisest sorrow think on him, Together with remembrance of ourselves. Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, The imperial jointress to this warlike state, Have we, as ‘twere with a defeated joy,– With an auspicious and a dropping eye, With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole,– Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr’d Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone With this affair along. For all, our thanks. Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras, Holding a weak supposal of our worth, Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death Our state to be disjoint and out of frame, Colleagued with the dream of his advantage, He hath not fail’d to pester us with message, Importing the surrender of those lands Lost by his father, with all bonds of law, To our most valiant brother. So much for him. Now for ourself and for this time of meeting: Thus much the business is: we have here writ To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,– Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears Of this his nephew’s purpose,–to suppress His further gait herein; in that the levies, The lists and full proportions, are all made Out of his subject: and we here dispatch You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand, For bearers of this greeting to old Norway; Giving to you no further personal power To business with the king, more than the scope Of these delated articles allow. Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.

CORNELIUS – | | In that and all things will we show our duty.

VOLTIMAND –

KING CLAUDIUS – We doubt it nothing: heartily farewell.

Exeunt VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS

And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you? You told us of some suit; what is’t, Laertes? You cannot speak of reason to the Dane, And loose your voice: what wouldst thou beg, Laertes, That shall not be my offer, not thy asking? The head is not more native to the heart, The hand more instrumental to the mouth, Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father. What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

LAERTES – My dread lord, Your leave and favour to return to France; From whence though willingly I came to Denmark, To show my duty in your coronation, Yet now, I must confess, that duty done, My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

KING CLAUDIUS – Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?

LORD POLONIUS – He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave By laboursome petition, and at last Upon his will I seal’d my hard consent: I do beseech you, give him leave to go.

KING CLAUDIUS – Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine, And thy best graces spend it at thy will! But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,–

HAMLET – [Aside] A little more than kin, and less than kind.

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

HAMLET – Not so, my lord; I am too much i’ the sun.

A room in Polonius’ house.

LAERTES – 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.

OPHELIA – Do you doubt that?

LAERTES – 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.

OPHELIA – No more but so?

LAERTES – 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 circumscribed 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 unmaster’d 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 ‘scapes not calumnious strokes: The canker galls the infants of the spring, Too oft before their buttons be disclosed, 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.

OPHELIA – I shall the 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.

LAERTES – O, fear me not. I stay too long: but here my father comes.

Enter POLONIUS

A double blessing is a double grace, Occasion smiles upon a second leave.

LORD POLONIUS – 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 See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy 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 of a 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 ownself 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!

LAERTES – Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS – The time invites you; go; your servants tend.

LAERTES – Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well What I have said to you.

OPHELIA – ‘Tis in my memory lock’d, And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

LAERTES – Farewell.

Exit

LORD POLONIUS – What is’t, Ophelia, be hath said to you?

OPHELIA – So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.

LORD POLONIUS – 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 behoves my daughter and your honour. What is between you? give me up the truth.

OPHELIA – He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders Of his affection to me.

LORD POLONIUS – Affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl, Unsifted in such perilous circumstance. Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?

The platform.

Enter HAMLET, HORATIO, and MARCELLUS

HAMLET – The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.

HORATIO – It is a nipping and an eager air.

HAMLET – What hour now?

HORATIO – I think it lacks of twelve.

HAMLET – No, it is struck.

HORATIO – Indeed? I heard it not: then it draws near the season Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off, within

What does this mean, my lord?

HAMLET – The king doth wake to-night and takes his rouse, Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels; And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge.

HORATIO – Is it a custom?

HAMLET – 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 traduced and tax’d of other nations: They clepe 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’er-leavens 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 eale Doth all the noble substance of a doubt To his own scandal.

HORATIO – Look, my lord, it comes!

Enter Ghost

HAMLET – Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou comest in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee: I’ll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me! Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre, Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d, Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws, To cast thee up again. What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous; and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?

Ghost beckons HAMLET

HORATIO – It beckons you to go away with it, As if it some impartment did desire To you alone.

MARCELLUS – Look, with what courteous action It waves you to a more removed ground: But do not go with it.

HORATIO – No, by no means.

HAMLET – It will not speak; then I will follow it.

HORATIO – Do not, my lord.

HAMLET – Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life in a pin’s fee; And for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself? It waves me forth again: I’ll follow it.

HORATIO – What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff That beetles o’er his base into the sea, And there assume some other horrible form, Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason And draw you into madness? think of it: The very place puts toys of desperation, Without more motive, into every brain That looks so many fathoms to the sea And hears it roar beneath.

HAMLET – It waves me still. Go on; I’ll follow thee.

MARCELLUS – You shall not go, my lord.

HAMLET – Hold off your hands.

HORATIO – Be ruled; you shall not go.

HAMLET – My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean l’ion’s nerve. Still am I call’d. Unhand me, gentlemen. By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me! I say, away! Go on; I’ll follow thee.

Exeunt Ghost and HAMLET

HORATIO – He waxes desperate with imagination.

MARCELLUS – Let’s follow; ‘tis not fit thus to obey him.

HORATIO – Have after. To what issue will this come?

MARCELLUS – Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

HORATIO – Heaven will direct it.

MARCELLUS – Nay, let’s follow him.

Exeunt

Another part of the platform.

Enter GHOST and HAMLET

HAMLET – Where wilt thou lead me? speak; I’ll go no further.

Ghost – Mark me.

HAMLET – I will.

Ghost – My hour is almost come, When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself.

HAMLET – Alas, poor ghost!

Ghost – Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I shall unfold.

HAMLET – Speak; I am bound to hear.

Ghost – So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

HAMLET – What?

Ghost – I am thy father’s spirit, Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confined to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porpentine: But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list! If thou didst ever thy dear father love–

HAMLET – O God!

Ghost – Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET – Murder!

Ghost – Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

HAMLET – Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge.

A room in the castle.

Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and Attendants

KING CLAUDIUS – 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 call it, Sith nor the 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 the understanding of himself, I cannot dream of: I entreat you both, That, being of so young days brought up with him, And sith so neighbour’d to his youth and havior, 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 GERTRUDE – 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.

ROSENCRANTZ – Both your majesties Might, by the sovereign power you have of us, Put your dread pleasures more into command Than to entreaty.

GUILDENSTERN – 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 CLAUDIUS – Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

QUEEN GERTRUDE – 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.

GUILDENSTERN – Heavens make our presence and our practises Pleasant and helpful to him!

QUEEN GERTRUDE – Ay, amen!

Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and some Attendants

Enter POLONIUS

LORD POLONIUS – The ambassadors from Norway, my good lord, Are joyfully return’d.

KING CLAUDIUS – Thou still hast been the father of good news.

LORD POLONIUS – Have I, my lord? I assure 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 used to do, that I have found The very cause of Hamlet’s l’unacy.

KING CLAUDIUS – O, speak of that; that do I long to hear.

LORD POLONIUS – Give first admittance to the ambassadors; My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.

KING CLAUDIUS – 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 GERTRUDE – I doubt it is no other but the main; His father’s death, and our o’erhasty marriage.

KING CLAUDIUS – Well, we shall sift him.

Re-enter POLONIUS, with VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS

Welcome, my good friends! Say, Voltimand, what from our brother Norway?

VOLTIMAND – 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 grieved, 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 the 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,

Giving 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 CLAUDIUS – It likes us well; And at our more consider’d time well 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 VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS

LORD POLONIUS – This business is well ended. My liege, and madam, to expostulate What majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night 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 GERTRUDE – More matter, with less art.

LORD POLONIUS – 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

‘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 GERTRUDE – Came this from Hamlet to her?

LORD POLONIUS – 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 CLAUDIUS – But how hath she Received his love?

LORD POLONIUS – What do you think of me?

KING CLAUDIUS – As of a man faithful and honourable.

LORD POLONIUS – I would fain prove so. But what might you think, When I had seen this hot love on the wing– As I perceived 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 precepts 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 CLAUDIUS – Do you think ‘tis this?

QUEEN GERTRUDE – It may be, very likely.

LORD POLONIUS – Hath there been such a time–I’d fain know that– That I have positively said ‘Tis so,’ When it proved otherwise?

KING CLAUDIUS – Not that I know.

LORD POLONIUS – [Pointing 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 CLAUDIUS – How may we try it further?

LORD POLONIUS – You know, sometimes he walks four hours together Here in the lobby.

QUEEN GERTRUDE – So he does indeed.

LORD POLONIUS – 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 be not from his reason fall’n thereon, Let me be no assistant for a state, But keep a farm and carters.

KING CLAUDIUS – We will try it.

QUEEN GERTRUDE – But, look, where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.

LORD POLONIUS – Away, I do beseech you, both away: I’ll board him presently.

Exeunt KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, and Attendants

Enter HAMLET, reading

O, give me leave: How does my good Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET – Well, God-a-mercy.

LORD POLONIUS – Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET – Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.

LORD POLONIUS – Not I, my lord.

HAMLET – Then I would you were so honest a man.

LORD POLONIUS – Honest, my lord!

HAMLET – Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

LORD POLONIUS – That’s very true, my lord.

HAMLET – For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion,–Have you a daughter?

LORD POLONIUS – I have, my lord.

HAMLET – Let her not walk i’ the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to ‘t.

LORD POLONIUS – [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 suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I’ll speak to him again. What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET – Words, words, words.

LORD POLONIUS – What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET – Between who?

LORD POLONIUS – I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

HAMLET – 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 yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.

LORD POLONIUS – [Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in ‘t. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET – Into my grave.

LORD POLONIUS – Indeed, that is out o’ the 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.

HAMLET – You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.

LORD POLONIUS – Fare you well, my lord.

HAMLET – These tedious old fools!

Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN

LORD POLONIUS – You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.

ROSENCRANTZ

[To POLONIUS] God save you, sir!

Exit POLONIUS

GUILDENSTERN

My honoured lord!

ROSENCRANTZ

My most dear lord!

HAMLET

My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?

ROSENCRANTZ

As the indifferent children of the earth.

GUILDENSTERN

Happy, in that we are not over-happy; On fortune’s cap we are not the very button.

HAMLET

Nor the soles of her shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ

Neither, my lord.

HAMLET

Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?

GUILDENSTERN

‘Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET

In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet. What’s the news?

ROSENCRANTZ

None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest.

HAMLET

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?

GUILDENSTERN

Prison, my lord!

HAMLET

Denmark’s a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ

Then is the world one.

HAMLET

A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ the worst.

ROSENCRANTZ

We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET

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.

ROSENCRANTZ

Why then, your ambition makes it one; ‘tis too narrow for your mind.

HAMLET

O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN

Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET

A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ

Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.

HAMLET

Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars’ shadows. Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.

ROSENCRANTZ

| | We’ll wait upon you.

GUILDENSTERN

|

HAMLET

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?

ROSENCRANTZ

To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.

HAMLET

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.

GUILDENSTERN

What should we say, my lord?

HAMLET

Why, any thing, but to the 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.

ROSENCRANTZ

To what end, my lord?

HAMLET

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?

ROSENCRANTZ

[Aside to GUILDENSTERN] What say you?

HAMLET

[Aside] Nay, then, I have an eye of you.–If you love me, hold not off.

GUILDENSTERN

My lord, we were sent for.

HAMLET

OPHELIA

Good my lord, How does your honour for this many a day?

HAMLET

I humbly thank you; well, well, well.

OPHELIA

My lord, I have remembrances of yours, That I have longed long to re-deliver; I pray you, now receive them.

HAMLET

No, not I; I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA

My honour’d lord, you know right well you did; And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed 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.

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?

OPHELIA

At home, my lord.

HAMLET

Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in’s own house. Farewell.

OPHELIA

O, help him, you sweet heavens!

HAMLET

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.

OPHELIA

O heavenly powers, restore him!

HAMLET

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.

Exit

OPHELIA

O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown! The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword; The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mould of form, The observed 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, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Re-enter KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS

KING CLAUDIUS

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?

LORD POLONIUS

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 placed, 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 CLAUDIUS

It shall be so: Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.

Exeunt

A hall in the castle.

A room in the castle.

Enter KING CLAUDIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN

KING CLAUDIUS

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 dangerous as doth hourly grow Out of his l’unacies.

GUILDENSTERN

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.

ROSENCRANTZ

The single and peculiar life is bound, With all the strength and armour of the mind, To keep itself from noyance; but much more That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest The lives of many. The cease of majesty Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw What’s near it with it: it is a massy wheel, Fix’d on the summit of the highest mount, To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things Are mortised and adjoin’d; which, when it falls, Each small annexment, petty consequence, Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.

KING CLAUDIUS

Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage; For we will fetters put upon this fear, Which now goes too free-footed.

ROSENCRANTZ

| | We will haste us.

GUILDENSTERN

|

Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN

Enter POLONIUS

LORD POLONIUS

My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet: Behind the arras I’ll convey myself, To hear the process; and 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 CLAUDIUS

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 murder. Pray can I not, Though inclination be as sharp as will: My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent; And, like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin, And both neglect. What if this cursed hand Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood, Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy But to confront the visage of offence? And what’s in prayer but this two-fold force, To be forestalled ere we come to fall, Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up; My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’? That cannot be; since I am still possess’d Of those effects for which I did the murder, My crown, mine own ambition and my queen. May one be pardon’d and retain the 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 can not repent? O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul, that, struggling to be free, Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay! Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel, Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe! All may be well.

Retires and kneels

Enter HAMLET

HAMLET

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 revenged. That would be scann’d: A villain kills my father; and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven. O, this is hire and salary, not revenge. He took my father grossly, full of bread; With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; And how his audit stands who knows save heaven? But in our circumstance and course of thought, ‘Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged, To take him in the purging of his soul, When he is fit and season’d for his passage? No! Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent: When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, Or in the 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 CLAUDIUS

[Rising] My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Exit

The Queen’s closet.

Enter QUEEN MARGARET and POLONIUS

LORD POLONIUS

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 sconce me even here. Pray you, be round with him.

HAMLET

[Within] Mother, mother, mother!

QUEEN GERTRUDE

I’ll warrant you, Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.

POLONIUS hides behind the arras

Enter HAMLET

HAMLET

Now, mother, what’s the matter?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

HAMLET

Mother, you have my father much offended.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

HAMLET

Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Why, how now, Hamlet!

HAMLET

What’s the matter now?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Have you forgot me?

HAMLET

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 GERTRUDE

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

HAMLET

Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge; You go not till I set you up a glass Where you may see the inmost part of you.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me? Help, help, ho!

LORD POLONIUS

[Behind] What, ho! help, help, help!

HAMLET

[Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!

Makes a pass through the arras

LORD POLONIUS

[Behind] O, I am slain!

Falls and dies

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O me, what hast thou done?

HAMLET

Nay, I know not: Is it the king?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

HAMLET

A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

As kill a king!

HAMLET

Ay, lady, ‘twas my word.

Lifts up the array and discovers POLONIUS

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune; Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger. Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down, And let me wring your heart; for so I shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff, If damned custom have not brass’d it so That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me?

HAMLET

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 GERTRUDE

Ay me, what act, That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

HAMLET

Look here, upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See, what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion’s curls; the front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man: This was your husband. Look you now, what follows: Here is your husband; like a mildew’d ear, Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes? You cannot call it love; for at your age The hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble, And waits upon the 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 ecstasy was ne’er so thrall’d But it reserved 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? Rebell’ious 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 GERTRUDE

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.

HAMLET

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 GERTRUDE

O, speak to me no more; These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears; No more, sweet Hamlet!

HAMLET

A murderer and a villain; A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings; A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diadem stole, And put it in his pocket!

QUEEN GERTRUDE

No more!

HAMLET

A king of shreds and patches,–

Enter Ghost

Save me, and hover o’er me with your wings, You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alas, he’s mad!

HAMLET

Do you not come your tardy son to chide, That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by The important acting of your dread command? O, say!

Ghost

Do not forget: this visitation Is but to whet thy almost bl’unted 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.

HAMLET

How is it with you, lady?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alas, how is’t with you, That you do bend your eye on vacancy And with the incorporal air do hold discourse? Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep; And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son, Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

HAMLET

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 GERTRUDE

To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET

Do you see nothing there?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

HAMLET

Nor did you nothing hear?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET

Why, look you there! look, how it steals away! My father, in his habit as he lived! Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!

Exit Ghost

QUEEN GERTRUDE

This the very coinage of your brain: This bodiless creation ecstasy Is very cunning in.

HAMLET

Ecstasy! My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, And makes as healthful music: it is not madness That I have utter’d: bring me to the test, And I the matter will re-word; which madness Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, Lay not that mattering unction to your soul, That not your trespass, but my madness speaks: It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, Whilst rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven; Repent what’s past; avoid what is to come; And do not spread the compost on the weeds, To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue; For in the fatness of these pursy times Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

HAMLET

O, throw away the worser part of it, And live the purer with the other half. Good night: but go not to mine uncle’s bed; Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits devil, 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 [ ] the devil, or throw him out With wondrous potency. Once more, good night: And when you are desirous to be bless’d, I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,

Pointing to POLONIUS

I do repent: but heaven hath pleased 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 GERTRUDE

What shall I do?

HAMLET

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 GERTRUDE

Be thou assured, if words be made of breath, And breath of life, I have no life to breathe What thou hast said to me.

HAMLET

I must to England; you know that?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alack, I had forgot: ‘tis so concluded on.

HAMLET

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 engineer Hoist with his own petard: and ‘t shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines, And blow them at the moon: O, ‘tis most sweet, When in one line two crafts directly meet. This man shall set me packing: I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room. Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor Is now most still, most secret and most grave, Who was in life a foolish prating knave. Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. Good night, mother.

Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in POLONIUS

Another room in the castle.

Enter HAMLET

HAMLET

Safely stowed.

ROSENCRANTZ:

| | [Within] Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!

GUILDENSTERN:

|

HAMLET

What noise? who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come.

Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN

ROSENCRANTZ

What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?

HAMLET

Compounded it with dust, whereto ‘tis kin.

ROSENCRANTZ

Tell us where ‘tis, that we may take it thence And bear it to the chapel.

HAMLET

Do not believe it.

ROSENCRANTZ

Believe what?

HAMLET

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?

ROSENCRANTZ

Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

HAMLET

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 mouthed, to be last swallowed: when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.

ROSENCRANTZ

I understand you not, my lord.

HAMLET

I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

ROSENCRANTZ

My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king.

HAMLET

The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing–

GUILDENSTERN

A thing, my lord!

HAMLET

Of nothing: bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.

Exeunt

Another room in the castle.

Enter KING CLAUDIUS, attended

KING CLAUDIUS

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 loved of the distracted multitude, Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes; And where tis so, the 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 By desperate appliance are relieved, Or not at all.

Enter ROSENCRANTZ

How now! what hath befall’n?

ROSENCRANTZ

Where the dead body is bestow’d, my lord, We cannot get from him.

KING CLAUDIUS

But where is he?

ROSENCRANTZ

Without, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure.

KING CLAUDIUS

Bring him before us.

ROSENCRANTZ

Ho, Guildenstern! bring in my lord.

Enter HAMLET and GUILDENSTERN

KING CLAUDIUS

Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?

HAMLET

At supper.

KING CLAUDIUS

At supper! where?

HAMLET

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 CLAUDIUS

Alas, alas!

HAMLET

A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and cat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

KING CLAUDIUS

What dost you mean by this?

HAMLET

Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

KING CLAUDIUS

Where is Polonius?

HAMLET

In heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger find him not there, seek him i’ the other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

KING CLAUDIUS

Go seek him there.

To some Attendants

HAMLET

He will stay till ye come.

Exeunt Attendants

KING CLAUDIUS

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, The associates tend, and every thing is bent For England.

HAMLET

For England!

KING CLAUDIUS

Ay, Hamlet.

HAMLET

Good.

KING CLAUDIUS

So is it, if thou knew’st our purposes.

HAMLET

I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for England! Farewell, dear mother.

KING CLAUDIUS

Thy loving father, Hamlet.

HAMLET

My mother: father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England!

Exit

KING CLAUDIUS

Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard; Delay it not; I’ll have him hence to-night: Away! for every thing is seal’d and done That else leans on the 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

A plain in Denmark.

Enter FORTINBRAS, a Captain, and Soldiers, marching

PRINCE FORTINBRAS

Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king; Tell him that, by his licence, Fortinbras Craves the conveyance of a promised 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.

Captain

I will do’t, my lord.

PRINCE FORTINBRAS

Go softly on.

Exeunt FORTINBRAS and Soldiers

Enter HAMLET, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and others

HAMLET

Good sir, whose powers are these?

Captain

They are of Norway, sir.

HAMLET

How purposed, sir, I pray you?

Captain

Against some part of Poland.

HAMLET

Who commands them, sir?

Captain

The nephews to old Norway, Fortinbras.

HAMLET

Goes it against the main of Poland, sir, Or for some frontier?

Captain

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.

HAMLET

Why, then the Polack never will defend it.

Captain

Yes, it is already garrison’d.

HAMLET

Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats Will not debate the question of this straw: This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace, That inward breaks, and shows no cause without Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.

Captain

God be wi’ you, sir.

Exit

ROSENCRANTZ

Wilt please you go, my lord?

HAMLET

I’ll be with you straight go a little before.

Exeunt all except 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 god-like reason To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on the 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 egg-shell. 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 kill’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

Elsinore. A room in the castle.

Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE, HORATIO, and a Gentleman

QUEEN GERTRUDE

I will not speak with her.

Gentleman

She is importunate, indeed distract: Her mood will needs be pitied.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

What would she have?

Gentleman

She speaks much of her father; says she hears There’s tricks i’ the 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.

HORATIO

‘Twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Let her come in.

Exit HORATIO

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.

Re-enter HORATIO, with OPHELIA

OPHELIA

Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

How now, Ophelia!

OPHELIA

[Sings] How should I your true love know From another one? By his cockle hat and staff, And his sandal shoon.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

OPHELIA

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.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Nay, but, Ophelia,–

OPHELIA

Pray you, mark.

Sings

White his shroud as the mountain snow,–

Enter KING CLAUDIUS

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alas, look here, my lord.

OPHELIA

[Sings] Larded with sweet flowers Which bewept to the grave did go With true-love showers.

KING CLAUDIUS

How do you, pretty lady?

OPHELIA

Well, God ‘ild 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 CLAUDIUS

Conceit upon her father.

OPHELIA

Pray you, 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 betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes, And dupp’d the chamber-door; Let in the maid, that out a maid Never departed more.

KING CLAUDIUS

Pretty Ophelia!

OPHELIA

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 promised me to wed. So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun, An thou hadst not come to my bed.

KING CLAUDIUS

How long hath she been thus?

OPHELIA

I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him i’ the 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 CLAUDIUS

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 battal’ions. First, her father slain: Next, your son gone; and he most violent author Of his own just remove: the people muddied, Thick 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 much containing as all these, Her brother is in secret come from France; Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds, And wants not buzzers to infect his ear 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 murdering-piece, in many places Gives me superfluous death.

A noise within

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alack, what noise is this?

KING CLAUDIUS

Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.

Enter another Gentleman

What is the matter?

Gentleman

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 officers. 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!’

QUEEN GERTRUDE

How cheerfully on the false trail they cry! O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!

KING CLAUDIUS

The doors are broke.

Noise within

LAERTES

Where is this king? Sirs, stand you all without.

Danes

No, let’s come in.

LAERTES

I pray you, give me leave.

Danes

We will, we will.

They retire without the door

LAERTES

I thank you: keep the door. O thou vile king, Give me my father!

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Calmly, good Laertes.

LAERTES

That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard, Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow Of my true mother.

KING CLAUDIUS

What is the cause, Laertes, That thy rebellion looks so giant-like? 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 incensed. Let him go, Gertrude. Speak, man.

LAERTES

Where is my father?

KING CLAUDIUS

Dead.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

But not by him.

KING CLAUDIUS

Let him demand his fill.

LAERTES

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 worlds I give to negligence, Let come what comes; only I’ll be revenged Most thoroughly for my father.

KING CLAUDIUS

Who shall stay you?

LAERTES

My will, not all the world: And for my means, I’ll husband them so well, They shall go far with little.

KING CLAUDIUS

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?

LAERTES

None but his enemies.

KING CLAUDIUS

Will you know them then?

LAERTES

To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms; And like the kind life-rendering pelican, Repast them with my blood.

KING CLAUDIUS

Why, now you speak Like a good child and a true gentleman. That I am guiltless of your father’s death, And am most sensible in grief for it, It shall as level to your judgment pierce As day does to your eye.

Danes

[Within] Let her come in.

LAERTES

How now! what noise is that?

Re-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 moral 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.

OPHELIA

[Sings] They bore him barefaced on the bier; Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny; And in his grave rain’d many a tear:– Fare you well, my dove!

LAERTES

Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, It could not move thus.

OPHELIA

[Sings] You must sing a-down a-down, An you call him a-down-a. O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that stole his master’s daughter.

LAERTES

This nothing’s more than matter.

OPHELIA

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies. that’s for thoughts.

LAERTES

A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.

OPHELIA

There’s fennel for you, and columbines: there’s rue for you; and here’s some for me: we may call it herb-grace o’ Sundays: O you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy: I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died: they say he made a good end,–

Sings

For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.

LAERTES

Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favour and to prettiness.

OPHELIA

[Sings] And will he not come again? And will he not come again? No, no, he is dead: Go to thy death-bed: 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 ha’ mercy on his soul!

And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be wi’ ye.

Exit

LAERTES

Do you see this, O God?

KING CLAUDIUS

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 can 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.

LAERTES

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 CLAUDIUS

So you shall; And where the offence is let the great axe fall. I pray you, go with me.

Exeunt

Another room in the castle.

Enter HORATIO and a Servant

HORATIO

What are they that would speak with me?

Servant

Sailors, sir: they say they have letters for you.

HORATIO

Let them come in.

Exit Servant

I do not know from what part of the world I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.

Enter Sailors

First Sailor

God bless you, sir.

HORATIO

Let him bless thee too.

First Sailor

He shall, sir, an’t please him. There’s a letter for you, sir; it comes from the ambassador that was bound for England; if your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is.

HORATIO

[Reads] ‘Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked 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 make you way for these your letters; And do’t the speedier, that you may direct me To him from whom you brought them.

Exeunt

Another room in the castle.

Enter KING CLAUDIUS and LAERTES

KING CLAUDIUS

Now must your conscience my acquaintance 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.

LAERTES

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 CLAUDIUS

O, for two special reasons; Which may to you, perhaps, seem 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 gyves 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.

LAERTES

And so have I a noble father lost; A sister driven into desperate 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 CLAUDIUS

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 loved your father, and we love ourself; And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine–

Enter a Messenger

How now! what news?

Messenger

Letters, my lord, from Hamlet: This to your majesty; this to the queen.

KING CLAUDIUS

From Hamlet! who brought them?

Messenger

Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not: They were given me by Claudio; he received them Of him that brought them.

KING CLAUDIUS

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?

LAERTES

Know you the hand?

KING CLAUDIUS

‘Tis Hamlets character. ‘Naked! And in a postscript here, he says ‘alone.’ Can you advise me?

LAERTES

I’m 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 CLAUDIUS

If it be so, Laertes– As how should it be so? how otherwise?– Will you be ruled by me?

LAERTES

Ay, my lord; So you will not o’errule me to a peace.

KING CLAUDIUS

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 an exploit, now ripe in my device, Under the which he shall not choose but fall: And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe, But even his mother shall uncharge the practise And call it accident.

LAERTES

My lord, I will be ruled; The rather, if you could devise it so That I might be the organ.

KING CLAUDIUS

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 sum of parts Did not together pluck such envy from him As did that one, and that, in my regard, Of the unworthiest siege.

LAERTES

What part is that, my lord?

KING CLAUDIUS

A very riband in the cap of youth, Yet needful too; for youth no less becomes The light and careless livery that it wears Than settled age his sables and his weeds, Importing health and graveness. Two months since, Here was a gentleman of Normandy:– I’ve seen myself, and served 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 he had been incorpsed and demi-natured 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.

LAERTES

A Norman was’t?

KING CLAUDIUS

A Norman.

LAERTES

Upon my life, Lamond.

KING CLAUDIUS

The very same.

LAERTES

I know him well: he is the brooch indeed And gem of all the nation.

KING CLAUDIUS

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 had neither motion, guard, nor eye, If you opposed 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 him. Now, out of this,–

LAERTES

What out of this, my lord?

KING CLAUDIUS

Laertes, was your father dear to you? Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, A face without a heart?

LAERTES

Why ask you this?

KING CLAUDIUS

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’ the ulcer:– Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake, To show yourself your father’s son in deed More than in words?

LAERTES

To cut his throat i’ the church.

KING CLAUDIUS

No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize; Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes, Will you do this, keep close within your chamber. Hamlet 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 practise Requite him for your father.

LAERTES

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 That is but scratch’d withal: I’ll touch my point With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly, It may be death.

KING CLAUDIUS

Let’s further think of this; Weigh what convenience both of time and means May fit us to our shape: if this should fail, 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 should 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 prepared him A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping, If he by chance escape your venom’d stuck, Our purpose may hold there.

Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE

How now, sweet queen!

QUEEN GERTRUDE

One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, So fast they follow; your sister’s drown’d, Laertes.

LAERTES

Drown’d! O, where?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

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 crow-flowers, 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 pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clambering 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 chanted 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 mel’odious lay To muddy death.

LAERTES

Alas, then, she is drown’d?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Drown’d, drown’d.

LAERTES

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 CLAUDIUS

Let’s follow, Gertrude: How much I had to do to calm his rage! Now fear I this will give it start again; Therefore let’s follow.

Exeunt

First Clown

Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating; and, when you are asked this question next, say ‘a grave-maker: ‘the houses that he makes last till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan: fetch me a stoup of liquor.

Exit Second Clown

He digs and sings

In youth, when I did love, did love, Methought it was very sweet, To contract, O, the time, for, ah, my behove, O, methought, there was nothing meet.

HAMLET

Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making?

HORATIO

Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

HAMLET

‘Tis e’en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.

First Clown

[Sings] But age, with his stealing steps, Hath claw’d me in his clutch, And hath shipped me intil the land, As if I had never been such.

Throws up a skull

HAMLET

That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain’s jaw-bone, that did the first murder! It might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o’er-reaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?

HORATIO

It might, my lord.

HAMLET

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 praised my lord such-a-one’s horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not?

HORATIO

Ay, my lord.

HAMLET

Why, e’en so: and now my Lady Worm’s; chapless, and knocked about the mazzard with a sexton’s spade: here’s fine revolution, an we had the trick to see’t. Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with ‘em? mine ache to think on’t.

A pick-axe, 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

HAMLET

There’s another: why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities 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 hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

HORATIO

Not a jot more, my lord.

HAMLET

Is not parchment made of sheepskins?

HORATIO

Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too.

HAMLET

They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow. Whose grave’s this, sirrah?

First Clown

Mine, sir.

Sings

O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet.

HAMLET

I think it be thine, indeed; for thou liest in’t.

First Clown

You lie out on’t, sir, and therefore it is not yours: for my part, I do not lie in’t, and yet it is mine.

HAMLET

‘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.

First Clown

‘Tis a quick lie, sir; ‘twill away gain, from me to you.

HAMLET

What man dost thou dig it for?

First Clown

For no man, sir.

HAMLET

What woman, then?

First Clown

For none, neither.

HAMLET

Who is to be buried in’t?

First Clown

One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she’s dead.

HAMLET

How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken a note of it; the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he gaffs his kibe. How long hast thou been a grave-maker?

First Clown

Of all the days i’ the year, I came to’t that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.

HAMLET

How long is that since?

First 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.

HAMLET

Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?

First Clown

Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or, if he do not, it’s no great matter there.

HAMLET

Why?

First Clown

‘Twill, a not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he.

HAMLET

How came he mad?

First Clown

Very strangely, they say.

HAMLET

How strangely?

First Clown

Faith, e’en with losing his wits.

HAMLET

Upon what ground?

First Clown

Why, here in Denmark: I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.

HORATIO

What’s that, my lord?

HAMLET

Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’ the earth?

HORATIO

E’en so.

HAMLET

And smelt so? pah!

Puts down the skull

HORATIO

E’en so, my lord.

HAMLET

To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

HORATIO

‘Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

HAMLET

The queen, the courtiers: who is this they follow? And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken The corse they follow did with desperate hand Fordo its own life: ‘twas of some estate. Couch we awhile, and mark.

Retiring with HORATIO

LAERTES

What ceremony else?

HAMLET

That is Laertes, A very noble youth: mark.

LAERTES

What ceremony else?

First Priest

Her obsequies have been as far enlarged As we have warrantise: her death was doubtful; And, but that great command o’ersways the order, She should in ground unsanctified have lodged 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.

LAERTES

Must there no more be done?

First 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.

LAERTES

Lay her i’ the earth: And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering angel shall my sister be, When thou liest howling.

HAMLET

What, the fair Ophelia!

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Sweets to the sweet: farewell!

Scattering flowers

I hoped 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.

LAERTES

O, treble woe Fall ten times treble on that cursed head, Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense Deprived thee of! Hold off the earth awhile, Till I have caught her once more in mine arms:

Leaps into the grave

Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, Till of this flat a mountain you have made, To o’ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head Of blue Olympus.

HAMLET

[Advancing] What is he whose grief Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I, Hamlet the Dane.

Leaps into the grave

LAERTES

The devil take thy soul!

Grappling with him

HAMLET

Thou pray’st not well. I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat; For, though I am not splenitive and rash, Yet have I something in me dangerous, Which let thy wiseness fear: hold off thy hand.

KING CLAUDIUS

Pluck them asunder.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Hamlet, Hamlet!

All

Gentlemen,–

HORATIO

Good my lord, be quiet.

The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave

HAMLET

Why I will fight with him upon this theme Until my eyelids will no longer wag.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O my son, what theme?

HAMLET

I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?

KING CLAUDIUS

O, he is mad, Laertes.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

For love of God, forbear him.

HAMLET

‘Swounds, show me what thou’lt do: Woo’t weep? woo’t fight? woo’t fast? woo’t tear thyself? Woo’t drink up eisel? 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 Mill’ions 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 GERTRUDE

This is mere madness: And thus awhile the fit will work on him; Anon, as patient as the female dove, When that her golden couplets are disclosed, His silence will sit drooping.

HAMLET

Hear you, sir; What is the reason that you use me thus? I loved 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 CLAUDIUS

I pray you, 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

A hall in the castle.

Enter HAMLET and HORATIO

HAMLET

So much for this, sir: now shall you see the other; You do remember all the circumstance?

HORATIO

Remember it, my lord?

HAMLET

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting, That would not let me sleep: methought I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly, And praised be rashness for it, let us know, Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will,–

HORATIO

That is most certain.

HAMLET

Up from my cabin, My sea-gown scarf’d about me, in the dark Groped 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, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life, That, on the supervise, no leisure bated, No, not to stay the grinding of the axe, My head should be struck off.

HORATIO

Is’t possible?

HAMLET

Here’s the commission: read it at more leisure. But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed?

HORATIO

I beseech you.

HAMLET

Being thus be-netted round with villanies,– Ere I could make a prologue to my brains, They had begun the play–I sat me down, Devised 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 The effect of what I wrote?

HORATIO

Ay, good my lord.

HAMLET

An earnest conjuration from the king, As England was his faithful tributary, As love between them like the palm might flourish, As peace should stiff her wheaten garland wear And stand a comma ‘tween their amities, And many such-like ‘As’es 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.

HORATIO

How was this seal’d?

HAMLET

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 form of the other, Subscribed it, gave’t the impression, placed it safely, The changeling never known. Now, the next day Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent Thou know’st already.

HORATIO

So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to’t.

HAMLET

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.

HORATIO

Why, what a king is this!

HAMLET

Does it not, think’st thee, stand me now upon– He that hath kill’d my king and whored my mother, Popp’d in between the election and my hopes, Thrown out his angle for my proper life, And with such cozenage–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?

HORATIO

It must be shortly known to him from England What is the issue of the business there.

HAMLET

It will be short: the interim is mine; And a man’s life’s 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 towering passion.

HORATIO

Peace! who comes here?

Enter OSRIC

OSRIC

Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.

HAMLET

I humbly thank you, sir. Dost know this water-fly?

HORATIO

No, my good lord.

HAMLET

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.

OSRIC

Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should impart a thing to you from his majesty.

HAMLET

I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of spirit. Put your bonnet to his right use; ‘tis for the head.

OSRIC

I thank your lordship, it is very hot.

HAMLET

No, believe me, ‘tis very cold; the wind is northerly.

OSRIC

It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.

HAMLET

But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my complexion.

OSRIC

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,–

HAMLET

I beseech you, remember–

HAMLET moves him to put on his hat

OSRIC

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.

HAMLET

Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; though, I know, to divide him inventorially would dizzy the 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.

OSRIC

Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him.

HAMLET

The concernancy, sir? why do we wrap the gentleman in our more rawer breath?

OSRIC

Sir?

HORATIO

Is’t not possible to understand in another tongue? You will do’t, sir, really.

HAMLET

What imports the nomination of this gentleman?

OSRIC

Of Laertes?

HORATIO

His purse is empty already; all’s golden words are spent.

HAMLET

Of him, sir.

OSRIC

I know you are not ignorant–

HAMLET

I would you did, sir; yet, in faith, if you did, it would not much approve me. Well, sir?

OSRIC

You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is–

HAMLET

I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with him in excellence; but, to know a man well, were to know himself.

OSRIC

I mean, sir, for his weapon; but in the imputation laid on him by them, in his meed he’s unfellowed.

HAMLET

What’s his weapon?

OSRIC

Rapier and dagger.

HAMLET

That’s two of his weapons: but, well.

OSRIC

The king, sir, hath wagered with him six Barbary horses: against the which he has imponed, 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.

HAMLET

What call you the carriages?

HORATIO

I knew you must be edified by the margent ere you had done.

OSRIC

The carriages, sir, are the hangers.

HAMLET

The phrase would be more german 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 ‘imponed,’ as you call it?

OSRIC

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.

HAMLET

How if I answer ‘no’?

OSRIC

I mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in trial.

HAMLET

Sir, I will walk here in the hall: if it please his majesty, ‘tis 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 an I can; if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.

OSRIC

Shall I re-deliver you e’en so?

HAMLET

To this effect, sir; after what flourish your nature will.

OSRIC

I commend my duty to your lordship.

HAMLET

Yours, yours.

Exit OSRIC

He does well to commend it himself; there are no tongues else for’s turn.

HORATIO

This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.

HAMLET

He did comply with his dug, before he sucked it. Thus has he–and many more of the same bevy that I know the dressy 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 fond 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.

HAMLET

I am constant to my purpose; 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.

HAMLET

In happy time.

Lord

The queen desires you to use some gentle entertainment to Laertes before you fall to play.

HAMLET

She well instructs me.

Exit Lord

HORATIO

You will lose this wager, my lord.

HAMLET

I do not think so: since he went into France, I have been in continual practise: I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart: but it is no matter.

HORATIO

Nay, good my lord,–

HAMLET

HORATIO

If your mind dislike any thing, obey it: I will forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit.

HAMLET

Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, LAERTES, Lords, OSRIC, and Attendants with foils, &c

KING CLAUDIUS

Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.

KING CLAUDIUS puts LAERTES’ hand into HAMLET’s

HAMLET

Give me your pardon, sir: I’ve 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 ta’en 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 purposed evil Free me so far in your most generous thoughts, That I have shot mine arrow o’er the house, And hurt my brother.

LAERTES

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 ungored. But till that time, I do receive your offer’d love like love, And will not wrong it.

HAMLET

I embrace it freely; And will this brother’s wager frankly play. Give us the foils. Come on.

LAERTES

Come, one for me.

HAMLET

I’ll be your foil, Laertes: in mine ignorance Your skill shall, like a star i’ the darkest night, Stick fiery off indeed.

LAERTES

You mock me, sir.

HAMLET

No, by this hand.

KING CLAUDIUS

Give them the foils, young Osric. Cousin Hamlet, You know the wager?

HAMLET

Very well, my lord Your grace hath laid the odds o’ the weaker side.

KING CLAUDIUS

I do not fear it; I have seen you both: But since he is better’d, we have therefore odds.

LAERTES

This is too heavy, let me see another.

HAMLET

This likes me well. These foils have all a length?

They prepare to play

OSRIC

Ay, my good lord.

KING CLAUDIUS

Set me the stoops 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 heavens to earth, ‘Now the king dunks to Hamlet.’ Come, begin: And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.

HAMLET

Come on, sir.

LAERTES

Come, my lord.

They play

HAMLET

One.

LAERTES

No.

HAMLET

Judgment.

OSRIC

A hit, a very palpable hit.

LAERTES

Well; again.

KING CLAUDIUS

Stay; give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine; Here’s to thy health.

Trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within

Give him the cup.

HAMLET

I’ll play this bout first; set it by awhile. Come.

They play

Another hit; what say you?

LAERTES

A touch, a touch, I do confess.

KING CLAUDIUS

Our son shall win.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

He’s fat, and scant of breath. Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows; The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.

HAMLET

Good madam!

KING CLAUDIUS

Gertrude, do not drink.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

I will, my lord; I pray you, pardon me.

KING CLAUDIUS

[Aside] It is the poison’d cup: it is too late.

HAMLET

I dare not drink yet, madam; by and by.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Come, let me wipe thy face.

LAERTES

My lord, I’ll hit him now.

KING CLAUDIUS

I do not think’t.

LAERTES

[Aside] And yet ‘tis almost ‘gainst my conscience.

HAMLET

Come, for the third, Laertes: you but dally; I pray you, pass with your best violence; I am afeard you make a wanton of me.

LAERTES

Say you so? come on.

They play

OSRIC

Nothing, neither way.

LAERTES

Have at you now!

LAERTES wounds HAMLET; then in scuffling, they change rapiers, and HAMLET wounds LAERTES

KING CLAUDIUS

Part them; they are incensed.

HAMLET

Nay, come, again.

QUEEN GERTRUDE falls

OSRIC

Look to the queen there, ho!

HORATIO

They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?

OSRIC

How is’t, Laertes?

LAERTES

Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric; I am justly kill’d with mine own treachery.

HAMLET

How does the queen?

KING CLAUDIUS

She swounds to see them bleed.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

No, no, the drink, the drink,–O my dear Hamlet,– The drink, the drink! I am poison’d.

Dies

HAMLET

O villany! Ho! let the door be lock’d: Treachery! Seek it out.

LAERTES

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 practise 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.

HAMLET

The point!–envenom’d too! Then, venom, to thy work.

Stabs KING CLAUDIUS

All

Treason! treason!

KING CLAUDIUS

O, yet defend me, friends; I am but hurt.

HAMLET

Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, Drink off this potion. Is thy union here? Follow my mother.

KING CLAUDIUS dies

LAERTES

He is justly served; 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

HAMLET

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 livest; report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied.

HORATIO

Never believe it: I am more an antique Roman than a Dane: Here’s yet some liquor left.

HAMLET