Hamlet
No traveller returns,[19] puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus, conscience does make cowards of us all;[20]
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,[21]
With this regard, their currents turn away,
And lose the name of action.[22]--
[OPHELIA _returns._]
--Soft you now![23]
The fair Ophelia:--Nymph, in thy orisons[24]
Be all my sins remember'd.
_Oph._ (R.C.) Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?
_Ham._ (L.C.) I humbly thank you; well.
_Oph._ My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longèd long to re-deliver;
I pray you, now receive them.
_Ham._ No, not I;
I never gave you aught.
_Oph._ My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath compos'd
As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
Take these again; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.
_Ham._ Ha, ha! are you honest?
_Oph._ My lord?
_Ham._ Are you fair?
_Oph._ What means your lordship?
_Ham._ That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no
discourse to your beauty.[25]
_Oph._ Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
_Ham._ Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform
honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can
translate beauty into his likeness:[26] this was some time a paradox,
but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.
_Oph._ Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
_Ham._ You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so
inoculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it:[27] I loved you
not.
_Oph._ I was the more deceived.
_Ham._ Get thee to a nunnery: Why wouldst thou be a breeder of
sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of
such things, that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am
very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck[28]
than I have thoughts to put them in,[29] imagination to give them
shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do,
crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all;
believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father?
_Oph._ At home, my lord.
_Ham._ Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool
nowhere but in's own house. Farewell.
_Oph._ O, help him, you sweet heavens!
_Ham._ If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry.
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape
calumny. Get thee to a nunnery; 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; go; go.
_Oph._ Heavenly powers, restore him!
_Ham._ I have heard of your paintings[30] too, well enough; Heaven
hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another:[31] you
jig, you amble, and you lisp,[32] and nickname Heaven's creatures,
and make your wantonness your ignorance.[33] Go to, I'll no more
of't; it hath made me mad.
[HAMLET _crosses to_ R.H.]
I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married
already, all but one,[34] shall live; the rest shall keep as they
are. To a nunnery, go.
[_Exit_ HAMLET, R.H.[35]]
_Oph._ (L.) O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,[36]
The glass of fashion[37] and the mould of form,[38]
The observ'd of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his musick vows,[39]
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh:
O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
[_Exit_ OPHELIA, L.H.]
_Re-enter_ KING _and_ POLONIUS.
_King._ Love! his affections do not that way tend;
Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,
Was not like madness. There's something in his soul,
O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;
He shall with speed to England,
For the demand of our neglected tribute:
Haply, the seas, and countries different,
With variable objects, shall expel
This something-settled matter in his heart;
Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
From fashion of himself. What think you on't?
_Pol._ It shall do well: But yet I do believe
The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love. 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;[40]
And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear
Of all their conference. If she find him not,[41]
To England send him; or confine him where
Your wisdom best shall think.
_King._ It shall be so:
Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.
[_Exeunt_, L.H.]
_Enter_ HAMLET _and a_ Player (R.H.)
_Ham._ (C.) Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of our players
do, I had as lief[42] the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw
the air too much with your hands thus;[43] but use all gently: for in
the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your
passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it
smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious
perrywig-pated fellow[44] tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to
split the ears of the groundlings,[45] who, for the most part, are
capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise: I would
have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant;[46] it
out-herods Herod:[47] Pray you, avoid it.
_1st Play._ (R.) I warrant your honour.
_Ham._ Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your
tutor; suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this
special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for
any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both
at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up
to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and
the very age and body of the time its form and pressure.[48] Now,
this overdone, or come tardy off,[49] though it make the unskilful
laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which
one[50] must, in your allowance,[51] o'erweigh a whole theatre of
others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others
praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely,[52] that, neither
having the accent of christians, nor the gait of christian, pagan,
nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of
nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they
imitated humanity so abominably.
[_Crosses to_ R.]
_1st Play._ (L.) I hope we have reformed that indifferently[53] with
us.
_Ham._ O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns
speak no more than is set down for them:[54] for there be of them
that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren
spectators[55] to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary
question[56] of the play be then to be considered: that's villainous,
and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make
you ready.
[_Exit_ Player, L.H.]
_Ham._ What, ho, Horatio!
_Enter_ HORATIO (R.H.)
_Hor._ Here, sweet lord, at your service.
_Ham._ Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
As e'er my conversation cop'd withal.[57]
_Hor._ O, my dear lord.
_Ham._ Nay, do not think I flatter;
For what advancement may I hope from thee,
That no revenue hast, but thy good spirits,
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp;
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,[58]
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul[59] was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself: for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Has ta'en with equal thanks: and bless'd are those
Whose blood and judgment[60] are so well co-mingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.--Something too much of this.--
There is a play to-night before the king;
One scene of it comes near the circumstance
Which I have told thee of my father's death:
I pr'ythee when thou seest that act a-foot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul[61]
Observe my uncle: if his occulted guilt[62]
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen;
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan's stithy.[63] Give him heedful note:
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face;
And, after, we will both our judgments join
In censure of his seeming.[64]
[HORATIO _goes off_, U.E.L.H.]
_March. Enter_ KING _and_ QUEEN, _preceded by_ POLONIUS, OPHELIA,
HORATIO, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, Lords, Ladies, _and_ Attendants.
KING _and_ QUEEN _sit_ (L.H.); OPHELIA (R.H.)
_King._ (L.) How fares our cousin Hamlet?
_Ham._ (C.) Excellent, i'faith; of the cameleon's dish: I eat the
air, promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.
_King._ I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not
mine.[65]
_Ham._ No, nor mine, now.[66] My lord,--you played once in the
university, you say?[67]
[_To_ POLONIUS, L.]
_Pol._ (L.C.) That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.
_Ham._ (C.) And what did you enact?
_Pol._ I did enact Julius Cæsar:[68] I was killed i'the Capitol;
Brutus killed me.
_Ham._ It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf
there.--Be the players ready?
_Ros._ Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.[69]
_Queen._ Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
[_Pointing to a chair by her side._]
_Ham._ No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.
_Pol._ O, ho! do you mark that?
[_Aside to the_ KING.]
_Ham._ Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
[_Lying down at_ OPHELIA'S _feet._][70]
_Oph._ (R.) You are merry, my lord.
_Ham._ O, your only jig-maker.[71] What should a man do but be merry?
for, look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died
within these two hours.
_Oph._ Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.
_Ham._ So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a
suit of sables.[72] O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten
yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half
a year: But, by'r-lady, he must build churches, then.[73]
_Oph._ What means the play, my lord?
_Ham._ Miching mallecho;[74] it means mischief.
_Oph._ But what is the argument of the play?
_Enter a_ Player _as_ Prologue (L.H.) _on a raised stage._
_Ham._ We shall know by this fellow.
_Pro._ _For us, and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently._
[_Exit_, L.H.]
_Ham._ Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?[75]
_Oph._ 'Tis brief, my lord.
_Ham._ As woman's love.
_Enter a_ KING _and a_ QUEEN (L.H.) _on raised stage._
_P. King._ (R.) Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart[76] gone round
Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbèd ground,[77]
Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands,