1 Play. 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 mirrour up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure*. Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your allowances, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players, that I have seen play,—and heard others praise, and that highly,—not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

1 Play. I hope, we have reformed that indifferently with us.

Ham. O, reform it altogether. And let those, that play your clowns, speak no more than is set the brother of death.'- World of Words, 1611. Hence this personage was introduced into the old mysteries and moralities as a demon of outrageous and violent demeanour; or as Bale says, • Termagauntes altogether, and very devils incarnate :' and again,

this terrible Termagaunt, this Nero, this Pharaoh. A tyrant was always ' a part to tear a cat in.'—The murder of the innocents was a favourite subject for a mystery; and wherever Herod is introduced, he plays the part of a vaunting braggart, a tyrant of tyrants, and does indeed outdo Termagant.

* Pressure is impression, resemblance. 5 i. e. approval, estimation. Vide King Lear, Act ii. Sc. 4. .

down for them: for there be of them, that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question o of the play be then to be considered : that's villanous; and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.

[Exeunt Players. Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUIL

DENSTERN. How now, my lord? will the king hear this piece of work?

Pol. And the queen too, and that presently.
Ham. Bid the players make haste.-

[Exit PoloniUS: Will

you two help to hasten them? Both. Ay, my lord.

[Exeunt RosENCRANTZ and GuilDENSTERN. Ham. What, ho; Horatio!

Enter HORATIO.
Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service.

Ham. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
As e’er my conversation cop'd withal.

Hor. O, my dear lord,-
Ham.

Nay, do not think I flatter:

6 The quarto, 1603, ' Point in the the play then to be observed.' Afterwards is added, “And then you have some again that keeps one suit of jests, as a man is known by one suit of apparel; and gentlemen quotes his jests down in their tables before they come to the play, as thus :- Cannot you stay till I eat my porridge ;

and you oue me a quarter's wages; and your beer is sour; and blabbering with his lips: And thus keeping in his cinque a pace of jests; when, God knows, the warme Clown cannot make a jest unless by chance, as the blind man catcheth a hare: Masters, tell him of it.'— This passage was evidently levelled at the particular folly of some injudicious player contemporary with the poet.

For what advancement may I hope from thee,
That no revenue hast, but thy good spirits,
To feed, and clothe thee? Why should the poor

be
flatter'd ?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp;
And crook the pregnant? hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear ?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish her election,
She hath seal'd thee for herself: for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
A man, that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta’en with equal thanks; and bless'd are those,
Whose blood and judgment are so well co-mingledo,
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

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 afoot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe my uncle: if his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen;
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan's stithy 10. Give him heedful note:

In

my

7 Pregnant, quick, ready.

8. According to the doctrine of the four humours, desire and confidence were seated in the blood, and judgment in the phlegm, and the due mixtures of the humours made a perfect character.'

Johnson. 9 Quarto, 1604—co-medled.' 10 Vulcan's stithy is. Vulcan’s workshop or smithy; stith being

an unvil.

For I mine eyes will rivet to his face 11;
And, after, we will both our judgments join
In censure 19 of his seeming.
Hor.

Well, my lord:
If he steal aught, the whilst this play is playing,
And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

Ham. They are coming to the play; I must be idle: Get you a place.

Danish March. A Flourish. Enter King, Queen,

POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUIL-
DENSTERN, and Others.
King. How fares our cousin Hamlet?

Ham. Excellent, i'faith; of the chameleon's dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed; You cannot feed capons so.

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

Ham, No, nor mine now. My lord,—you played once in the university, you say? [To POLONIUS.

Pol. That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor. Ham. And what did

you

enact? Pol. I did enact Julius Cæsar: I was killed i' the Capitol; Brutus killed me 13

11 Here the first quarto has :

• And if he do not blench and change at that,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen;
Horatio, have a care, observe him well.

Hor. My lord, mine eyes shall still be on his face,
And not the smallest alteration

That shall appear in him, but I shall note it.' 12 i. e. judgment, opinion.

13 A Latin play on the subject of Cæsar's death was performed at Christ Church, in Oxford, in 1582. Malone thinks that there was an English play on the same subject previous to Shak

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 14 upon your pati

ence.

Queen. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

Ham. No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.

Pol. O ho! do you mark that? [To the King
Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

[Lying down at OPHELIA's Feet.
Oph. No, my lord.
Ham. I mean, my

head

upon your lap?
Oph. Ay, my lord.
Ham. Do you think, I meant contray 15 matters ?
Oph. I think nothing, my lord.

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

Oph. What is, my lord ?
Ham. Nothing.
Oph. You are merry, my

lord. Ham. Who, I?

speare's. Cæsar was killed in Pompey's portico, and not in the Capitol : but the error is at least as old as Chaucer's time.

This Julius to the Capitolie wente
Upon a day, that he was wont to gon,
And in the Capitolie anon him hente
This false Brutus and his other soon,
And sticked him with bodekins anon
With many a wound,' &c.

Chaucer's Monkes Tale, v. 14621. I have cited this passage to show that Chaucer uses bodkin for dagger, like Shakspeare. See p.

240. 14 i. e. 'they wait upon your sufferance or will. Johnson would have changed the word to pleasure;

but Shakspeare has again used it in a similar sense in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act iii. Sc. 1:

And think my patience more than thy desert

Is privilege for thy departure hence.' 15 This is the reading of the quarto 1603. The quarto 1604 and the folio read country.