Rural Simplicity.

I was not much afeard: for once or twice I was about to speak; and tell him plainly, The self-same sun, that shines upon his court, Hides not his visage from our cottage, but Looks on alike.

Love cemented by Prosperity, but loosened by Adversity.
Prosperity's the very bond of love;

Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together
Affliction alters.

ACT V.

A Statue.

LEONTES. What was he that did make it ?-See, my lord,

Would you not deem it breath'd?—and that those veins Did verily bear blood?

POLIXENES.

Masterly done:

The very life seems warm upon her lip.

LEONTES. The fixure of her eye hath motion in't

There is an air comes from her. What fine chisel. Could ever yet cut breath? Let no man mock me, For I will kiss her.

-000

HAMLET.

Claudius, the reigning king of Denmark, has killed his brother, the former king, and placed himself on the throne, marrying

* As if.

at the same time the widow of the murdered monarch, whose ghost appears to his son Hamlet, urging him to avenge his death. In order the better to effect this object, Hamlet feigns madness, and causes a play to be acted before the king and queen which represents a scene similar to the murder of his father. The agitation of the king and queen at witnessing this representation, convinces Hamlet of their guilt, and he eventually avenges his father's death by killing the guilty Claudius; the queen drinks poison which is intended by the king for Hamlet, who, in a fencing bout with Laertes, son of Polonius, a foolish old lord, is wounded by a rapier anointed with poison and dies. Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius, goes mad, and drowns herself in a distraught state, whilst Polonius himself is stabbed by Hamlet. The play, perhaps more than any other of Shakspere's, abounds in tragic incidents. "If,” says Dr. Johnson, speaking of this play, "the dramas of Shakspere were to be characterized each by the particular excellence which distinguishes it from the rest, we must allow to the tragedy of Hamlet the praise of variety; the incidents are so numerous that the argument of the play would make a long tale."

ACT I.

Ghosts vanish at the Crowing of a Cock.

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 of 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.

The Reverence paid to Christmas Time.
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This 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.

Morning.

But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill.

Real Grief.

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly; these, indeed, seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within, which passeth show;
These, but the trappings and the suits of woe.

Immoderate Grief reproved.

"Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father: But, you must know, your father lost a father; That father lost his, and the survivor bound

In filial obligation, for some term

To do obsequious sorrow: But to persevere
In obstinate condolement, is a course
Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven;
A heart unfortified, or mind impatient;

An understanding simple and unschool'd:
For what we know must be, and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we, in our peevish opposition,
Take it to heart? Fie! 't is a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd; whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried
From the first corse, till he that died to-day,
This must be so.

Hamlet's Soliloquy on his Mother's Marriage.
O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve* itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed

His canon† 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead!-nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this

Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteems the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,—
Let me not think on 't;-Frailty, thy name is woman!-
A little month; or ere those shoes were old,

With which she follow'd my poor father's body,

* Dissolve.

+ Law.
§ Allow.

A name for Apollo.

Like Niobe, all tears;-why she, even she,—

O heaven! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer,-married with my uncle,
My father's brother; but no more like my father,
Than I to Hercules: Within a month;
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married.

The Extent of Human Perfection.

He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.

Cautions to young Women,

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.

Satire on ungracious Pastors.

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
Whilst, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own reed.*

Advice to a Son going to Travel.

Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.

* Regards not his own lessons.