Ham. Very well. Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exit Player.]-My good friends, [To Ros. and GUIL.] I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore. Ros. Good my lord!

Ham. Ay, so, God b' wi' ye. [Exeunt ROSE. and GUILD

Now I am alone.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous, that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit,62
That from her working all his visage wann'd;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspéct,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion

63

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet I,

64

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king
Upon whose property and most dear life

A damn'd defeat was made.65 Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by th' nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this, ha?

66

62 Conceit is used repeatedly by the Poet for conception or imagination. 63 The hint or prompt-word, a technical phrase among players. "A prompter," says Florio," one who keepes the booke for the plaiers, and teacheth them or schollers their kue."

64 This John was probably distinguished as a sleepy, apathetic fellow, a sort of dreaming or droning simpleton or flunky. The only other mention of him that has reached us is in Armin's Nest of Ninnies, 1608: "His name is John, indeed, says the cinnick, but neither John a-nods nor John a-dreams, yet either, as you take it."

65 Thus Chapman, in his Revenge for Honour: "That he might in the mean time make a sure defeat on our good aged father's life."

66 This was giving one the lie with the most galling additions and terms of insult, or belaboring him with extreme provocation, and then rubbing it in; so that the not resenting it would stamp him as the most hopeless of cowards. So, in King Richard II., when Norfolk would drive home his charge upon Bolingbroke with the utmost force, he exclaims: "As low as to thy heart, through the false passage of thy throat, thou liest."

67

'Zounds, I should take it; for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter; or, ere this,
I should have fatted all the region kites 68
With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain !
O, vengeance!

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave;
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by Heaven and Hell,70
Must, like a [trull,] unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,

A scullion!

Fie upon't! foh! - About, my brain!" I've heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play

Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick if he but blench,72
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the Devil: and the Devil hath power
T'assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps,
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
(As he is very potent with such spirits,)
Abuses me to damn me.7 73 I'll have grounds

80

67 Lack gall to make me feel the bitterness of oppression. The gentleness of doves and pigeons was supposed to proceed from their not having any gall in them.

68 All the kites of the element, or of the airy region, the sky. So, in one of the Player's speeches a little before: "Anon the dreadful thunder doth rend the region." See page 176, note 7.

69 Kindless is unnatural. See page 525, note 8.- - Observe how Hamlet checks himself in this strain of objurgation, and then, in mere shame of what he has just done, turns to ranting at himself for having ranted.

70 By all the best and all the worst passions of his nature. In the preceding line, the quarto of 1611 and some copies of the undated quarto read as in the text: the other quartos and the folio have "the son of the dear murdered," which some modern editors prefer.

71" About, my brain," is nothing more than "to work, my brain." The phrase to go about a thing, is still common.

72 To tent was to probe, to search a wound. To blench is to shrink or

start.

73 That Hamlet was not alone in the suspicion here started, appears from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici: "I believe that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us into mischief, blood, and villainy; instilling and stealing into our hearts that the blessed spirits are

More relative than this: 74 the play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.

[Exit.

ACT III. SCENE I. Elsinore. A Room in the Castle.

Enter the KING, the QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELia, RosenCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.

King. And can you, by no drift of circumstance, Get from him why he puts on this confusion, Grating so harshly all his days of quiet

With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

Ros. He does confess he feels himself distracted;
But from what cause he will by no means speak.
Guil. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded;
But with a crafty madness keeps aloof,

When we would bring him on to some confession
Of his true state.

Queen.

Did he receive you well? Ros. Most like a gentleman.

Guil. But with much forcing of his disposition. Ros. Niggard of question; but, of our demands, Most free in his reply.

Queen. Did you assay him to any pastime?

Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain players
We o'er-raught on the way:1 of these we told him ;
And there did seem in him a kind of joy

To hear of it. They are about the Court;
And, as I think, they have already order

This night to play before him.

Pol.

'Tis most true.

And he beseech'd me to entreat your Majesties

To hear and see the matter.

King. With all my heart; and it doth much content me To hear him so inclin'd.

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,

And drive his purpose on to these delights.
Ros. We shall, my lord.

[Exeunt ROSE. and GUILD.

not at rest in their graves, but wander, solicitous of the affairs of the world." To abuse, in the Poet's language, is to deceive, or practise upon with illusions. 74 Grounds stai ding in closer and clearer relation with the matter alleged by the Ghost.

1 O'er-raught is overtook, raught being the old form of reached,

King.

Sweet Gertrude, leave us too:

For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
That he, as 'twere by accident, may here
Affront Ophelia: 2

Her father and myself, lawful espials,

Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen,
We may of their encounter frankly judge;
And gather by him, as he is behav'd,
If't be th' affliction of his love or no

That thus he suffers for.

Queen.

I shall obey you:

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish

That your good beauties be the happy cause

:

Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,

To both your honours.

Oph.

Madam, I wish it may. [Exit QUEEN.

Pol. Ophelia, walk you here.

Gracious, so please you, We will bestow ourselves. — [To ОPH.] Read on this book; That show of such an exercise may colour

Your loneliness. We're oft to blame in this,

that with devotion's visage

"Tis too much prov'd, -
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The Devil himself.

King.

O, 'tis too true!

[Aside.] How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience. The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,

Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it'

Than is my deed to my most painted word:

O heavy burden!

Pol. I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord.

[Exeunt KING and POLONIUE

that is the question:

Enter HAMLET.

Ham. To be, or not to be,

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them. To die; -to sleep,-
No more and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, -'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

2 Affront was sometimes used for meet, or, as it is explained a little after, encounter. So, in Cymbeline, iv. 3: "Your preparation can affront no less than what you hear of."

8 Not more ugly in comparison with the thing that helps it. To is in sev eral places so used by the Poet.

To sleep! perchance to dream;

-ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,*
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life: 5

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns

6

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?7 who'd these fardels bear,8
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death-
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns-puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;"
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.-Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia !- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember❜d.

Oph.
Good my lord,
How does your Honour for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thank you; well, well, well.10
Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver;

I pray you, now receive them.

4 "This mortal coil" is the tumult and bustle of this mortal life; or, as Wordsworth has it, "the fretful stir unprofitable, and the fever of the world." Perhaps coil here means, also, the body.

5 That is, the consideration that induces us to undergo the calamity of so ong a life. This use of respect is very frequent. See page 101, note 16.

So the folio; the quartos, despis'd. The folio reading is the stronger; for if a love unprized be hard to bear, a love scorned must be much harder. 7 The allusion is to the term quietus est, used in settling accounts at exchequer audits. Thus, in Sir Thomas Overbury's character of a Franklin: "Lastly, to end him, he cares not when his end comes; he needs not feare his audit, for his quietus is in heaven."- Bodkin was the ancient term for a small dagger.

8 So the folio; the quartos, "who would fardels bear." I prefer "who'd these fardels bear," because it makes what follows more continuous with what precedes; and it seems more natural that Hamlet should still keep his mind on the crosses already mentioned. Fardel is an old word for burden. 9 The pale complexion of grief. See page 203, note 10.

10 Thus the folio; the quartos have well but once. The repetition seems very apt and forcible, as suggesting the opposite of what the word means.