Ham.-It shall to the barber's, with your beard.-Pr❜ythee say on-He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps:-say on: come to Hecuba.

1 Play. But who, ah woe! had seen the mobled* queenHam. The mobled queen?

Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good.

1 Play. Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning the fames With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head,

Where late the diadem stood; and, for a robe,

About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,

A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up ;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,

'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounced :
But if the gods themselves did see her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs;
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
(Unless things mortal move them not at all),

Would have made milch the burning eye of heaven,
And passion in the gods.

Pol. Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and his tears in 's eyes.-Pr'ythee, no more.

Ham. 'Tis well; I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon. -Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time: After your death you had better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.

Pol. My lord I will use them according to their desert.

Ham. Odd's bodikins, man, much better: Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your your own honour and dignity: The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

Pol. Come, Sirs. [Exit POLONIUS, with some of the PLAYERS. Ham. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of Gonzago ?

1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. We'll have it to-morrow night. You could, for a need study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down, and insert in't? could you not?

1 Play. Ay, my lord.

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!

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' you:-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 to his own conceit,

That, from her working, all his visage wann'd;

* Muffled.

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,

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

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. 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 the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha!

Why, 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
With this slave's offal: Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless, villain!
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,

Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a cursing, like a very drab,

A scullion!

Fie upon't! foh! About, my brains! Humph! I have 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 do blench, ||
I know my course. The spirit, that I have seen,
May be a devil, and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy
(As he is very potent with such spirits),

* A dreamy, stupid fellow.

Unnatural.

Shrink or start.

+ Destruction.

§ Search him.

Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this. The play 's the thing,
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

[Exit.

ACT III.

SCENE I-A Room in the Castle.

Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and
GUILDENSTERN.

King. And can you, by no drift of conference
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: 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 inclined.

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,

And drive his purpose on to these delights.

Ros. We shall, my lord.

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN,

King. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too:

For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither;

That he, as 'twere by accident, may here

Affront Ophelia :

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 behaved,

* Closely connected.

+ Overtook.

+ Meet. { Spies.

Freely.

If't be the 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:-Read on this book: [To OPHELIA.

That show of such an exercise may colour

Your loneliness.-We are oft to blame in this,

"Tis too much proved, t-that, with devotion's visage, And pious action, we do sugar o'er

The devil himself.

King. O, 'tis too true;

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.

[Aside.

[Exeunt KING and POLONIUS,

Enter HAMLET.

Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question :-
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 ;-

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:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels § bear,
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 thougth;
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.

Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed 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 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.

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, you should admit of no discourse to your beauty.

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; this was sometime 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: 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, 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?

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.

* Call.