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 murther'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 brain! 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 murther, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murther of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the 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,
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.

SCENE I. A Room in the Castle.

Enter KING, 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?

And gather by him, as he is behav'd,
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.

Ophelia.

40

Madam, I wish it may. [Exit Queen. Polonius. Ophelia, walk you here.-Gracious, so please you, We will bestow ourselves. [To Ophelia] Read on this book; That show of such an exercise may colour

Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this

"T is too much prov'd-that with devotion's visage And pious action we do sugar o'er

The devil himself.

King. [Aside] O, 't is too true!

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience! 50 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 burthen!

Polonius. I hear him coming; let 's withdraw, my lord.

[Exeunt King and Polonius.

Enter HAMLET.

Hamlet. To be, or not to be,-that is the question :
Whether 't is 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,-'t is a consummation

60

Devoutly to be wish'd.

To die,—to sleep,—

To sleep! perchance to deam! 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 dispriz'd 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

80

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.

Ophelia.

Good my lord,

How does your honour for this many a day?

Hamlet. I humbly thank you; well, well, well. Ophelia. My lord, I have remembrances of yours, That I have longed long to re-deliver ;

I pray you, now receive them.

Hamlet.

I never gave you aught.

No, not I;