Hamlet

_Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing him and heher. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes herup, and declines his head upon her neck. Lays him down upon a bank offlowers. She, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow,takes off his crown, kisses it, pours poison in the King’s ears, andexits. The Queen returns, finds the King dead, and makes passionateaction. The Poisoner with some three or four Mutes, comes in again,seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisonerwoos the Queen with gifts. She seems loth and unwilling awhile, but inthe end accepts his love._

[_Exeunt._]

OPHELIA.What means this, my lord?

HAMLET.Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.

OPHELIA.Belike this show imports the argument of the play.

Enter Prologue.

HAMLET.We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel; they’lltell all.

OPHELIA.Will they tell us what this show meant?

HAMLET.Ay, or any show that you’ll show him. Be not you ashamed to show, he’llnot shame to tell you what it means.

OPHELIA.You are naught, you are naught: I’ll mark the play.

PROLOGUE._For us, and for our tragedy,Here stooping to your clemency,We beg your hearing patiently._

HAMLET.Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

OPHELIA.’Tis brief, my lord.

HAMLET.As woman’s love.

Enter a King and a Queen.

PLAYER KING.Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone roundNeptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground,And thirty dozen moons with borrow’d sheenAbout the world have times twelve thirties been,Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our handsUnite commutual in most sacred bands.

PLAYER QUEEN.So many journeys may the sun and moonMake us again count o’er ere love be done.But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,So far from cheer and from your former state,That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must:For women’s fear and love holds quantity,In neither aught, or in extremity.Now what my love is, proof hath made you know,And as my love is siz’d, my fear is so.Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

PLAYER KING.Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too:My operant powers their functions leave to do:And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,Honour’d, belov’d, and haply one as kindFor husband shalt thou—

PLAYER QUEEN.O confound the rest.Such love must needs be treason in my breast.In second husband let me be accurst!None wed the second but who kill’d the first.

HAMLET.[_Aside._] Wormwood, wormwood.

PLAYER QUEEN.The instances that second marriage moveAre base respects of thrift, but none of love.A second time I kill my husband dead,When second husband kisses me in bed.

PLAYER KING.I do believe you think what now you speak;But what we do determine, oft we break.Purpose is but the slave to memory,Of violent birth, but poor validity:Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,But fall unshaken when they mellow be.Most necessary ’tis that we forgetTo pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.What to ourselves in passion we propose,The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.The violence of either grief or joyTheir own enactures with themselves destroy.Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.This world is not for aye; nor ’tis not strangeThat even our loves should with our fortunes change,For ’tis a question left us yet to prove,Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.The great man down, you mark his favourite flies,The poor advanc’d makes friends of enemies;And hitherto doth love on fortune tend:For who not needs shall never lack a friend,And who in want a hollow friend doth try,Directly seasons him his enemy.But orderly to end where I begun,Our wills and fates do so contrary runThat our devices still are overthrown.Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.So think thou wilt no second husband wed,But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

PLAYER QUEEN.Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light,Sport and repose lock from me day and night,To desperation turn my trust and hope,An anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope,Each opposite that blanks the face of joy,Meet what I would have well, and it destroy!Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,If, once a widow, ever I be wife.

HAMLET.[_To Ophelia._] If she should break it now.

PLAYER KING.’Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile.My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguileThe tedious day with sleep.[_Sleeps._]

PLAYER QUEEN.Sleep rock thy brain,And never come mischance between us twain.

[_Exit._]

HAMLET.Madam, how like you this play?

QUEEN.The lady protests too much, methinks.

HAMLET.O, but she’ll keep her word.

KING.Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in’t?

HAMLET.No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i’ th’ world.

KING.What do you call the play?

HAMLET._The Mousetrap._ Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of amurder done in Vienna. Gonzago is the Duke’s name, his wife Baptista:you shall see anon; ’tis a knavish piece of work: but what o’ that?Your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. Let thegall’d jade wince; our withers are unwrung.

Enter Lucianus.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.

OPHELIA.You are a good chorus, my lord.

HAMLET.I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppetsdallying.

OPHELIA.You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

HAMLET.It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.

OPHELIA.Still better, and worse.

HAMLET.So you mistake your husbands.—Begin, murderer. Pox, leave thy damnablefaces, and begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.

LUCIANUS.Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing,Confederate season, else no creature seeing;Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,Thy natural magic and dire propertyOn wholesome life usurp immediately.

[_Pours the poison into the sleeper’s ears._]

HAMLET.He poisons him i’ th’garden for’s estate. His name’s Gonzago. The storyis extant, and written in very choice Italian. You shall see anon howthe murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.

OPHELIA.The King rises.

HAMLET.What, frighted with false fire?

QUEEN.How fares my lord?

POLONIUS.Give o’er the play.

KING.Give me some light. Away.

All.Lights, lights, lights.

[_Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio._]

HAMLET.Why, let the strucken deer go weep,The hart ungalled play;For some must watch, while some must sleep,So runs the world away.Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, if the rest of myfortunes turn Turk with me; with two Provincial roses on my razedshoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?

HORATIO.Half a share.

HAMLET.A whole one, I.For thou dost know, O Damon dear,This realm dismantled wasOf Jove himself, and now reigns hereA very, very—pajock.

HORATIO.You might have rhymed.

HAMLET.O good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound. Didstperceive?

HORATIO.Very well, my lord.

HAMLET.Upon the talk of the poisoning?

HORATIO.I did very well note him.

HAMLET.Ah, ha! Come, some music. Come, the recorders.For if the king like not the comedy,Why then, belike he likes it not, perdie.Come, some music.

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

GUILDENSTERN.Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

HAMLET.Sir, a whole history.

GUILDENSTERN.The King, sir—

HAMLET.Ay, sir, what of him?

GUILDENSTERN.Is in his retirement, marvellous distempered.

HAMLET.With drink, sir?

GUILDENSTERN.No, my lord; rather with choler.

HAMLET.Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to thedoctor, for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge himinto far more choler.

GUILDENSTERN.Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not sowildly from my affair.

HAMLET.I am tame, sir, pronounce.

GUILDENSTERN.The Queen your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent meto you.

HAMLET.You are welcome.

GUILDENSTERN.Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. If it shallplease you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother’scommandment; if not, your pardon and my return shall be the end of mybusiness.

HAMLET.Sir, I cannot.

GUILDENSTERN.What, my lord?

HAMLET.Make you a wholesome answer. My wit’s diseased. But, sir, such answeras I can make, you shall command; or rather, as you say, my mother.Therefore no more, but to the matter. My mother, you say,—

ROSENCRANTZ.Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into amazement andadmiration.

HAMLET.O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother! But is there no sequelat the heels of this mother’s admiration?

ROSENCRANTZ.She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed.

HAMLET.We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any furthertrade with us?

ROSENCRANTZ.My lord, you once did love me.

HAMLET.And so I do still, by these pickers and stealers.

ROSENCRANTZ.Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do surely bar thedoor upon your own liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend.

HAMLET.Sir, I lack advancement.

ROSENCRANTZ.How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself for yoursuccession in Denmark?

HAMLET.Ay, sir, but while the grass grows—the proverb is something musty.

Re-enter the Players with recorders.

O, the recorders. Let me see one.—To withdraw with you, why do you goabout to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?

GUILDENSTERN.O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.

HAMLET.I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?

GUILDENSTERN.My lord, I cannot.

HAMLET.I pray you.

GUILDENSTERN.Believe me, I cannot.

HAMLET.I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN.I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET.’Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your finger andthumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse mosteloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN.But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony. I have not theskill.

HAMLET.Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would playupon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heartof my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of mycompass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this littleorgan, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood, do you think I am easierto be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, thoughyou can fret me, you cannot play upon me.

Enter Polonius.

God bless you, sir.

POLONIUS.My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.

HAMLET.Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?

POLONIUS.By the mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.

HAMLET.Methinks it is like a weasel.

POLONIUS.It is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET.Or like a whale.

POLONIUS.Very like a whale.

HAMLET.Then will I come to my mother by and by.—They fool me to the top of mybent.—I will come by and by.

POLONIUS.I will say so.

[_Exit._]

HAMLET.By and by is easily said. Leave me, friends.

[_Exeunt all but Hamlet._]

’Tis now the very witching time of night,When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes outContagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,And do such bitter business as the dayWould quake to look on. Soft now, to my mother.O heart, lose not thy nature; let not everThe soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:Let me be cruel, not unnatural.I will speak daggers to her, but use none;My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.How in my words somever she be shent,To give them seals never, my soul, consent.

[_Exit._]

SCENE III. A room in the Castle.

Enter King, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING.I like him not, nor stands it safe with usTo let his madness range. Therefore prepare you,I your commission will forthwith dispatch,And he to England shall along with you.The terms of our estate may not endureHazard so near us as doth hourly growOut of his lunacies.

GUILDENSTERN.We will ourselves provide.Most holy and religious fear it isTo keep those many many bodies safeThat live and feed upon your Majesty.

ROSENCRANTZ.The single and peculiar life is boundWith all the strength and armour of the mind,To keep itself from ’noyance; but much moreThat spirit upon whose weal depend and restThe lives of many. The cease of majestyDies not alone; but like a gulf doth drawWhat’s near it with it. It is a massy wheelFix’d on the summit of the highest mount,To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser thingsAre mortis’d and adjoin’d; which when it falls,Each small annexment, petty consequence,Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never aloneDid the King sigh, but with a general groan.

KING.Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage;For we will fetters put upon this fear,Which now goes too free-footed.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.We will haste us.

[_Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern._]

Enter Polonius.

POLONIUS.My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet.Behind the arras I’ll convey myselfTo hear the process. I’ll warrant she’ll tax him home,And as you said, and wisely was it said,’Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,Since nature makes them partial, should o’erhearThe speech of vantage. Fare you well, my liege,I’ll call upon you ere you go to bed,And tell you what I know.

KING.Thanks, dear my lord.

[_Exit Polonius._]

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,—A brother’s murder! Pray can I not,Though inclination be as sharp as will:My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,And, like a man to double business bound,I stand in pause where I shall first begin,And both neglect. What if this cursed handWere thicker than itself with brother’s blood,Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavensTo wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercyBut to confront the visage of offence?And what’s in prayer but this twofold force,To be forestalled ere we come to fall,Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up.My fault is past. But O, what form of prayerCan serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder!That cannot be; since I am still possess’dOf those effects for which I did the murder,—My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.May one be pardon’d and retain th’offence?In the corrupted currents of this worldOffence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itselfBuys out the law. But ’tis not so above;There is no shuffling, there the action liesIn his true nature, and we ourselves compell’dEven to the teeth and forehead of our faults,To give in evidence. What then? What rests?Try what repentance can. What can it not?Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?O wretched state! O bosom black as death!O limed soul, that struggling to be free,Art more engag’d! Help, angels! Make assay:Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel,Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.All may be well.

[_Retires and kneels._]

Enter Hamlet.

HAMLET.Now might I do it pat, now he is praying.And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven;And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d:A villain kills my father, and for thatI, his sole son, do this same villain sendTo heaven. O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.He took my father grossly, full of bread,With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?But in our circumstance and course of thought,’Tis heavy with him. And am I then reveng’d,To take him in the purging of his soul,When he is fit and season’d for his passage? No.Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent:When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage,Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed,At gaming, swearing; or about some actThat has no relish of salvation in’t,Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,And that his soul may be as damn’d and blackAs hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

[_Exit._]

The King rises and advances.

KING.My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

[_Exit._]

SCENE IV. Another room in the Castle.

Enter Queen and Polonius.

POLONIUS.He will come straight. Look you lay home to him,Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,And that your Grace hath screen’d and stood betweenMuch heat and him. I’ll silence me e’en here.Pray you be round with him.

HAMLET.[_Within._] Mother, mother, mother.

QUEEN.I’ll warrant you, Fear me not.Withdraw, I hear him coming.

[_Polonius goes behind the arras._]

Enter Hamlet.

HAMLET.Now, mother, what’s the matter?

QUEEN.Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

HAMLET.Mother, you have my father much offended.

QUEEN.Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

HAMLET.Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

QUEEN.Why, how now, Hamlet?

HAMLET.What’s the matter now?

QUEEN.Have you forgot me?

HAMLET.No, by the rood, not so.You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,And, would it were not so. You are my mother.

QUEEN.Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.

HAMLET.Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge.You go not till I set you up a glassWhere you may see the inmost part of you.

QUEEN.What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?Help, help, ho!

POLONIUS.[_Behind._] What, ho! help, help, help!

HAMLET.How now? A rat? [_Draws._]Dead for a ducat, dead!

[_Makes a pass through the arras._]

POLONIUS.[_Behind._] O, I am slain!

[_Falls and dies._]

QUEEN.O me, what hast thou done?

HAMLET.Nay, I know not. Is it the King?

[_Draws forth Polonius._]

QUEEN.O what a rash and bloody deed is this!

HAMLET.A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother,As kill a king and marry with his brother.

QUEEN.As kill a king?

HAMLET.Ay, lady, ’twas my word.—[_To Polonius._] Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune,Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.—Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down,And let me wring your heart, for so I shall,If it be made of penetrable stuff;If damned custom have not braz’d it so,That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

QUEEN.What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongueIn noise so rude against me?

HAMLET.Such an actThat blurs the grace and blush of modesty,Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the roseFrom the fair forehead of an innocent love,And sets a blister there. Makes marriage vowsAs false as dicers’ oaths. O such a deedAs from the body of contraction plucksThe very soul, and sweet religion makesA rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face doth glow,Yea this solidity and compound mass,With tristful visage, as against the doom,Is thought-sick at the act.

QUEEN.Ay me, what act,That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

HAMLET.Look here upon this picture, and on this,The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.See what a grace was seated on this brow,Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,An eye like Mars, to threaten and command,A station like the herald MercuryNew lighted on a heaven-kissing hill:A combination and a form indeed,Where every god did seem to set his seal,To give the world assurance of a man.This was your husband. Look you now what follows.Here is your husband, like a mildew’d earBlasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?You cannot call it love; for at your ageThe hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,And waits upon the judgement: and what judgementWould step from this to this? Sense sure you have,Else could you not have motion; but sure that senseIs apoplex’d, for madness would not errNor sense to ecstacy was ne’er so thrall’dBut it reserv’d some quantity of choiceTo serve in such a difference. What devil was’tThat thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,Or but a sickly part of one true senseCould not so mope. O shame! where is thy blush?Rebellious hell,If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shameWhen the compulsive ardour gives the charge,Since frost itself as actively doth burn,And reason panders will.

QUEEN.O Hamlet, speak no more.Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,And there I see such black and grained spotsAs will not leave their tinct.

HAMLET.Nay, but to liveIn the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making loveOver the nasty sty.

QUEEN.O speak to me no more;These words like daggers enter in mine ears;No more, sweet Hamlet.

HAMLET.A murderer and a villain;A slave that is not twentieth part the titheOf your precedent lord. A vice of kings,A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,That from a shelf the precious diadem stoleAnd put it in his pocket!

QUEEN.No more.

HAMLET.A king of shreds and patches!—

Enter Ghost.

Save me and hover o’er me with your wings,You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

QUEEN.Alas, he’s mad.

HAMLET.Do you not come your tardy son to chide,That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go byThe important acting of your dread command?O say!

GHOST.Do not forget. This visitationIs but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.But look, amazement on thy mother sits.O step between her and her fighting soul.Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.Speak to her, Hamlet.

HAMLET.How is it with you, lady?

QUEEN.Alas, how is’t with you,That you do bend your eye on vacancy,And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,Upon the heat and flame of thy distemperSprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

HAMLET.On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,His form and cause conjoin’d, preaching to stones,Would make them capable.—Do not look upon me,Lest with this piteous action you convertMy stern effects. Then what I have to doWill want true colour; tears perchance for blood.

QUEEN.To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET.Do you see nothing there?

QUEEN.Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

HAMLET.Nor did you nothing hear?

QUEEN.No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET.Why, look you there! look how it steals away!My father, in his habit as he liv’d!Look where he goes even now out at the portal.

[_Exit Ghost._]

QUEEN.This is the very coinage of your brain.This bodiless creation ecstasyIs very cunning in.

HAMLET.Ecstasy!My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,And makes as healthful music. It is not madnessThat I have utter’d. Bring me to the test,And I the matter will re-word; which madnessWould gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,Lay not that flattering unction to your soulThat not your trespass, but my madness speaks.It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven,Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come;And do not spread the compost on the weeds,To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;For in the fatness of these pursy timesVirtue itself of vice must pardon beg,Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

QUEEN.O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

HAMLET.O throw away the worser part of it,And live the purer with the other half.Good night. But go not to mine uncle’s bed.Assume a virtue, if you have it not.That monster custom, who all sense doth eat,Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,That to the use of actions fair and goodHe likewise gives a frock or liveryThat aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,And that shall lend a kind of easinessTo the next abstinence. The next more easy;For use almost can change the stamp of nature,And either curb the devil, or throw him outWith wondrous potency. Once more, good night,And when you are desirous to be bles’d,I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord[_Pointing to Polonius._]I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so,To punish me with this, and this with me,That I must be their scourge and minister.I will bestow him, and will answer wellThe death I gave him. So again, good night.I must be cruel, only to be kind:Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.One word more, good lady.

QUEEN.What shall I do?

HAMLET.Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed,Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,Or paddling in your neck with his damn’d fingers,Make you to ravel all this matter out,That I essentially am not in madness,But mad in craft. ’Twere good you let him know,For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?No, in despite of sense and secrecy,Unpeg the basket on the house’s top,Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,To try conclusions, in the basket creepAnd break your own neck down.

QUEEN.Be thou assur’d, if words be made of breath,And breath of life, I have no life to breatheWhat thou hast said to me.

HAMLET.I must to England, you know that?

QUEEN.Alack,I had forgot. ’Tis so concluded on.

HAMLET.There’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows,Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,—They bear the mandate, they must sweep my wayAnd marshal me to knavery. Let it work;For ’tis the sport to have the enginerHoist with his own petard, and ’t shall go hardBut I will delve one yard below their minesAnd blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet,When in one line two crafts directly meet.This man shall set me packing.I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.Mother, good night. Indeed, this counsellorIs now most still, most secret, and most grave,Who was in life a foolish prating knave.Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.Good night, mother.

[_Exit Hamlet dragging out Polonius._]

ACT IV

SCENE I. A room in the Castle.

Enter King, Queen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING.There’s matter in these sighs. These profound heavesYou must translate; ’tis fit we understand them.Where is your son?

QUEEN.Bestow this place on us a little while.

[_To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who go out._]

Ah, my good lord, what have I seen tonight!

KING.What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

QUEEN.Mad as the sea and wind, when both contendWhich is the mightier. In his lawless fitBehind the arras hearing something stir,Whips out his rapier, cries ‘A rat, a rat!’And in this brainish apprehension killsThe unseen good old man.

KING.O heavy deed!It had been so with us, had we been there.His liberty is full of threats to all;To you yourself, to us, to everyone.Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer’d?It will be laid to us, whose providenceShould have kept short, restrain’d, and out of hauntThis mad young man. But so much was our loveWe would not understand what was most fit,But like the owner of a foul disease,To keep it from divulging, let it feedEven on the pith of life. Where is he gone?

QUEEN.To draw apart the body he hath kill’d,O’er whom his very madness, like some oreAmong a mineral of metals base,Shows itself pure. He weeps for what is done.

KING.O Gertrude, come away!The sun no sooner shall the mountains touchBut we will ship him hence, and this vile deedWe must with all our majesty and skillBoth countenance and excuse.—Ho, Guildenstern!

Re-enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Friends both, go join you with some further aid:Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,And from his mother’s closet hath he dragg’d him.Go seek him out, speak fair, and bring the bodyInto the chapel. I pray you haste in this.

[_Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern._]

Come, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends,And let them know both what we mean to doAnd what’s untimely done, so haply slander,Whose whisper o’er the world’s diameter,As level as the cannon to his blank,Transports his poison’d shot, may miss our name,And hit the woundless air. O, come away!My soul is full of discord and dismay.

[_Exeunt._]

SCENE II. Another room in the Castle.

Enter Hamlet.

HAMLET.Safely stowed.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.[_Within._] Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!

HAMLET.What noise? Who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come.

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

ROSENCRANTZ.What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?

HAMLET.Compounded it with dust, whereto ’tis kin.

ROSENCRANTZ.Tell us where ’tis, that we may take it thence,And bear it to the chapel.

HAMLET.Do not believe it.

ROSENCRANTZ.Believe what?

HAMLET.That I can keep your counsel, and not mine own. Besides, to be demandedof a sponge—what replication should be made by the son of a king?

ROSENCRANTZ.Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

HAMLET.Ay, sir; that soaks up the King’s countenance, his rewards, hisauthorities. But such officers do the King best service in the end: hekeeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to belast swallowed: when he needs what you have gleaned, it is butsqueezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.

ROSENCRANTZ.I understand you not, my lord.

HAMLET.I am glad of it. A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

ROSENCRANTZ.My lord, you must tell us where the body is and go with us to the King.

HAMLET.The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body. The Kingis a thing—

GUILDENSTERN.A thing, my lord!

HAMLET.Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.

[_Exeunt._]

SCENE III. Another room in the Castle.

Enter King, attended.

KING.I have sent to seek him and to find the body.How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!Yet must not we put the strong law on him:He’s lov’d of the distracted multitude,Who like not in their judgement, but their eyes;And where ’tis so, th’offender’s scourge is weigh’d,But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,This sudden sending him away must seemDeliberate pause. Diseases desperate grownBy desperate appliance are reliev’d,Or not at all.

Enter Rosencrantz.

How now? What hath befall’n?

ROSENCRANTZ.Where the dead body is bestow’d, my lord,We cannot get from him.

KING.But where is he?

ROSENCRANTZ.Without, my lord, guarded, to know your pleasure.

KING.Bring him before us.

ROSENCRANTZ.Ho, Guildenstern! Bring in my lord.

Enter Hamlet and Guildenstern.

KING.Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?

HAMLET.At supper.

KING.At supper? Where?

HAMLET.Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation ofpolitic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet.We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service,—two dishes,but to one table. That’s the end.

KING.Alas, alas!

HAMLET.A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of thefish that hath fed of that worm.

KING.What dost thou mean by this?

HAMLET.Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the gutsof a beggar.

KING.Where is Polonius?

HAMLET.In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there,seek him i’ th’other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him notwithin this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into thelobby.

KING.[_To some Attendants._] Go seek him there.

HAMLET.He will stay till you come.

[_Exeunt Attendants._]

KING.Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,—Which we do tender, as we dearly grieveFor that which thou hast done,—must send thee henceWith fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself;The bark is ready, and the wind at help,Th’associates tend, and everything is bentFor England.

HAMLET.For England?

KING.Ay, Hamlet.

HAMLET.Good.

KING.So is it, if thou knew’st our purposes.

HAMLET.I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for England! Farewell, dearmother.

KING.Thy loving father, Hamlet.

HAMLET.My mother. Father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is oneflesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England.

[_Exit._]

KING.Follow him at foot. Tempt him with speed aboard;Delay it not; I’ll have him hence tonight.Away, for everything is seal’d and doneThat else leans on th’affair. Pray you make haste.

[_Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern._]

And England, if my love thou hold’st at aught,—As my great power thereof may give thee sense,Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and redAfter the Danish sword, and thy free awePays homage to us,—thou mayst not coldly setOur sovereign process, which imports at full,By letters conjuring to that effect,The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England;For like the hectic in my blood he rages,And thou must cure me. Till I know ’tis done,Howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.

[_Exit._]

SCENE IV. A plain in Denmark.

Enter Fortinbras and Forces marching.

FORTINBRAS.Go, Captain, from me greet the Danish king.Tell him that by his license, FortinbrasCraves the conveyance of a promis’d marchOver his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.If that his Majesty would aught with us,We shall express our duty in his eye;And let him know so.

CAPTAIN.I will do’t, my lord.

FORTINBRAS.Go softly on.

[_Exeunt all but the Captain._]

Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern &c.

HAMLET.Good sir, whose powers are these?

CAPTAIN.They are of Norway, sir.

HAMLET.How purpos’d, sir, I pray you?

CAPTAIN.Against some part of Poland.

HAMLET.Who commands them, sir?

CAPTAIN.The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.

HAMLET.Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,Or for some frontier?

CAPTAIN.Truly to speak, and with no addition,We go to gain a little patch of groundThat hath in it no profit but the name.To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;Nor will it yield to Norway or the PoleA ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

HAMLET.Why, then the Polack never will defend it.

CAPTAIN.Yes, it is already garrison’d.

HAMLET.Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducatsWill not debate the question of this straw!This is th’imposthume of much wealth and peace,That inward breaks, and shows no cause withoutWhy the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.

CAPTAIN.God b’ wi’ you, sir.

[_Exit._]

ROSENCRANTZ.Will’t please you go, my lord?

HAMLET.I’ll be with you straight. Go a little before.

[_Exeunt all but Hamlet._]

How all occasions do inform against me,And spur my dull revenge. What is a manIf his chief good and market of his timeBe but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.Sure he that made us with such large discourse,Looking before and after, gave us notThat capability and godlike reasonTo fust in us unus’d. Now whether it beBestial oblivion, or some craven scrupleOf thinking too precisely on th’event,—A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdomAnd ever three parts coward,—I do not knowWhy yet I live to say this thing’s to do,Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and meansTo do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me,Witness this army of such mass and charge,Led by a delicate and tender prince,Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff’d,Makes mouths at the invisible event,Exposing what is mortal and unsureTo all that fortune, death, and danger dare,Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be greatIs not to stir without great argument,But greatly to find quarrel in a strawWhen honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,Excitements of my reason and my blood,And let all sleep, while to my shame I seeThe imminent death of twenty thousand menThat, for a fantasy and trick of fame,Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plotWhereon the numbers cannot try the cause,Which is not tomb enough and continentTo hide the slain? O, from this time forth,My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.

[_Exit._]

SCENE V. Elsinore. A room in the Castle.

Enter Queen, Horatio and a Gentleman.

QUEEN.I will not speak with her.

GENTLEMAN.She is importunate, indeed distract.Her mood will needs be pitied.

QUEEN.What would she have?

GENTLEMAN.She speaks much of her father; says she hearsThere’s tricks i’ th’ world, and hems, and beats her heart,Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt,That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,Yet the unshaped use of it doth moveThe hearers to collection; they aim at it,And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures yield them,Indeed would make one think there might be thought,Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.’Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strewDangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.

QUEEN.Let her come in.

[_Exit Gentleman._]

To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is,Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.So full of artless jealousy is guilt,It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

Enter Ophelia.

OPHELIA.Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?

QUEEN.How now, Ophelia?

OPHELIA.[_Sings._]How should I your true love knowFrom another one?By his cockle hat and staffAnd his sandal shoon.

QUEEN.Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

OPHELIA.Say you? Nay, pray you mark.[_Sings._]He is dead and gone, lady,He is dead and gone,At his head a grass green turf,At his heels a stone.

QUEEN.Nay, but Ophelia—

OPHELIA.Pray you mark.[_Sings._]White his shroud as the mountain snow.

Enter King.

QUEEN.Alas, look here, my lord!

OPHELIA.[_Sings._]Larded all with sweet flowers;Which bewept to the grave did not goWith true-love showers.

KING.How do you, pretty lady?

OPHELIA.Well, God dild you! They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, weknow what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!

KING.Conceit upon her father.

OPHELIA.Pray you, let’s have no words of this; but when they ask you what itmeans, say you this:[_Sings._]Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,All in the morning betime,And I a maid at your window,To be your Valentine.

Then up he rose and donn’d his clothes,And dupp’d the chamber door,Let in the maid, that out a maidNever departed more.

KING.Pretty Ophelia!

OPHELIA.Indeed la, without an oath, I’ll make an end on’t.[_Sings._]By Gis and by Saint Charity,Alack, and fie for shame!Young men will do’t if they come to’t;By Cock, they are to blame.

Quoth she, before you tumbled me,You promis’d me to wed.So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun,An thou hadst not come to my bed.

KING.How long hath she been thus?

OPHELIA.I hope all will be well. We must be patient. But I cannot choose butweep, to think they would lay him i’ th’ cold ground. My brother shallknow of it. And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach!Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.

[_Exit._]

KING.Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.

[_Exit Horatio._]

O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springsAll from her father’s death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,When sorrows come, they come not single spies,But in battalions. First, her father slain;Next, your son gone; and he most violent authorOf his own just remove; the people muddied,Thick, and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispersFor good Polonius’ death; and we have done but greenlyIn hugger-mugger to inter him. Poor OpheliaDivided from herself and her fair judgement,Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts.Last, and as much containing as all these,Her brother is in secret come from France,Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,And wants not buzzers to infect his earWith pestilent speeches of his father’s death,Wherein necessity, of matter beggar’d,Will nothing stick our person to arraignIn ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,Like to a murdering piece, in many placesGives me superfluous death.

[_A noise within._]

QUEEN.Alack, what noise is this?

KING.Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.

Enter a Gentleman.

What is the matter?

GENTLEMAN.Save yourself, my lord.The ocean, overpeering of his list,Eats not the flats with more impetuous hasteThan young Laertes, in a riotous head,O’erbears your offices. The rabble call him lord,And, as the world were now but to begin,Antiquity forgot, custom not known,The ratifiers and props of every word,They cry ‘Choose we! Laertes shall be king!’Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,‘Laertes shall be king, Laertes king.’

QUEEN.How cheerfully on the false trail they cry.O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs.

[_A noise within._]

KING.The doors are broke.

Enter Laertes, armed; Danes following.

LAERTES.Where is this king?—Sirs, stand you all without.

Danes.No, let’s come in.

LAERTES.I pray you, give me leave.

DANES.We will, we will.

[_They retire without the door._]

LAERTES.I thank you. Keep the door. O thou vile king,Give me my father.

QUEEN.Calmly, good Laertes.

LAERTES.That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard;Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlotEven here between the chaste unsmirched browOf my true mother.

KING.What is the cause, Laertes,That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?—Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.There’s such divinity doth hedge a king,That treason can but peep to what it would,Acts little of his will.—Tell me, Laertes,Why thou art thus incens’d.—Let him go, Gertrude:—Speak, man.

LAERTES.Where is my father?

KING.Dead.

QUEEN.But not by him.

KING.Let him demand his fill.

LAERTES.How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with.To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!I dare damnation. To this point I stand,That both the worlds, I give to negligence,Let come what comes; only I’ll be reveng’dMost throughly for my father.

KING.Who shall stay you?

LAERTES.My will, not all the world.And for my means, I’ll husband them so well,They shall go far with little.

KING.Good Laertes,If you desire to know the certaintyOf your dear father’s death, is’t writ in your revengeThat, sweepstake, you will draw both friend and foe,Winner and loser?

LAERTES.None but his enemies.

KING.Will you know them then?

LAERTES.To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms;And, like the kind life-rendering pelican,Repast them with my blood.

KING.Why, now you speakLike a good child and a true gentleman.That I am guiltless of your father’s death,And am most sensibly in grief for it,It shall as level to your judgement ’pearAs day does to your eye.

DANES.[_Within._] Let her come in.

LAERTES.How now! What noise is that?

Re-enter Ophelia, fantastically dressed with straws and flowers.

O heat, dry up my brains. Tears seven times salt,Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye.By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!O heavens, is’t possible a young maid’s witsShould be as mortal as an old man’s life?Nature is fine in love, and where ’tis fine,It sends some precious instance of itselfAfter the thing it loves.

OPHELIA.[_Sings._]They bore him barefac’d on the bier,Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonnyAnd on his grave rain’d many a tear.—Fare you well, my dove!

LAERTES.Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,It could not move thus.

OPHELIA.You must sing ‘Down a-down, and you call him a-down-a.’ O, how thewheel becomes it! It is the false steward that stole his master’sdaughter.

LAERTES.This nothing’s more than matter.

OPHELIA.There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray love, remember. Andthere is pansies, that’s for thoughts.

LAERTES.A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.