radox, but now the time gives it proof.-----I did love you once. Oph. Indeed, my Lord, you made me believe fo. Ham. You fhould not have believed me. For virtue cannot fo innoculate our old ftock, but we fhall relith of it. I loved you not. Oph. I was the more deceived. Ham. Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldft thou be a breeder of finners? I am myself indifferent honeft; but yet I could accufe me of fuch 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 fhape, or time to act them in. What thould fuch fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth? we are arrant knaves, believe none of us------Go thy ways to a nunnery----- Where's your father? Oph. At home, my Lord. Ham. Let the doors be fhut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewel. Oph. Oh help him, you fweet Heavens ! Ham. If thou doft marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry. Be thou as chafte as ice, as pure as fnow, thou shalt not efcape calumny.---Get thee to a nunnery,-----farewel-----Cr, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wife men know well enough what monsters you make of them-----To a nunnery, go---and quickly too: farewel. Oph. Heavenly powers reftore him! Ham. I have heard of your painting too, well enough: God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another, You jig, you amble, and you lifp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonnefs your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't, it hath made me mad. I fay, we will have no more marriages. Thofe that are married already, all but one, fhall live; the rest thall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. [Exit Hamlet. Oph. Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, foldier's, fcholar's, eye, tongue, Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state, [fword! The glafs of fafhion, and the mold of form, Th' obferved of all observers, quite, quite down! I am of ladies most deject and wretched, That fucked the honey of his mufic vows: Now fee that noble and moft fovereign reason, Like fweet bells jangled out of tune, and harth; That unmatched form, and feature of blown youth, Blafted with ecstasy. Oh, woe is me! T' have feen what I have seen, fee what I fee. Enter King and POLONIUS. King. Love! his affections do not that way tend; Nor what he fpake, though it lacked form a little, Was not like madness. Something's in his foul, O'er which his melancholy fits on brood; And, I do doubt, the hatch and the disclose Will be fome danger, which, how to prevent, I have in quick determination Thus fet it down. He fhall with speed to England, Haply the feas and countries different, This fomething-fettled matter in his heart; Whereon his brains ftill beating, puts him thus From fashion of himself. Pal. It fhall do well. What think you on't? But yet I do believe, The origin and commencement of this grief Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia?--You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet faid, We heard it all.-----My Lord, do as you pleafe; But if you hold it fit, after the play King. It fhall be fo: Madness in great ones muft not unwatched go. [Exeunt. Enter HAMLET, and two or three of the Players. Ham. Speak the fpeech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lieve the town-crier had spoke my lines. And do not faw the air too much with your hand thus;. but ufe all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, I may fay, whirlwind of your paffion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothnefs. Oh, it offends me to the foul, to hear a robuftious periwig-pated fellow tear a paffion to tatters, to very rags, to fplit the ears of the groundlings: who (for the moit part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb fhews and noife: I would have fuch a fellow whipt for.o'erdoing Termagant; it out-hereds Herod. Pray you, avoid it. 1 Play. I warrant your Honour. Ham. Be not too tame neither; but let your-own difcretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this fpecial observance, that you o'er-ftep not the modelty of nature; for any thing fo overdone is from the purpofe of playing; whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature; to fhew Virtue her own feature, fcorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and preffure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unfkilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve: the cenfure of which one muft in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, there be players that I have feen play, and heard others praife, and that highly, (not to fpeak it prophanely) that neither having the accent of Chriftian, nor the gait of Chriftian, Pagan, nor man, have fo ftrutted and bellowed, that I have thought fome of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well; they imitated humanity fo abominably. Play. I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us. : Ham. Oh, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns, fpeak no more than is set down for them for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to fet on fome quantity of barren fpectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, fome neceffary queftion of the play be then to be confidered. That's villainous; and thews a moft pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready. [Exeunt Players. Enter POLONIUS, ROSINCRANTZ, and GUILDEN STERN How now, my Lord; will the King hear this piece of work? Pol. And the Queen too, and that prefently. Ham. Bid the players make hafte. Exit Polon. . Will you two help to haften them? Both. We will, my Lord. Ham. What, ho, Horatio! Enter HORATIO to HAMLET. [Exeunt. Hor. Here, fweet Lord, at your fervice. Ham. Nay, do not think I flatter: For what advancement may I hope from thee, No, let the candied tongue lick abfurd pomp, Haft ta'en with equal thanks. And bleft are those, H |