1 Play. What speech, my lord? forty, fifty, a hundred ducats a-piece, for his picture | straight: Come, give us a taste of your quality;' in little. 'Sblood, there is something in this more come, a passionate speech. than natural, if philosophy could find it out. [Flourish of trumpets within. Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once,Guil. There are the players. but it was never acted; or, if it was, not above Ham. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. once: for the play, I remember, pleased not the Your hands. Come then: the appurtenance of million; 'twas caviare" to the general:10 but it was welcome is fashion and ceremony: let me comply2 (as I received it, and others, whose judgments, in with you in this garb; lest my extent to the players, which, I tell you, must show fairly outward, should more appear like entertainment than yours. You are welcome; but my uncle-father, and auntmother, are deceived. Guil. In what, my dear lord? such matters, cried in the top of mine) an excellent play; well digested in the scenes set down with as much modesty as cunning. remember, one said, there were no sallads in the lines, to make the matter savoury; nor no matter in the phrase, that might indite1 the author of affection:4 but called it, an honest method, as wholesome as, sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I chiefly loved: 'twas Eneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of Priam's slaughter: If it live in your me;-mory, begin at this line; let me see, let me see;The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,—, 'tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus. Ham. I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a hand-saw. Enter Polonius. Pol. Well be with you, gentlemen! Ham. Hark you, Guildenstern;-and you too at each ear a hearer: that great baby, you see there, is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts. Ros. Happily, he's the second time come to them; for, they say, an old man is twice a child. Ham. I will prophesy, he comes to tell me of the players; mark it.-You say right, sir: o'Monday morning: 'twas then, indeed. Pol. My lord, I have news to tell you. Pol. The actors are come hither, my lord. Pol. Upon mine honour, Ham. Then came each actor on his ass, Pol. The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral [tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral,] scene individable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ, and the liberty, these are the only men. Ham. O Jephthah, judge of Israel,-what a treasure hadst thou! [Aside. Pol. What a treasure had he, my lord? Pol. What follows then, my lord? Enter four or five Players. Black as his purpose, did the night resemble To their lord's murder: Roasted in wrath, and And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore, 1 Play. Anon he finds him But, as we often see, against some storm, A silence in the heavens, the rack 16 stand still, The bold winds speechless, and the orb below You are welcome, masters; Welcome, all:-I am As hush as death; anon the dreadful thunder glad to see thee well:-welcome, good friends.-Doth rend the region: So, after Pyrrhus' pause, Ö, old friend! Why, thy face is valenced' since IA roused vengeance sets him new a-work; saw thee last; Com'st thou to beards me in Den-And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall mark?-What! my young lady and mistress! By'r-On Mars's armour, forg'd for proof eterne," lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven, than when With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine." Pray Now falls on Priam. God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods, not cracked with the ring.-Masters, you are all In general synod, take away her power; welcome. We'll e'en to't like French falconers, Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, fly at any thing we see: We'll have a speech And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends! (1) Miniature. (2) Compliment. (3) Writing. L Pol. This is too long. Had he the motive and the cue for passion, Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard.-That I have? He would drown the stage with tears Pr'ythee, say on.-He's for a jig, or a tale of baw-And cleave the general ear with horrid speech; dry, or he sleeps:-say on: come to Hecuba. Make mad the guilty, and appal the free, Confound the ignorant; and amaze, indeed, The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, 1 Play. But who, ah wo! had seen the mobled' queen Ham. The mobled queen? Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good. 1 Play. Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head, A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up; nounc'd: But if the gods themselves did see her then, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward? Why, I should take it for it cannot be, Would have made milch the burning eye of Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave; heaven, And passion in the gods. Pol. Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and has 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 were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live. Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert. Pol. Come, sirs. [Exit Polonius, with some of the Players. Ham. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play tomorrow.-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 Ros. and Guil. A broken voice, and his whole function suiting What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That I, the son of a dear father murder'd, heard, Fie upon't! foh! About my brains! Humph! I have ACT III. [Exit. SCENE I-A room in the castle. Enter King, King. And can you by no drift of conference Ros. He does confess, he feels himself distracted; Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, Her father, and myself (lawful espials,3) Will so bestow ourselves, that seeing, unseen, I shall obey you: Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope, your virtues 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 King. O, 'tis too true! how smart [Aside. Pol. I hear him coming; let's withdraw, my lord.) [Exeunt King and Polonius. Enter Hamlet. Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question:- That makes calamity of so long life: Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; Oph. Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours I pray you, now receive them. Ham. I never gave you aught. No, not I; Oph. My honour'd lord, you know right well, you And, with them, words of so sweet breath compos'd Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest? Ham. Are you fair? Oph. What means your lordship? Ham. That if you be honest, and fair, you should admit 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 some time 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 would'st 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 sleep,-very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more of fences 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? For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, (1) Overtook. (2) Meet. (3) Spies. (9) Rudeness. (10) Acquittance. Oph. At home, my lord. Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him; that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewell. (11) The ancient term for a small dagger. Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens! lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw Ham. If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all plague for thy dowry; Be thou as chaste as ice, as gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acthee to a nunnery; farewell: Or, if thou wilt needs quire and beget a temperance, that may give it marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear enough, what monsters you make of them. To aa robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell. Oph. Heavenly powers, restore him! tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show, and noise: would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: Pray you, avoid it. 1 Play. I warrant your honour. Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance: Go to; I'll no Ham. Be not too tame neither, but let your own more of't; it hath made me mad. I say, we will discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the have no more marriages: those that are married word, the word to the action; with this special obalready, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep servance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of naas they are. To a nunnery, go. [Exit Hamlet. ture: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! of playing, whose end, both at first, and now, was, The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; sword: to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve: the censure of which one, must, in your allowance," o'er-weigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players, that I have seen play,-and heard others praise, and that highly,not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of christians, nor the gait of christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. The expectancy and rose of the fair state, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see! Re-enter King and Polonius. King. Love! his affections do not that way tend! O'er which his melancholy sits on brood; Thus set it down; He shall with speed to England, This something-settled matter in his heart; To show his grief; let her be round3 with him: King. 1 Play. I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us. Ham. O, reform it altogether. And let those, that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them, that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous; and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.[Exeunt Players. Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern. How now, my lord? will the king hear this piece of work? Pol. And the queen too, and that presently. Both. Av, my lord. [Exeunt Ros. and Guil Enter Horatio. Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service. Ham. No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp; (4) The meaner people then seem to have sat in the pit. (5) Herod's character was always violent. Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note: And, after, we will both our judgments join Hor. Ham. They are coming to the play; I must be idle: Get you a place. Danish march. A flourish. Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and others. King. How fares our cousin Hamlet? Ham. Excellent, i'faith; of the chameleon's dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed: You cannot feed capons so. King. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not mine. -- Ham. No, nor mine now. My lord, you played once in the university, you say? To Polonius, Pol. That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor. Ham. And what did you enact? Pol. I did enact Julius Cæsar: I was killed i'the Capitol; Brutus killed me. Ham. It was a brute part of him, to kill so capital a calf there.-Be the players ready? Ros. Ay, my lord, they stay upon your patience. Queen. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me. Ham. No, good mother, here's metal more attractive. [To the King. Pol. O ho! do you mark that? Oph. No, my lord. Ham. Do you think, I meant country matters? Ham. That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs. Oph. What is, my lord? Ham. Nothing. Oph. You are merry, my lord. Ham. Who, I? Oph. Ay, my lord. Ham. Ó! your only jig-maker. What should a man do, but be merry? for, look you, how chee fully my mother looks, and my father died withe these two hours. Oph. Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord. Ham. So long? Nay, then let the devil wer black, for I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens i die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? The there's hope, a great man's memory may outlive h life half a year: But, by'r-lady, he must buzd churches then: or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse: whose epitaph is, Fe |0, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot. Trumpets sound. The dumb show follows. Enter a King and a Queen, very lovingly; A Queen embracing him, and he her. She kneels and makes show of protestation unto him. H takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck. lays him down upon a bank of flowers; shi, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and po poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Quen returns; finds the King dead, and makes pas sionate action. The poisoner, with some two a three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lames with her. The dead body is carried away. The poisoner woos the Queen with gifts; she seem loath and unwilling awhile, but, in the end, a cepts his love. [Exeunt Oph. What means this, my lord? mischief. Oph. Belike, this show imports the argument of the play. Enter Prologue. Ham. We shall know by this fellow: the play ers cannot keep counsel; they'll tell all. Oph. Will he tell us what this show meant? Ham. Ay, or any show that you'll show him: Be not you ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means. Oph. You are naught, you are naught; I'll mark the play. Pro. For us, and for our tragedy, Here stooping to your clemency, We beg your hearing patiently. Ham. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring? Oph. 'Tis brief, my lord. Ham. As woman's love. Enter a King and a Queen. P. King. Full thirty times hath Phœbus' cart' gone round Neptune's salt wash, and Tellus" orbed ground: And thirty dozen moons, with borrow'd sheen, 10 About the world have times twelve thirties been; Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands, Unite commutual in most sacred bands, P. Queen. So many journeys may the sun and moon Make us again count o'er, ere love be done! So far from cheer, and from your former state, In neither aught, or in extremity. Now, what my love is, proof liath made you know: And as my love is siz'd," my fear is so. (7) Short. (8) Car, chariot. (9) The earth's (10) Shining, lustre. (11) Magnitude, proportion. |