The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of DenmarkeIII

And can you by no drift of circumstance

1605 Get from him why he puts on this confusion:

Grating so harshly all his days of quiet

With turbulent and dangerous lunacy.

He does confess he feels himself distracted,

But from what cause he will by no means speak.

1610 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.

Did he receive you well?

1615 Most like a gentleman.

But with much forcing of his disposition.

Niggard of question, but of our demands

Most free in his reply.

Did you assay him to any pastime?

1620 Madam, it so fell out, that certain players

We ore-wrought 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

1625 This night to play before him.

’Tis most true:

And he beseeched me to entreat your majesties

To hear, and see the matter.

With all my heart, and it doth much content me

1630 To hear him so inclined. Good gentlemen,

Give him a further edge, and drive his purpose on

To these delights.

We shall my lord.

Sweet Gertrude leave us too,

1635 For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,

That he, as ’twere by accident, may there

Affront Ophelia. Her father and myself (lawful espials)

Will so bestow ourselves, that seeing unseen

We may of their encounter frankly judge,

1640 And gather by him, as he is behaved,

If’t be th’affliction of his love, or no.

That thus he suffers for.[…]

I shall obey you,

And for your part Ophelia, I do wish

1645 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 honors.

Madam, I wish it may.

1650 Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious so please ye

We will bestow ourselves: Read on this book,

That show of such an exercise may colour

Your loneliness. We are oft too blame in this,

’Tis too much proved, that with devotion’s visage,

1655 And pious action, we do surge o’re

The devil himself.

Oh’tis true:

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience?

The harlot’s cheek beautied with plast’ring art

1660 Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it,

Than is my deed, to my most painted word.

Oh heavy burden!

I hear him coming, let’s withdraw my lord.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

1665 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

1670 The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to? ’Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep,

To sleep, perchance to dream; I, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,

1675 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 poor man’s contumely,

1680 The pangs of disprized 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 these fardels bear

1685 To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,

1690 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 thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

1695 With this regard their currents turn away,

And lose the name of action. Soft you now,

The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remembered.

Good my lord,

1700 How does your honor for this many a day?

I humbly thank you: well, well, well.

My lord, I have remembrances of yours,

That I have longèd long to redeliver.

I pray you now, receive them.

1705 No, no, I never gave you aught.

My honoured lord, I know right well you did,

And with them words of so sweet breath composed,

As made the things more rich, then perfume left:

Take these again, for to the noble mind

1710 Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind.

There my lord.

Ha, ha: Are you honest[…]?

My lord.

Are you fair?

1715 What means your lordship?

That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

Could beauty my lord, have better commerce than your honesty?

1720 I 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.

1725 Indeed my lord, you made me believe so.

You should not have believed me. For virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.

I was the more deceived.

1730 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 heaven and earth. We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?

1740 At home, my lord.

Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no way, but in’s own house. Farewell.

O help him, you sweet heavens.

If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for, thy dowry. Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery. Go, farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool: for wise men know well enough, what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery go, and quickly too. Farewell.

O heavenly powers, restore him.

I have heard of your pratlings too well enough. God has given you one pace, and you make yourself another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God’s creatures, and make your wantonness, your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on’t, it hath made me mad, I say, we will have no more marriages. Those that are married already, all but one shall live, the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.

1760 O what a noble mind is here o’erthrown?

The courtiers, soldiers, scholars: eye, tongue, sword,

Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,

Th’observed of all observers, quite, quite down.

1765 Have I of ladies most deject and wretched,

That sucked the honey of his music vows:

Now see that noble, and most sovereign reason,

Like sweet bells jangled out of tune, and harsh,

That unmatched form and feature of blown youth,

1770 Blasted with ecstasy. Oh, woe is me,

T’have seen what I have seen: see what I see.

Love? His affections do not that way tend,

Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little,

Was not like madness. There’s something in his soul?

1775 O’er which his melancholy sits on brood,

And I do doubt the hatch, and the disclose

Will be some danger, which to prevent

I have in quick determination

Thus set it down. He shall with speed to England

1780 For the demand of our neglected tribute:

Haply the seas and countries different

With variable objects, shall expel

This something settled matter in his heart:

Whereon his brains still beating, puts him thus

1785 From fashion of himself. What think you on’t?

It shall do well. But yet do I believe

The origin and commencement of this grief

Sprung from neglected love. How now Ophelia?

You need not tell us, what Lord Hamlet said,

1790 We heard it all. My lord, do as you please,

But if you hold it fit after the play,

Let his queen mother all alone entreat him

To show his griefs: let her be round with him,

And I'll be placed so, please you in the ear

1795 Of all their conference. If she find him not,

To England send him: or confine him where

Your wisdom best shall think.

It shall be so:

Madness in great ones, must not unwatched go.

1800 Speak the speech I pray you, as I pronounced it to you trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as live the town-crier had spoke my lines: Nor do not saw the air too much your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O it offends me to the soul, to see a robustious periwig-pated fellow, tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings: who (for the most part) are capable of nothing, but inexplicable dumb shows, & noise: I could have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant: it out-Herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.

I warrant your honor.

1815 Be not too tame neither: but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance: that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone, is from the purpose of playing, whose end both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature; 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 unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one, must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theater of others. Oh, 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, or Norman, 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.

1835 I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir.

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 meantime, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that’s villainous, & shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.

1845 How now my lord,

Will the King hear this piece of work?

And the Queen too, and that presently.

Bid the players make haste.

Will you two help to hasten them?

1850 We will my lord.

What ho, Horatio?

Here sweet lord, at your service.

Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man

As ere my conversation coped withal.

1855 O my dear lord.

Nay, do not think I flatter:

For what advancement may I hope from thee,

That no revenue hast, but thy good spirits

To feed & clothe thee. Why should the poor be flattered?

1860 No, let the candied tongue, like absurd pomp,

And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,

Where thrift may follow feigning? Dost thou hear,

Since my dear soul was mistress of my choice,

And could of men distinguish, her election

1865 Hath sealed thee for herself. For thou hast been

As one in suffering all, that suffers nothing.

A man that Fortune’s buffets, and rewards

Hath ’ta’en with equal thanks. And blest are those,

Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,

1870 That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger,

To sound what stop she please. Give me that man,

That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him

In my heart’s core: I, in my heart of heart,

As I do thee. Something too much of this.

1875 There is a play tonight before the King.

One scene of it comes near the circumstance

Which I have told thee, of my father’s death.

I prithee, when thou see’st that act afoot,

Even with the very comment of my soul

1880 Observe mine uncle: If his occulted guilt,

Do not itself unkennel in one speech,

It is a damnèd ghost that we have seen:

And my imaginations are as foul

As Vulcan’s stithy. Give him needful note,

1885 For I mine eyes will rivet to his face:

And after we will both our judgments join,

To censure of his seeming.

Well my lord.

If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,

1890 And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

They are coming to the play: I must be idle.

Get you a place.

How fares our cousin Hamlet?

Excellent i’faith, of the chameleon’s dish: I eat the air promise-crammed, you cannot feed capons so.

I have nothing with this answer Hamlet, these words are not mine.

No, nor mine. Now my lord, you played once i’th university, you say?

1900 That I did my lord, and was accounted a good actor.

And what did you enact?

I did enact Julius Caesar, I was killed i’th Capitol: Brutus killed me.

1905 It was a brute part of him, to kill so capital a Calfe there. Be the players ready?.

I my lord, they stay upon your patience.

Come hither my good Hamlet, sit by me.

No good mother, here’s mettle more attractiue.

1910 Oh ho, do you mark that?

Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

No my lord.

I mean, my head upon your lap?

I my lord.

1915 Do you think I meant country matters?

I think nothing, my lord.

That’s a fair thought to lie between maids legs

What is my lord?

Nothing.

1920 You are merry, my lord?

Who I?

I my lord.

Oh God, your only jig-maker: what should a man do, but be merry. For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within’s two hours.

Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.

So long? Nay then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. Oh heavens! Die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there’s hope, a great man’s memory, may outlive his life half a year: But by’r lady he must build churches then: or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is, For o, for o, the hobby-horse is forgot.

1935 What means this, my lord?

Marry this is miching malicho, that means mischief.

Belike this show imports the argument of the play?

1940 We shall know by these fellows: the players cannot keep counsel, they'll tell all.

Will they tell us what this show meant?

I, or any show that you'll show him. Be not you ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means.

You are naught, you are naught, I'll mark the play.

For us, and for our tragedy,

Here stooping to your clemency:

1950 We beg your hearing patiently.

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

’Tis brief my lord.

As woman’s love.

Full thirty times hath Phoebus cart gone round,

1955 Neptune’s salt wash, and Tellus orbèd ground:

And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen,

About the world have times twelve thirties been,

Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands

Unite commutual, in most sacred bands.

1960 So many journeys may the sun and moon

Make 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 form state,

That I distrust you: yet though I distrust,

1965 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 sized, my fear is so.

1970 Faith I must leave thee love, and shortly too:

My operant powers my functions leave to do:

And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,

Honoured, beloved, and haply, one as kind.

For husband shalt thou⸺

1975 Oh 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 killed the first.

Wormwood, wormwood.

1980 The instances that second marriage move,

Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.

A second time, I kill my husband dead,

When second husband kisses me in bed.

I do believe you. Think what now you speak:

1985 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.

1990 Most necessary ’tis, that we forget

To pay ourselves, what to ourselves is debt:

What to ourselves in passion we propose,

The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.

The violence of other grief or joy,

1995 Their own enactors 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 strange

That even our loves should with our fortunes change.

2000 For ’tis a question left us yet to prove,

Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.

The great man down you mark his favourites flies,

The poor advanced, makes friends of enemies:

And hitherto doth love on fortune tend,

2005 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 run,

2010 That 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.

Nor earth to give me food, not heaven light,

2015 Sport and repose lock from me day and night:

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.

2020 If she should break it now.

’Tis deeply sworn:

Sweet, leave me here awhile,

My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile

The tedious day with sleep.

2025 Sleep rock thy brain,

And never come mischance between us twain.

Madam, how like you this play?

The lady protests too much methinks.

Oh but she'll keep her word.

2030 Have you heard the argument, is there no offence in’t?

No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest, no Offence i’th’world.

What do you call the play?

2035 The Mousetrap: Marry how? Tropically: This play is the image of a murder 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 the galled jade winch: our withers are unwrung.

This is one Lucianus nephew to the King.

You are a good chorus, my lord.

I could interpret between you and your love: if I could see the puppets dallying.

2045 You are keen my lord, you are keen.

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

Still better and worse.

So you mistake husbands. Begin murderer. Pox, leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.

Thoughts black, hands apt,

Drugs fit, and time agreeing:

2055 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 property,

On wholesome life, usurp immediately.

2060 He poisons him i’th garden for’s estate: His name’s Gonzago: the story is extant and writ in choice Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.

The King rises.

2065 What, frighted with false fire.

How fares my lord?

Give o’er the play.

Give me some light. Away.

Lights, lights, lights.

2070 Why let the stricken deer go weep,

The heart ungallèd 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 my fortunes turn Turk with me; with two provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players sir.

Half a share.

A whole one I,

2080 For thou dost know: Oh Damon dear,

This realm dismantled was of Jove himself,

And now reigns here.

A very very paiocke.

You might have Rim’d.

2085 Oh good Horatio, I'll take the Ghost’s word for a thousand pound. Didst perceive?

Very well my lord.

Upon the talk of the poisoning?

I did very well note him.

2090 Oh, ha? Come some music. Come theͤ recorders:

For if the King like not the comedy,

Why then belike he likes it not perdie.

Come some music.

Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

2095 Sir a whole history.

The King, sir.

I sir, what of him?

Is in his retirement, marvelous distempered.

With drink sir?

2100 No my lord, rather with choler.

Your wisdom should show itself more richer, to signify this to his doctor: for for me to put him to his purgation, would perhaps plunge him into far more choler.

2105 Good my lord put your discourse into some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair.

I am tame sir, pronounce.

The Queen your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.

2110 You are welcome.

Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother’s commandment: if not, your pardon, and my return shall be the end of my business.

Sir, I cannot.

What, my lord?

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

Then thus she says: your behaviour hath stroke her into amazement, and admiration.

Oh wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother. But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother’s admiration?

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

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

My lord, you once did love me.

So I do still, by these pickers and stealers.

Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do freely bar the door of your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to your friend.

Sir I lack advancement.

How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself, for your succession in Denmark?

I, but while the grass grows, the proverb is something musty.

O the recorder. Let me see, to withdraw with you, why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?

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

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

My lord, I cannot.

I pray you.

2150 Believe me, I cannot.

I do beseech you.

I know no touch of it, my lord.

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

But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony, I have not the skill.

Why look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me: you would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops: you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note, to the top of my compass: and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it. Why do you think, that I am easier to be played on, than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me, God bless you sir.

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

Do you see that cloud? That’s almost in shape like a camel.

By th’ mass, and it’s like a camel indeed.

Methinks it is like a weasel.

2175 It is backed like a weasel.

Or like a whale?

Very like a whale.

Then will I come to my mother, by and by: They fool me to the top of my bent.

2180 I will come by and by.

I will say so.

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

’Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out

2185 Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,

And do such bitter business as the day

Would quake to look on. Soft now, to my mother:

Oh heart, loose not thy nature; let not ever

The soul of Nero, enter this firm bosom:

2190 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 soever she be shent,

To give them seals, never my soul consent.

2195 I like him not, nor stands it safe with us,

To 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 endure

2200 Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow

Out of his lunacies.

We will ourselves provide:

Most holy and religious fear it is

To keep those many many bodies safe

2205 That live and feed upon your majesty.

The single

And peculiar life is bound

With all the strength and armour of the mind,

To keep itself from noyance: but much more,

2210 That spirit, upon whose spirit depends and rests

The lives of many, the cease of majesty

Dies not alone; but like a gulf doth draw

What’s near it, with it. It is a massy wheel

Fixed on the summit of the highest mount,

2215 To whose huge spokes, ten thousand lesser things

Are mortised and adjoined: which when it falls,

Each small annexment, petty consequence

Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone

Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.

2220 Arm you, I pray you to this speedy voyage;

For we will fetters put upon this fear,

Which now goes too free-footed.

We will haste us.

My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet:

2225 Behind the arras I'll convey myself

To 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 then a mother,

Since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear

2230 The speech of vantage. Fare you well my liege,

I'll call upon you ere you go to bed,

And tell you what I know.

Thanks dear my lord.

Oh my offence is rank, it smells to heaven.

2235 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,

2240 I stand in pause where I shall first begin,

And both neglect; what if this cursèd hand

Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,

Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy,

2245 But to confront the visage of offence?

And what’s in prayer, but this twofold force,

To be forestallèd ere we come to fall,

Or pardoned being down? Then I'll look up,

My fault is past. But oh, what form of prayer

2250 Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder:

That cannot be, since I am still possessed

Of those effects for which I did the murder.

My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen:

May one be pardoned, and retain th’offence?

2255 In the corrupted currents of this world,

Offences gilded hand may shove by justice,

And oft ’tis seen, the wicked prize itself

Buys out the law; but ’tis not so above,

There is no shuffling, there the action lies

2260 In his true nature, and we ourselves compell’d

Even 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?

2265 Oh wretched state! Oh bosom, black as death!

Oh limèd soul, that struggling to be free,

Art more engaged: Help angels, make assay:

Bow stubborn knees, and heart with strings of steel,

Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe,

2270 All may be well.

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 revenged: that would be scanned,

A villain kills my father, and for that

2275 I his foul son, do this same villain send

To heaven. Oh this is hire and salary, not revenge.

He took my father grossly, full of bread,

With all his crimes broad blown, as fresh as May,

And how his audit stands, who knows, save heaven:

2280 But in our circumstance and course of thought

’Tis heavy with him; and am I then revenged,

To take him in the purging of his soul,

When he is fit and seasoned for his passage? No.

Up sword, and know thou a more horrid hent

2285 When he is drunk asleep: or in his rage,

Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed,

At gaming, swearing, or about some act

That has no relish of salvation in’t,

Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,

2290 And that his soul may be as damned and black

As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays,

This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below,

Words without thoughts, never to heaven go.

2295 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 screened, and stood between

Much heat, and him. I'll silence me e'en here:

2300 Pray you be round with him.

Mother, mother, mother.

I'll warrant you, fear me not.

Withdraw, I hear him coming.

Now mother, what’s the matter?

2305 Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

Mother, you have my father much offended.

Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

Go, go, you question with an idle tongue.

Why how now Hamlet?

2310 What’s the matter now?

Have you forgot me?

No by the rood, not so:

You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,

But would you were not so. You are my mother.

2315 Nay, then I'll set those to you that can speak.

Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge:

You go not till I set you up a glass,

Where you may see the inmost part of you?

What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?

2320 Help, help, hoa.

What ho, help, help, help.

How now, a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead.

Oh I am slain.

Oh me, what hast thou done?

2325 Nay I know not, is it the King?

Oh what a rash, and bloody deed is this?

A bloody deed, almost as bad good mother,

As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

As kill a king?

2330 I lady, ’twas my word.

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool farewell,

I took thee for thy betters, take thy fortune,

Thou find’st to be too busy, is some danger.

Leave wringing of your hands, peace, sit you down,

2335 And let me wring your heart, for so I shall

If it be made of penetrable stuff;

If damnèd custom have not brazed it so,

That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue,

2340 In noise so rude against me?

Such an act

That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,

Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose

From the fair forehead of an innocent love,

2345 And makes a blister there. Makes marriage vows

As false as dicers oaths. Oh such a deed,

As from the body of contraction plucks

The very soul, and sweet religion makes

A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face doth glow,

2350 Yea this solidity and compound mass,

With tristful visage as against the doom,

Is thought-sick at the act.

Aye me; what act; that roars so loud, & thunders in the index.

2355 Look here upon this picture, and on this,

The counterfeit presentment of two brothers:

See what a grace was seated on his brow,

Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,

An eye like Mars, to threaten or command

2360 A station, like the herald Mercury

New 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.

2365 This was your husband. Look you now what follows.

Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear

Blasting his wholesome breath. Have you eyes?

Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,

And batten on this moor? Ha? Have you eyes?

2370 You cannot call it love: for at your age,

The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble,

And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment

Would step from this, to this? What devil was’t,

That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?

2375 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 shame,

When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,

2380 Since frost itself, as actively doth burn,

As reason panders will.

O Hamlet, speak no more.

Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,

And there I see such black and grainèd spots,

2385 As will not leave their tinct.

Nay, but to live

In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,

Stewed in corruption; honeying and making love

Over the nasty sty.

2390 Oh speak to me no more,

These words like daggers enter in mine ears.

No more sweet Hamlet.

A murderer, and a villain:

A slave, that is not twentieth part the tithe

2395 Of your precedent lord. A vice of kings,

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule.

That from a shelf, the precious diadem stole,

And put it in his pocket.

No more.

2400 A king of shreds and patches.

Save me; and hover o’er me with your wings

You heavenly guards. What would you gracious figure?

Alas he’s mad.

Do you not come your tardy son to chide,

2405 That lapsed in time and passion, lets go by

Th’important acting of your dread command? Oh say.

Do not forget: this visitation

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

But look, amazement on thy mother sits;

2410 O step between her, and her fighting soul,

Conceit in weakest bodies, strongest works.

Speak to her Hamlet.

How is it with you lady?

Alas, how is’t with you?

2415 That you bend your eye on vacancy,

And with their corporal air do hold discourse.

Forth at your eyes, your spirits wildly peep,

And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm,

Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,

2420 Start up, and stand on end. Oh gentle son,

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper

Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

On him, on him: look you how pale he glares.

His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,

2425 Would make them capable. Do not look upon me,

Lest with this piteous action you convert

My stern effects: then what I have to do,

Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.

To who do you speak this?

2430 Do you see nothing there?

Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.

Nor did you nothing hear?

No, nothing but ourselves.

Why look you there: look how it steals away:

2435 My father in his habit, as he lived,

Look where he goes even now out at the portal.

This is the very coinage of your brain,

This bodiless creation ecstasy is very cunning in.

Ecstasy?

2440 My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,

And makes as healthful music. It is not madness

That I have uttered; bring me to the test

And I the matter will re-word . which madness

Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,

2445 Lay not a flattering unction to your soul,

That 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,

2450 Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come,

And do not spread the compost o’er the weeds,

To make them rank. Forgive me this my virtue,

For in the fatness of this pursy times,

Virtue itself, of vice must pardon beg,

2455 Yea curb, and woo, for leave to do him good.

Oh Hamlet,

Thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

O throw away the worser past of it,

And live the purer with the other half.

2460 Good night, but go not to mine uncle’s bed,

Assume a virtue, if you have it not, refrain tonight,

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence. Once more good night,

And when you are desirous o be blest,

2465 I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,

I do repent: but heaven hath pleased 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 well

2470 The death I gave him: so again, good night,

I must be cruel, only to be kind;

Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

What shall I do?

Not this by no means that I bid you do:

2475 Let the blunt 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 damned fingers,

Make you to ravel all this matter out,

2480 That I essentially am not in madness,

But made 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,

2485 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, creep

And break your own neck down.

2490 Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,

And breath of life: I have no life to breathe

What thou hast said to me.

I must to England, you know that?

Alack I had forgot: ’Tis so concluded on.

2495 This man shall set me packing:

I'll lug the guts into the neighbor room,

Mother good night. Indeed this counsellor

Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,

Who was in life, a foolish prating knave.

2500 Come sir, to draw toward an end with you.

Good night mother.