SCENE I.-A Room in the Castle. Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, King. And can you by no drift of conference, Ros. He does confess he feels himself distracted; But from what cause he will by no means speak. Guil. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded; But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof, Queen. Did he receive you well? Ros. Most like a gentleman. Guil. But with much forcing of his disposi Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. King. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too: For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither; That he, as 't were by accident, may here Affront Ophelia : Her father and myself (lawful espials) Than is my deed to my most painted word; O, heavy burden! [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: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, tumely, The pangs of déspised love, the law's delay, Take these again; for to the noble mind, Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest? Ham. Are you fair? Oph. What means your lordship? Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty 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. So. Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe 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 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? Oph. At home, my lord. Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in 's own house. Farewell. Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens! Ham. 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; 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. Oph. Heavenly powers, restore him! 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 nickname God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance:-Go to; I'll no more of'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, [Exit. go. Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword; 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; Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little, Was not like madness. There's something in his soul, O'er which his melancholy sits on brood; Will be some danger: which to prevent, I have, in quick determination, Thus set it down:-He shall with speed to Eng land, For the demand of our neglected tribute: Enter HAMLET, and certain Players. Ham. Speak the speech, 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 lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear 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 and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing Termagant; it out-herods Herod : pray you, avoid it. 1st Play. I warrant your honour. Ham. 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'er-step 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 't were, the mirror up to nature; to shew 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'erweigh 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. 1st 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 shews a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. [Exeunt Players. Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDEN No, let the candied tongue lick ábsurd pomp; 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 camelion'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. Pol. O, ho! do you mark that? [To the KING. Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap? [Lying down at OPHELIA's feet. Oph. No, my lord. Ham. I mean, my head upon your lap? Oph. Ay, my lord. Ham. Do you think I meant country matters? Oph. I think nothing, my lord. 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. O! 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 these two hours. Oph. Nay, 't is twice two months, my lord. Enter a King and a Queen, very lovingly; the Queen embracing him, and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers; she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The poisoner, with some two or three mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The poisoner woos the Queen with gifts; she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love. |