Hamlet (13 page)

KING
    And can you by no
drift of circumstance
¹

Get from him why he puts on this confusion,

Grating
³
so harshly all his days of quiet

With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

ROSENCRANTZ
    He does confess he feels himself distracted,

But from what cause he will by no means speak.

GUILDENSTERN
    Nor do we find him
forward
to be
sounded
⁷
,

But with a crafty madness keeps aloof

When we would bring him on to some confession

Of his true state.

GERTRUDE
    Did he receive you well?

ROSENCRANTZ
    Most like a gentleman.

GUILDENSTERN
    But with much forcing of his
disposition
¹³
.

ROSENCRANTZ
    
Niggard of question
, but of our
demands
¹⁴

Most free in his reply.

GERTRUDE
    Did you
assay
¹⁶
him to any pastime?

ROSENCRANTZ
    Madam, it so fell out that certain players

We
o’erraught
¹⁸
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

This night to play before him.

POLONIUS
    ’Tis most true:

And he beseeched me to entreat your majesties

To hear and see the matter.

KING
    With all my heart, and it doth much content me

To hear him so inclined.

Good gentlemen, give him a further
edge
²⁸

And drive his purpose on to these delights.

ROSENCRANTZ
    We shall, my lord.

KING
    Sweet Gertrude, leave us too.

For we have
closely
³²
sent for Hamlet hither,

That he, as ’twere by accident, may here

Affront
³⁴
Ophelia:

Her father and myself, lawful
espials
³⁵
,

Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,

We may of their encounter frankly judge,

And gather by him, as he is behaved,

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

That thus he suffers for.

GERTRUDE
    I shall obey you.—

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish

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 honours.

OPHELIA
    Madam, I wish it may.

POLONIUS
    Ophelia, walk you here.—
Gracious
⁴⁸
, so please you,

We will bestow ourselves.— Read on this book,

That show of such an
exercise
may
colour
⁵⁰

Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this —

’Tis too much proved — that with devotion’s
visage
⁵²

And pious action we do sugar o’er

The devil himself.

KING
    O, ’tis true!

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!

The harlot’s cheek, beautied with
plast’ring art
⁵⁷
,

Is not more ugly
to the thing that helps it
⁵⁸

Than is my deed to my most painted word.

O, heavy burden!

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

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

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The
slings
and arrows of
outrageous
⁶⁴
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

The heartache and the thousand natural
shocks
⁶⁸

That flesh is heir to: ’tis a
consummation
⁶⁹

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep:

To sleep, perchance to dream: ay, there’s the
rub
⁷¹
,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have
shuffled off
this
mortal coil
⁷³
,

Must give us pause: there’s the
respect
⁷⁴

That makes calamity
of so long life
⁷⁵
,

For who would bear the whips and
scorns
⁷⁶
of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s
contumely
⁷⁷
,

The pangs of
disprized
⁷⁸
love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of
office
and the
spurns
⁷⁹

That patient merit
of the unworthy takes
⁸⁰
,

When he himself might his
quietus
⁸¹
make

With a
bare
bodkin
? Who would these
fardels
⁸²
bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country from whose
bourn
⁸⁵

No traveller returns,
puzzles
⁸⁶
the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus
conscience
⁸⁹
does make cowards of us all:

And thus the
native hue
⁹⁰
of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale
cast
⁹¹
of thought,

And enterprises of great
pith and moment
⁹²

With this regard their currents turn away,

And lose the name of action.
Soft you
⁹⁴
now,

The fair Ophelia.— Nymph, in thy
orisons
⁹⁵

Be all my sins remembered.

OPHELIA
    Good my lord,

How does your honour for this many a day?

HAMLET
    I humbly thank you: well, well, well.

OPHELIA
    My lord, I have
remembrances
¹⁰⁰
of yours,

That I have longèd long to re-deliver:

I pray you now receive them.

HAMLET
    No, no: I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA
    My honoured lord, I know right well you did,

And with them words of so sweet breath composed

As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,

Take these again, for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

There, my lord.

HAMLET
    Ha, ha! Are you
honest
¹¹⁰
?

OPHELIA
    My lord?

HAMLET
    Are you
fair
¹¹²
?

OPHELIA
    What means your lordship?

HAMLET
    That if you be honest and fair,
your honesty should
¹¹⁴

admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPHELIA
    Could beauty, my lord, have better
commerce
¹¹⁶
than

with honesty?

HAMLET
    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
¹²⁰
likeness: this was

sometime
a
paradox
¹²¹
, but now the time gives it proof. I did

love you once.

OPHELIA
    Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET
    You should not have believed me, for
virtue cannot so
¹²⁴

inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not.

OPHELIA
    I was the more deceived.

HAMLET
    Get thee to a
nunnery
¹²⁷
. Why wouldst thou be a

breeder of sinners? I am myself
indifferent honest
¹²⁸
, 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
¹³¹
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?

OPHELIA
    At home, my lord.

HAMLET
    Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play

the fool nowhere but in’s own house. Farewell.

OPHELIA
    O, help him, you sweet heavens!

HAMLET
    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
¹⁴²
. Get thee to a nunnery: go, farewell. Or,

if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know

well enough what
monsters
¹⁴⁴
you make of them. To a

nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell.

OPHELIA
    O heavenly powers, restore him!

HAMLET
    I have heard of your
paintings
¹⁴⁷
too, well enough.

God has given you one face and you make yourself another:

you jig, you
amble
and you
lisp
¹⁴⁹
, and nickname God’s

creatures, and
make your wantonness your ignorance
¹⁵⁰
. Go

to, I’ll no more
on’t
¹⁵¹
: 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.

OPHELIA
    O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,

Th’
expectancy
¹⁵⁷
and rose of the fair state,

The
glass of fashion
and the mould of
form
¹⁵⁸
,

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

And 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
¹⁶⁴
youth

Blasted with ecstasy
¹⁶⁵
. O, woe is me,

T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

KING
    Love? His
affections
¹⁶⁷
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
¹⁷⁰
,

And I do
doubt
the hatch and the
disclose
¹⁷¹

Will be some danger, which to prevent,

I have in quick determination

Thus
set it down
¹⁷⁴
: he shall with speed to England

For the demand of our neglected
tribute
¹⁷⁵
.

Haply
¹⁷⁶
the seas and countries different

With variable
objects
¹⁷⁷
shall expel

This
something-settled matter
¹⁷⁸
in his heart,

Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus

From
fashion of himself
¹⁸⁰
. What think you on’t?

POLONIUS
    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:

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
¹⁸⁸
with him,

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

Of all their conference. If she
find him not
¹⁹⁰
,

To England send him, or confine him where

Your wisdom best shall think.

KING
    It shall be so:

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.