The Tragedy Of Hamlet, Prince Of Denmark

1 Enter Queen and Polonius.
2 POLONIUS.
3 He will come straight. Look you lay home to him,
4 Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
5 And that your Grace hath screen’d and stood between
6 Much heat and him. I’ll silence me e’en here.
7 Pray you be round with him.
8 HAMLET.
9 [_Within._] Mother, mother, mother.
10 QUEEN.
11 I’ll warrant you, Fear me not.
12 Withdraw, I hear him coming.
13 [_Polonius goes behind the arras._]
14 Enter Hamlet.
15 HAMLET.
16 Now, mother, what’s the matter?
17 QUEEN.
18 Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
19 HAMLET.
20 Mother, you have my father much offended.
21 QUEEN.
22 Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
23 HAMLET.
24 Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
25 QUEEN.
26 Why, how now, Hamlet?
27 HAMLET.
28 What’s the matter now?
29 QUEEN.
30 Have you forgot me?
31 HAMLET.
32 No, by the rood, not so.
33 You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,
34 And, would it were not so. You are my mother.
35 QUEEN.
36 Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.
37 HAMLET.
38 Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge.
39 You go not till I set you up a glass
40 Where you may see the inmost part of you.
41 QUEEN.
42 What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
43 Help, help, ho!
44 POLONIUS.
45 [_Behind._] What, ho! help, help, help!
46 HAMLET.
47 How now? A rat? [_Draws._]
48 Dead for a ducat, dead!
49 [_Makes a pass through the arras._]
50 POLONIUS.
51 [_Behind._] O, I am slain!
52 [_Falls and dies._]
53 QUEEN.
54 O me, what hast thou done?
55 HAMLET.
56 Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
57 [_Draws forth Polonius._]
58 QUEEN.
59 O what a rash and bloody deed is this!
60 HAMLET.
61 A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother,
62 As kill a king and marry with his brother.
63 QUEEN.
64 As kill a king?
65 HAMLET.
66 Ay, lady, ’twas my word.—
67 [_To Polonius._] Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
68 I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune,
69 Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.—
70 Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down,
71 And let me wring your heart, for so I shall,
72 If it be made of penetrable stuff;
73 If damned custom have not braz’d it so,
74 That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
75 QUEEN.
76 What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue
77 In noise so rude against me?
78 HAMLET.
79 Such an act
80 That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
81 Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
82 From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
83 And sets a blister there. Makes marriage vows
84 As false as dicers’ oaths. O such a deed
85 As from the body of contraction plucks
86 The very soul, and sweet religion makes
87 A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face doth glow,
88 Yea this solidity and compound mass,
89 With tristful visage, as against the doom,
90 Is thought-sick at the act.
91 QUEEN.
92 Ay me, what act,
93 That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
94 HAMLET.
95 Look here upon this picture, and on this,
96 The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
97 See what a grace was seated on this brow,
98 Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,
99 An eye like Mars, to threaten and command,
100 A station like the herald Mercury
101 New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill:
102 A combination and a form indeed,
103 Where every god did seem to set his seal,
104 To give the world assurance of a man.
105 This was your husband. Look you now what follows.
106 Here is your husband, like a mildew’d ear
107 Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
108 Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
109 And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
110 You cannot call it love; for at your age
111 The hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,
112 And waits upon the judgement: and what judgement
113 Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,
114 Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense
115 Is apoplex’d, for madness would not err
116 Nor sense to ecstacy was ne’er so thrall’d
117 But it reserv’d some quantity of choice
118 To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
119 That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?
120 Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
121 Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
122 Or but a sickly part of one true sense
123 Could not so mope. O shame! where is thy blush?
124 Rebellious hell,
125 If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
126 To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
127 And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame
128 When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
129 Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
130 And reason panders will.
131 QUEEN.
132 O Hamlet, speak no more.
133 Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,
134 And there I see such black and grained spots
135 As will not leave their tinct.
136 HAMLET.
137 Nay, but to live
138 In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
139 Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
140 Over the nasty sty.
141 QUEEN.
142 O speak to me no more;
143 These words like daggers enter in mine ears;
144 No more, sweet Hamlet.
145 HAMLET.
146 A murderer and a villain;
147 A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
148 Of your precedent lord. A vice of kings,
149 A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
150 That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
151 And put it in his pocket!
152 QUEEN.
153 No more.
154 HAMLET.
155 A king of shreds and patches!—
156 Enter Ghost.
157 Save me and hover o’er me with your wings,
158 You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
159 QUEEN.
160 Alas, he’s mad.
161 HAMLET.
162 Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
163 That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go by
164 The important acting of your dread command?
165 O say!
166 GHOST.
167 Do not forget. This visitation
168 Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
169 But look, amazement on thy mother sits.
170 O step between her and her fighting soul.
171 Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
172 Speak to her, Hamlet.
173 HAMLET.
174 How is it with you, lady?
175 QUEEN.
176 Alas, how is’t with you,
177 That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
178 And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
179 Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,
180 And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
181 Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,
182 Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,
183 Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
184 Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?
185 HAMLET.
186 On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
187 His form and cause conjoin’d, preaching to stones,
188 Would make them capable.—Do not look upon me,
189 Lest with this piteous action you convert
190 My stern effects. Then what I have to do
191 Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.
192 QUEEN.
193 To whom do you speak this?
194 HAMLET.
195 Do you see nothing there?
196 QUEEN.
197 Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
198 HAMLET.
199 Nor did you nothing hear?
200 QUEEN.
201 No, nothing but ourselves.
202 HAMLET.
203 Why, look you there! look how it steals away!
204 My father, in his habit as he liv’d!
205 Look where he goes even now out at the portal.
206 [_Exit Ghost._]
207 QUEEN.
208 This is the very coinage of your brain.
209 This bodiless creation ecstasy
210 Is very cunning in.
211 HAMLET.
212 Ecstasy!
213 My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,
214 And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
215 That I have utter’d. Bring me to the test,
216 And I the matter will re-word; which madness
217 Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
218 Lay not that flattering unction to your soul
219 That not your trespass, but my madness speaks.
220 It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
221 Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
222 Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven,
223 Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come;
224 And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
225 To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;
226 For in the fatness of these pursy times
227 Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
228 Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
229 QUEEN.
230 O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
231 HAMLET.
232 O throw away the worser part of it,
233 And live the purer with the other half.
234 Good night. But go not to mine uncle’s bed.
235 Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
236 That monster custom, who all sense doth eat,
237 Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,
238 That to the use of actions fair and good
239 He likewise gives a frock or livery
240 That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,
241 And that shall lend a kind of easiness
242 To the next abstinence. The next more easy;
243 For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
244 And either curb the devil, or throw him out
245 With wondrous potency. Once more, good night,
246 And when you are desirous to be bles’d,
247 I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord
248 [_Pointing to Polonius._]
249 I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so,
250 To punish me with this, and this with me,
251 That I must be their scourge and minister.
252 I will bestow him, and will answer well
253 The death I gave him. So again, good night.
254 I must be cruel, only to be kind:
255 Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.
256 One word more, good lady.
257 QUEEN.
258 What shall I do?
259 HAMLET.
260 Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
261 Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed,
262 Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,
263 And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
264 Or paddling in your neck with his damn’d fingers,
265 Make you to ravel all this matter out,
266 That I essentially am not in madness,
267 But mad in craft. ’Twere good you let him know,
268 For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
269 Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
270 Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?
271 No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
272 Unpeg the basket on the house’s top,
273 Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,
274 To try conclusions, in the basket creep
275 And break your own neck down.
276 QUEEN.
277 Be thou assur’d, if words be made of breath,
278 And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
279 What thou hast said to me.
280 HAMLET.
281 I must to England, you know that?
282 QUEEN.
283 Alack,
284 I had forgot. ’Tis so concluded on.
285 HAMLET.
286 There’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows,
287 Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,—
288 They bear the mandate, they must sweep my way
289 And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
290 For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
291 Hoist with his own petard, and ’t shall go hard
292 But I will delve one yard below their mines
293 And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet,
294 When in one line two crafts directly meet.
295 This man shall set me packing.
296 I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.
297 Mother, good night. Indeed, this counsellor
298 Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
299 Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
300 Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
301 Good night, mother.
302 [_Exit Hamlet dragging out Polonius._]