The Tragedy Of Hamlet, Prince Of Denmark

1 Enter Queen, Horatio and a Gentleman.
2 QUEEN.
3 I will not speak with her.
4 GENTLEMAN.
5 She is importunate, indeed distract.
6 Her mood will needs be pitied.
7 QUEEN.
8 What would she have?
9 GENTLEMAN.
10 She speaks much of her father; says she hears
11 There’s tricks i’ th’ world, and hems, and beats her heart,
12 Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt,
13 That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
14 Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
15 The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
16 And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,
17 Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures yield them,
18 Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
19 Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
20 ’Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew
21 Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
22 QUEEN.
23 Let her come in.
24 [_Exit Gentleman._]
25 To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is,
26 Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.
27 So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
28 It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
29 Enter Ophelia.
30 OPHELIA.
31 Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?
32 QUEEN.
33 How now, Ophelia?
34 OPHELIA.
35 [_Sings._]
36 How should I your true love know
37 From another one?
38 By his cockle hat and staff
39 And his sandal shoon.
40 QUEEN.
41 Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
42 OPHELIA.
43 Say you? Nay, pray you mark.
44 [_Sings._]
45 He is dead and gone, lady,
46 He is dead and gone,
47 At his head a grass green turf,
48 At his heels a stone.
49 QUEEN.
50 Nay, but Ophelia—
51 OPHELIA.
52 Pray you mark.
53 [_Sings._]
54 White his shroud as the mountain snow.
55 Enter King.
56 QUEEN.
57 Alas, look here, my lord!
58 OPHELIA.
59 [_Sings._]
60 Larded all with sweet flowers;
61 Which bewept to the grave did not go
62 With true-love showers.
63 KING.
64 How do you, pretty lady?
65 OPHELIA.
66 Well, God dild you! They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we
67 know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!
68 KING.
69 Conceit upon her father.
70 OPHELIA.
71 Pray you, let’s have no words of this; but when they ask you what it
72 means, say you this:
73 [_Sings._]
74 Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
75 All in the morning betime,
76 And I a maid at your window,
77 To be your Valentine.
78 Then up he rose and donn’d his clothes,
79 And dupp’d the chamber door,
80 Let in the maid, that out a maid
81 Never departed more.
82 KING.
83 Pretty Ophelia!
84 OPHELIA.
85 Indeed la, without an oath, I’ll make an end on’t.
86 [_Sings._]
87 By Gis and by Saint Charity,
88 Alack, and fie for shame!
89 Young men will do’t if they come to’t;
90 By Cock, they are to blame.
91 Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
92 You promis’d me to wed.
93 So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun,
94 An thou hadst not come to my bed.
95 KING.
96 How long hath she been thus?
97 OPHELIA.
98 I hope all will be well. We must be patient. But I cannot choose but
99 weep, to think they would lay him i’ th’ cold ground. My brother shall
100 know of it. And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach!
101 Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.
102 [_Exit._]
103 KING.
104 Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.
105 [_Exit Horatio._]
106 O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
107 All from her father’s death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
108 When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
109 But in battalions. First, her father slain;
110 Next, your son gone; and he most violent author
111 Of his own just remove; the people muddied,
112 Thick, and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers
113 For good Polonius’ death; and we have done but greenly
114 In hugger-mugger to inter him. Poor Ophelia
115 Divided from herself and her fair judgement,
116 Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts.
117 Last, and as much containing as all these,
118 Her brother is in secret come from France,
119 Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
120 And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
121 With pestilent speeches of his father’s death,
122 Wherein necessity, of matter beggar’d,
123 Will nothing stick our person to arraign
124 In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
125 Like to a murdering piece, in many places
126 Gives me superfluous death.
127 [_A noise within._]
128 QUEEN.
129 Alack, what noise is this?
130 KING.
131 Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.
132 Enter a Gentleman.
133 What is the matter?
134 GENTLEMAN.
135 Save yourself, my lord.
136 The ocean, overpeering of his list,
137 Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
138 Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
139 O’erbears your offices. The rabble call him lord,
140 And, as the world were now but to begin,
141 Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
142 The ratifiers and props of every word,
143 They cry ‘Choose we! Laertes shall be king!’
144 Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,
145 ‘Laertes shall be king, Laertes king.’
146 QUEEN.
147 How cheerfully on the false trail they cry.
148 O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs.
149 [_A noise within._]
150 KING.
151 The doors are broke.
152 Enter Laertes, armed; Danes following.
153 LAERTES.
154 Where is this king?—Sirs, stand you all without.
155 Danes.
156 No, let’s come in.
157 LAERTES.
158 I pray you, give me leave.
159 DANES.
160 We will, we will.
161 [_They retire without the door._]
162 LAERTES.
163 I thank you. Keep the door. O thou vile king,
164 Give me my father.
165 QUEEN.
166 Calmly, good Laertes.
167 LAERTES.
168 That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard;
169 Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
170 Even here between the chaste unsmirched brow
171 Of my true mother.
172 KING.
173 What is the cause, Laertes,
174 That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?—
175 Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.
176 There’s such divinity doth hedge a king,
177 That treason can but peep to what it would,
178 Acts little of his will.—Tell me, Laertes,
179 Why thou art thus incens’d.—Let him go, Gertrude:—
180 Speak, man.
181 LAERTES.
182 Where is my father?
183 KING.
184 Dead.
185 QUEEN.
186 But not by him.
187 KING.
188 Let him demand his fill.
189 LAERTES.
190 How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with.
191 To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!
192 Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
193 I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
194 That both the worlds, I give to negligence,
195 Let come what comes; only I’ll be reveng’d
196 Most throughly for my father.
197 KING.
198 Who shall stay you?
199 LAERTES.
200 My will, not all the world.
201 And for my means, I’ll husband them so well,
202 They shall go far with little.
203 KING.
204 Good Laertes,
205 If you desire to know the certainty
206 Of your dear father’s death, is’t writ in your revenge
207 That, sweepstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
208 Winner and loser?
209 LAERTES.
210 None but his enemies.
211 KING.
212 Will you know them then?
213 LAERTES.
214 To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms;
215 And, like the kind life-rendering pelican,
216 Repast them with my blood.
217 KING.
218 Why, now you speak
219 Like a good child and a true gentleman.
220 That I am guiltless of your father’s death,
221 And am most sensibly in grief for it,
222 It shall as level to your judgement ’pear
223 As day does to your eye.
224 DANES.
225 [_Within._] Let her come in.
226 LAERTES.
227 How now! What noise is that?
228 Re-enter Ophelia, fantastically dressed with straws and flowers.
229 O heat, dry up my brains. Tears seven times salt,
230 Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye.
231 By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
232 Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
233 Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
234 O heavens, is’t possible a young maid’s wits
235 Should be as mortal as an old man’s life?
236 Nature is fine in love, and where ’tis fine,
237 It sends some precious instance of itself
238 After the thing it loves.
239 OPHELIA.
240 [_Sings._]
241 They bore him barefac’d on the bier,
242 Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny
243 And on his grave rain’d many a tear.—
244 Fare you well, my dove!
245 LAERTES.
246 Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
247 It could not move thus.
248 OPHELIA.
249 You must sing ‘Down a-down, and you call him a-down-a.’ O, how the
250 wheel becomes it! It is the false steward that stole his master’s
251 daughter.
252 LAERTES.
253 This nothing’s more than matter.
254 OPHELIA.
255 There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray love, remember. And
256 there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.
257 LAERTES.
258 A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.
259 OPHELIA.
260 There’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s rue for you; and here’s
261 some for me. We may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. O you must wear
262 your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would give you some
263 violets, but they wither’d all when my father died. They say he made a
264 good end.
265 [_Sings._]
266 For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.
267 LAERTES.
268 Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself
269 She turns to favour and to prettiness.
270 OPHELIA.
271 [_Sings._]
272 And will he not come again?
273 And will he not come again?
274 No, no, he is dead,
275 Go to thy death-bed,
276 He never will come again.
277 His beard was as white as snow,
278 All flaxen was his poll.
279 He is gone, he is gone,
280 And we cast away moan.
281 God ha’ mercy on his soul.
282 And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God b’ wi’ ye.
283 [_Exit._]
284 LAERTES.
285 Do you see this, O God?
286 KING.
287 Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
288 Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
289 Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
290 And they shall hear and judge ’twixt you and me.
291 If by direct or by collateral hand
292 They find us touch’d, we will our kingdom give,
293 Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours
294 To you in satisfaction; but if not,
295 Be you content to lend your patience to us,
296 And we shall jointly labour with your soul
297 To give it due content.
298 LAERTES.
299 Let this be so;
300 His means of death, his obscure burial,—
301 No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones,
302 No noble rite, nor formal ostentation,—
303 Cry to be heard, as ’twere from heaven to earth,
304 That I must call’t in question.
305 KING.
306 So you shall.
307 And where th’offence is let the great axe fall.
308 I pray you go with me.
309 [_Exeunt._]