Hamlet, William Shakespeare [most read books of all time .txt] 📗

By cock, they are to blame.

Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
You promis'd me to wed.
So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.

King.
How long hath she been thus?

Oph.
I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I cannot
choose but weep, to think they would lay him i' the cold ground.
My brother shall know of it: and so I thank you for your good
counsel.--Come, my coach!--Good night, ladies; good night, sweet
ladies; good night, good night.

[Exit.]

King.
Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.

[Exit Horatio.]

O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
All from her father's death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions! First, her father slain:
Next, your son gone; and he most violent author
Of his own just remove: the people muddied,
Thick and and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers
For good Polonius' death; and we have done but greenly
In hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts:
Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France;
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murdering piece, in many places
Give, me superfluous death.

[A noise within.]

Queen.
Alack, what noise is this?

King.
Where are my Switzers? let them guard the door.

[Enter a Gentleman.]

What is the matter?

Gent.
Save yourself, my lord:
The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
O'erbears your offices. The rabble call him lord;
And, as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props of every word,
They cry 'Choose we! Laertes shall be king!'
Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,
'Laertes shall be king! Laertes king!'

Queen.
How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!

[A noise within.]

King.
The doors are broke.

[Enter Laertes, armed; Danes following.]

Laer.
Where is this king?--Sirs, stand you all without.

Danes.
No, let's come in.

Laer.
I pray you, give me leave.

Danes.
We will, we will.

[They retire without the door.]

Laer.
I thank you:--keep the door.--O thou vile king,
Give me my father!

Queen.
Calmly, good Laertes.

Laer.
That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard;
Cries cuckold to my father; brands the harlot
Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow
Of my true mother.

King.
What is the cause, Laertes,
That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?--
Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person:
There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.--Tell me, Laertes,
Why thou art thus incens'd.--Let him go, Gertrude:--
Speak, man.

Laer.
Where is my father?

King.
Dead.

Queen.
But not by him.

King.
Let him demand his fill.

Laer.
How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation:--to this point I stand,--
That both the worlds, I give to negligence,
Let come what comes; only I'll be reveng'd
Most throughly for my father.

King.
Who shall stay you?

Laer.
My will, not all the world:
And for my means, I'll husband them so well,
They shall go far with little.

King.
Good Laertes,
If you desire to know the certainty
Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge
That, sweepstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
Winner and loser?

Laer.
None but his enemies.

King.
Will you know them then?

Laer.
To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
And, like the kind life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood.

King.
Why, now you speak
Like a good child and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father's death,
And am most sensibly in grief for it,
It shall as level to your judgment pierce
As day does to your eye.

Danes.
[Within] Let her come in.

Laer.
How now! What noise is that?

[Re-enter Ophelia, fantastically dressed with straws and
flowers.]

O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!--
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!--
O heavens! is't possible a young maid's wits
Should be as mortal as an old man's life?
Nature is fine in love; and where 'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.

Oph.
[Sings.]
They bore him barefac'd on the bier
Hey no nonny, nonny, hey nonny
And on his grave rain'd many a tear.--

Fare you well, my dove!

Laer.
Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move thus.

Oph.
You must sing 'Down a-down, an you call him a-down-a.' O,
how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that stole his
master's daughter.

Laer.
This nothing's more than matter.

Oph.
There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love,
remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.

Laer.
A document in madness,--thoughts and remembrance fitted.

Oph.
There's fennel for you, and columbines:--there's rue for you;
and here's some for me:--we may call it herb of grace o'
Sundays:--O, you must wear your rue with a difference.--There's a
daisy:--I would give you some violets, but they wither'd all when
my father died:--they say he made a good end,--
[Sings.]
For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy,--

Laer.
Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
She turns to favour and to prettiness.

Oph.
[Sings.]
And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
No, no, he is dead,
Go to thy death-bed,
He never will come again.

His beard was as white as snow,
All flaxen was his poll:
He is gone, he is gone,
And we cast away moan:
God ha' mercy on his soul!

And of all Christian souls, I pray God.--God b' wi' ye.

[Exit.]

Laer.
Do you see this, O God?

King.
Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me.
If by direct or by collateral hand
They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
To you in satisfaction; but if not,
Be you content to lend your patience to us,
And we shall jointly labour with your soul
To give it due content.

Laer.
Let this be so;
His means of death, his obscure burial,--
No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
No noble rite nor formal ostentation,--
Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call't in question.

King.
So you shall;
And where the offence is let the great axe fall.
I pray you go with me.

[Exeunt.]


Scene VI. Another room in the Castle.

[Enter Horatio and a Servant.]

Hor.
What are they that would speak with me?

Servant.
Sailors, sir: they say they have letters for you.

Hor.
Let them come in.

[Exit Servant.]

I do not know from what part of the world
I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.

[Enter Sailors.]

I Sailor.
God bless you, sir.

Hor.
Let him bless thee too.

Sailor.
He shall, sir, an't please him. There's a letter for you,
sir,--it comes from the ambassador that was bound for England; if
your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is.

Hor.
[Reads.] 'Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked
this, give these fellows some means to the king: they have
letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of
very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too
slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour, and in the grapple I
boarded them: on the instant they got clear of our ship; so I
alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves
of mercy: but they knew what they did; I am to do a good turn for
them. Let the king have the letters I have sent; and repair thou
to me with as much haste as thou wouldst fly death. I have words
to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are they much too
light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows will bring
thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course
for England: of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell.
He that thou knowest thine, HAMLET.'

Come, I will give you way for these your letters;
And do't the speedier, that you may direct me
To him from whom you brought them.

[Exeunt.]


Scene VII. Another room in the Castle.

[Enter King and Laertes.]

King.
Now must your conscience my acquittance seal,
And you must put me in your heart for friend,
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
That he which hath your noble father slain
Pursu'd my life.

Laer.
It well appears:--but tell me
Why you proceeded not against these feats,
So crimeful and so capital in nature,
As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
You mainly were stirr'd up.

King.
O, for two special reasons;
Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew'd,
But yet to me they are strong. The queen his mother
Lives almost by his looks; and for myself,--
My virtue or my plague, be it either which,--
She's so conjunctive to my life and soul,
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her. The other motive,
Why to a public count I might not go,
Is the great love the general gender bear him;
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows,
Too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aim'd them.

Laer.
And so have I a noble father lost;
A sister driven into desperate terms,--
Whose worth, if praises may go back again,
Stood challenger on mount of all the age
For her perfections:--but my revenge will come.

King.
Break not your sleeps for that:--you must not think
That we are made of stuff so flat and dull
That we can let our beard be shook with danger,
And