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

/> Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing, but not
as your daughter may conceive:--friend, look to't.

Pol.
How say you by that?--[Aside.] Still harping on my daughter:--yet
he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far
gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity
for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again.--What do you
read, my lord?

Ham.
Words, words, words.

Pol.
What is the matter, my lord?

Ham.
Between who?

Pol.
I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

Ham.
Slanders, sir: for the satirical slave says here that old men
have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes
purging thick amber and plum-tree gum; and that they have a
plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which,
sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it
not honesty to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir,
should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward.

Pol.
[Aside.] Though this be madness, yet there is a method in't.--
Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

Ham.
Into my grave?

Pol.
Indeed, that is out o' the air. [Aside.] How pregnant sometimes
his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which
reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I
will leave him and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between
him and my daughter.--My honourable lord, I will most humbly take
my leave of you.

Ham.
You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more
willingly part withal,--except my life, except my life, except my
life.

Pol.
Fare you well, my lord.

Ham.
These tedious old fools!

[Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

Pol.
You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.

Ros.
[To Polonius.] God save you, sir!

[Exit Polonius.]

Guil.
My honoured lord!

Ros.
My most dear lord!

Ham.
My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah,
Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?

Ros.
As the indifferent children of the earth.

Guil.
Happy in that we are not over-happy;
On fortune's cap we are not the very button.

Ham.
Nor the soles of her shoe?

Ros.
Neither, my lord.

Ham.
Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her
favours?

Guil.
Faith, her privates we.

Ham.
In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a
strumpet. What's the news?

Ros.
None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.

Ham.
Then is doomsday near; but your news is not true. Let me
question more in particular: what have you, my good friends,
deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison
hither?

Guil.
Prison, my lord!

Ham.
Denmark's a prison.

Ros.
Then is the world one.

Ham.
A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and
dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.

Ros.
We think not so, my lord.

Ham.
Why, then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good
or bad but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.

Ros.
Why, then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your
mind.

Ham.
O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a
king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

Guil.
Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of
the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

Ham.
A dream itself is but a shadow.

Ros.
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that
it is but a shadow's shadow.

Ham.
Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretch'd
heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we to the court? for, by my
fay, I cannot reason.

Ros. and Guild.
We'll wait upon you.

Ham.
No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest of my
servants; for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most
dreadfully attended. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what
make you at Elsinore?

Ros.
To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.

Ham.
Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you:
and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were
you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free
visitation? Come, deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak.

Guil.
What should we say, my lord?

Ham.
Why, anything--but to the purpose. You were sent for; and
there is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties
have not craft enough to colour: I know the good king and queen
have sent for you.

Ros.
To what end, my lord?

Ham.
That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights
of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the
obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a
better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with
me, whether you were sent for or no.

Ros.
[To Guildenstern.] What say you?

Ham.
[Aside.] Nay, then, I have an eye of you.--If you love me, hold
not off.

Guil.
My lord, we were sent for.

Ham.
I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your
discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no
feather. I have of late,--but wherefore I know not,--lost all my
mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so
heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the
air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical
roof fretted with golden fire,--why, it appears no other thing
to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a
piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in
faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in
action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the
beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what
is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman
neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

Ros.
My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.

Ham.
Why did you laugh then, when I said 'Man delights not me'?

Ros.
To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten
entertainment the players shall receive from you: we coted them
on the way; and hither are they coming to offer you service.

Ham.
He that plays the king shall be welcome,--his majesty shall
have tribute of me; the adventurous knight shall use his foil and
target; the lover shall not sigh gratis; the humorous man shall
end his part in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose
lungs are tickle o' the sere; and the lady shall say her mind
freely, or the blank verse shall halt for't. What players are
they?

Ros.
Even those you were wont to take such delight in,--the
tragedians of the city.

Ham.
How chances it they travel? their residence, both in
reputation and profit, was better both ways.

Ros.
I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late
innovation.

Ham.
Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the
city? Are they so followed?

Ros.
No, indeed, are they not.

Ham.
How comes it? do they grow rusty?

Ros.
Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace: but there is,
sir, an aery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top
of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for't: these are
now the fashion; and so berattle the common stages,--so they call
them,--that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and
dare scarce come thither.

Ham.
What, are they children? who maintains 'em? How are they
escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can
sing? will they not say afterwards, if they should grow
themselves to common players,--as it is most like, if their means
are no better,--their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim
against their own succession?

Ros.
Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the nation
holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy: there was, for
awhile, no money bid for argument unless the poet and the player
went to cuffs in the question.

Ham.
Is't possible?

Guil.
O, there has been much throwing about of brains.

Ham.
Do the boys carry it away?

Ros.
Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load too.

Ham.
It is not very strange; for my uncle is king of Denmark, and
those that would make mouths at him while my father lived, give
twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in
little. 'Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if
philosophy could find it out.

[Flourish of trumpets within.]

Guil.
There are the players.

Ham.
Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come: the
appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony: let me comply
with you in this garb; lest my extent to the players, which I
tell you must show fairly outward, should more appear like
entertainment than yours. You are welcome: but my uncle-father
and aunt-mother are deceived.

Guil.
In what, my dear lord?

Ham.
I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I
know a hawk from a handsaw.

[Enter Polonius.]

Pol.
Well be with you, gentlemen!

Ham.
Hark you, Guildenstern;--and you too;--at each ear a hearer: that
great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts.

Ros.
Happily he's the second time come to them; for they say an old
man is twice a child.

Ham.
I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players; mark it.--You
say right, sir: o' Monday morning; 'twas so indeed.

Pol.
My lord, I have news to tell you.

Ham.
My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in
Rome,--

Pol.
The actors are come hither, my lord.

Ham.
Buzz, buzz!

Pol.
Upon my honour,--

Ham.
Then came each actor on his ass,--

Pol.
The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy,
history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral,
tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene
individable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy nor
Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are
the only men.

Ham.
O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!

Pol.
What treasure had he, my lord?

Ham.
Why--
'One fair daughter, and no more,
The which he loved passing well.'


Pol.
[Aside.] Still on my daughter.

Ham.
Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah?

Pol.
If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I
love passing well.

Ham.
Nay, that follows not.

Pol.
What follows, then, my lord?

Ham.
Why--
'As by lot, God wot,'
and then, you know,
'It came to pass, as most like it was--'
The first row of the pious chanson will show you more; for look
where my abridgment comes.

[Enter four or five Players.]

You are welcome, masters; welcome,