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

all:--I am glad to see thee
well.--welcome, good friends.--O, my old friend! Thy face is
valanc'd since I saw thee last; comest thou to beard me in
Denmark?--What, my young lady and mistress! By'r lady, your
ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the
altitude of a chopine. Pray God, your voice, like a piece of
uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.--Masters, you are
all welcome. We'll e'en to't like French falconers, fly at
anything we see: we'll have a speech straight: come, give us a
taste of your quality: come, a passionate speech.

I Play.
What speech, my lord?

Ham.
I heard thee speak me a speech once,--but it was never acted;
or if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleased
not the million, 'twas caviare to the general; but it was,--as I
received it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in
the top of mine,--an excellent play, well digested in the scenes,
set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said
there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury,
nor no matter in the phrase that might indite the author of
affectation; but called it an honest method, as wholesome as
sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it
I chiefly loved: 'twas AEneas' tale to Dido, and thereabout of it
especially where he speaks of Priam's slaughter: if it live in
your memory, begin at this line;--let me see, let me see:--

The rugged Pyrrhus, like th' Hyrcanian beast,--

it is not so:-- it begins with Pyrrhus:--

'The rugged Pyrrhus,--he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose,did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,--
Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
Now is be total gules; horridly trick'd
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Bak'd and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and a damned light
To their vile murders: roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'ersized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.'

So, proceed you.

Pol.
'Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good
discretion.

I Play.
Anon he finds him,
Striking too short at Greeks: his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command: unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base; and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick:
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood;
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
But as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region; so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
A roused vengeance sets him new a-work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour, forg'd for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.--
Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod, take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!

Pol.
This is too long.

Ham.
It shall to the barber's, with your beard.--Pr'ythee say on.--
He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps:--say on; come
to Hecuba.

I Play.
But who, O who, had seen the mobled queen,--

Ham.
'The mobled queen'?

Pol.
That's good! 'Mobled queen' is good.

I Play.
Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
About her lank and all o'erteemed loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;--
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounc'd:
But if the gods themselves did see her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made,--
Unless things mortal move them not at all,--
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods.

Pol.
Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in's
eyes.--Pray you, no more!

Ham.
'Tis well. I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.--
Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you
hear? Let them be well used; for they are the abstracts and brief
chronicles of the time; after your death you were better have a
bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

Pol.
My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Ham.
Odd's bodikin, man, better: use every man after his
desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own
honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in
your bounty. Take them in.

Pol.
Come, sirs.

Ham.
Follow him, friends. we'll hear a play to-morrow.

[Exeunt Polonius with all the Players but the First.]

Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play 'The Murder of
Gonzago'?

I Play.
Ay, my lord.

Ham.
We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a
speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and
insert in't? could you not?

I Play.
Ay, my lord.

Ham.
Very well.--Follow that lord; and look you mock him not.

[Exit First Player.]

--My good friends [to Ros. and Guild.], I'll leave you till
night: you are welcome to Elsinore.

Ros.
Good my lord!

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

Ham.
Ay, so, God b' wi' ye!
Now I am alone.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wan'd;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba?
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free;
Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this, ha?
'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter; or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon't! foh!--About, my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ, I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,--
As he is very potent with such spirits,--
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this.--the play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

[Exit.]


ACT III.

Scene I. A room in the Castle.

[Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and
Guildenstern.]

King.
And can you, by no drift of circumstance,
Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

Ros.
He does confess he feels himself distracted,
But from what cause he will by no means speak.

Guil.
Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof
When we would bring him on to some confession
Of his true state.

Queen.
Did he receive you well?

Ros.
Most like a gentleman.

Guil.
But with much forcing of his disposition.

Ros.
Niggard of question; but, of our demands,
Most free in his reply.

Queen.
Did you assay him
To any pastime?

Ros.
Madam, it so fell out that certain players
We o'er-raught 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.

Pol.
'Tis most true;
And he beseech'd 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 inclin'd.--
Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
And drive his purpose on to these delights.

Ros.
We shall, my lord.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

King.
Sweet Gertrude, leave us too;
For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
That he, as 'twere by accident, may here
Affront Ophelia:
Her father and myself,--lawful espials,--
Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen,
We may of their encounter frankly judge;
And gather by him, as he is behav'd,
If't be the affliction of his love