The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare [book recommendations based on other books txt] 📗

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 th’ affliction of his love, or no, That thus he suffers for.

Queen. I shall obey you;

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish That your good beauties be the happy cause Of Hamlet’s wildness. So shall I hope your virtues Will bring him to his wonted way again, To both your honours.

Oph. Madam, I wish it may.

[Exit Queen.]

Pol. Ophelia, walk you here.- Gracious, so please you, We will bestow ourselves.- [To Ophelia] Read on this book, That show of such an exercise may colour Your loneliness.- We are oft to blame in this, ‘Tis too much prov’d, that with devotion’s visage And pious action we do sugar o’er

The Devil himself.

King. [aside] O, ‘tis too true!

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!

The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plast’ring art, Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it Than is my deed to my most painted word.

O heavy burthen!

Pol. I hear him coming. Let’s withdraw, my lord.

Exeunt King and Polonius].

Enter Hamlet.

Ham. To be, or not to be-that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. To die-to sleep-No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die-to sleep.

To sleep-perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub!

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death-The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn No traveller returns-puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.- Soft you now!

The fair Ophelia!- Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins rememb’red.

Oph. Good my lord,

How does your honour for this many a day?

Ham. I humbly thank you; well, well, well.

Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours That I have longed long to redeliver.

I pray you, now receive them.

Ham. No, not I!

I never gave you aught.

Oph. My honour’d lord, you know right well you did, And with them words of so sweet breath compos’d As made the things more rich. Their perfume lost, Take these again; for to the noble mind Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

There, my lord.

Ham. Ha, ha! Are you honest?

Oph. My lord?

Ham. Are you fair?

Oph. What means your lordship?

Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.

Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

Ham. You should not have believ’d me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.

Oph. I was the more deceived.

Ham. Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.

I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?

Oph. At home, my lord.

Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in’s own house. Farewell.

Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens!

Ham. If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery. Go, farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too.

Farewell.

Oph. O heavenly powers, restore him!

Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and you lisp; you nickname God’s creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t! it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no moe marriages. Those that are married already-all but one-shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. Exit.

Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!

The courtier’s, scholar’s, soldier’s, eye, tongue, sword, Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mould of form, Th’ observ’d of all observers-quite, quite down!

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That suck’d the honey of his music vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh; That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me

T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Enter King and Polonius.

King. Love? his affections do not that way tend; Nor what he spake, though it lack’d form a little, Was not like madness. There’s something in his soul O’er which his melancholy sits on brood; And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose Will be some danger; which for to prevent, I have in quick determination

Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England For the demand of our neglected tribute.

Haply the seas, and countries different, With variable objects, shall expel

This something-settled matter in his heart, Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus From fashion of himself. What think you on’t?

Pol. It shall do well. But yet do I believe The origin and commencement of his grief Sprung from neglected love.- How now, Ophelia?

You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said.

We heard it all.- My lord, do as you please; But if you hold it fit, after the play Let his queen mother all alone entreat him To show his grief. Let her be round with him; And I’ll be plac’d so please you, in the ear Of all their conference. If she find him not, To England send him; or confine him where Your wisdom best shall think.

King. It shall be so.

Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go. Exeunt.

Scene II.

Elsinore. hall in the Castle.

Enter Hamlet and three of the Players.

Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc’d it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as live the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the cars of the groundlings, who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipp’d for o’erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.

Player. I warrant your honour.

Ham. Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature; to show Virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak it profanely), that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

Player. I hope we have reform’d that indifferently with us, sir.

Ham. O, reform it altogether! And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them. For there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That’s villanous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.

Exeunt Players.

Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.

How now, my lord? Will the King hear this piece of work?

Pol. And the Queen too, and that presently.

Ham. Bid the players make haste, [Exit Polonius.] Will you two help to hasten them?

Both. We will, my lord. Exeunt they two.

Ham. What, ho, Horatio!

Enter Horatio.

Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service.

Ham. Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man As e’er my conversation cop’d withal.

Hor. O, my dear lord!

Ham. Nay, do not think I flatter;

For what advancement may I hope from thee, That no revenue hast but thy good spirits To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter’d?

No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice And could of men distinguish, her election Hath scald thee for herself. For thou hast been As one, in suff’ring all, that suffers nothing; A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards Hast ta’en with equal thanks; and blest are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger To sound what stop she please. Give me that man That