Hamlet, William Shakespeare [reading women TXT] 📗

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?

Rosencrantz

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

Guildenstern

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? Rosencrantz Most like a gentleman. Guildenstern But with much forcing of his disposition. Rosencrantz

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

Queen

Did you assay him
To any pastime?

Rosencrantz

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.

Polonius

’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 inclined.
Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
And drive his purpose on to these delights.

Rosencrantz 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 behaved,
If’t be the 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.

Ophelia Madam, I wish it may. Exit Queen. Polonius

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 proved⁠—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 plastering art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word:
O heavy burthen!

Polonius I hear him coming: let’s withdraw, my lord. Exeunt King and Polonius. Enter Hamlet. Hamlet

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 heart-ache 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,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would 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 pitch 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 remember’d.

Ophelia

Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?

Hamlet I humbly thank you; well, well, well. Ophelia

My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver;
I pray you, now receive them.

Hamlet

No, not I;
I never gave you aught.

Ophelia

My honour’d lord, you know right well you did;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
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.

Hamlet Ha, ha! are you honest? Ophelia My lord? Hamlet Are you fair? Ophelia What means your lordship? Hamlet That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty. Ophelia Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty? Hamlet 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. Ophelia Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. Hamlet You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not. Ophelia I was the more deceived. Hamlet 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