Hamlet, William Shakespeare [reading women TXT] 📗

is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? “Forgive me my foul murder”?
That cannot be; since I am still possess’d
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
May one be pardon’d and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but ’tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell’d,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well. Retires and kneels. Enter Hamlet. Hamlet

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged. That would be scann’d:
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
’Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season’d for his passage?
No!
Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in’t;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn’d and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days. Exit.

King

Rising. My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. Exit.

Scene IV

The Queen’s closet.

Enter Queen and Polonius. Polonius

He will come straight. Look you lay home to him:
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
And that your grace hath screen’d and stood between
Much heat and him. I’ll sconce me even here.
Pray you, be round with him.

Hamlet Within. Mother, mother, mother! Queen

I’ll warrant you,
Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming. Polonius hides behind the arras.

Enter Hamlet. Hamlet Now, mother, what’s the matter? Queen Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. Hamlet Mother, you have my father much offended. Queen Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. Hamlet Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue. Queen Why, how now, Hamlet! Hamlet What’s the matter now? Queen Have you forgot me? Hamlet

No, by the rood, not so:
You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife;
And⁠—would it were not so!⁠—you are my mother.

Queen Nay, then, I’ll set those to you that can speak. Hamlet

Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.

Queen

What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help, ho!

Polonius Behind. What, ho! help, help, help! Hamlet Drawing. How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead! Makes a pass through the arras. Polonius Behind. O, I am slain! Falls and dies. Queen O me, what hast thou done? Hamlet

Nay, I know not:
Is it the king?

Queen O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! Hamlet

A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

Queen As kill a king! Hamlet

Ay, lady, ’twas my word. Lifts up the arras and discovers Polonius.
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;
Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.
Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down,
And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damned custom have not brass’d it so
That it be proof and bulwark against sense.

Queen

What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?

Hamlet

Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
As false as dicers’ oaths: O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words: heaven’s face doth glow;
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.

Queen

Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

Hamlet

Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow;
Hyperion’s curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man:
This was your husband. Look you now, what follows:
Here is your husband; like a mildew’d ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
You cannot call it love; for at your age
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,
And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment
Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense
Is apoplex’d; for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thrall’d
But it reserved some quantity of choice,
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one