Hamlet, William Shakespeare [reading women TXT] 📗

bent
For England. Hamlet For England! King Ay, Hamlet. Hamlet Good. King So is it, if thou knew’st our purposes. Hamlet I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for England! Farewell, dear mother. King Thy loving father, Hamlet. Hamlet My mother: father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England! Exit. King

Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard;
Delay it not; I’ll have him hence to-night:
Away! for every thing is seal’d and done
That else leans on the affair: pray you, make haste. Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
And, England, if my love thou hold’st at aught⁠—
As my great power thereof may give thee sense,
Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red
After the Danish sword, and thy free awe
Pays homage to us⁠—thou mayst not coldly set
Our sovereign process; which imports at full,
By letters congruing to that effect,
The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England;
For like the hectic in my blood he rages,
And thou must cure me: till I know ’tis done,
Howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun. Exit.

Scene IV

A plain in Denmark.

Enter Fortinbras, a Captain, and Soldiers, marching. Prince Fortinbras

Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king;
Tell him that, by his license, Fortinbras
Craves the conveyance of a promised march
Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.
If that his majesty would aught with us,
We shall express our duty in his eye;
And let him know so.

Captain I will do’t, my lord. Prince Fortinbras Go softly on. Exeunt Fortinbras and Soldiers. Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and others. Hamlet Good sir, whose powers are these? Captain They are of Norway, sir. Hamlet How purposed, sir, I pray you? Captain Against some part of Poland. Hamlet Who commands them, sir? Captain The nephews to old Norway, Fortinbras. Hamlet

Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
Or for some frontier?

Captain

Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

Hamlet Why, then the Polack never will defend it. Captain Yes, it is already garrison’d. Hamlet

Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw:
This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.

Captain God be wi’ you, sir. Exit. Rosencrantz Will’t please you go, my lord? Hamlet

I’ll be with you straight. Go a little before. Exeunt all except Hamlet.
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say “This thing’s to do;”
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,
Excitements of my reason and my blood
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! Exit.

Scene V

Elsinore. A room in the castle.

Enter Queen, Horatio, and a Gentleman. Queen I will not speak with her. Gentleman

She is importunate, indeed distract:
Her mood will needs be pitied.

Queen What would she have? Gentleman

She speaks much of her father; says she hears
There’s tricks i’ the world; and hems, and beats her heart;
Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,
That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures yield them,
Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.

Horatio

’Twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew
Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.

Queen

Let her come in. Exit Horatio.
To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is,
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss:
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

Re-enter Horatio, with Ophelia. Ophelia Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark? Queen How now, Ophelia! Ophelia

Sings.

How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.

Queen Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song? Ophelia

Say you? nay, pray you, mark. Sings.

He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.

Queen Nay, but, Ophelia⁠— Ophelia

Pray you, mark. Sings.

White his shroud as the mountain snow⁠—

Enter King. Queen Alas, look here, my lord. Ophelia

Sings.

Larded with sweet flowers;
Which bewept to the grave did go
With true-love showers.

King How do you, pretty lady? Ophelia Well, God ’ild you! They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at