Hamlet, William Shakespeare [reading women TXT] 📗

thee of! Hold off the earth awhile,
Till I have caught her once more in mine arms: Leaps into the grave.
Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
Till of this flat a mountain you have made,
To o’ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus. Hamlet

Advancing. What is he whose grief
Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow
Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand
Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,
Hamlet the Dane. Leaps into the grave.

Laertes The devil take thy soul! Grappling with him. Hamlet

Thou pray’st not well.
I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat;
For, though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I something in me dangerous,
Which let thy wiseness fear: hold off thy hand.

King Pluck them asunder. Queen Hamlet, Hamlet! All Gentlemen⁠— Horatio Good my lord, be quiet. The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave. Hamlet

Why, I will fight with him upon this theme
Until my eyelids will no longer wag.

Queen O my son, what theme? Hamlet

I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?

King O, he is mad, Laertes. Queen For love of God, forbear him. Hamlet

’Swounds, show me what thou’lt do:
Woo’t weep? woo’t fight? woo’t fast? woo’t tear thyself?
Woo’t drink up eisel? eat a crocodile?
I’ll do’t. Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
Be buried quick with her, and so will I:
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou’lt mouth,
I’ll rant as well as thou.

Queen

This is mere madness:
And thus awhile the fit will work on him;
Anon, as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.

Hamlet

Hear you, sir;
What is the reason that you use me thus?
I loved you ever: but it is no matter;
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew and dog will have his day. Exit.

King

I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon him. Exit Horatio.
To Laertes. Strengthen your patience in our last night’s speech;
We’ll put the matter to the present push.
Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.
This grave shall have a living monument:
An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;
Till then, in patience our proceeding be. Exeunt.

Scene II

A hall in the castle.

Enter Hamlet and Horatio. Hamlet

So much for this, sir: now shall you see the other;
You do remember all the circumstance?

Horatio Remember it, my lord? Hamlet

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting,
That would not let me sleep: methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly,
And praised be rashness for it, let us know,
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will⁠—

Horatio That is most certain. Hamlet

Up from my cabin,
My sea-gown scarf’d about me, in the dark
Groped I to find out them; had my desire,
Finger’d their packet, and in fine withdrew
To mine own room again; making so bold,
My fears forgetting manners, to unseal
Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio⁠—
O royal knavery!⁠—an exact command,
Larded with many several sorts of reasons
Importing Denmark’s health and England’s too,
With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life,
That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,
No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
My head should be struck off.

Horatio Is’t possible? Hamlet

Here’s the commission: read it at more leisure.
But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed?

Horatio I beseech you. Hamlet

Being thus be-netted round with villanies⁠—
Ere I could make a prologue to my brains,
They had begun the play⁠—I sat me down,
Devised a new commission, wrote it fair:
I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness to write fair and labour’d much
How to forget that learning, but, sir, now
It did me yeoman’s service: wilt thou know
The effect of what I wrote?

Horatio Ay, good my lord. Hamlet

An earnest conjuration from the king,
As England was his faithful tributary,
As love between them like the palm might flourish,
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear
And stand a comma ’tween their amities,
And many such-like “As”es of great charge,
That, on the view and knowing of these contents,
Without debatement further, more or less,
He should the bearers put to sudden death,
Not shriving-time allow’d.

Horatio How was this seal’d? Hamlet

Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.
I had my father’s signet in my purse,
Which was the model of that Danish seal;
Folded the writ up in form of the other,
Subscribed it, gave’t the impression, placed it safely,
The changeling never known. Now, the next day
Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent
Thou know’st already.

Horatio So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to’t. Hamlet

Why, man, they did make love to this employment;
They are not near my conscience; their defeat
Does by their own insinuation grow:
’Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
Between the pass and fell incensed points
Of mighty opposites.

Horatio Why, what a king is this! Hamlet

Does it not, think’st thee, stand me now upon⁠—
He that hath kill’d my king and whored my mother,
Popp’d in between the election and my hopes,
Thrown out his angle for my proper life,
And with such cozenage⁠—is’t not perfect conscience,
To quit him with this arm? and is’t not to be damn’d,
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil?

Horatio

It must be shortly known to him from England
What is the issue of the business there.

Hamlet

It will be short: the interim is mine;
And a man’s life’s no more than to say “One.”
But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
That to Laertes I forgot myself;
For, by the image of my cause, I see
The portraiture of his: I’ll court his favours:
But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me
Into a towering passion.

Horatio Peace! who comes here? Enter Osric. Osric Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark. Hamlet I humbly thank you, sir. Dost know this water-fly? Horatio No, my