For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, [do,
That he should weep for her? What would be
Had he the motive and the cue for passion,
That I have? He would drown the stage with
tears,

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property, and most dear life,

A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across ?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks ine by the nose ? gives me the lie i'the
throat,

As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha!

Why, I should take it : for it cannot be,
But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter; or, ere this,
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: Bloody, bawdy vil-
lain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless, †

villain !

Fie upon't! foh! About my brains! Humph!
I have heard,

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will
speak
¡players
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these
Play something like the murder of my father,
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick; if he do blench, §
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen,
May be a devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my 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.

ACT III.

SCENE 1.-A Room in the Castle.

[Exit.

Guil. But with inuch forcing of his disposi tion.

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

Queen. Did you assay him To any pastime ?

Ros. 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.

Pol. '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 hin so inclin'd.

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, And drive his purpose on to these delights.. Ros. 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, aud myself (lawful espials, t)
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 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.

Oph. Madam, I wish it may.

[Exit QUEEN. Pol. Ophelia, walk you here :-Gracious, su please you,

We will bestow ourselves :-Read on this book : [70 OPHELIA.

That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness.-We are oft to blaine in this,-
'Tis too much prov'd, ¶ that, with devotion's
visage,

And pious action, we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.

King. Oh! 'tis too true: how smart

A lash that speech doth give my conscience! The harlot's cheek, beautified with plastering

art,

Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it, Than is my deed to my most painted word: O heavy burden! [Aside. Pol. I hear him coming; let's withdraw, my lord. [Exeunt KING and POLONIUS.

Enter HAMLET.

• Overtook

§ Freely.

Shrink or start.

+ Meet. 1 Spies. f Place. Too frequent • Stir, bustle. 11 Consideration.

↑ Unnatural.

Get thee to a nunnery; 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. Heavenly powers, restore him!

Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath given you one face, and you

To groan and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,—
That 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 remember'd.

Ham. No, not I;

I never gave you aught.

of

Oph. My honour'd lord, you know right wel: you did;

Aud, with them, words of so sweet breath compos'd

[lost,
As made the things more rich their perfume
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, you should admit no discourse to your beauty. Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

Bam. 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.

80

Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe

Ham. You should not have believed 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 no where 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.

and you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance: Go to: I'll no more of't; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, [Exit HAMLET.

go.

Oph. Oh! what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! [sword: The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion, and the mould * of form, The 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 ecstacy: O woe is me!

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see. Re-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 I do believe The origin and commencement of his grief Sprung from neglected love.-How now, Ophe lia?

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:

Maduess in great ones must not unwatch'd go. [Exeunt

SCENE II-A Hail in the same.

Enter HAMLET, and certain PLAYERS. Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronaurced it to you, trippingly on the tongue : but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, Nor do not saw the air too much with your I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. 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

The model by whom all endeavoured to form them-
+ Alienation of mind.
Reprimand him with freedom.

selves.

Trumpets sound. The dumb Show follows. Enter a King and a Queen, very lovingly; the Queen embracing him, and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers; she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The poisoner, with some two or three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts; she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but, in the end, accepts his love. [Exeunt.

Oph. What means this, my lord? Ham. Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.

Oph. Belike, this show imports the argument of the play.

Enter PROLOGUE.

Ham. We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel; they'll tell all.

Oph. Will he tell us what this show meant? Ham. Ay, or any show that you'll show him: Be not you asham'd to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means.

Oph. You are naught, you are naught; I'll mark the play.

Pro. For us, and for our tragedy,

Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently.
Ham. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a
ring?

Oph. 'Tis brief, my lord.
Ham. As woman's love,

Enter KING and a QUEEN.

P. King. Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round

Neptune's salt wash, and Tellus' orbed ground;

And thirty dozen moons, with borrow'd sheen, || About the world have times twelve thirties been; [hands, Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our

Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

P. Queen. So many journeys may the sun and moon

Make us again count o'er, ere love be done!
But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer, and from your former state,
That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must:
For women fear too much, even as they love;
And women's fear and love hold quantity;
In neither aught, or in extremity. [know;
Now, what my love is, proof hath made you
And as my love is siz'd, ¶ my fear is so,
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are
fear;
[there.
Where little fears grow great, great love grows
P. King. 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and
shortly too;
[do;
My operant powers their functions leave to
And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honour'd, belov'd; and, haply, one as kind
For husband shalt thou--

P. Queen. O confound the rest!
Such love must needs be treason in my breast:
In second husband let me be accurst!
None wed the second, but who kill'd the first.
Ham. That's wormwood.

P. Queen. The instances, ++ that second mar

A second time I kill my husband dead,
When second husband kisses me in bed.
P. King. I do believe, you think what now
you speak ;
But, what we do determine, oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory;
Of violent birth, but poor validity:
Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the trec;
But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.
Most necessary 'tis, that we forget
To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt:
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
The violence of either grief or joy
Their own enactures with themselves destroy:
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;
Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
This world is not for aye: nor 'tis not strange,
That even our loves should with our fortunes
For 'tis a question left us yet to prove, [change;
Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
The great man down, you mark his favourite
flies;

The poor advanc'd makes friends of enemies.
And hitherto doth love on fortune tend;
For who not needs, shall never lack a friend;
And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
Directly seasons him his enemy.
But, orderly to end where I begun,-
Our wills, our fates, do so contráry run,
That our devices still are overthrown ;
Our thoughts are our's, their ends none of our

own:

So think thou wilt no second husband wed; But die thy thoughts, when thy first lord is dead.

P. Queen. Nor earth to give me food, por heaven light!

Sport and repose lock from me, day, and night!
To desperation turn my trust and hope!
An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope!
Each opposite, that blanks the face of joy,
Meet what I would have well, and it destroy!
Both here and hence pursue me, lasting strife,
If, once a widow, ever I be wife!
Ham. If she should break it now,-
[TO OPHELIA.
P. King. 'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave
me here a while;

My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.
[Sleeps

P. Queen. Sleep rock thy brain; And never come mischance between us twain! [Exit.

Ham. Madam, how like you this play? Queen. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Ham. Oh! but she'll keep her word. King. Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in't?

Ham. No, no, they do but jest; poison in jest ; no offence i'the world.

King. What do you call the play?

Ham. The mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is the duke's name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see anon; 'tis a knavish piece of work: But what of that? your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not: Let the galled jade wince, tour withers are unwrung.