Oph.

Ham.

Oph.

Ham.

Oph.

Ham.

Oph.

Ham.

Oph.

Ham.

Oph.

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,

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.

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

No, not I; I never gave you aught.

My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
And with them words of so sweet breath composed
As made these things more rich; their perfume lost,
Take them again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.

Ha, ha! are you honest ?

My lord?

Are you fair?

What means your lordship?

That if you be honest and fair, you should admit no discourse to your beauty.

Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

Ham.

Oph.

Ham.

Oph.

Ham.

Oph.

Ham.

Oph.

Ham.

Oph.

Ham.

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.

Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

You should not have believ'd me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.

I was the more deceived.

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; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father?

At home, my lord.

Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.

Oh, help him, you sweet heavens !

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. 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.

Heavenly powers, restore him!

I have heard of your paintings well enough; God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another; you jig and amble, and you lisp; you nickname God's creatures, and make your wantonness ignorance. Go to,

Oph.

King

Pol.

I'll no more on'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, go.

[Exit Hamlet]

Great God of heaven! what a quick change is this!
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;
Th'expectation, and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
Th'observed 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 time, and harsh ;
That unmatch'd form, and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy; Oh, woe is me,

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Re-enter KING and POLONIUS

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?

It shall do well.

But

yet

do I believe the origin and commencement of his

grief,

King

Sprung from neglected love :- -how now, Ophelia ?
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 placed (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.

It shall be so :

Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.

[Exeunt King, Polonius, and Ophelia]

Ham.

First

Player}

Ham.

SCENE II-ELSINORE

A PLAY SCENE IN THE CASTLE HALL

Enter HAMLET and three of the Players

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue. Marry, and you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your 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. Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing Termagant ; it out-Herods Herod; pray you, avoid it.

I warrant your honour.

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be

First

Player

Ham.

your tutor; suit the action to the word, the word to the action ; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so o'erdone, is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her feature; scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it makes the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, (not to speak it profanely) that neither having th'accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

I hope we have reform'd that indifferently with us, sir. Oh, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered; that's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. And then you have some again, that keeps one suit of jests, as a man is known by one suit of apparel; and gentlemen quotes his jests down in their tables, before they come to the play, as thus: "cannot you stay until I eat my porridge?" and, "you owe me a quarter's wages": and, 66 my coat wants a coulisse on ': and, "your beer is sour" : and, blabbering with his lips, and thus keeping in his cinque-pace of jests, when, (God knows) the warm clown cannot make a jest unless by chance, as the blind man catcheth a hare: masters, tell him of it. Go, make ready.

you

[Exeunt Players]