My liege, and madam, to expostulate1 Queen. More matter, with less art. Or, rather say, the cause of this defect; For this effect, defective, comes by cause: 15 Thence to a watch; thence into a weakness; King. Do you think, 'tis this? Pol. Hath there been such a time, (I'd fain know that) That I have positively said, 'Tis so, Thus it remains, and the remainder thus perpend. 20 When it prov'd otherwise? I have a daughter;---have, whilst she is mine; Who, in her duty and obedience, mark, Hath given me this: Now gather, and surmise. tified Ophelia That's an ill phrase, a vile phrase; beautify'd These in her excellent white bosom, these, &c. King. Not that I know. Pol. Take this from this, if this be otherwise: [Pointing to his head and shoulder. If circumstances lead me, I will find 25 Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed King. How may we try it further? together, Queen. So he does, indeed. Pol. Good madam, stay a while; I will be 30 Here in the lobby. faithful. King. As of a man, faithful and honourable. you think, [him: Pol. At such a time I'll loose my daughter to Be you and I behind an arras then: Mark the encounter: if he love her not, 35 And be not from his reason fallen thereon, How does my good lord Hanilet? Ham. Well, god-a'-mercy. Pol. Do you know me, my lord? Pol. I would fain prove so. But what might 50 You are a fishmonger. When I had seen this hot love on the wing, 1 To expostulate, for to enquire or discuss. i. e. if either I had conveyed intelligence between them, and been the confident of their amours, Eplay'd the desk or tablebook] or had connived at it, only observed them in secret, without acquainting my daughter with my discovery [given my heart a mute and dumb working]; or, lastly, had been negligent in observing the intrigue, and overlooked it [looked upon this lovewith idle sight]; what would you have thought of me? Being i.e. moreover, besides. 3T 2 Ham. Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing; but not as your daughter may con-5 ceive 2: friend, look to 't. Pol. How say you by that? [Aside.] still harping on my daughter:-yet he knew me not at first; he said, I was a fishmonger: He is far gone, Ham. My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good far gone: and, truly, in my youth I suffer'd much 10 lads, how do ye both? extreinity for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again. What do you read, my lord? Ham. Words, words, words! Pol. What is the matter, my lord? Ham. Between who? Pol. I mean, the matter that you read, my lord. Ham. Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here, that old men have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes purging thick am Ros. As the indifferent children of the earth. Guil. Happy, in that we are not over-happy; On fortune's cap we are not the very button. Ham. Nor the soals of her shoe? 15 Ros. Neither, my lord. Ham. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours? Guil. 'Faith, her privates we. Ham. In the secret parts of fortune? O, most ber, and plum-tree gum; and that they have a 20 true; she is a strumpet. What news? plentiful lack of wit, tog together with most weak ward. Pol. Though this be madness, yet there's me- Will you walk out of the air, my lord? Ham. Into my grave? Ros. None, my lord; but that the world's grown honest. Hum. Then is doom's-day near: But your news is not true. Let me question more in particular: What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither? Guil. Prison, my lord! 30 Ros. Then is the world one. Ham. A goodly one; in which there are many contines, wards, and dungeons; Denmark being lone of the worst. Ros. We think not so, my lord. Pol. Indeed, that is out o' the air. How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be deliver'd of. I will leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of 35 Ham. Why, then 'tis none to you; for there meeting between him and my daughter.-My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you. Ham. You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal; except my life, except my life, except my life. Pol. Fare you well, my lord. is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so; to me it is a prison. Ros. Why, then your ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your mind. 40 Ham. O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space; were it not that I have bad dreams. Dr. Warburton's comment (which Dr. Johnson says almost sets the critic on a level with the author) on this passage is as follows: "The illative particle [for] shews the speaker to be reasoning from something he had said before: what that was we learn in these words, To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one picked out of ten thousand. Having said this, the chain of ideas led him to reflect upon the argument which libertines bring against Providence from the circumstance of abounding eril. In the next speech therefore he endeavours to answer that objection, and vindicate Providence, even on a supposition of the fact, that almost all men were wicked. His argument in the two lines in question is to this purpose, But why need we wonder at this abounding of evil? For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, which though a god, yet shedding its heat and influence upon carrion Here he stops short, lest talking too consequentially, the hearer should suspect his madness to be feigned; and so turns him off from the subject, by enquiring of his daughter. But the inference which he intended to make, was a very noble one, and to this purpose: If this (says he) be the case, that the effect follows the thing operated upon [carrion] and not the thing operating [a god], why need we wonder, that, the supreme cause of all things diffusing its blessings on mankind, who is, as it were, a dead carrion, dead in original sin, man, instead of a proper return of duty, should breed only corruption and vices? This is the argument at length; and is as noble a one in behalf of Providence as could come from the schools of divinity. But this wonderful man had an art not only of acquainting the audience with what his actors say, but with what they think. The sentiment too is altogether in character; for Hamlet is perpetually moralizing, and his circuinstances make this reflection very natural." * The meaning, ays Mr. Steevens, seems to be, Conception (i. e. understanding) is a blessing; but as your daughter may conceive, (i. e. be pregnant,) friend, look to 't, i. e. have a care of that. By the satirical rogue he ineans Juvenal, in his tenth satire. Pregnant is ready, dexterous, apt. 4 and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form, and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like Guil. Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. Ham. A dream itself is but a shadow. Ros. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and 5 an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the light a quality, that it is but a shadow's shadow. Ham. Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs, and out-stretch'd heroes, the beggars' shadows:-Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason. beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me,-nor woman neither; though, by your smiling, you seem to say so. 10 Ros. My lord, there was no such stuff in my Both. We'll wait upon you. Ham. No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest of my servants; for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. thoughts. Ham. Why did you laugh then, when I said, Man delights not me? Ros. To think, my lord, if you delight not in But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make 15 man, what lenten entertainment the players shall you at Elsinour? Ros. To visit you, my lord; no other occasion. Ham. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you: and sure, dear friends, receive from you: we coted them on the way; and hither are they coming to offer you service. Ham. He that plays the king, shall be welcome; his majesty shall have tribute of me: the adven lover shall not sigh gratis; the humourous man shall end his part in peace; the clown shall make those laugh laugh, whose lungs are tickled o' the sere; and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank my thanks are too dear at a half-penny. Were 20 turous knight shall use his foil, and target; the you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, come; deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak. Guil. What should we say, my lord? Ham. Any thing-but to the purpose. You 25 verse shall halt for 't. --What players are they? were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties have not craft enough to colour: I know the good king and queen have sent for you. Ros. To what end, my lord? Ros. Even those you were wort to take such delight in, the tragedians of the city. Ham. How chances it, they travel? their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better 30 both ways. Ros. I think, their inhibition comes by the means of their late innovation'. Ham. That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserv'd love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be 35 Ros. No, indeed they are not. even and direct with me, whether you were sent for, or no? Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? Are they so follow'd? Guil. My lord, we were sent for. Ham. I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no feather. I have of late, (but, wherefore, I know not) lost all 45 'em? how are they escoted? Will they pursue Ham. How comes it? Do they grow rusty? Ros. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace: But there is, sir, an aiery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question', and 40 are most tyrannically clapp'd for't: these are now the fashion; and so berattle the common stages, (so they call them) that many, wearing rapiers, are afraid of goose quills, and dare scarce come thither. Ham. What, are they children? Who maintains my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises: and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firma-50 ment, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me, than a foul the quality no longer than they can sing? will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players, (as it is most like, if their means are no better) their writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their own succession? Ros. 'Faith, there has been much to do on both nerv An eye of you means, I have a glimpse of your meaning. 2 i. e, sparing, like the entertainments given in Lent. 3 To cote is to overtake. 4i. e. (says Mr. Steevens) those who are asthmatical, and to whom laughter is most uneasy, which is the case with those whose lungs are tickled by the sere or serum. i. e. (says Mr. Steevens) their permission to act any longer at an established house is taken away, in consequence of the custom of introducing personal abuse into their comedies. Several companies of actors in the time of our author were silenced on account of this licentious practice. The poet here steps out of his subject, to give a lash at home, and sneer at the prevailing fashion of following plays performed by the children of the chapel, and abandoning the established theatres.Little Eyases mean young nestlings, creatures just out of the egg. Children that perpetually recite in the highest notes of voice that can be uttered. i. e. paid; from the French escot, a shot or reckoning. Quality for profession. forty, fifty, an hundred ducats a-piece, for his pic Guil. O, there has been much throwing about of brains. Ham. Do the boys carry it away? tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragicaltragicalcomical-historical-pastoral,scene undividable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor 5 Plautus too light: For the law of writ', and the liberty, these are the only men. Ham. O Jephtha, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou! Pol. What a treasure had he, my lord? 10 Ham. Why,-One fair daughter, and no more, The which he loved passing well. [Aside. Pol. Still on my daughter. Pol. If you call me Jephtia, my lord, I have a ture in little. There is something in this more 15 daughter, that I love passing well. than natural, if philosophy could find it out. Ham. Nay, that follows not. [Flourish of trumpets. Pol. What follows then, my lord? Guil. There are the players. Ham. Why, as By lot, God wot, and then, you Ham. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinour. know, It came to pass, As most like it was welcome is fashion and ceremony: let me comply with you in this garb; lest my extent to the players, which, I tell you, must shew fairly outward, should more appear like entertainment than yours. You are welcome: but my uncle-father, and aunt-mother, are deceiv'd, you more; for look, where my abridgement comes. Enter four or five players. Guil. In what, my dear lord? Your hands. Come then: the appurtenance of 20 The first row of the pious chanson will shew Ham. I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a hand-saw 4. Enter Polonius. Pol. Well be with you, gentlemen! Ham. Hark you, Guildenstern; and you too; -at each ear a hearer: That great baby, you see there, is not yet out of his swadling-clouts. Ros. Haply, he's the second time come to them; for, they say, an old man is twice a child. Ham. I will prophesy, he comes to tell me of the players; mark it. You say right, sir: on Monday morning; 'twas then, indeed. Pol. My lord, I have news to tell you. Pol. The actors are come hither, my lord. 6 You are welcome, masters; welcome, all :- I am 25 glad to see thee well:-welcome, good friends.O, old friend! Why, thy face is valane'd since I saw thee last; Com'st thou to beard me in Denmark?-What! my young lady and mistress! By-'r-lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven, than 30 when I saw you last, bythe altitude of a chioppine". Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not crack'd within the ring".-Masters, you are all welcome. We'lle'an to't like French falconers, fly at any thing we see: We'll have a 35 speech straight: Come, give us a taste of your quality; come, a passionate speech. 1 Play. What speech, my good lord? Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted; or, if it was, not above 40 once: for the play, I remember, pleas'd not the million: 'twas caviare 13 to the general: but it was (as I receiv'd it, and others, whose judgements, in such matters, cried in the top of mine 14) an excellent play; well digested in the scenes, set down 45 with as much modesty 1 as cunning. I remember, one said, there were no sallets in the lines, to make the matter savoury; nor no matter in the phrase, that might indite the author of affection": To provoke any animal to rage, is to tarre him. 2 i. e. They not only carry away the world, but the world-bearer too: alluding to the story of Hercules' relieving Atlas; or the allusion may be to the Globe playhouse, on the Bankside, the sign of which was Hercules carrying the Globe. 31. e, in miniature. * This was a common proverbial speech. * Buz, buz! are, probably, only interjections employed to interrupt Polonius. • This seems to be a line of a ballad. Writ, for writing, composition. • These were quotations from an old song. Mr. Steevens explains this allusion thus: "The pious chansons were a kind of Christmas Carols, containing some scriptural history thrown into loose rhymes, and sung about the streets by the common people when they went at that season to solicit alms. - Hamlet is here repeating some scraps from a song of this kind; and when Polonius enquires what follows them, he refers him to the first row (i. e. division) of one of these, to obtain the information he wanted." 10 i. e. as Dr. Johnson thinks, those who will shorten my talk.An abridgement is used for a dramatic piece in the Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V. Sc. I. chioppine is a high shoe worn by the Italians. 12 That is, crack'd too much for use. 13 The caviare is the spawn of the sterlett, a fish of the sturgeon kind, which seldom grows above thirty inches long. It is found in many of the rivers of Russia. -The general means the people, or multitude. 14 i. c. were higher than mine. Modesty, for simplicity. 16 i, e. convict the author of being a fantastical affected writer. but "A but call'd it, an honest1 method; as wholesome as The rugged Pyrrhus-like the Hyrcanian beast,-- 1 Play. Anon he finds him, But, as we often see, against some storm, | Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard.Pr'ythee, say on:- He's for a jigg, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps :-say on; come to Hecuba. 1 Play. But who, ah woe! had seen the mobled Ham. The mobled queen? the flames 10 With bisson rheum: a clout upon that head, Pol. Look, whe'er he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in's eyes.-Prythee, no more. 25 Ham. 'Tis well; I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon. -Good my lord, will you see the players well bestow'd? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles of the time: After your death, you 30 were better have a bad epitath, than their ill report while you live. Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert. Ham. Odds bodikins, man, much better: Use 35 every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in. Pol. Come, sirs. [Exit Polonius. 40 Ham. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of Gonzago? 1 Play. Ay, my lord. Ham. We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could, 45 for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down, and insert in't? could you not? Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods, 50 you mock him not. -My good friends, [to Rosen 1 Play. Ay, my lord. Ham. Very well. Follow that lord; and look In general synod, take away her power; Breuk all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, crantz and Guildenstern] I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinour. And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends! Ros. Good, my lord. [Exeunt Ros. and Guil. Pol. This is too long. 1550, what a rogue and peasant slave am I ! Hamlet is telling how much his judgement differed from that of others. One said, there was no salt in the lines, &c., but called it an honest method. The author probably gave it, But I called it an honest method, &c. 2 Gules is a term in heraldry, and signifies red. According to Warburton, mobled, or mabled, signifies veiled; according to Dr. Johnson, it is huddled, grossly covered. Mr. Steevens says, he was informed that mab-led in Warwickshire (where it is pronounced mob-led) signifies led astray by a will o' the whisp, or ignis fatuus.--Mr. Tollet adds, that in the latter end of the reign of king Charles II. the rabble that attended the earl of Shaftesbury's partisans was first called mobile vulgus, and afterwards, by contraction, the mob; and ever since, the word mob has become proper English. Bisson or beesen, i. e. blind; a word still in use in some parts of the North of England. |