I will be brief: Your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it for, to define true madness,
What is't, but to be nothing else but mad:
But let that go.
Queen.
More matter, with less art.
Pol. Madam, I swear, I use no art at all.
That he is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true, 'tis pity;
And pity 'tis, 'tis true: a foolish figure;
But farewell it, for I will use no art.
Mad let us grant him then and now remains,
That we find out the cause of this effect;
Or, rather say, the cause of this defect;
For this effect, defective, comes by cause:
Thus it remains, and the remainder thus.
Perpend.

I have a daughter; have, while she is mine;
Who, in her duty and obedience, mark,

Hath given me this: Now gather, and surmise.

To the celestial, and my soul's idol, the most beauti- | fied Ophelia,

That's an ill phrase, a vile phrase; beautified is a vile phrase; but you shall hear. -Thus :

Pol.
What do you think of me?
King. As of a man faithful and honourable.
Pol. I would fain prove so. But what might you
think,

When I had seen this hot love on the wing,
(As I perceiv'd it, I must tell you that,
Before my daughter told me,) what might you,
Or my dear majesty your queen here, think,
If I had play'd the desk, or table-book ;
Or given my heart a working, mute and dumb;
Or look'd upon this love with idle sight;
What might you think? no, I went round to work,
And my young mistress thus did I bespeak;
Lord Hamlet is a prince out of thy sphere;
This must not be: and then I precepts gave her,
That she should lock herself from his resort,
Admit no messengers, receive no tokens.
Which done, she took the fruits of my advice;
And he, repulsed, (a short tale to make,)
Fell into a sadness; then into a fast;

Thence to a watch; thence into a weakness;
Thence to a lightness; and, by this declension,
Into the madness wherein now he raves,

And all we mourn for.

King.
Do you think, 'tis this?
Queen. It may be, very likely.
Pol. Hath there been such a time, (I'd fain know
that,)

Pol. Away, I do beseech you, both away;

I'll board him presently:

- O, give me leave.—

[Exeunt KING, QUEEN, and Attendiam.

How does my good lord Hamlet?
Ham. Well, god-'a-mercy.

Pol. Do you know me, my lord?

Ham. Excellent well; you are a fishmonger. Pol. Not I, my lord.

Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man. Pol. Honest, my lord?

is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. Ham. Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes,

Pol. That's very true, my lord.

Ham. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god, kissing carrion,→→→→ Have you a daughter?

Pol. I have, my lord.

Ham. Let her not walk i' the sun conception là a blessing; but as your daughter may conceive, — friend, look to't.

Pol. How say you by that? [Aside.] Still harp ing on my daughter: - yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: He is far gone, far gone and truly in my youth I suffered much ertremity 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 lart.

Ham. Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue ways here, that old men have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes purging thick amber, and plum-tree gum; and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: All of which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus vet down; for yourself, sir, shall be as old as I am, like a crab, you could go backward.

Pol. Though this be madness, yet there's methal in it. [Aside.] Will you walk out of the air, my kard? Ham. Into my grave?

Pol. Indeed, that is out o'the air. - How preg nant sometimes his replies are! a happines that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity co not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leve

Guil. What should we say, my lord?

Pol. Fare you well, my lord.
Ham. These tedious old fools!

Enter ROSENCRantz and Guildenstern. Pol. You go to seek the lord Hamlet; there he is. Ros. God save you, sir! [To POLONIUS. [Exit POLONIUS.

Guil. My honour'd lord!
Ros. My most dear lord!

Ham. My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both ?

Ros. As the indifferent children of the earth. Guil, Happy, in that we are not overhappy; On fortune's cap we are not the very button. Ham. Nor the soles of her shoe?

Ros. Neither, my lord.

Ham. Any thing-but to the purpose. You 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?

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-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for, or no? Ros. What say you? [To GUILDENSTERN, Ham. Nay, then I have an eye of you; [Aside.] - if you love me, hold not off.

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 my mirth,

Guil. 'Faith, her privates we.

Ham. In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet. What news? Ros. None, my lord; but that the world's grown honest.

Ham. Then is dooms-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? Ham. Denmark's a prison. Ros. Then is the world one.

Ham. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons; Denmark being one of the worst.

Ros. We think not so, my lord.

Ham. Why, then 'tis none to you: for there 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.

Ham. O God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell, and count myself a king of infinite space; were it not that I have bad dreams.

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 light a quality, that it is but a shadow's shadow.

Ham. Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs, and outstretch'd heroes, the beggars' shadows: Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I

cannot reason.

Ros. Guil. 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. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore ?

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, my thanks are too dear, a half-penny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation?

so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a steril promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me, than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form, and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the 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.

Ross. My lord, there is no such stuff in my thoughts.

Ham. Why did you laugh then, when I said, Man delights not me?

Ros. To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players shall 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 adventurous knight shall use his foil, and target: the lover shall not sigh gratis; the humerous man shall end his part in peace: the clown shall make those laugh, whose lungs are tickled o'the sere; and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for't. - What players are they?

Ros. Even those you were wont 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 both ways.

Ros. I think, their inhibition comes by the means of the late innovation.

Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? Are they so followed? Ros. No, indeed, they are not.

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 are most tyranically clapped for't: these are now the fashion; and so berattle the common stages, (so

Of reverend Priam, seem'd i'the air to stick :
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood;
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.

But, as we often see, against some storm,

A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death: anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region: So, after Pyrrhus' pause,
A roused vengeance sets him new a work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour, forg'd for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam. ·

Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard. Pr'ythee, say on:- He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps:- say on: come to Hecuba. 1 Play. But who, ah woe! had seen the mobled queen

Ham. The mobled queen?

Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good.

1 Play. Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning
the flames

With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head,
Where late the diadem stood; and, for a robe, **
About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst fortune's state would treason have pro-
nounc'd:

But if the gods themselves did see her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs; !
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
(Unless things mortal move them not at all,)
Would have made milch the burning eye of heaven,
And passion in the gods.

Pol. Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in's eyes. - Pr'ythee, no more.

Ham. 'Tis well; I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon. - - Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time: After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.

Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Ham. Odd's bodikin, man, much better: Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping! Use them after your own honour and lignity: The less they deserve, the more merit is in our bounty. Take them in.

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDenstern. Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' you:-Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous, that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit, That from her working, all his visage wann'd; Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing! For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,
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 me 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 villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
Why, what an ass am I? This is most brave;
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!

Fye 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
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these
players

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. [Exit.

SCENE I.A Room in the Castle. Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.

King. And can you, by no drift of conference Get from him, why he puts on this confusion; Grating so harshly all his days of quiet With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

Ros. He does confess, he feels himself distracted; But from what cause he will by no means speak. Guil. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded; But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof, When we would bring him on to some confession Of his true state.

Queen.

Did he receive you well?

Ros. Most like a gentleman.

Guil. But with much forcing of his disposition. Ros. Niggard of question; but, of our demands, Most free in his reply.

Queen.

To any pastime ?

Did you assay him

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 him 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, and myself (lawful espials,)

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.

Ophe
Madam, I wish it may.
[Exit QUEEN.
Pol. Ophelia, walk you here:- Gracious, so
please you,

We will bestow ourselves: Read on this book; [TO OPHELIA. That show of such an exercise may colour Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this, 'Tis too much prov'd, that, with devotion's visage, And pious action, we do sugar o'er The devil himself.

King.

O, 'tis too true! how smart

No more ; — and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ach, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, - 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die; - to sleep ; —
To sleep! perchance to dream;-ay, there's the
rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect,
That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after death,
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 of us a!!;
And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprizes 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.

Oph.
Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thank you; well.

Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yourse That I have longed long to re-deliver;

I pray you, now receive them.

Ham.

I never gave you aught.

No, not I;

Oph. My honour'd lord, you know right well

you did;

And, with them, words of so sweet breath compan`l As made the things more rich; their perfume last, 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?