Thou know'st 'tis common; all that live must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
Ham. Ay, Madam, it is common.
Queen.

Why seems it so particular with thee?

If it be,

Ham. Seems, Madam! nay, it is; I know not seems. 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,

Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly: these, indeed, seem,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

King. 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father:

But you must know your father lost a father;

That father lost, lost his; and the survivor bound,

In filial obligation, for some term

To do obsequious sorrow." But to persevere
In obstinate condolement, is a course

12

Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief:
It shows a will most incorrect to Heaven;
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool'd:
For what we know must be, and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we, in our peevish opposition,
Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to Heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to Nature,
To reason most absurd; whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died to-day,
This must be so. We pray you, throw to earth
This unprevailing woe,13 and think of us
As of a father: for let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our throne;

And with no less nobility of love

Than that which dearest father bears his son,

11 The Poet sometimes uses obsequious as having the sense of obsequies. 12 Incorrect is here used, apparently, in the sense of incorrigible.

13 Unprevailing was used in the sense of unavailing as late as Dryden's

14

Do I impart toward you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg, 15
It is most retrograde to our desire;
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet:
I pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.
Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, Madam.
King. Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply:
Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come;
This gentle and unforc'd accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart; in grace whereof,
No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell;
And the King's rouse the heavens shall bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.

[Flourish. Exeunt all but HAMLET Ham. O, that this too-too solid flesh would melt. Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

17

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on 't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.18 That it should come to this! .
But two months dead! nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,

Hyperion to a satyr: 19 so loving to my mother,

14 Impart towards you is plainly equivalent here to bestow upon you. I ao not remember another instance of impart so used. See, however, St. Luke iii. 11.

15 School was applied to places not only of academical, but also of professional study; and in the olden time men were wont to spend their whole lives in such cloistered retirements of learning. So that we need not suppose Hamlet was "going back to school" as an undergraduate. See page 94, note 18. Certain events of the Reformation had made the University of Wittenberg well known in England in Shakespeare's time.

16 A rouse was a deep draught to one's health, wherein it was the castom to empty the cup or goblet. Its meaning, and probably its origin, was the same as carouse. To bruit is to noise; used with again, the same as echo or reverberate.

17 To resolve had anciently the same meaning as to dissolve.

18 Merely is here used in one of the Latin senses of mere; wholly, entirely. Observe how, in this speech, Hamlet's brooding melancholy leads him to take a morbid pleasure in making things worse than they are.

19 Hyperion, which literally means sublimity, was one of the names of Apollo, the most beautiful of all the gods, and much celebrated in classic poetry for his golden locks.

528

ЯAMLET,

ACT I

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven kumitor
Visit her face too roughly."

20

Heaven and Earth!

Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown

Frailty, thy name is woman!

22

By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,
Let me not think on 't;
A little month; or ere those shoes were old,
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears; "why, she, even she
O God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer-married with my uncle,
My father's brother; but no more like
Than I to Hercules: within a month;
my father
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes," 23
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to, good:

But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!

Enter HORATIO, BERNARDO, and MARCELLUS.
Hor. Hail to your lordship!
Ham.

Horatio, or I do forget myself.

I'm glad to see you well:

Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
Ham. Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with
you.24

And what make you from Wittenberg, 25 Horatio? —
Marcellus?

Mar. My good lord,

Ham. I'm very glad to see you.-[To BER.] Good sir.26

But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

20 Beteem is an old word for permit or suffer.

even,

21 Niobe was the wife of Amphion, King of Thebes. As she had twelve children, she went to crowing one day over Latona, who had only two, Apollo and Diana. In return for this, all her twelve were slain by Latona's two; and Jupiter, in pity of her sorrow, transformed her into a rock, from which her tears issued in a perennial stream.

22 Discourse of reason, in old philosophical language, is rational discourse, or discursive reason; the faculty of pursuing a train of thought, or of passing from thought to thought in the way of inference or conclusion.

23 Shakespeare has leave repeatedly in the sense of leave off, or cease. Flushing is the redness of the eyes caused by what the Poet elsewhere calls "eye-offending brine."

24 As if he had said,

is the style I will exchange with you.
No, not my poor servant: we are friends; that

25 "What make you" is old language for what do you. See page 42,

note 1.

26 The words, Good even, sir, are evidently addressed to Bernardo, whom Hamlet has not before known; but as he now meets him in company with

Hor. A truant disposition, good my lord.
Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so;"
Nor shall you do mine ear that violence
To make it truster of your own report
Against yourself: I know you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?

We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
Hor. My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.
Ham. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student;

I think it was to see my mother's wedding.

Hor. Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon.

30

Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral bak'd meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in Heaven 29
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!-
My father, methinks, I see my father.
Hor. O, where, my lord?
Ham.
In my mind's eye, Horatio.
Hor. I saw him once; he was a goodly king.
Ham. He was a man, take him for all in all,31

I shall not look upon his like again.

Hor. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
Ham. Saw who?

Hor. My lord, the King your father.
Ham. The King my father!

Hor. Season your admiration for a while
With an attent ear, till I may deliver,
Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
This marvel to you.

Ham. For God's love, let me hear.

28

old acquaintances, like a true gentleman, as he is, he gives him a salutation of kindness. Some editors have changed even to morning, because Marcellus has said before of Hamlet,-"I this morning know where we shall find him.” It needs but be remembered that good even was the common salutation after

noon

27 So the quartos; the folio reads have instead of hear.

28 Scott, in The Bride of Lammermoor, has made the readers of romance familiar with the old custom of "funeral bak'd meats," which was kept up in Scotland till a recent period. -Thrift means economy: all was done merely to save cost.

29 In Shakespeare's time dearest was applied to any person or thing that excites the liveliest interest, whether of love or hate. See page 237, note 6.

30 The use of or ever for before occurs repeatedly in the Bible. Thus, in Daniel vi. 24: "And the lions brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den."

31 Some would read this, "He was a man: take him for all in all," laying marked stress on man, as if it were meant to intimate a correction of Horatio's "goodly king." There is no likelihood that the Poet had any such thought, as there is no reason why he should have had.

32 Admiration is here used in its Latin sense of wonder.- Season is qualify or temper. Of course, attent is for autentive.

Hor. Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,

33

In the dead vast and middle of the night,"
Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father,
Arm'd at all points, exactly, cap-à-pé,

Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd
By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes,

Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distill'd
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,34

Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did;

And I with them the third night kept the watch;
Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,

Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes. I knew your father;

These hands are not more like.

But where was this?

Ham.
Mar. My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd.
Ham. Did you not speak to it?

Hor.
My lord, I did,
But answer made it none; yet once methought
It lifted up its head,35 and did address

Itself to motion, like as it would speak:
But even then the morning cock crew loud,
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
And vanish'd from our sight.

Ham.

'Tis very strange.

Hor. As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true; And we did think it writ down in our duty

To let you know of it.

Ham. Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me. Hold you the watch to-night?

Mar. Ber.

Ham. Arm'd, say you?

Mar. Ber.

We do, my lord.

Arm'd, my lord.

88 S the quarto of 1603; the other old copies have wast and waste instead of past. Modern editions have differed whether it should be waste or waist, the latter meaning mille. I have no doubt that vast is the right word. It means vord or vacancy.

84 So all the quartos: the folio has bestill'd instead of distill'd. To distili is to fall in drops, to melt; so that distill'd is a very natural and fit expression for the cold sweat caused by intense fear. "The act of fear" is the action or the effect of fear.

35 The old copies have "it head." So, again, in v. 1, of this play: "Fordo it own life." The point is rather curious as showing the Poet's reluctance to use its, which was then a candidate for admission into the language. He has it used possessively in some fourteen other places. See page 488, note 3.