Response Journal week 2! use the file ″SP 20 Weekly Response Journal E215 Online ″ and fill out the answers in each text box as stated by instructions also answer the questions on the pages. Use the attached files for references

SP20WeeklyResponseJournalE215Online2 xHamlet-ShakespeareActs1-3 Hamlet-Shakespeare1

 Response Journal week 2! use the file ″SP 20 Weekly Response Journal E215 Online ″ and fill out the answers in each text box as stated by instructions also answer the questions on the pages. Use the attached files for references 

Weekly Response Journal Form

English 215

Week/Subject/Unit:

Due Date:

Names of texts & authors:

Notes on texts (For many of you these notes might be longer than 5 note points. Feel free to add as many as you like but you must have at least 5 for each set of readings.)

Formal choices, style and strategies

(How is the story or information in the text depicted? What are literary, stylistic, filmic, etc. strategies employed?)

Plot Notes (What’s happening? When is it happening (in the text; in history)? What is the purpose of these events?)

Interpretation (What moments strike you? Why? How do you understand the moment as it relates to the text as a whole? What does it remind you of? Any Intertextual references?)

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Write three key terms, ideas, or phrases you find particularly useful or important for discussing this set of texts and briefly explain why (a few sentences).

Write a short response (150-200 words) about the overall theme or themes you are seeing in the text/texts. Please include a quote or talk about a specific passage to help you describe the themes if you’d like. You may also include commentary about any literary styles you notice.

Write 2-3 Questions that came to mind during these readings this week. What are you interested in? Confused about? Worried about? Etc. Any and all questions about the material are welcome!

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http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/

Front
Matter

From the Director of the Folger Shakespeare
Library
Textual Introduction

Synopsis

Characters in the Play

ACT 1

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

ACT 2 Scene 1Scene 2

ACT 3

Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4

ACT 4

Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5
Scene 6
Scene 7

ACT 5 Scene 1Scene 2

Contents

file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#FromTheDirector

file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#TextualIntroduction

file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#synopsis

file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#characters

file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#line-1.1.0

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file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#line-1.5.0

file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#line-2.1.0

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file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#line-4.1.0

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file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#line-5.1.0

file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#line-5.2.0

Michael Witmore
Director, Folger Shakespeare Library

It is hard to imagine a world without Shakespeare. Since their
composition four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s plays and poems
have traveled the globe, inviting those who see and read his works to
make them their own.

Readers of the New Folger Editions are part of this ongoing process
of “taking up Shakespeare,” finding our own thoughts and feelings in
language that strikes us as old or unusual and, for that very reason,
new. We still struggle to keep up with a writer who could think a mile
a minute, whose words paint pictures that shift like clouds. These
expertly edited texts are presented to the public as a resource for
study, artistic adaptation, and enjoyment. By making the classic texts
of the New Folger Editions available in electronic form as Folger
Digital Texts, we place a trusted resource in the hands of anyone who
wants them.

The New Folger Editions of Shakespeare’s plays, which are the basis
for the texts realized here in digital form, are special because of their
origin. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is the
single greatest documentary source of Shakespeare’s works. An
unparalleled collection of early modern books, manuscripts, and
artwork connected to Shakespeare, the Folger’s holdings have been
consulted extensively in the preparation of these texts. The Editions
also reflect the expertise gained through the regular performance of
Shakespeare’s works in the Folger’s Elizabethan Theater.

I want to express my deep thanks to editors Barbara Mowat and Paul
Werstine for creating these indispensable editions of Shakespeare’s
works, which incorporate the best of textual scholarship with a
richness of commentary that is both inspired and engaging. Readers
who want to know more about Shakespeare and his plays can follow
the paths these distinguished scholars have tread by visiting the Folger
either in-person or online, where a range of physical and digital
resources exists to supplement the material in these texts. I commend
to you these words, and hope that they inspire.

From the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library

Until now, with the release of the Folger Digital Texts, readers in
search of a free online text of Shakespeare’s plays had to be content
primarily with using the Moby™ Text, which reproduces a late-
nineteenth century version of the plays. What is the difference? Many
ordinary readers assume that there is a single text for the plays: what
Shakespeare wrote. But Shakespeare’s plays were not published the
way modern novels or plays are published today: as a single,
authoritative text. In some cases, the plays have come down to us in
multiple published versions, represented by various Quartos (Qq) and
by the great collection put together by his colleagues in 1623, called
the First Folio (F). There are, for example, three very different
versions of Hamlet, two of King Lear, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet,
and others. Editors choose which version to use as their base text, and
then amend that text with words, lines or speech prefixes from the
other versions that, in their judgment, make for a better or more
accurate text.

Other editorial decisions involve choices about whether an unfamiliar
word could be understood in light of other writings of the period or
whether it should be changed; decisions about words that made it into
Shakespeare’s text by accident through four hundred years of
printings and misprinting; and even decisions based on cultural
preference and taste. When the Moby™ Text was created, for
example, it was deemed “improper” and “indecent” for Miranda to
chastise Caliban for having attempted to rape her. (See The Tempest,
1.2: “Abhorred slave,/Which any print of goodness wilt not
take,/Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee…”). All Shakespeare
editors at the time took the speech away from her and gave it to her
father, Prospero.

The editors of the Moby™ Shakespeare produced their text long
before scholars fully understood the proper grounds on which to make
the thousands of decisions that Shakespeare editors face. The Folger
Library Shakespeare Editions, on which the Folger Digital Texts
depend, make this editorial process as nearly transparent as is
possible, in contrast to older texts, like the Moby™, which hide
editorial interventions. The reader of the Folger Shakespeare knows
where the text has been altered because editorial interventions are
signaled by square brackets (for example, from Othello: “ If she in

Textual Introduction
By Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine

chains of magic were not bound, ”), half-square brackets (for
example, from Henry V: “With blood and sword and fire to win your
right,”), or angle brackets (for example, from Hamlet: “O farewell,
honest soldier. Who hath relieved/you?”). At any point in the text,
you can hover your cursor over a bracket for more information.

Because the Folger Digital Texts are edited in accord with twenty-first
century knowledge about Shakespeare’s texts, the Folger here
provides them to readers, scholars, teachers, actors, directors, and
students, free of charge, confident of their quality as texts of the plays
and pleased to be able to make this contribution to the study and
enjoyment of Shakespeare.

Events before the start of Hamlet set the stage for tragedy. When the
king of Denmark, Prince Hamlet’s father, suddenly dies, Hamlet’s
mother, Gertrude, marries his uncle Claudius, who becomes the new
king.

A spirit who claims to be the ghost of Hamlet’s father describes his
murder at the hands of Claudius and demands that Hamlet avenge the
killing. When the councilor Polonius learns from his daughter,
Ophelia, that Hamlet has visited her in an apparently distracted state,
Polonius attributes the prince’s condition to lovesickness, and he sets
a trap for Hamlet using Ophelia as bait.

To confirm Claudius’s guilt, Hamlet arranges for a play that mimics
the murder; Claudius’s reaction is that of a guilty man. Hamlet, now
free to act, mistakenly kills Polonius, thinking he is Claudius.
Claudius sends Hamlet away as part of a deadly plot.

After Polonius’s death, Ophelia goes mad and later drowns. Hamlet,
who has returned safely to confront the king, agrees to a fencing
match with Ophelia’s brother, Laertes, who secretly poisons his own
rapier. At the match, Claudius prepares poisoned wine for Hamlet,
which Gertrude unknowingly drinks; as she dies, she accuses
Claudius, whom Hamlet kills. Then first Laertes and then Hamlet die,
both victims of Laertes’ rapier.

Synopsis

THE

GHOST

HAMLET, Prince of Denmark, son of the late King Hamlet

and Queen Gertrude
QUEEN GERTRUDE, widow of King Hamlet, now married to Claudius
KING CLAUDIUS, brother to the late King Hamlet

OPHELIA

LAERTES, her brother
POLONIUS, father of Ophelia and Laertes, councillor to King Claudius
REYNALDO, servant to Polonius

HORATIO, Hamlet’s friend and confidant

FORTINBRAS, Prince of Norway
A Captain in Fortinbras’s army

Ambassadors to Denmark from England

Players who take the roles of Prologue, Player King, Player Queen,
and Lucianus in The Murder of Gonzago

Two Messengers
Sailors
Gravedigger
Gravedigger’s companion
Doctor of Divinity

Attendants, Lords, Guards, Musicians, Laertes’s Followers, Soldiers,
Officers

Characters in the Play

courtiers at the Danish court

VOLTEMAND

CORNELIUS

ROSENCRANTZ

GUILDENSTERN

OSRIC
Gentlemen
A Lord

Danish soldiers

FRANCISCO

BARNARDO

MARCELLUS

BARNARDO
FRANCISCO

BARNARDO
FRANCISCO
BARNARDO

FRANCISCO

BARNARDO
FRANCISCO
BARNARDO
FRANCISCO
BARNARDO
FRANCISCO

HORATIO

Enter Barnardo and Francisco, two sentinels.

Who’s there?

Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.
Long live the King!
Barnardo.
He.

You come most carefully upon your hour.

’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.

For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.

Have you had quiet guard?
Not a mouse stirring.
Well, good night.

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

Enter Horatio and Marcellus.

I think I hear them.—Stand ho! Who is there?

Friends to this ground.
7

ACT 1
Scene 1

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9 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

FRANCISCO

MARCELLUS

FRANCISCO

Francisco exits.
MARCELLUS

BARNARDO
HORATIO

BARNARDO

HORATIO

BARNARDO
MARCELLUS

HORATIO
BARNARDO
HORATIO
BARNARDO

MARCELLUS And liegemen to the Dane.
Give you good night.

O farewell, honest soldier. Who hath relieved
you?

Barnardo hath my place. Give you good night.

Holla, Barnardo.
Say, what, is Horatio there?

A piece of him.

Welcome, Horatio.—Welcome, good Marcellus.

What, has this thing appeared again tonight?
I have seen nothing.

Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy
And will not let belief take hold of him
Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us to watch the minutes of this night,
That, if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.

Sit down awhile,
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
What we have two nights seen.

Well, sit we down,
And let us hear Barnardo speak of this.

Last night of all,
When yond same star that’s westward from the pole
Had made his course t’ illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one—

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11 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

MARCELLUS
BARNARDO
MARCELLUS
BARNARDO
HORATIO
BARNARDO

MARCELLUS
HORATIO

MARCELLUS
BARNARDO
HORATIO

Ghost exits.
MARCELLUS

BARNARDO

HORATIO

Enter Ghost.

Peace, break thee off! Look where it comes again.

In the same figure like the King that’s dead.

, to Horatio
Thou art a scholar. Speak to it, Horatio.

Looks he not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.

Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.

It would be spoke to.

Speak to it, Horatio.

What art thou that usurp’st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? By heaven, I charge thee,

speak.

It is offended.
See, it stalks away.

Stay! speak! speak! I charge thee, speak!

’Tis gone and will not answer.

How now, Horatio, you tremble and look pale.
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on ’t?

Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own

eyes.

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13 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HORATIO

MARCELLUS Is it not like the King?
As thou art to thyself.

Such was the very armor he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated.
So frowned he once when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
’Tis strange.

Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

In what particular thought to work I know not,
But in the gross and scope of mine opinion
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon
And foreign mart for implements of war,
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week.
What might be toward that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint laborer with the day?
Who is ’t that can inform me?

That can I.
At least the whisper goes so: our last king,
Whose image even but now appeared to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteemed him)
Did slay this Fortinbras, who by a sealed compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror.

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15 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

BARNARDO
HORATIO

Against the which a moiety competent
Was gagèd by our king, which had returned
To the inheritance of Fortinbras
Had he been vanquisher, as, by the same comart
And carriage of the article designed,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimprovèd mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes
For food and diet to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in ’t; which is no other
(As it doth well appear unto our state)
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost. And this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch, and the chief head
Of this posthaste and rummage in the land.

I think it be no other but e’en so.
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armèd through our watch so like the king
That was and is the question of these wars.

A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of feared events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,

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17 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

It spreads his arms.

The cock crows.

MARCELLUS

HORATIO
BARNARDO
HORATIO

Ghost exits.
MARCELLUS
BARNARDO
HORATIO

Have heaven and Earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.

Enter Ghost.

But soft, behold! Lo, where it comes again!
I’ll cross it though it blast me.—Stay, illusion!

If thou hast any sound or use of voice,
Speak to me.
If there be any good thing to be done
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me.
If thou art privy to thy country’s fate,
Which happily foreknowing may avoid,
O, speak!
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it.

Stay and speak!—Stop it, Marcellus.

Shall I strike it with my partisan?
Do, if it will not stand.

’Tis here.
’Tis here.

’Tis gone.
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence,
For it is as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.

It was about to speak when the cock crew.

And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard

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19 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

MARCELLUS
HORATIO
MARCELLUS

They exit.

The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day, and at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
Th’ extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine, and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.

It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is that time.

So have I heard and do in part believe it.
But look, the morn in russet mantle clad
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.
Break we our watch up, and by my advice
Let us impart what we have seen tonight
Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it
As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

Let’s do ’t, I pray, and I this morning know
Where we shall find him most convenient.

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21 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

KING

Flourish. Enter Claudius, King of Denmark, Gertrude the
Queen, the Council, as Polonius, and his son Laertes,

Hamlet, with others, among them Voltemand and
Cornelius.

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we (as ’twere with a defeated joy,
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole)
Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barred
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along. For all, our thanks.
Now follows that you know. Young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth
Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleaguèd with this dream of his advantage,
He hath not failed to pester us with message
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother—so much for him.
Now for ourself and for this time of meeting.
Thus much the business is: we have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,
Who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears

Scene 2

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23 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

Giving them a paper.

CORNELIUS/VOLTEMAND

KING

Voltemand and Cornelius exit.

LAERTES

KING

Of this his nephew’s purpose, to suppress
His further gait herein, in that the levies,
The lists, and full proportions are all made
Out of his subject; and we here dispatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway,
Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the King more than the scope
Of these dilated articles allow.

Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.

In that and all things will we show our duty.

We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell.

And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?
You told us of some suit. What is ’t, Laertes?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane
And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg,

Laertes,
That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

My dread lord,
Your leave and favor to return to France,
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark
To show my duty in your coronation,
Yet now I must confess, that duty done,
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?

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25 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

KING

HAMLET

KING
HAMLET

QUEEN

HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET

POLONIUS
Hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
By laborsome petition, and at last
Upon his will I sealed my hard consent.
I do beseech you give him leave to go.

Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine,
And thy best graces spend it at thy will.—
But now, my cousin Hamlet and my son—

, aside
A little more than kin and less than kind.

How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun.

Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not forever with thy vailèd lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

Ay, madam, it is common.

If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?

“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 forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed “seem,”
For they are actions that a man might play;

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27 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

KING

But I have that within which passes show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

’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 persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness. ’Tis unmanly grief.
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschooled.
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 today,
“This must be so.” We pray you, throw to earth
This unprevailing woe 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
Do I impart toward you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
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.

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29 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

HAMLET
KING

Flourish.

All but Hamlet exit.

HAMLET

QUEEN
Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.
I pray thee, stay with us. Go not to Wittenberg.

I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply.
Be as ourself in Denmark.—Madam, come.
This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof
No jocund health that Denmark drinks today
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
Respeaking earthly thunder. Come away.

O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on ’t, ah fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. 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; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and Earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on. And yet, within a month
(Let me not think on ’t; frailty, thy name is woman!),
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body,

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31 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

HORATIO
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET

MARCELLUS
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET

Like Niobe, all tears—why she, even she
(O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer!), married with my

uncle,
My father’s brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her gallèd eyes,
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, Marcellus, and Barnardo.

Hail to your Lordship.
I am glad to see you well.

Horatio—or I do forget myself!

The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.

Sir, my good friend. I’ll change that name with you.
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?—
Marcellus?

My good lord.

I am very glad to see you. To Barnardo. Good
even, sir.—

But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

A truant disposition, good my lord.

I would not hear your enemy say so,
Nor shall you do my 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.

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33 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO

HAMLET
HORATIO

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO

HORATIO
My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.

I prithee, do not mock me, fellow student.
I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.

Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.

Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
My father—methinks I see my father.

Where, my lord?

In my mind’s eye, Horatio.

I saw him once. He was a goodly king.

He was a man. Take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.

My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

Saw who?

My lord, the King your father.
The King my father?

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

For God’s love, let me hear!

Two nights together had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch,

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35 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

HAMLET
MARCELLUS

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

ALL
HAMLET

In the dead waste and middle of the night,
Been thus encountered: a figure like your father,
Armed at point exactly, cap-à-pie,
Appears before them and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them. Thrice he walked
By their oppressed and fear-surprisèd eyes
Within his truncheon’s length, whilst they, distilled
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
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 delivered, 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?

My lord, upon the platform where we watch.

Did you not speak to it?
My lord, I did,

But answer made it none. Yet once methought
It lifted up its head 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 vanished from our sight.

’Tis very strange.

As I do live, my honored lord, ’tis true.
And we did think it writ down in our duty
To let you know of it.

Indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
Hold you the watch tonight?

We do, my lord.

Armed, say you?

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37 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

HAMLET
ALL
HAMLET
HORATIO

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO

HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO

BARNARDO/MARCELLUS
HORATIO

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

ALL Armed, my lord.
From top to toe?

My lord, from head to foot.
Then saw you not his face?

O, yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.
What, looked he frowningly?

A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
Pale or red?

Nay, very pale.
And fixed his eyes upon you?

Most constantly.
I would I had been there.
It would have much amazed you.
Very like. Stayed it long?

While one with moderate haste might tell a
hundred.

Longer, longer.

Not when I saw ’t.
His beard was grizzled, no?

It was as I have seen it in his life,
A sable silvered.

I will watch tonight.
Perchance ’twill walk again.

I warrant it will.

If it assume my noble father’s person,
I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
If you have hitherto concealed this sight,

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39 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 3

ALL
HAMLET

All but Hamlet exit.

He exits.

LAERTES

OPHELIA
LAERTES

OPHELIA
LAERTES

Let it be tenable in your silence still;
And whatsomever else shall hap tonight,
Give it an understanding but no tongue.
I will requite your loves. So fare you well.
Upon the platform, ’twixt eleven and twelve,
I’ll visit you.

Our duty to your Honor.

Your loves, as mine to you. Farewell.

My father’s spirit—in arms! All is not well.
I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come!
Till then, sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s

eyes.

Enter Laertes and Ophelia, his sister.

My necessaries are embarked. Farewell.
And, sister, as the winds give benefit
And convey is assistant, do not sleep,
But let me hear from you.

Do you doubt that?

For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor,
Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute,
No more.

No more but so?
Think it no more.

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Scene 3

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41 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 3

OPHELIA

For nature, crescent, does not grow alone
In thews and bulk, but, as this temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
The virtue of his will; but you must fear,
His greatness weighed, his will is not his own,
For he himself is subject to his birth.
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself, for on his choice depends
The safety and the health of this whole state.
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head. Then, if he says he loves

you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed, which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honor may sustain
If with too credent ear you list his songs
Or lose your heart or your chaste treasure open
To his unmastered importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia; fear it, my dear sister,
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough
If she unmask her beauty to the moon.
Virtue itself ’scapes not calumnious strokes.
The canker galls the infants of the spring
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed,
And, in the morn and liquid dew of youth,
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary, then; best safety lies in fear.
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.

I shall the effect of this good lesson keep

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43 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 3

LAERTES

POLONIUS

As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede.

O, fear me not.

Enter Polonius.

I stay too long. But here my father comes.
A double blessing is a double grace.
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.

Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stayed for. There, my blessing with

thee.
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel,
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged courage. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in,
Bear ’t that th’ opposèd may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy (rich, not gaudy),
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

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45 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 3

LAERTES
POLONIUS
LAERTES
OPHELIA

LAERTES Laertes exits.
POLONIUS

OPHELIA
POLONIUS
OPHELIA
POLONIUS

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell. My blessing season this in thee.

Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

The time invests you. Go, your servants tend.

Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well
What I have said to you.

’Tis in my memory locked,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

Farewell.

What is ’t, Ophelia, he hath said to you?

So please you, something touching the Lord
Hamlet.

Marry, well bethought.
’Tis told me he hath very oft of late
Given private time to you, and you yourself
Have of your audience been most free and

bounteous.
If it be so (as so ’tis put on me,
And that in way of caution), I must tell you
You do not understand yourself so clearly
As it behooves my daughter and your honor.
What is between you? Give me up the truth.

He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.

Affection, puh! You speak like a green girl
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his “tenders,” as you call them?

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47 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 3

POLONIUS
OPHELIA
POLONIUS
OPHELIA
POLONIUS

OPHELIA
I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

Marry, I will teach you. Think yourself a baby
That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly,
Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus) you’ll tender me a fool.

My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honorable fashion—

Ay, “fashion” you may call it. Go to, go to!

And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.

Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both
Even in their promise as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time
Be something scanter of your maiden presence.
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parle. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him that he is young,
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds
The better to beguile. This is for all:
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth
Have you so slander any moment leisure

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49 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 4

OPHELIA
They exit.

HAMLET
HORATIO

HAMLET
HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HORATIO

A flourish of trumpets and two pieces goes off.

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to ’t, I charge you. Come your ways.

I shall obey, my lord.

Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.

The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.

It is a nipping and an eager air.

What hour now?
I think it lacks of twelve.

No, it is struck.

Indeed, I heard it not. It then draws near the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

What does this mean, my lord?

The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swagg’ring upspring reels;
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.

Is it a custom?
Ay, marry, is ’t,

But, to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honored in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations.
They clepe us drunkards and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition. And, indeed, it takes

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Scene 4

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51 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 4

HORATIO
HAMLET

From our achievements, though performed at
height,

The pith and marrow of our attribute.
So oft it chances in particular men
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth (wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin),
By the o’ergrowth of some complexion
(Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason),
Or by some habit that too much o’erleavens
The form of plausive manners—that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature’s livery or fortune’s star,
His virtues else, be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo,
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault. The dram of evil
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.

Enter Ghost.

Look, my lord, it comes.

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from

hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou com’st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee “Hamlet,”
“King,” “Father,” “Royal Dane.” O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsèd in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulcher,
Wherein we saw thee quietly interred,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws

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53 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 4

Ghost beckons.
HORATIO

MARCELLUS
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO

To cast thee up again. What may this mean
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel,
Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?

It beckons you to go away with it
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.

Look with what courteous action
It waves you to a more removèd ground.
But do not go with it.

No, by no means.

It will not speak. Then I will follow it.

Do not, my lord.
Why, what should be the fear?

I do not set my life at a pin’s fee.
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again. I’ll follow it.

What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord?
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o’er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? Think of it.
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.

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55 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

MARCELLUS

They hold back Hamlet.
HAMLET
HORATIO

HAMLET

Ghost and Hamlet exit.
HORATIO

MARCELLUS
HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HORATIO

MARCELLUS
They exit.

HAMLET
HAMLET
GHOST

It waves me still.—Go on, I’ll follow thee.

You shall not go, my lord.

Hold off your hands.

Be ruled. You shall not go.
My fate cries out

And makes each petty arture in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.
Still am I called. Unhand me, gentlemen.
By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me!
I say, away!—Go on. I’ll follow thee.

He waxes desperate with imagination.

Let’s follow. ’Tis not fit thus to obey him.

Have after. To what issue will this come?

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Heaven will direct it.

Nay, let’s follow him.

Enter Ghost and Hamlet.

Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak. I’ll go no

further.

Mark me.

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57 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

GHOST

HAMLET
GHOST

HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET

HAMLET I will.
My hour is almost come

When I to sulf’rous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.

Alas, poor ghost!

Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.

Speak. I am bound to hear.

So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.
What?

I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night
And for the day confined to fast in fires
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their

spheres,
Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand an end,
Like quills upon the fearful porpentine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love—

O God!

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
Murder?

Murder most foul, as in the best it is,
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

Haste me to know ’t, that I, with wings as swift

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59 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

GHOST
HAMLET
GHOST

As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.

I find thee apt;
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear.
’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forgèd process of my death
Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father’s life
Now wears his crown.

O, my prophetic soul! My uncle!

Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts—
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.
O Hamlet, what a falling off was there!
From me, whose love was of that dignity
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage, and to decline
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine.
But virtue, as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So, lust, though to a radiant angel linked,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed
And prey on garbage.
But soft, methinks I scent the morning air.
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursèd hebona in a vial
And in the porches of my ears did pour

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61 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

He exits.
HAMLET

The leprous distilment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigor it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine,
And a most instant tetter barked about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust
All my smooth body.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand
Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched,
Cut off, even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,
No reck’ning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
O horrible, O horrible, most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damnèd incest.
But, howsomever thou pursues this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once.
The glowworm shows the matin to be near
And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me.

O all you host of heaven! O Earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell? O fie! Hold, hold, my heart,
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory

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63 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

He writes.

HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HORATIO
HAMLET
MARCELLUS
HAMLET
MARCELLUS

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HAMLET

I’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter. Yes, by heaven!
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd

villain!

My tables—meet it is I set it down
That one may smile and smile and be a villain.
At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark.

So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word.
It is “adieu, adieu, remember me.”
I have sworn ’t.

Enter Horatio and Marcellus.

My lord, my lord!
Lord Hamlet.

Heavens secure him!
So be it.

Illo, ho, ho, my lord!
Hillo, ho, ho, boy! Come, bird, come!

How is ’t, my noble lord?

What news, my lord?
O, wonderful!

Good my lord, tell it.
No, you will reveal it.

Not I, my lord, by heaven.
Nor I, my lord.

How say you, then? Would heart of man once think

it?
But you’ll be secret?

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65 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

HORATIO/MARCELLUS
HAMLET
HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HAMLET

HORATIO/MARCELLUS Ay, by heaven, my lord.

There’s never a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he’s an arrant knave.

There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this.

Why, right, you are in the right.
And so, without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part,
You, as your business and desire shall point you
(For every man hath business and desire,
Such as it is), and for my own poor part,
I will go pray.

These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.

I am sorry they offend you, heartily;
Yes, faith, heartily.

There’s no offense, my lord.

Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
And much offense, too. Touching this vision here,
It is an honest ghost—that let me tell you.
For your desire to know what is between us,
O’ermaster ’t as you may. And now, good friends,
As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,
Give me one poor request.

What is ’t, my lord? We will.

Never make known what you have seen tonight.
My lord, we will not.

Nay, but swear ’t.
In faith, my lord, not I.

Nor I, my lord, in faith.

Upon my sword.

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67 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

HAMLET

GHOST
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

MARCELLUS We have sworn, my lord, already.
Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.

cries under the stage Swear.

Ha, ha, boy, sayst thou so? Art thou there,
truepenny?

Come on, you hear this fellow in the cellarage.
Consent to swear.

Propose the oath, my lord.

Never to speak of this that you have seen,
Swear by my sword.

, beneath Swear.

Hic et ubique? Then we’ll shift our ground.
Come hither, gentlemen,
And lay your hands again upon my sword.
Swear by my sword
Never to speak of this that you have heard.

, beneath Swear by his sword.

Well said, old mole. Canst work i’ th’ earth so fast?—
A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good

friends.

O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.

And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come.
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd some’er I bear myself
(As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on)
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumbered thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,

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69 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

GHOST
HAMLET
They exit.

As “Well, well, we know,” or “We could an if we
would,”

Or “If we list to speak,” or “There be an if they
might,”

Or such ambiguous giving-out, to note
That you know aught of me—this do swear,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you.

, beneath Swear.

Rest, rest, perturbèd spirit.—So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you,
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do t’ express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together,
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let’s go together.

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POLONIUS

REYNALDO

POLONIUS

REYNALDO
POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS

Enter old Polonius with his man Reynaldo.

Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.

I will, my lord.

You shall do marvelous wisely, good Reynaldo,
Before you visit him, to make inquire
Of his behavior.

My lord, I did intend it.

Marry, well said, very well said. Look you, sir,
Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris;
And how, and who, what means, and where they

keep,
What company, at what expense; and finding
By this encompassment and drift of question
That they do know my son, come you more nearer
Than your particular demands will touch it.
Take you, as ’twere, some distant knowledge of him,
As thus: “I know his father and his friends
And, in part, him.” Do you mark this, Reynaldo?

Ay, very well, my lord.

“And, in part, him, but,” you may say, “not well.
73

ACT 2

Scene 1

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75 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 1

REYNALDO
POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS

REYNALDO

POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS

But if ’t be he I mean, he’s very wild,
Addicted so and so.” And there put on him
What forgeries you please—marry, none so rank
As may dishonor him, take heed of that,
But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips
As are companions noted and most known
To youth and liberty.

As gaming, my lord.
Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing,

Quarreling, drabbing—you may go so far.
My lord, that would dishonor him.

Faith, no, as you may season it in the charge.
You must not put another scandal on him
That he is open to incontinency;
That’s not my meaning. But breathe his faults so

quaintly
That they may seem the taints of liberty,
The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,
A savageness in unreclaimèd blood,
Of general assault.

But, my good lord—
Wherefore should you do this?
Ay, my lord, I would know that.

Marry, sir, here’s my drift,
And I believe it is a fetch of wit.
You, laying these slight sullies on my son,
As ’twere a thing a little soiled i’ th’ working,
Mark you, your party in converse, him you would

sound,
Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes
The youth you breathe of guilty, be assured
He closes with you in this consequence:
“Good sir,” or so, or “friend,” or “gentleman,”
According to the phrase or the addition
Of man and country—

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77 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 1

POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS

REYNALDO
POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS

Reynaldo exits.

REYNALDO Very good, my lord.
And then, sir, does he this, he does—what

was I about to say? By the Mass, I was about to say
something. Where did I leave?

At “closes in the consequence,” at “friend,
or so,” and “gentleman.”

At “closes in the consequence”—ay, marry—
He closes thus: “I know the gentleman.
I saw him yesterday,” or “th’ other day”
(Or then, or then, with such or such), “and as you

say,
There was he gaming, there o’ertook in ’s rouse,
There falling out at tennis”; or perchance
“I saw him enter such a house of sale”—
Videlicet, a brothel—or so forth. See you now
Your bait of falsehood take this carp of truth;
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out.
So by my former lecture and advice
Shall you my son. You have me, have you not?

My lord, I have.

God be wi’ you. Fare you well.

Good my lord.

Observe his inclination in yourself.

I shall, my lord.
And let him ply his music.
Well, my lord.

Farewell.

Enter Ophelia.

How now, Ophelia, what’s the matter?

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79 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 1

POLONIUS
OPHELIA

POLONIUS
OPHELIA
POLONIUS
OPHELIA
POLONIUS

OPHELIA
O, my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted!

With what, i’ th’ name of God?

My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,
No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,
Ungartered, and down-gyvèd to his ankle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosèd out of hell
To speak of horrors—he comes before me.

Mad for thy love?

My lord, I do not know,
But truly I do fear it.

What said he?

He took me by the wrist and held me hard.
Then goes he to the length of all his arm,
And, with his other hand thus o’er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face
As he would draw it. Long stayed he so.
At last, a little shaking of mine arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk
And end his being. That done, he lets me go,
And, with his head over his shoulder turned,
He seemed to find his way without his eyes,
For out o’ doors he went without their helps
And to the last bended their light on me.

Come, go with me. I will go seek the King.
This is the very ecstasy of love,
Whose violent property fordoes itself

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81 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

OPHELIA
POLONIUS
They exit.
KING

And leads the will to desperate undertakings
As oft as any passions under heaven
That does afflict our natures. I am sorry.
What, have you given him any hard words of late?

No, my good lord, but as you did command
I did repel his letters and denied
His access to me.

That hath made him mad.
I am sorry that with better heed and judgment
I had not coted him. I feared he did but trifle
And meant to wrack thee. But beshrew my jealousy!
By heaven, it is as proper to our age
To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
As it is common for the younger sort
To lack discretion. Come, go we to the King.
This must be known, which, being kept close, might

move
More grief to hide than hate to utter love.
Come.

Flourish. Enter King and Queen, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern and Attendants.

Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Moreover that we much did long to see you,
The need we have to use you did provoke
Our hasty sending. Something have you heard
Of Hamlet’s transformation, so call it,
Sith nor th’ exterior nor the inward man
Resembles that it was. What it should be,
More than his father’s death, that thus hath put him

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Scene 2

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83 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

QUEEN
ROSENCRANTZ
GUILDENSTERN
KING
QUEEN
GUILDENSTERN

So much from th’ understanding of himself
I cannot dream of. I entreat you both
That, being of so young days brought up with him
And sith so neighbored to his youth and havior,
That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court
Some little time, so by your companies
To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather
So much as from occasion you may glean,
Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus
That, opened, lies within our remedy.

Good gentlemen, he hath much talked of you,
And sure I am two men there is not living
To whom he more adheres. If it will please you
To show us so much gentry and goodwill
As to expend your time with us awhile
For the supply and profit of our hope,
Your visitation shall receive such thanks
As fits a king’s remembrance.

Both your Majesties
Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,
Put your dread pleasures more into command
Than to entreaty.

But we both obey,
And here give up ourselves in the full bent
To lay our service freely at your feet,
To be commanded.

Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.
And I beseech you instantly to visit
My too much changèd son.—Go, some of you,
And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.

Heavens make our presence and our practices
Pleasant and helpful to him!

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85 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exit
with some Attendants.

POLONIUS
KING
POLONIUS
KING
POLONIUS
KING

Polonius exits.

QUEEN
KING

QUEEN Ay, amen!

Enter Polonius.

Th’ ambassadors from Norway, my good lord,
Are joyfully returned.

Thou still hast been the father of good news.

Have I, my lord? I assure my good liege
I hold my duty as I hold my soul,
Both to my God and to my gracious king,
And I do think, or else this brain of mine
Hunts not the trail of policy so sure
As it hath used to do, that I have found
The very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy.

O, speak of that! That do I long to hear.

Give first admittance to th’ ambassadors.
My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.

Thyself do grace to them and bring them in.

He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found
The head and source of all your son’s distemper.

I doubt it is no other but the main—
His father’s death and our o’erhasty marriage.

Well, we shall sift him.

Enter Ambassadors Voltemand and Cornelius with
Polonius.

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87 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

VOLTEMAND

He gives a paper.

KING

Voltemand and Cornelius exit.
POLONIUS

Welcome, my good friends.
Say, Voltemand, what from our brother Norway?

Most fair return of greetings and desires.
Upon our first, he sent out to suppress
His nephew’s levies, which to him appeared
To be a preparation ’gainst the Polack,
But, better looked into, he truly found
It was against your Highness. Whereat, grieved
That so his sickness, age, and impotence
Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests
On Fortinbras, which he, in brief, obeys,
Receives rebuke from Norway, and, in fine,
Makes vow before his uncle never more
To give th’ assay of arms against your Majesty.
Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,
Gives him three-score thousand crowns in annual

fee
And his commission to employ those soldiers,
So levied as before, against the Polack,
With an entreaty, herein further shown,

That it might please you to give quiet pass
Through your dominions for this enterprise,
On such regards of safety and allowance
As therein are set down.

It likes us well,
And, at our more considered time, we’ll read,
Answer, and think upon this business.
Meantime, we thank you for your well-took labor.
Go to your rest. At night we’ll feast together.
Most welcome home!

This business is well ended.
My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,

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89 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

QUEEN
POLONIUS

QUEEN
POLONIUS

Why day is day, night night, and time is time
Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
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.

More matter with less art.

Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
That he’s 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.

He reads. To the celestial, and my soul’s idol, the
most beautified Ophelia—
That’s an ill phrase, a vile phrase; “beautified” is a
vile phrase. But you shall hear. Thus: He reads.
In her excellent white bosom, these, etc.—

Came this from Hamlet to her?

Good madam, stay awhile. I will be faithful.
He reads the letter.

Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.

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91 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst
this machine is to him, Hamlet.

KING
POLONIUS

KING

POLONIUS
KING

O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers. I have not
art to reckon my groans, but that I love thee best, O
most best, believe it. Adieu.

This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me,
And more above, hath his solicitings,
As they fell out by time, by means, and place,
All given to mine ear.

But how hath she received his love?
What do you think of me?

As of a man faithful and honorable.

I would fain prove so. But what might you think,
When I had seen this hot love on the wing
(As I perceived 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 played the desk or table-book
Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb,
Or looked upon this love with idle sight?
What might you think? No, I went round to work,
And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:
“Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star.
This must not be.” And then I prescripts 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, repelled (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.

, to Queen Do you think ’tis this?

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93 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

POLONIUS
KING
POLONIUS
KING
POLONIUS
QUEEN
POLONIUS
KING
QUEEN
POLONIUS

King and Queen exit with Attendants.

HAMLET

QUEEN It may be, very like.

Hath there been such a time (I would fain know
that)

That I have positively said “’Tis so,”
When it proved otherwise?

Not that I know.

Take this from this, if this be otherwise.
If circumstances lead me, I will find
Where truth is hid, though it were hid, indeed,
Within the center.

How may we try it further?

You know sometimes he walks four hours together
Here in the lobby.

So he does indeed.

At such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him.
To the King. Be you and I behind an arras then.
Mark the encounter. If he love her not,
And be not from his reason fall’n thereon,
Let me be no assistant for a state,
But keep a farm and carters.

We will try it.

Enter Hamlet reading on a book.

But look where sadly the poor wretch comes

reading.

Away, I do beseech you both, away.
I’ll board him presently. O, give me leave.

How does my good Lord Hamlet?
Well, God-a-mercy.

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95 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

HAMLET

POLONIUS
HAMLET

POLONIUS
HAMLET

POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS

HAMLET
POLONIUS

HAMLET

POLONIUS
HAMLET

POLONIUS

POLONIUS Do you know me, my lord?
Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.

Not I, my lord.
Then I would you were so honest a man.

Honest, my lord?
Ay, sir. To be honest, as this world goes, is to

be one man picked out of ten thousand.
That’s very true, my lord.

For if the sun breed maggots in a dead
dog, being a good kissing carrion—Have you a
daughter?

I have, my lord.
Let her not walk i’ th’ sun. Conception is a

blessing, but, as your daughter may conceive,
friend, look to ’t.

, aside How say you by that? Still harping on
my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first; he said I
was a fishmonger. He is far gone. And truly, in my
youth, I suffered much extremity for love, very near
this. I’ll speak to him again.—What do you read, my
lord?

Words, words, words.
What is the matter, my lord?

Between who?
I mean the matter that you read, my lord.

Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here
that old men have gray 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 which, sir,
though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I
hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for
yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am, if, like a crab,
you could go backward.

, aside Though this be madness, yet there is
method in ’t.—Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

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97 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET

POLONIUS
ROSENCRANTZ

Polonius exits.
GUILDENSTERN

ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET

ROSENCRANTZ
GUILDENSTERN

HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

HAMLET

GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

ROSENCRANTZ

HAMLET Into my grave?
Indeed, that’s out of the air. Aside. How

pregnant sometimes his replies are! A happiness
that often madness hits on, which reason and
sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I
will leave him and suddenly contrive the means of
meeting between him and my daughter.—My lord,
I will take my leave of you.

You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I
will more willingly part withal—except my life,
except my life, except my life.

Fare you well, my lord.
, aside These tedious old fools.

Enter Guildenstern and Rosencrantz.

You go to seek the Lord Hamlet. There he is.
, to Polonius God save you, sir.

My honored lord.
My most dear lord.

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

As the indifferent children of the earth.

Happy in that we are not overhappy.
On Fortune’s cap, we are not the very button.

Nor the soles of her shoe?
Neither, my lord.

Then you live about her waist, or in the
middle of her favors?

Faith, her privates we.
In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true!

She is a strumpet. What news?
None, my lord, but that the world’s

grown honest.

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99 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

GUILDENSTERN

HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET

ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET

ROSENCRANTZ/GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

ROSENCRANTZ

HAMLET Then is doomsday 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?

Prison, my lord?
Denmark’s a prison.

Then is the world one.
A goodly one, in which there are many confines,

wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’
th’ worst.

We think not so, my lord.
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.

Why, then, your ambition makes it one.
’Tis too narrow for your mind.

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.

Which dreams, indeed, are ambition,
for the very substance of the ambitious is merely
the shadow of a dream.

A dream itself is but a shadow.
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy

and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs

and outstretched heroes the beggars’ shadows.
Shall we to th’ court? For, by my fay, I cannot
reason.

We’ll wait upon you.
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?

To visit you, my lord, no other occasion.

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101 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

HAMLET Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks;
but I thank you, and sure, dear friends, my thanks
are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for?
Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation?
Come, come, deal justly with me. Come, come; nay,
speak.

What should we say, my lord?
Anything but to th’ purpose. You were sent

for, and there is a kind of confession in your looks
which your modesties have not craft enough to
color. I know the good king and queen have sent for
you.

To what end, my lord?
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 can charge you withal: be even and direct
with me whether you were sent for or no.

, to Guildenstern What say you?
, aside Nay, then, I have an eye of you.—If

you love me, hold not off.
My lord, we were sent for.

I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the
King and Queen molt no feather. I have of late, but
wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone 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
firmament, this majestical roof, fretted
with golden fire—why, it appeareth nothing to me
but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in
reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving

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103 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

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, no, nor women neither, though by
your smiling you seem to say so.

My lord, there was no such stuff in my
thoughts.

Why did you laugh, then, when I said “man
delights not me”?

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.

He that plays the king shall be welcome—his
Majesty shall have tribute on me. The adventurous
knight shall use his foil and target, the lover shall
not sigh gratis, the humorous man shall end his
part in peace, the clown shall make those laugh
whose lungs are tickle o’ th’ sear, and the lady
shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall
halt for ’t. What players are they?

Even those you were wont to take such
delight in, the tragedians of the city.

How chances it they travel? Their residence,
both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.

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

Do they hold the same estimation they did
when I was in the city? Are they so followed?

No, indeed are they not.
How comes it? Do they grow rusty?

Nay, their endeavor keeps in the wonted
pace. But there is, sir, an aerie of children, little
eyases, that cry out on the top of question and are
most tyrannically clapped for ’t. These are now the

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105 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN

HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET

A flourish for the Players.
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

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.

What, are they children? Who maintains ’em?
How are they escoted? Will they pursue 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?

Faith, there has been much to-do on
both sides, and the nation holds it no sin to tar
them to controversy. There was for a while no
money bid for argument unless the poet and the
player went to cuffs in the question.

Is ’t possible?
O, there has been much throwing

about of brains.
Do the boys carry it away?

Ay, that they do, my lord—Hercules
and his load too.

It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of
Denmark, and those that would make mouths at
him while my father lived give twenty, forty, fifty,
a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little.
’Sblood, there is something in this more than natural,
if philosophy could find it out.

There are the players.
Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore.

Your hands, come then. Th’ appurtenance of welcome
is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply
with you in this garb, lest my extent to the players,
which, I tell you, must show fairly outwards, should
more appear like entertainment than yours. You are
welcome. But my uncle-father and aunt-mother are
deceived.

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107 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET

POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS

HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET

GUILDENSTERN In what, my dear lord?
I am but mad north-north-west. When the

wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Enter Polonius.

Well be with you, gentlemen.
Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too—at

each ear a hearer! That great baby you see there is
not yet out of his swaddling clouts.

Haply he is the second time come to
them, for they say an old man is twice a child.

I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the
players; mark it.—You say right, sir, a Monday
morning, ’twas then indeed.

My lord, I have news to tell you.
My lord, I have news to tell you: when Roscius

was an actor in Rome—
The actors are come hither, my lord.

Buzz, buzz.
Upon my honor—

Then came each actor on his ass.
The best actors in the world, either for

tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical,
tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or
poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor
Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty,
these are the only men.

O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure
hadst thou!

What a treasure had he, my lord?
Why,

One fair daughter, and no more,
The which he lovèd passing well.

, aside Still on my daughter.
Am I not i’ th’ right, old Jephthah?

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109 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET

FIRST

PLAYER

HAMLET

POLONIUS If you call me “Jephthah,” my lord: I have a
daughter that I love passing well.

Nay, that follows not.
What follows then, my lord?

Why,
As by lot, God wot

and then, you know,
It came to pass, as most like it was—

the first row of the pious chanson will show you
more, for look where my abridgment comes.

Enter the Players.

You are welcome, masters; welcome all.—I am glad
to see thee well.—Welcome, good friends.—O my
old friend! Why, thy face is valanced 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 when I saw you last, by
the altitude of a chopine. Pray God your voice, like a
piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the
ring. Masters, you are all welcome. We’ll e’en to ’t
like French falconers, fly at anything we see. We’ll
have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your
quality. Come, a passionate speech.

What speech, my good lord?
I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it

was never acted, or, if it was, not above once; for
the play, I remember, pleased not the million:
’twas caviary to the general. But it was (as I
received it, and others whose judgments in such
matters cried in the top of mine) an excellent play,
well digested in the scenes, set down with as much
modesty as cunning. I remember one said there
were no sallets in the lines to make the matter
savory, nor no matter in the phrase that might indict
the author of affection, but called it an honest

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111 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

POLONIUS
FIRST PLAYER

method, as wholesome as sweet and, by very much,
more handsome than fine. One speech in ’t I
chiefly loved. ’Twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido, and
thereabout of it especially when he speaks of
Priam’s slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at
this line—let me see, let me see:

The rugged Pyrrhus, like th’ Hyrcanian beast—
’tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus:

The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couchèd in th’ ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smeared
With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot,
Now is he total gules, horridly tricked
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Baked and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and a damnèd light
To their lord’s murder. Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o’ersizèd with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.

So, proceed you.
’Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good

accent and good discretion.
Anon he finds him

Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command. Unequal matched,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
Th’ unnervèd father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus’ ear. For lo, his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seemed i’ th’ air to stick.

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113 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

POLONIUS
HAMLET
FIRST PLAYER
HAMLET
POLONIUS
FIRST PLAYER

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,
Arousèd vengeance sets him new a-work,
And never did the Cyclops’ hammers fall
On Mars’s armor, forged for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.
Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods
In general synod take away her power,
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven
As low as to the fiends!

This is too long.
It shall to the barber’s with your beard.—

Prithee say on. He’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or
he sleeps. Say on; come to Hecuba.

But who, ah woe, had seen the moblèd queen—

“The moblèd queen”?
That’s good. “ Moblèd queen” is good.

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’erteemèd loins
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up—
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped,
’Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have

pronounced.
But if the gods themselves did see her then

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115 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET

FIRST

PLAYER
HAMLET

FIRST PLAYER
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs,
The instant burst of clamor that she made
(Unless things mortal move them not at all)
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven
And passion in the gods.

Look whe’er he has not turned his color and
has tears in ’s eyes. Prithee, no more.

’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.

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

God’s bodykins, man, much better! Use every
man after his desert and who shall ’scape
whipping? Use them after your own honor and
dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in
your bounty. Take them in.

Come, sirs.
Follow him, friends. We’ll hear a play

tomorrow. As Polonius and Players exit, Hamlet speaks to
the First Player. Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can
you play “The Murder of Gonzago”?

Ay, my lord.
We’ll ha ’t tomorrow night. You could, for a

need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen
lines, which I would set down and insert in ’t,
could you not?

Ay, my lord.
Very well. Follow that lord—and look you

mock him not. First Player exits. My good friends,
I’ll leave you till night. You are welcome to Elsinore.

Good my lord.

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117 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exit.

HAMLET
Ay, so, good-bye to 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 wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his 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 appall 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 damned 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’ th’ throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha! ’Swounds, I should take it! For it cannot be
But I am pigeon-livered 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!

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119 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

He exits.

O vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
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 stallion! Fie upon ’t! Foh!
About, my brains!—Hum, 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 proclaimed 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
T’ 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.

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KING
ROSENCRANTZ
GUILDENSTERN

QUEEN
ROSENCRANTZ

GUILDENSTERN

ROSENCRANTZ
QUEEN
ROSENCRANTZ

Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz,
Guildenstern, and Lords.

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?

He does confess he feels himself distracted,
But from what cause he will by no means speak.

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.

Did he receive you well?
Most like a gentleman.

But with much forcing of his disposition.

Niggard of question, but of our demands
Most free in his reply.

Did you assay him to any pastime?

Madam, it so fell out that certain players
123

ACT 3
Scene 1

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125 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 1

POLONIUS
KING

ROSENCRANTZ
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

and Lords exit.
KING

QUEEN
OPHELIA

Queen exits.
POLONIUS

We o’erraught on the way. Of these we told him,
And there did seem in him a kind of joy
To hear of it. They are here about the court,
And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.

’Tis most true,
And he beseeched me to entreat your Majesties
To hear and see the matter.

With all my heart, and it doth much content me
To hear him so inclined.
Good gentlemen, give him a further edge
And drive his purpose into these delights.

We shall, my lord.

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 behaved,
If ’t be th’ affliction of his love or no
That thus he suffers for.

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 honors.

Madam, I wish it may.

Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please you,

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127 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 1

KING
POLONIUS

They withdraw.

HAMLET

We will bestow ourselves. To Ophelia. Read on this
book,

That show of such an exercise may color
Your loneliness. —We are oft to blame in this
(’Tis too much proved), that with devotion’s visage
And pious action we do sugar o’er
The devil himself.

, aside O, ’tis too true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my

conscience.
The harlot’s cheek beautied with plast’ring art
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word.
O heavy burden!

I hear him coming. Let’s withdraw, my lord.

Enter Hamlet.

To be or not to be—that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. 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,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

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129 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 1

OPHELIA

HAMLET
OPHELIA

HAMLET
OPHELIA

The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ 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 undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler 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 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 remembered.

Good my lord,
How does your Honor for this many a day?

I humbly thank you, well.

My lord, I have remembrances of yours
That I have longèd long to redeliver.
I pray you now receive them.

No, not I. I never gave you aught.

My honored lord, you know right well you did,
And with them words of so sweet breath composed
As made the things more rich. Their perfume

lost,
Take these again, for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.

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131 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 1

OPHELIA
HAMLET

OPHELIA
HAMLET

OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET

HAMLET Ha, ha, are you honest?
My lord?
Are you fair?
What means your Lordship?
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty

should admit no discourse to your beauty.
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce

than with honesty?
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 believed 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 offenses
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?

At home, my lord.
Let the doors be shut upon him that he may

play the fool nowhere but in ’s own house. Farewell.
O, 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

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133 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 1

OPHELIA
HAMLET

He exits.
OPHELIA

KING

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 too, 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 your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no
more on ’t. It hath made me mad. I say we will have
no more marriage. Those that are married already,
all but one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.
To a nunnery, go.

O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue,

sword,
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mold of form,
Th’ observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his musicked vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh;
That unmatched form and stature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me
T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

, advancing with Polonius
Love? His affections do not that way tend;
Nor what he spake, though it lacked 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

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135 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

POLONIUS
KING
They exit.
HAMLET

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
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 unwatched go.

Enter Hamlet and three of the Players.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced
it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if 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. O,

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137 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

PLAYER
HAMLET
PLAYER
HAMLET

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’erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods
Herod. Pray you, avoid it.

I warrant your Honor.
Be not too tame neither, but let your own

discretion be 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 anything 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 own 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 unskillful laugh,
cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure
of the which one must in your allowance o’erweigh
a whole theater of others. O, 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 reformed that indifferently
with us, sir.

O, 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 meantime some necessary

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139 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

Players exit.

POLONIUS
HAMLET Polonius exits.

ROSENCRANTZ They exit.
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

question of the play be then to be considered.
That’s villainous and shows a most pitiful ambition
in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.

Enter Polonius, Guildenstern, and Rosencrantz.

How now, my lord, will the King hear this piece of
work?

And the Queen too, and that presently.
Bid the players make haste.

Will you two help to hasten them?
Ay, my lord.

What ho, Horatio!

Enter Horatio.

Here, sweet lord, at your service.

Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man
As e’er my conversation coped withal.

O, my dear lord—

Nay, do not think I flatter,
For what advancement may I hope from thee
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be

flattered?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath sealed thee for herself. For thou hast been
As one in suffering all that suffers nothing,
A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hast ta’en with equal thanks; and blessed are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well

commeddled

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141 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

HORATIO

Sound a flourish.
HAMLET

KING
HAMLET

KING
HAMLET

That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.—Something too much of this.—
There is a play tonight before the King.
One scene of it comes near the circumstance
Which I have told thee of my father’s death.
I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe my uncle. If his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damnèd ghost that we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan’s stithy. Give him heedful note,
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
And, after, we will both our judgments join
In censure of his seeming.

Well, my lord.
If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing
And ’scape detecting , I will pay the theft.

They are coming to the play. I must be idle.
Get you a place.

Enter Trumpets and Kettle Drums. Enter King, Queen,
Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and other

Lords attendant with the King’s guard carrying
torches.

How fares our cousin Hamlet?
Excellent, i’ faith, of the chameleon’s dish. I

eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed
capons so.

I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. These
words are not mine.

No, nor mine now. To Polonius. My lord, you
played once i’ th’ university, you say?

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143 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

QUEEN
HAMLET

Hamlet takes a place near Ophelia.
POLONIUS
HAMLET
OPHELIA

HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET

OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET

OPHELIA
HAMLET

POLONIUS That did I, my lord, and was accounted a
good actor.

What did you enact?
I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i’ th’

Capitol. Brutus killed me.
It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a

calf there.—Be the players ready?
Ay, my lord. They stay upon your

patience.
Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

No, good mother. Here’s metal more
attractive.

, to the King Oh, ho! Do you mark that?
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
No, my lord.
I mean, my head upon your lap?

Ay, my lord.
Do you think I meant country matters?
I think nothing, my lord.
That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’

legs.
What is, my lord?
Nothing.
You are merry, my lord.
Who, I?
Ay, my lord.
O God, your only jig-maker. What should a

man do but be merry? For look you how cheerfully
my mother looks, and my father died within ’s two
hours.

Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.
So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black,

for I’ll have a suit of sables. O heavens, die two
months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there’s
hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half
a year. But, by ’r Lady, he must build churches, then,

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145 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

The trumpets sounds. Dumb show follows.

Players exit.
OPHELIA
HAMLET

OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA

PROLOGUE

He exits.

or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the
hobby-horse, whose epitaph is “For oh, for oh, the
hobby-horse is forgot.”

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. He lies him down upon a bank of
flowers. She, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon
comes in another man, takes off his crown, kisses it, pours

poison in the sleeper’s ears, and leaves him. The Queen
returns, finds the King dead, makes passionate action. The
poisoner with some three or four come in again, seem to
condole with her. The dead body is carried away. The
poisoner woos the Queen with gifts. She seems harsh
awhile but in the end accepts his love.

What means this, my lord?
Marry, this is miching mallecho. It means

mischief.
Belike this show imports the argument of the

play.

Enter Prologue.

We shall know by this fellow. The players
cannot keep counsel; they’ll tell all.

Will he tell us what this show meant?
Ay, or any show that you will show him. Be

not you ashamed to show, he’ll not shame to tell you
what it means.

You are naught, you are naught. I’ll mark the
play.

For us and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently.

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147 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

OPHELIA
HAMLET

PLAYER KING

PLAYER QUEEN

PLAYER KING
PLAYER QUEEN

HAMLET Is this a prologue or the posy of a ring?
’Tis brief, my lord.
As woman’s love.

Enter the Player King and Queen.

Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round
Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbèd ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

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.
Now what my love is, proof hath made you know,
And, as my love is sized, my fear is so:
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too.
My operant powers their functions leave to do.
And thou shall live in this fair world behind,
Honored, beloved; and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou—

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 killed the first.

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149 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

PLAYER QUEEN
PLAYER KING

HAMLET That’s wormwood!

The instances that second marriage move
Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.
A second time I kill my husband dead
When second husband kisses me in bed.

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, the fruit unripe, sticks on the tree
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 change;
For ’tis a question left us yet to prove
Whether love lead fortune or else fortune love.
The great man down, you mark his favorite flies;
The poor, advanced, 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 and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
So think thou wilt no second husband wed,
But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

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151 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

HAMLET
PLAYER KING

Sleeps.
PLAYER QUEEN

Player Queen exits.

HAMLET
QUEEN

HAMLET
KING

HAMLET
KING
HAMLET
OPHELIA

PLAYER QUEEN
Nor Earth to me give food, nor 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.

If she should break it now!

’Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile.
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.

Sleep rock thy brain,
And never come mischance between us twain.

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

O, but she’ll keep her word.
Have you heard the argument? Is there no

offense in ’t?
No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest. No

offense i’ th’ world.
What do you call the play?

“The Mousetrap.” 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;
our withers are unwrung.

Enter Lucianus.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.
You are as good as a chorus, my lord.

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153 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET

LUCIANUS

Pours the poison in his ears.
HAMLET

Claudius rises.
OPHELIA

HAMLET
QUEEN
POLONIUS
KING
POLONIUS

All but Hamlet and Horatio exit.
HAMLET

HAMLET I could interpret between you and your love,
if I could see the puppets dallying.

You are keen, my lord, you are keen.
It would cost you a groaning to take off mine

edge.
Still better and worse.
So you mis-take your husbands.—Begin,

murderer. Pox, leave thy damnable faces and
begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for
revenge.

Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time

agreeing,
Confederate season, else no creature seeing,
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
Thy natural magic and dire property
On wholesome life usurp immediately.

He poisons him i’ th’ garden for his estate. His
name’s Gonzago. The story is extant and written in
very choice Italian. You shall see anon how the
murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.

The King rises.
What, frighted with false fire?

How fares my lord?
Give o’er the play.

Give me some light. Away!
Lights, lights, lights!

Why, let the strucken deer go weep,
The hart ungallèd play.
For some must watch, while some must sleep:
Thus runs the world away.

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155 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

GUILDENSTERN

HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

GUILDENSTERN

HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers (if the
rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me) with two
Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a
fellowship in a cry of players?

Half a share.
A whole one, I.
For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself, and now reigns here
A very very—pajock.
You might have rhymed.
O good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for

a thousand pound. Didst perceive?
Very well, my lord.
Upon the talk of the poisoning?
I did very well note him.
Ah ha! Come, some music! Come, the

recorders!
For if the King like not the comedy,
Why, then, belike he likes it not, perdy.

Come, some music!

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word
with you.

Sir, a whole history.
The King, sir—

Ay, sir, what of him?
Is in his retirement marvelous

distempered.
With drink, sir?

No, my lord, with choler.
Your wisdom should show itself more richer

to signify this to the doctor, for for me to put him to
his purgation would perhaps plunge him into more
choler.

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157 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET

ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

GUILDENSTERN Good my lord, put your discourse into
some frame and start not so wildly from my
affair.

I am tame, sir. Pronounce.
The Queen your mother, in most great

affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.
You are welcome.

Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not
of the right breed. If it shall please you to make me
a wholesome answer, I will do your mother’s
commandment. If not, your pardon and my return
shall be the end of my business.

Sir, I cannot.
What, my lord?

Make you a wholesome answer. My wit’s
diseased. But, sir, such answer as I can make, you
shall command—or, rather, as you say, my mother.
Therefore no more but to the matter. My mother,
you say—

Then thus she says: your behavior hath
struck her into amazement and admiration.

O wonderful son that can so ’stonish a mother!
But is there no sequel at the heels of this
mother’s admiration? Impart.

She desires to speak with you in her
closet ere you go to bed.

We shall obey, were she ten times our mother.
Have you any further trade with us?

My lord, you once did love me.
And do still, by these pickers and stealers.

Good my lord, what is your cause of
distemper? You do surely bar the door upon your
own liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend.

Sir, I lack advancement.
How can that be, when you have the

voice of the King himself for your succession in
Denmark?

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159 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

HAMLET Ay, sir, but “While the grass grows”—the
proverb is something musty.

Enter the Players with recorders.

O, the recorders! Let me see one. He takes a
recorder and turns to Guildenstern. To withdraw
with you: why do you go about to recover the wind
of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?

O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my
love is too unmannerly.

I do not well understand that. Will you play
upon this pipe?

My lord, I cannot.
I pray you.

Believe me, I cannot.
I do beseech you.

I know no touch of it, my lord.
It is as easy as lying. Govern these ventages

with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with
your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent
music. Look you, these are the stops.

But these cannot I command to any
utt’rance of harmony. I have not the skill.

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing
you make of me! You would play upon me, you
would seem to know my stops, you would pluck
out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me
from my lowest note to the top of my compass;
and there is much music, excellent voice, in this
little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood,
do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?
Call me what instrument you will, though you can
fret me, you cannot play upon me.

Enter Polonius.

God bless you, sir.

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161 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
All but Hamlet exit.
He exits.

POLONIUS My lord, the Queen would speak with you,
and presently.

Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in
shape of a camel?

By th’ Mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.
Methinks it is like a weasel.

It is backed like a weasel.
Or like a whale.

Very like a whale.
Then I will come to my mother by and by.

Aside. They fool me to the top of my bent.—I will
come by and by.

I will say so.
“By and by” is easily said. Leave me,

friends.

’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes

out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot

blood
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft, now to my mother.
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom.
Let me be cruel, not unnatural.
I will speak daggers to her, but use none.
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites:
How in my words somever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my soul, consent.

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163 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 3

KING
GUILDENSTERN
ROSENCRANTZ
KING
ROSENCRANTZ
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exit.

Enter King, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you.
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you.
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so near ’s as doth hourly grow
Out of his brows.

We will ourselves provide.
Most holy and religious fear it is
To keep those many many bodies safe
That live and feed upon your Majesty.

The single and peculiar life is bound
With all the strength and armor of the mind
To keep itself from noyance, but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests
The lives of many. The cess of majesty
Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
What’s near it with it; or it is a massy wheel
Fixed on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoined, which, when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.

Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage,
For we will fetters put about this fear,
Which now goes too free-footed.

We will haste us.

Enter Polonius.
Scene 3

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165 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 3

KING

Polonius exits.

POLONIUS
My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet.
Behind the arras I’ll convey myself
To hear the process. I’ll warrant she’ll tax him

home;
And, as you said (and wisely was it said),
’Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
Since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear
The speech of vantage. Fare you well, my liege.
I’ll call upon you ere you go to bed
And tell you what I know.

Thanks, dear my lord.

O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t,
A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will.
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin
And both neglect. What if this cursèd hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood?
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offense?
And what’s in prayer but this twofold force,
To be forestallèd ere we come to fall,
Or pardoned being down? Then I’ll look up.
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? “Forgive me my foul murder”?
That cannot be, since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder:
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain th’ offense?
In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offense’s gilded hand may shove by justice,

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167 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 3

He kneels.

HAMLET

He draws his sword.

He sheathes his sword.

And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above:
There is no shuffling; there the action lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limèd soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay.
Bow, stubborn knees, and heart with strings of steel
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe.
All may be well.

Enter Hamlet.

Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying,
And now I’ll do ’t.

And so he goes to heaven,
And so am I revenged. That would be scanned:
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven.
But in our circumstance and course of thought
’Tis heavy with him. And am I then revenged
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?
No.
Up sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,

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169 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

Hamlet exits.
KING

He exits.
POLONIUS
HAMLET
QUEEN

Polonius hides behind the arras.

HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET

Or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed,
At game, a-swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in ’t—
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damned and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

, rising
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Enter Queen and Polonius.

He will come straight. Look you lay home to him.
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear

with
And that your Grace hath screened and stood

between
Much heat and him. I’ll silence me even here.
Pray you, be round with him.

, within Mother, mother, mother!
I’ll warrant you. Fear me not. Withdraw,

I hear him coming.

Enter Hamlet.

Now, mother, what’s the matter?

Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

Mother, you have my father much offended.

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Scene 4

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171 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN
POLONIUS
HAMLET

He kills Polonius by thrusting a rapier
through the arras.

POLONIUS

QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN

HAMLET
QUEEN

QUEEN
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

Why, how now, Hamlet?

What’s the matter now?

Have you forgot me?
No, by the rood, not so.

You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,
And (would it were not so) you are my mother.

Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.

Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.

What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
Help, ho!

, behind the arras What ho! Help!

How now, a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead.

, behind the arras
O, I am slain!

O me, what hast thou done?
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?

O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

A bloody deed—almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king and marry with his brother.

As kill a king?

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173 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

He pulls Polonius’ body from behind the arras.

QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET

HAMLET Ay, lady, it was my word.

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell.
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune.
Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.
To Queen. Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit

you down,
And let me wring your heart; for so I shall
If it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damnèd custom have not brazed it so
That it be proof and bulwark against sense.

What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?

Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows
As false as dicers’ oaths—O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words! Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.

Ay me, what act
That roars so loud and thunders in the index?

Look here upon this picture and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See what a grace was seated on this brow,
Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,
An eye like Mars’ to threaten and command,
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven -kissing hill,

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175 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

QUEEN
HAMLET

A combination and a form indeed
Where every god did seem to set his seal
To give the world assurance of a man.
This was your husband. Look you now what follows.
Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed
And batten on this moor? Ha! Have you eyes?
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble
And waits upon the judgment; and what judgment
Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense
Is apoplexed; for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled,
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was ’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope. O shame, where is thy blush?
Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax
And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardor gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
And reason panders will.

O Hamlet, speak no more!
Thou turn’st my eyes into my very soul,
And there I see such black and grainèd spots
As will not leave their tinct.

Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty!

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177 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET
QUEEN

QUEEN O, speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet!

A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings,
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
And put it in his pocket—

No more!
A king of shreds and patches—

Enter Ghost.

Save me and hover o’er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards!—What would your gracious

figure?
Alas, he’s mad.

Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’ important acting of your dread command?
O, say!

Do not forget. This visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But look, amazement on thy mother sits.
O, step between her and her fighting soul.
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.

How is it with you, lady?
Alas, how is ’t with you,

That you do bend your eye on vacancy
And with th’ incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,
And, as the sleeping soldiers in th’ alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,

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179 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN

HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET

Ghost exits.
QUEEN

HAMLET

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience! Whereon do you look?

On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares.
His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable. To the Ghost. Do not

look upon me,
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects. Then what I have to do
Will want true color—tears perchance for blood.

To whom do you speak this?
Do you see nothing there?

Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

Nor did you nothing hear?
No, nothing but ourselves.

Why, look you there, look how it steals away!
My father, in his habit as he lived!
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!

This is the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.

Ecstasy?
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test,
And I the matter will reword, which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul
That not your trespass but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven,

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181 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

QUEEN
HAMLET

Pointing to Polonius.

QUEEN

Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come,
And do not spread the compost on the weeds
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue,
For, in the fatness of these pursy times,
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain!

O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half!
Good night. But go not to my uncle’s bed.
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence, the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either … the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night,
And, when you are desirous to be blest,
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord

I do repent; but heaven hath pleased it so
To punish me with this and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him and will answer well
The death I gave him. So, again, good night.
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This bad begins, and worse remains behind.
One word more, good lady.

What shall I do?

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183 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET

HAMLET
Not this by no means that I bid you do:
Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed,
Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses
Or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft. ’Twere good you let him know,
For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?
No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house’s top,
Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep
And break your own neck down.

Be thou assured, if words be made of breath
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.

I must to England, you know that.

Alack,
I had forgot! ’Tis so concluded on.

There’s letters sealed; and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work,
For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard; and ’t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
This man shall set me packing.

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185 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

They exit, Hamlet tugging in Polonius.

I’ll lug the guts into the neighbor room.
Mother, good night indeed. This counselor
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.—
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.—
Good night, mother.

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Folger Shakespeare Library

http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org

http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/

Front
Matter

From the Director of the Folger Shakespeare
Library
Textual Introduction

Synopsis

Characters in the Play

ACT 1

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

ACT 2 Scene 1Scene 2

ACT 3

Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4

ACT 4

Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5

Scene 6

Scene 7

ACT 5 Scene 1Scene 2

Contents

file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#FromTheDirector

file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#TextualIntroduction

file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#synopsis

file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#characters

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file:///Users/rebeccaniles/Downloads/FolgerDigitalTexts_Ham/Ham.html#line-5.2.0

Michael Witmore
Director, Folger Shakespeare Library

It is hard to imagine a world without Shakespeare. Since their
composition four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s plays and poems
have traveled the globe, inviting those who see and read his works to
make them their own.

Readers of the New Folger Editions are part of this ongoing process
of “taking up Shakespeare,” finding our own thoughts and feelings in
language that strikes us as old or unusual and, for that very reason,
new. We still struggle to keep up with a writer who could think a mile
a minute, whose words paint pictures that shift like clouds. These
expertly edited texts are presented to the public as a resource for
study, artistic adaptation, and enjoyment. By making the classic texts
of the New Folger Editions available in electronic form as Folger
Digital Texts, we place a trusted resource in the hands of anyone who
wants them.

The New Folger Editions of Shakespeare’s plays, which are the basis
for the texts realized here in digital form, are special because of their
origin. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is the
single greatest documentary source of Shakespeare’s works. An
unparalleled collection of early modern books, manuscripts, and
artwork connected to Shakespeare, the Folger’s holdings have been
consulted extensively in the preparation of these texts. The Editions
also reflect the expertise gained through the regular performance of
Shakespeare’s works in the Folger’s Elizabethan Theater.

I want to express my deep thanks to editors Barbara Mowat and Paul
Werstine for creating these indispensable editions of Shakespeare’s
works, which incorporate the best of textual scholarship with a
richness of commentary that is both inspired and engaging. Readers
who want to know more about Shakespeare and his plays can follow
the paths these distinguished scholars have tread by visiting the Folger
either in-person or online, where a range of physical and digital
resources exists to supplement the material in these texts. I commend
to you these words, and hope that they inspire.

From the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library

Until now, with the release of the Folger Digital Texts, readers in
search of a free online text of Shakespeare’s plays had to be content
primarily with using the Moby™ Text, which reproduces a late-
nineteenth century version of the plays. What is the difference? Many
ordinary readers assume that there is a single text for the plays: what
Shakespeare wrote. But Shakespeare’s plays were not published the
way modern novels or plays are published today: as a single,
authoritative text. In some cases, the plays have come down to us in
multiple published versions, represented by various Quartos (Qq) and
by the great collection put together by his colleagues in 1623, called
the First Folio (F). There are, for example, three very different
versions of Hamlet, two of King Lear, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet,
and others. Editors choose which version to use as their base text, and
then amend that text with words, lines or speech prefixes from the
other versions that, in their judgment, make for a better or more
accurate text.

Other editorial decisions involve choices about whether an unfamiliar
word could be understood in light of other writings of the period or
whether it should be changed; decisions about words that made it into
Shakespeare’s text by accident through four hundred years of
printings and misprinting; and even decisions based on cultural
preference and taste. When the Moby™ Text was created, for
example, it was deemed “improper” and “indecent” for Miranda to
chastise Caliban for having attempted to rape her. (See The Tempest,
1.2: “Abhorred slave,/Which any print of goodness wilt not
take,/Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee…”). All Shakespeare
editors at the time took the speech away from her and gave it to her
father, Prospero.

The editors of the Moby™ Shakespeare produced their text long
before scholars fully understood the proper grounds on which to make
the thousands of decisions that Shakespeare editors face. The Folger
Library Shakespeare Editions, on which the Folger Digital Texts
depend, make this editorial process as nearly transparent as is
possible, in contrast to older texts, like the Moby™, which hide
editorial interventions. The reader of the Folger Shakespeare knows
where the text has been altered because editorial interventions are
signaled by square brackets (for example, from Othello: “ If she in

Textual Introduction
By Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine

chains of magic were not bound, ”), half-square brackets (for
example, from Henry V: “With blood and sword and fire to win your
right,”), or angle brackets (for example, from Hamlet: “O farewell,
honest soldier. Who hath relieved/you?”). At any point in the text,
you can hover your cursor over a bracket for more information.

Because the Folger Digital Texts are edited in accord with twenty-first
century knowledge about Shakespeare’s texts, the Folger here
provides them to readers, scholars, teachers, actors, directors, and
students, free of charge, confident of their quality as texts of the plays
and pleased to be able to make this contribution to the study and
enjoyment of Shakespeare.

Events before the start of Hamlet set the stage for tragedy. When the
king of Denmark, Prince Hamlet’s father, suddenly dies, Hamlet’s
mother, Gertrude, marries his uncle Claudius, who becomes the new
king.

A spirit who claims to be the ghost of Hamlet’s father describes his
murder at the hands of Claudius and demands that Hamlet avenge the
killing. When the councilor Polonius learns from his daughter,
Ophelia, that Hamlet has visited her in an apparently distracted state,
Polonius attributes the prince’s condition to lovesickness, and he sets
a trap for Hamlet using Ophelia as bait.

To confirm Claudius’s guilt, Hamlet arranges for a play that mimics
the murder; Claudius’s reaction is that of a guilty man. Hamlet, now
free to act, mistakenly kills Polonius, thinking he is Claudius.
Claudius sends Hamlet away as part of a deadly plot.

After Polonius’s death, Ophelia goes mad and later drowns. Hamlet,
who has returned safely to confront the king, agrees to a fencing
match with Ophelia’s brother, Laertes, who secretly poisons his own
rapier. At the match, Claudius prepares poisoned wine for Hamlet,
which Gertrude unknowingly drinks; as she dies, she accuses
Claudius, whom Hamlet kills. Then first Laertes and then Hamlet die,
both victims of Laertes’ rapier.

Synopsis

THE

GHOST

HAMLET, Prince of Denmark, son of the late King Hamlet

and Queen Gertrude
QUEEN GERTRUDE, widow of King Hamlet, now married to Claudius
KING CLAUDIUS, brother to the late King Hamlet

OPHELIA

LAERTES, her brother
POLONIUS, father of Ophelia and Laertes, councillor to King Claudius
REYNALDO, servant to Polonius

HORATIO, Hamlet’s friend and confidant

FORTINBRAS, Prince of Norway
A Captain in Fortinbras’s army

Ambassadors to Denmark from England

Players who take the roles of Prologue, Player King, Player Queen,
and Lucianus in The Murder of Gonzago

Two Messengers
Sailors
Gravedigger
Gravedigger’s companion
Doctor of Divinity

Attendants, Lords, Guards, Musicians, Laertes’s Followers, Soldiers,
Officers

Characters in the Play

courtiers at the Danish court

VOLTEMAND

CORNELIUS

ROSENCRANTZ

GUILDENSTERN

OSRIC

Gentlemen
A Lord

Danish soldiers

FRANCISCO

BARNARDO

MARCELLUS

BARNARDO
FRANCISCO

BARNARDO
FRANCISCO
BARNARDO

FRANCISCO

BARNARDO
FRANCISCO
BARNARDO
FRANCISCO
BARNARDO
FRANCISCO

HORATIO

Enter Barnardo and Francisco, two sentinels.

Who’s there?

Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.
Long live the King!
Barnardo.
He.

You come most carefully upon your hour.

’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.

For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.

Have you had quiet guard?
Not a mouse stirring.
Well, good night.

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

Enter Horatio and Marcellus.

I think I hear them.—Stand ho! Who is there?

Friends to this ground.
7

ACT 1
Scene 1

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9 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

FRANCISCO

MARCELLUS

FRANCISCO

Francisco exits.
MARCELLUS

BARNARDO
HORATIO

BARNARDO

HORATIO

BARNARDO
MARCELLUS

HORATIO
BARNARDO
HORATIO
BARNARDO

MARCELLUS And liegemen to the Dane.
Give you good night.

O farewell, honest soldier. Who hath relieved
you?

Barnardo hath my place. Give you good night.

Holla, Barnardo.
Say, what, is Horatio there?

A piece of him.

Welcome, Horatio.—Welcome, good Marcellus.

What, has this thing appeared again tonight?
I have seen nothing.

Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy
And will not let belief take hold of him
Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us to watch the minutes of this night,
That, if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.

Sit down awhile,
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
What we have two nights seen.

Well, sit we down,
And let us hear Barnardo speak of this.

Last night of all,
When yond same star that’s westward from the pole
Had made his course t’ illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one—

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11 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

MARCELLUS
BARNARDO
MARCELLUS
BARNARDO
HORATIO
BARNARDO

MARCELLUS
HORATIO

MARCELLUS
BARNARDO
HORATIO

Ghost exits.
MARCELLUS

BARNARDO

HORATIO

Enter Ghost.

Peace, break thee off! Look where it comes again.

In the same figure like the King that’s dead.

, to Horatio
Thou art a scholar. Speak to it, Horatio.

Looks he not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.

Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.

It would be spoke to.

Speak to it, Horatio.

What art thou that usurp’st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? By heaven, I charge thee,

speak.

It is offended.
See, it stalks away.

Stay! speak! speak! I charge thee, speak!

’Tis gone and will not answer.

How now, Horatio, you tremble and look pale.
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on ’t?

Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own

eyes.

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13 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HORATIO

MARCELLUS Is it not like the King?
As thou art to thyself.

Such was the very armor he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated.
So frowned he once when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
’Tis strange.

Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

In what particular thought to work I know not,
But in the gross and scope of mine opinion
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon
And foreign mart for implements of war,
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week.
What might be toward that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint laborer with the day?
Who is ’t that can inform me?

That can I.
At least the whisper goes so: our last king,
Whose image even but now appeared to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteemed him)
Did slay this Fortinbras, who by a sealed compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror.

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15 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

BARNARDO
HORATIO

Against the which a moiety competent
Was gagèd by our king, which had returned
To the inheritance of Fortinbras
Had he been vanquisher, as, by the same comart
And carriage of the article designed,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimprovèd mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes
For food and diet to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in ’t; which is no other
(As it doth well appear unto our state)
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost. And this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch, and the chief head
Of this posthaste and rummage in the land.

I think it be no other but e’en so.
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armèd through our watch so like the king
That was and is the question of these wars.

A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of feared events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,

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17 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

It spreads his arms.

The cock crows.

MARCELLUS

HORATIO
BARNARDO
HORATIO

Ghost exits.
MARCELLUS
BARNARDO
HORATIO

Have heaven and Earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.

Enter Ghost.

But soft, behold! Lo, where it comes again!
I’ll cross it though it blast me.—Stay, illusion!

If thou hast any sound or use of voice,
Speak to me.
If there be any good thing to be done
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me.
If thou art privy to thy country’s fate,
Which happily foreknowing may avoid,
O, speak!
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it.

Stay and speak!—Stop it, Marcellus.

Shall I strike it with my partisan?
Do, if it will not stand.

’Tis here.
’Tis here.

’Tis gone.
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence,
For it is as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.

It was about to speak when the cock crew.

And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard

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19 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

MARCELLUS
HORATIO
MARCELLUS

They exit.

The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day, and at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
Th’ extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine, and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.

It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is that time.

So have I heard and do in part believe it.
But look, the morn in russet mantle clad
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.
Break we our watch up, and by my advice
Let us impart what we have seen tonight
Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it
As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

Let’s do ’t, I pray, and I this morning know
Where we shall find him most convenient.

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21 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

KING

Flourish. Enter Claudius, King of Denmark, Gertrude the
Queen, the Council, as Polonius, and his son Laertes,

Hamlet, with others, among them Voltemand and
Cornelius.

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we (as ’twere with a defeated joy,
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole)
Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barred
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along. For all, our thanks.
Now follows that you know. Young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth
Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleaguèd with this dream of his advantage,
He hath not failed to pester us with message
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother—so much for him.
Now for ourself and for this time of meeting.
Thus much the business is: we have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,
Who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears

Scene 2

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23 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

Giving them a paper.

CORNELIUS/VOLTEMAND

KING

Voltemand and Cornelius exit.

LAERTES

KING

Of this his nephew’s purpose, to suppress
His further gait herein, in that the levies,
The lists, and full proportions are all made
Out of his subject; and we here dispatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway,
Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the King more than the scope
Of these dilated articles allow.

Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.

In that and all things will we show our duty.

We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell.

And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?
You told us of some suit. What is ’t, Laertes?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane
And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg,

Laertes,
That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

My dread lord,
Your leave and favor to return to France,
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark
To show my duty in your coronation,
Yet now I must confess, that duty done,
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?

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25 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

KING

HAMLET

KING
HAMLET

QUEEN

HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET

POLONIUS
Hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
By laborsome petition, and at last
Upon his will I sealed my hard consent.
I do beseech you give him leave to go.

Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine,
And thy best graces spend it at thy will.—
But now, my cousin Hamlet and my son—

, aside
A little more than kin and less than kind.

How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun.

Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not forever with thy vailèd lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

Ay, madam, it is common.

If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?

“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 forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed “seem,”
For they are actions that a man might play;

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27 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

KING

But I have that within which passes show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

’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 persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness. ’Tis unmanly grief.
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschooled.
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 today,
“This must be so.” We pray you, throw to earth
This unprevailing woe 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
Do I impart toward you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
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.

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29 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

HAMLET
KING

Flourish.

All but Hamlet exit.

HAMLET

QUEEN
Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.
I pray thee, stay with us. Go not to Wittenberg.

I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply.
Be as ourself in Denmark.—Madam, come.
This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof
No jocund health that Denmark drinks today
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
Respeaking earthly thunder. Come away.

O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on ’t, ah fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. 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; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and Earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on. And yet, within a month
(Let me not think on ’t; frailty, thy name is woman!),
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body,

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31 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

HORATIO
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET

MARCELLUS
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET

Like Niobe, all tears—why she, even she
(O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer!), married with my

uncle,
My father’s brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her gallèd eyes,
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, Marcellus, and Barnardo.

Hail to your Lordship.
I am glad to see you well.

Horatio—or I do forget myself!

The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.

Sir, my good friend. I’ll change that name with you.
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?—
Marcellus?

My good lord.

I am very glad to see you. To Barnardo. Good
even, sir.—

But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

A truant disposition, good my lord.

I would not hear your enemy say so,
Nor shall you do my 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.

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33 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO

HAMLET
HORATIO

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO

HORATIO
My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.

I prithee, do not mock me, fellow student.
I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.

Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.

Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
My father—methinks I see my father.

Where, my lord?

In my mind’s eye, Horatio.

I saw him once. He was a goodly king.

He was a man. Take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.

My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

Saw who?

My lord, the King your father.
The King my father?

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

For God’s love, let me hear!

Two nights together had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch,

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35 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

HAMLET
MARCELLUS

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

ALL
HAMLET

In the dead waste and middle of the night,
Been thus encountered: a figure like your father,
Armed at point exactly, cap-à-pie,
Appears before them and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them. Thrice he walked
By their oppressed and fear-surprisèd eyes
Within his truncheon’s length, whilst they, distilled
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
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 delivered, 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?

My lord, upon the platform where we watch.

Did you not speak to it?
My lord, I did,

But answer made it none. Yet once methought
It lifted up its head 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 vanished from our sight.

’Tis very strange.

As I do live, my honored lord, ’tis true.
And we did think it writ down in our duty
To let you know of it.

Indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
Hold you the watch tonight?

We do, my lord.

Armed, say you?

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37 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

HAMLET
ALL
HAMLET
HORATIO

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO

HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO

BARNARDO/MARCELLUS
HORATIO

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

ALL Armed, my lord.
From top to toe?

My lord, from head to foot.
Then saw you not his face?

O, yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.
What, looked he frowningly?

A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
Pale or red?

Nay, very pale.
And fixed his eyes upon you?

Most constantly.
I would I had been there.
It would have much amazed you.
Very like. Stayed it long?

While one with moderate haste might tell a
hundred.

Longer, longer.

Not when I saw ’t.
His beard was grizzled, no?

It was as I have seen it in his life,
A sable silvered.

I will watch tonight.
Perchance ’twill walk again.

I warrant it will.

If it assume my noble father’s person,
I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
If you have hitherto concealed this sight,

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39 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 3

ALL
HAMLET

All but Hamlet exit.

He exits.

LAERTES

OPHELIA
LAERTES

OPHELIA
LAERTES

Let it be tenable in your silence still;
And whatsomever else shall hap tonight,
Give it an understanding but no tongue.
I will requite your loves. So fare you well.
Upon the platform, ’twixt eleven and twelve,
I’ll visit you.

Our duty to your Honor.

Your loves, as mine to you. Farewell.

My father’s spirit—in arms! All is not well.
I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come!
Till then, sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s

eyes.

Enter Laertes and Ophelia, his sister.

My necessaries are embarked. Farewell.
And, sister, as the winds give benefit
And convey is assistant, do not sleep,
But let me hear from you.

Do you doubt that?

For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor,
Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute,
No more.

No more but so?
Think it no more.

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Scene 3

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41 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 3

OPHELIA

For nature, crescent, does not grow alone
In thews and bulk, but, as this temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
The virtue of his will; but you must fear,
His greatness weighed, his will is not his own,
For he himself is subject to his birth.
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself, for on his choice depends
The safety and the health of this whole state.
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head. Then, if he says he loves

you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed, which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honor may sustain
If with too credent ear you list his songs
Or lose your heart or your chaste treasure open
To his unmastered importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia; fear it, my dear sister,
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough
If she unmask her beauty to the moon.
Virtue itself ’scapes not calumnious strokes.
The canker galls the infants of the spring
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed,
And, in the morn and liquid dew of youth,
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary, then; best safety lies in fear.
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.

I shall the effect of this good lesson keep

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43 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 3

LAERTES

POLONIUS

As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede.

O, fear me not.

Enter Polonius.

I stay too long. But here my father comes.
A double blessing is a double grace.
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.

Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stayed for. There, my blessing with

thee.
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel,
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged courage. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in,
Bear ’t that th’ opposèd may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy (rich, not gaudy),
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

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45 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 3

LAERTES
POLONIUS
LAERTES
OPHELIA

LAERTES Laertes exits.
POLONIUS

OPHELIA
POLONIUS
OPHELIA
POLONIUS

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell. My blessing season this in thee.

Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

The time invests you. Go, your servants tend.

Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well
What I have said to you.

’Tis in my memory locked,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

Farewell.

What is ’t, Ophelia, he hath said to you?

So please you, something touching the Lord
Hamlet.

Marry, well bethought.
’Tis told me he hath very oft of late
Given private time to you, and you yourself
Have of your audience been most free and

bounteous.
If it be so (as so ’tis put on me,
And that in way of caution), I must tell you
You do not understand yourself so clearly
As it behooves my daughter and your honor.
What is between you? Give me up the truth.

He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.

Affection, puh! You speak like a green girl
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his “tenders,” as you call them?

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47 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 3

POLONIUS
OPHELIA
POLONIUS
OPHELIA
POLONIUS

OPHELIA
I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

Marry, I will teach you. Think yourself a baby
That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly,
Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus) you’ll tender me a fool.

My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honorable fashion—

Ay, “fashion” you may call it. Go to, go to!

And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.

Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both
Even in their promise as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time
Be something scanter of your maiden presence.
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parle. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him that he is young,
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds
The better to beguile. This is for all:
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth
Have you so slander any moment leisure

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49 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 4

OPHELIA
They exit.

HAMLET
HORATIO

HAMLET
HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HORATIO

A flourish of trumpets and two pieces goes off.

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to ’t, I charge you. Come your ways.

I shall obey, my lord.

Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.

The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.

It is a nipping and an eager air.

What hour now?
I think it lacks of twelve.

No, it is struck.

Indeed, I heard it not. It then draws near the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

What does this mean, my lord?

The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swagg’ring upspring reels;
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.

Is it a custom?
Ay, marry, is ’t,

But, to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honored in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations.
They clepe us drunkards and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition. And, indeed, it takes

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Scene 4

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51 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 4

HORATIO
HAMLET

From our achievements, though performed at
height,

The pith and marrow of our attribute.
So oft it chances in particular men
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth (wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin),
By the o’ergrowth of some complexion
(Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason),
Or by some habit that too much o’erleavens
The form of plausive manners—that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature’s livery or fortune’s star,
His virtues else, be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo,
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault. The dram of evil
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.

Enter Ghost.

Look, my lord, it comes.

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from

hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou com’st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee “Hamlet,”
“King,” “Father,” “Royal Dane.” O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsèd in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulcher,
Wherein we saw thee quietly interred,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws

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53 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 4

Ghost beckons.
HORATIO

MARCELLUS
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO

To cast thee up again. What may this mean
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel,
Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?

It beckons you to go away with it
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.

Look with what courteous action
It waves you to a more removèd ground.
But do not go with it.

No, by no means.

It will not speak. Then I will follow it.

Do not, my lord.
Why, what should be the fear?

I do not set my life at a pin’s fee.
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again. I’ll follow it.

What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord?
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o’er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? Think of it.
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.

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55 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

MARCELLUS

They hold back Hamlet.
HAMLET
HORATIO

HAMLET

Ghost and Hamlet exit.
HORATIO

MARCELLUS
HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HORATIO

MARCELLUS
They exit.

HAMLET
HAMLET
GHOST

It waves me still.—Go on, I’ll follow thee.

You shall not go, my lord.

Hold off your hands.

Be ruled. You shall not go.
My fate cries out

And makes each petty arture in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.
Still am I called. Unhand me, gentlemen.
By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me!
I say, away!—Go on. I’ll follow thee.

He waxes desperate with imagination.

Let’s follow. ’Tis not fit thus to obey him.

Have after. To what issue will this come?

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Heaven will direct it.

Nay, let’s follow him.

Enter Ghost and Hamlet.

Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak. I’ll go no

further.

Mark me.

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57 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

GHOST

HAMLET
GHOST

HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET

HAMLET I will.
My hour is almost come

When I to sulf’rous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.

Alas, poor ghost!

Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.

Speak. I am bound to hear.

So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.
What?

I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night
And for the day confined to fast in fires
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their

spheres,
Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand an end,
Like quills upon the fearful porpentine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love—

O God!

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
Murder?

Murder most foul, as in the best it is,
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

Haste me to know ’t, that I, with wings as swift

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59 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

GHOST
HAMLET
GHOST

As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.

I find thee apt;
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear.
’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forgèd process of my death
Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father’s life
Now wears his crown.

O, my prophetic soul! My uncle!

Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts—
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.
O Hamlet, what a falling off was there!
From me, whose love was of that dignity
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage, and to decline
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine.
But virtue, as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So, lust, though to a radiant angel linked,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed
And prey on garbage.
But soft, methinks I scent the morning air.
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursèd hebona in a vial
And in the porches of my ears did pour

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61 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

He exits.
HAMLET

The leprous distilment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigor it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine,
And a most instant tetter barked about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust
All my smooth body.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand
Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched,
Cut off, even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,
No reck’ning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
O horrible, O horrible, most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damnèd incest.
But, howsomever thou pursues this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once.
The glowworm shows the matin to be near
And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me.

O all you host of heaven! O Earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell? O fie! Hold, hold, my heart,
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory

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63 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

He writes.

HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HORATIO
HAMLET
MARCELLUS
HAMLET
MARCELLUS

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HAMLET

I’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter. Yes, by heaven!
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd

villain!

My tables—meet it is I set it down
That one may smile and smile and be a villain.
At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark.

So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word.
It is “adieu, adieu, remember me.”
I have sworn ’t.

Enter Horatio and Marcellus.

My lord, my lord!
Lord Hamlet.

Heavens secure him!
So be it.

Illo, ho, ho, my lord!
Hillo, ho, ho, boy! Come, bird, come!

How is ’t, my noble lord?

What news, my lord?
O, wonderful!

Good my lord, tell it.
No, you will reveal it.

Not I, my lord, by heaven.
Nor I, my lord.

How say you, then? Would heart of man once think

it?
But you’ll be secret?

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65 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

HORATIO/MARCELLUS
HAMLET
HORATIO
MARCELLUS
HAMLET

HORATIO/MARCELLUS Ay, by heaven, my lord.

There’s never a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he’s an arrant knave.

There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this.

Why, right, you are in the right.
And so, without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part,
You, as your business and desire shall point you
(For every man hath business and desire,
Such as it is), and for my own poor part,
I will go pray.

These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.

I am sorry they offend you, heartily;
Yes, faith, heartily.

There’s no offense, my lord.

Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
And much offense, too. Touching this vision here,
It is an honest ghost—that let me tell you.
For your desire to know what is between us,
O’ermaster ’t as you may. And now, good friends,
As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,
Give me one poor request.

What is ’t, my lord? We will.

Never make known what you have seen tonight.
My lord, we will not.

Nay, but swear ’t.
In faith, my lord, not I.

Nor I, my lord, in faith.

Upon my sword.

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67 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

HAMLET

GHOST
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

MARCELLUS We have sworn, my lord, already.
Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.

cries under the stage Swear.

Ha, ha, boy, sayst thou so? Art thou there,
truepenny?

Come on, you hear this fellow in the cellarage.
Consent to swear.

Propose the oath, my lord.

Never to speak of this that you have seen,
Swear by my sword.

, beneath Swear.

Hic et ubique? Then we’ll shift our ground.
Come hither, gentlemen,
And lay your hands again upon my sword.
Swear by my sword
Never to speak of this that you have heard.

, beneath Swear by his sword.

Well said, old mole. Canst work i’ th’ earth so fast?—
A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good

friends.

O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.

And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come.
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd some’er I bear myself
(As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on)
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumbered thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,

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69 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 5

GHOST
HAMLET
They exit.

As “Well, well, we know,” or “We could an if we
would,”

Or “If we list to speak,” or “There be an if they
might,”

Or such ambiguous giving-out, to note
That you know aught of me—this do swear,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you.

, beneath Swear.

Rest, rest, perturbèd spirit.—So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you,
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do t’ express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together,
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let’s go together.

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POLONIUS

REYNALDO

POLONIUS

REYNALDO
POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS

Enter old Polonius with his man Reynaldo.

Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.

I will, my lord.

You shall do marvelous wisely, good Reynaldo,
Before you visit him, to make inquire
Of his behavior.

My lord, I did intend it.

Marry, well said, very well said. Look you, sir,
Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris;
And how, and who, what means, and where they

keep,
What company, at what expense; and finding
By this encompassment and drift of question
That they do know my son, come you more nearer
Than your particular demands will touch it.
Take you, as ’twere, some distant knowledge of him,
As thus: “I know his father and his friends
And, in part, him.” Do you mark this, Reynaldo?

Ay, very well, my lord.

“And, in part, him, but,” you may say, “not well.
73

ACT 2

Scene 1

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75 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 1

REYNALDO
POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS

REYNALDO

POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS

But if ’t be he I mean, he’s very wild,
Addicted so and so.” And there put on him
What forgeries you please—marry, none so rank
As may dishonor him, take heed of that,
But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips
As are companions noted and most known
To youth and liberty.

As gaming, my lord.
Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing,

Quarreling, drabbing—you may go so far.
My lord, that would dishonor him.

Faith, no, as you may season it in the charge.
You must not put another scandal on him
That he is open to incontinency;
That’s not my meaning. But breathe his faults so

quaintly
That they may seem the taints of liberty,
The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,
A savageness in unreclaimèd blood,
Of general assault.

But, my good lord—
Wherefore should you do this?
Ay, my lord, I would know that.

Marry, sir, here’s my drift,
And I believe it is a fetch of wit.
You, laying these slight sullies on my son,
As ’twere a thing a little soiled i’ th’ working,
Mark you, your party in converse, him you would

sound,
Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes
The youth you breathe of guilty, be assured
He closes with you in this consequence:
“Good sir,” or so, or “friend,” or “gentleman,”
According to the phrase or the addition
Of man and country—

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77 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 1

POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS

REYNALDO
POLONIUS
REYNALDO
POLONIUS

Reynaldo exits.

REYNALDO Very good, my lord.
And then, sir, does he this, he does—what

was I about to say? By the Mass, I was about to say
something. Where did I leave?

At “closes in the consequence,” at “friend,
or so,” and “gentleman.”

At “closes in the consequence”—ay, marry—
He closes thus: “I know the gentleman.
I saw him yesterday,” or “th’ other day”
(Or then, or then, with such or such), “and as you

say,
There was he gaming, there o’ertook in ’s rouse,
There falling out at tennis”; or perchance
“I saw him enter such a house of sale”—
Videlicet, a brothel—or so forth. See you now
Your bait of falsehood take this carp of truth;
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out.
So by my former lecture and advice
Shall you my son. You have me, have you not?

My lord, I have.

God be wi’ you. Fare you well.

Good my lord.

Observe his inclination in yourself.

I shall, my lord.
And let him ply his music.
Well, my lord.

Farewell.

Enter Ophelia.

How now, Ophelia, what’s the matter?

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79 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 1

POLONIUS
OPHELIA

POLONIUS
OPHELIA
POLONIUS
OPHELIA
POLONIUS

OPHELIA
O, my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted!

With what, i’ th’ name of God?

My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,
No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,
Ungartered, and down-gyvèd to his ankle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosèd out of hell
To speak of horrors—he comes before me.

Mad for thy love?

My lord, I do not know,
But truly I do fear it.

What said he?

He took me by the wrist and held me hard.
Then goes he to the length of all his arm,
And, with his other hand thus o’er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face
As he would draw it. Long stayed he so.
At last, a little shaking of mine arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk
And end his being. That done, he lets me go,
And, with his head over his shoulder turned,
He seemed to find his way without his eyes,
For out o’ doors he went without their helps
And to the last bended their light on me.

Come, go with me. I will go seek the King.
This is the very ecstasy of love,
Whose violent property fordoes itself

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81 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

OPHELIA
POLONIUS
They exit.
KING

And leads the will to desperate undertakings
As oft as any passions under heaven
That does afflict our natures. I am sorry.
What, have you given him any hard words of late?

No, my good lord, but as you did command
I did repel his letters and denied
His access to me.

That hath made him mad.
I am sorry that with better heed and judgment
I had not coted him. I feared he did but trifle
And meant to wrack thee. But beshrew my jealousy!
By heaven, it is as proper to our age
To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
As it is common for the younger sort
To lack discretion. Come, go we to the King.
This must be known, which, being kept close, might

move
More grief to hide than hate to utter love.
Come.

Flourish. Enter King and Queen, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern and Attendants.

Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Moreover that we much did long to see you,
The need we have to use you did provoke
Our hasty sending. Something have you heard
Of Hamlet’s transformation, so call it,
Sith nor th’ exterior nor the inward man
Resembles that it was. What it should be,
More than his father’s death, that thus hath put him

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Scene 2

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83 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

QUEEN
ROSENCRANTZ
GUILDENSTERN
KING
QUEEN
GUILDENSTERN

So much from th’ understanding of himself
I cannot dream of. I entreat you both
That, being of so young days brought up with him
And sith so neighbored to his youth and havior,
That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court
Some little time, so by your companies
To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather
So much as from occasion you may glean,
Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus
That, opened, lies within our remedy.

Good gentlemen, he hath much talked of you,
And sure I am two men there is not living
To whom he more adheres. If it will please you
To show us so much gentry and goodwill
As to expend your time with us awhile
For the supply and profit of our hope,
Your visitation shall receive such thanks
As fits a king’s remembrance.

Both your Majesties
Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,
Put your dread pleasures more into command
Than to entreaty.

But we both obey,
And here give up ourselves in the full bent
To lay our service freely at your feet,
To be commanded.

Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.
And I beseech you instantly to visit
My too much changèd son.—Go, some of you,
And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.

Heavens make our presence and our practices
Pleasant and helpful to him!

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85 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exit
with some Attendants.

POLONIUS
KING
POLONIUS
KING
POLONIUS
KING

Polonius exits.

QUEEN
KING

QUEEN Ay, amen!

Enter Polonius.

Th’ ambassadors from Norway, my good lord,
Are joyfully returned.

Thou still hast been the father of good news.

Have I, my lord? I assure my good liege
I hold my duty as I hold my soul,
Both to my God and to my gracious king,
And I do think, or else this brain of mine
Hunts not the trail of policy so sure
As it hath used to do, that I have found
The very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy.

O, speak of that! That do I long to hear.

Give first admittance to th’ ambassadors.
My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.

Thyself do grace to them and bring them in.

He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found
The head and source of all your son’s distemper.

I doubt it is no other but the main—
His father’s death and our o’erhasty marriage.

Well, we shall sift him.

Enter Ambassadors Voltemand and Cornelius with
Polonius.

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87 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

VOLTEMAND

He gives a paper.

KING

Voltemand and Cornelius exit.
POLONIUS

Welcome, my good friends.
Say, Voltemand, what from our brother Norway?

Most fair return of greetings and desires.
Upon our first, he sent out to suppress
His nephew’s levies, which to him appeared
To be a preparation ’gainst the Polack,
But, better looked into, he truly found
It was against your Highness. Whereat, grieved
That so his sickness, age, and impotence
Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests
On Fortinbras, which he, in brief, obeys,
Receives rebuke from Norway, and, in fine,
Makes vow before his uncle never more
To give th’ assay of arms against your Majesty.
Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,
Gives him three-score thousand crowns in annual

fee
And his commission to employ those soldiers,
So levied as before, against the Polack,
With an entreaty, herein further shown,

That it might please you to give quiet pass
Through your dominions for this enterprise,
On such regards of safety and allowance
As therein are set down.

It likes us well,
And, at our more considered time, we’ll read,
Answer, and think upon this business.
Meantime, we thank you for your well-took labor.
Go to your rest. At night we’ll feast together.
Most welcome home!

This business is well ended.
My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,

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89 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

QUEEN
POLONIUS

QUEEN
POLONIUS

Why day is day, night night, and time is time
Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
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.

More matter with less art.

Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
That he’s 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.

He reads. To the celestial, and my soul’s idol, the
most beautified Ophelia—
That’s an ill phrase, a vile phrase; “beautified” is a
vile phrase. But you shall hear. Thus: He reads.
In her excellent white bosom, these, etc.—

Came this from Hamlet to her?

Good madam, stay awhile. I will be faithful.
He reads the letter.

Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.

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91 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst
this machine is to him, Hamlet.

KING
POLONIUS

KING

POLONIUS
KING

O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers. I have not
art to reckon my groans, but that I love thee best, O
most best, believe it. Adieu.

This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me,
And more above, hath his solicitings,
As they fell out by time, by means, and place,
All given to mine ear.

But how hath she received his love?
What do you think of me?

As of a man faithful and honorable.

I would fain prove so. But what might you think,
When I had seen this hot love on the wing
(As I perceived 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 played the desk or table-book
Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb,
Or looked upon this love with idle sight?
What might you think? No, I went round to work,
And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:
“Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star.
This must not be.” And then I prescripts 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, repelled (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.

, to Queen Do you think ’tis this?

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93 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

POLONIUS
KING
POLONIUS
KING
POLONIUS
QUEEN
POLONIUS
KING
QUEEN
POLONIUS

King and Queen exit with Attendants.

HAMLET

QUEEN It may be, very like.

Hath there been such a time (I would fain know
that)

That I have positively said “’Tis so,”
When it proved otherwise?

Not that I know.

Take this from this, if this be otherwise.
If circumstances lead me, I will find
Where truth is hid, though it were hid, indeed,
Within the center.

How may we try it further?

You know sometimes he walks four hours together
Here in the lobby.

So he does indeed.

At such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him.
To the King. Be you and I behind an arras then.
Mark the encounter. If he love her not,
And be not from his reason fall’n thereon,
Let me be no assistant for a state,
But keep a farm and carters.

We will try it.

Enter Hamlet reading on a book.

But look where sadly the poor wretch comes

reading.

Away, I do beseech you both, away.
I’ll board him presently. O, give me leave.

How does my good Lord Hamlet?
Well, God-a-mercy.

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95 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

HAMLET

POLONIUS
HAMLET

POLONIUS
HAMLET

POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS

HAMLET
POLONIUS

HAMLET

POLONIUS
HAMLET

POLONIUS

POLONIUS Do you know me, my lord?
Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.

Not I, my lord.
Then I would you were so honest a man.

Honest, my lord?
Ay, sir. To be honest, as this world goes, is to

be one man picked out of ten thousand.
That’s very true, my lord.

For if the sun breed maggots in a dead
dog, being a good kissing carrion—Have you a
daughter?

I have, my lord.
Let her not walk i’ th’ sun. Conception is a

blessing, but, as your daughter may conceive,
friend, look to ’t.

, aside How say you by that? Still harping on
my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first; he said I
was a fishmonger. He is far gone. And truly, in my
youth, I suffered much extremity for love, very near
this. I’ll speak to him again.—What do you read, my
lord?

Words, words, words.
What is the matter, my lord?

Between who?
I mean the matter that you read, my lord.

Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here
that old men have gray 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 which, sir,
though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I
hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for
yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am, if, like a crab,
you could go backward.

, aside Though this be madness, yet there is
method in ’t.—Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

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97 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET

POLONIUS
ROSENCRANTZ

Polonius exits.
GUILDENSTERN

ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET

ROSENCRANTZ
GUILDENSTERN

HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

HAMLET

GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

ROSENCRANTZ

HAMLET Into my grave?
Indeed, that’s out of the air. Aside. How

pregnant sometimes his replies are! A happiness
that often madness hits on, which reason and
sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I
will leave him and suddenly contrive the means of
meeting between him and my daughter.—My lord,
I will take my leave of you.

You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I
will more willingly part withal—except my life,
except my life, except my life.

Fare you well, my lord.
, aside These tedious old fools.

Enter Guildenstern and Rosencrantz.

You go to seek the Lord Hamlet. There he is.
, to Polonius God save you, sir.

My honored lord.
My most dear lord.

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

As the indifferent children of the earth.

Happy in that we are not overhappy.
On Fortune’s cap, we are not the very button.

Nor the soles of her shoe?
Neither, my lord.

Then you live about her waist, or in the
middle of her favors?

Faith, her privates we.
In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true!

She is a strumpet. What news?
None, my lord, but that the world’s

grown honest.

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99 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

GUILDENSTERN

HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET

ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET

ROSENCRANTZ/GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

ROSENCRANTZ

HAMLET Then is doomsday 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?

Prison, my lord?
Denmark’s a prison.

Then is the world one.
A goodly one, in which there are many confines,

wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’
th’ worst.

We think not so, my lord.
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.

Why, then, your ambition makes it one.
’Tis too narrow for your mind.

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.

Which dreams, indeed, are ambition,
for the very substance of the ambitious is merely
the shadow of a dream.

A dream itself is but a shadow.
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy

and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs

and outstretched heroes the beggars’ shadows.
Shall we to th’ court? For, by my fay, I cannot
reason.

We’ll wait upon you.
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?

To visit you, my lord, no other occasion.

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101 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

HAMLET Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks;
but I thank you, and sure, dear friends, my thanks
are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for?
Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation?
Come, come, deal justly with me. Come, come; nay,
speak.

What should we say, my lord?
Anything but to th’ purpose. You were sent

for, and there is a kind of confession in your looks
which your modesties have not craft enough to
color. I know the good king and queen have sent for
you.

To what end, my lord?
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 can charge you withal: be even and direct
with me whether you were sent for or no.

, to Guildenstern What say you?
, aside Nay, then, I have an eye of you.—If

you love me, hold not off.
My lord, we were sent for.

I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the
King and Queen molt no feather. I have of late, but
wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone 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
firmament, this majestical roof, fretted
with golden fire—why, it appeareth nothing to me
but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in
reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving

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103 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

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, no, nor women neither, though by
your smiling you seem to say so.

My lord, there was no such stuff in my
thoughts.

Why did you laugh, then, when I said “man
delights not me”?

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.

He that plays the king shall be welcome—his
Majesty shall have tribute on me. The adventurous
knight shall use his foil and target, the lover shall
not sigh gratis, the humorous man shall end his
part in peace, the clown shall make those laugh
whose lungs are tickle o’ th’ sear, and the lady
shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall
halt for ’t. What players are they?

Even those you were wont to take such
delight in, the tragedians of the city.

How chances it they travel? Their residence,
both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.

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

Do they hold the same estimation they did
when I was in the city? Are they so followed?

No, indeed are they not.
How comes it? Do they grow rusty?

Nay, their endeavor keeps in the wonted
pace. But there is, sir, an aerie of children, little
eyases, that cry out on the top of question and are
most tyrannically clapped for ’t. These are now the

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105 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN

HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET

A flourish for the Players.
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

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.

What, are they children? Who maintains ’em?
How are they escoted? Will they pursue 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?

Faith, there has been much to-do on
both sides, and the nation holds it no sin to tar
them to controversy. There was for a while no
money bid for argument unless the poet and the
player went to cuffs in the question.

Is ’t possible?
O, there has been much throwing

about of brains.
Do the boys carry it away?

Ay, that they do, my lord—Hercules
and his load too.

It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of
Denmark, and those that would make mouths at
him while my father lived give twenty, forty, fifty,
a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little.
’Sblood, there is something in this more than natural,
if philosophy could find it out.

There are the players.
Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore.

Your hands, come then. Th’ appurtenance of welcome
is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply
with you in this garb, lest my extent to the players,
which, I tell you, must show fairly outwards, should
more appear like entertainment than yours. You are
welcome. But my uncle-father and aunt-mother are
deceived.

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107 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET

POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS

HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET

GUILDENSTERN In what, my dear lord?
I am but mad north-north-west. When the

wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Enter Polonius.

Well be with you, gentlemen.
Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too—at

each ear a hearer! That great baby you see there is
not yet out of his swaddling clouts.

Haply he is the second time come to
them, for they say an old man is twice a child.

I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the
players; mark it.—You say right, sir, a Monday
morning, ’twas then indeed.

My lord, I have news to tell you.
My lord, I have news to tell you: when Roscius

was an actor in Rome—
The actors are come hither, my lord.

Buzz, buzz.
Upon my honor—

Then came each actor on his ass.
The best actors in the world, either for

tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical,
tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or
poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor
Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty,
these are the only men.

O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure
hadst thou!

What a treasure had he, my lord?
Why,

One fair daughter, and no more,
The which he lovèd passing well.

, aside Still on my daughter.
Am I not i’ th’ right, old Jephthah?

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109 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET

FIRST

PLAYER

HAMLET

POLONIUS If you call me “Jephthah,” my lord: I have a
daughter that I love passing well.

Nay, that follows not.
What follows then, my lord?

Why,
As by lot, God wot

and then, you know,
It came to pass, as most like it was—

the first row of the pious chanson will show you
more, for look where my abridgment comes.

Enter the Players.

You are welcome, masters; welcome all.—I am glad
to see thee well.—Welcome, good friends.—O my
old friend! Why, thy face is valanced 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 when I saw you last, by
the altitude of a chopine. Pray God your voice, like a
piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the
ring. Masters, you are all welcome. We’ll e’en to ’t
like French falconers, fly at anything we see. We’ll
have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your
quality. Come, a passionate speech.

What speech, my good lord?
I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it

was never acted, or, if it was, not above once; for
the play, I remember, pleased not the million:
’twas caviary to the general. But it was (as I
received it, and others whose judgments in such
matters cried in the top of mine) an excellent play,
well digested in the scenes, set down with as much
modesty as cunning. I remember one said there
were no sallets in the lines to make the matter
savory, nor no matter in the phrase that might indict
the author of affection, but called it an honest

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111 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

POLONIUS
FIRST PLAYER

method, as wholesome as sweet and, by very much,
more handsome than fine. One speech in ’t I
chiefly loved. ’Twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido, and
thereabout of it especially when he speaks of
Priam’s slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at
this line—let me see, let me see:

The rugged Pyrrhus, like th’ Hyrcanian beast—
’tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus:

The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couchèd in th’ ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smeared
With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot,
Now is he total gules, horridly tricked
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Baked and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and a damnèd light
To their lord’s murder. Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o’ersizèd with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.

So, proceed you.
’Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good

accent and good discretion.
Anon he finds him

Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command. Unequal matched,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
Th’ unnervèd father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus’ ear. For lo, his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seemed i’ th’ air to stick.

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113 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

POLONIUS
HAMLET
FIRST PLAYER
HAMLET
POLONIUS
FIRST PLAYER

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,
Arousèd vengeance sets him new a-work,
And never did the Cyclops’ hammers fall
On Mars’s armor, forged for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.
Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods
In general synod take away her power,
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven
As low as to the fiends!

This is too long.
It shall to the barber’s with your beard.—

Prithee say on. He’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or
he sleeps. Say on; come to Hecuba.

But who, ah woe, had seen the moblèd queen—

“The moblèd queen”?
That’s good. “ Moblèd queen” is good.

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’erteemèd loins
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up—
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped,
’Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have

pronounced.
But if the gods themselves did see her then

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115 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET

FIRST

PLAYER
HAMLET

FIRST PLAYER
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs,
The instant burst of clamor that she made
(Unless things mortal move them not at all)
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven
And passion in the gods.

Look whe’er he has not turned his color and
has tears in ’s eyes. Prithee, no more.

’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.

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

God’s bodykins, man, much better! Use every
man after his desert and who shall ’scape
whipping? Use them after your own honor and
dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in
your bounty. Take them in.

Come, sirs.
Follow him, friends. We’ll hear a play

tomorrow. As Polonius and Players exit, Hamlet speaks to
the First Player. Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can
you play “The Murder of Gonzago”?

Ay, my lord.

We’ll ha ’t tomorrow night. You could, for a

need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen
lines, which I would set down and insert in ’t,
could you not?

Ay, my lord.
Very well. Follow that lord—and look you

mock him not. First Player exits. My good friends,
I’ll leave you till night. You are welcome to Elsinore.

Good my lord.

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117 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exit.

HAMLET
Ay, so, good-bye to 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 wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his 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 appall 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 damned 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’ th’ throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha! ’Swounds, I should take it! For it cannot be
But I am pigeon-livered 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!

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119 Hamlet ACT 2. SC. 2

He exits.

O vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
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 stallion! Fie upon ’t! Foh!
About, my brains!—Hum, 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 proclaimed 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
T’ 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.

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KING
ROSENCRANTZ
GUILDENSTERN

QUEEN
ROSENCRANTZ

GUILDENSTERN

ROSENCRANTZ
QUEEN
ROSENCRANTZ

Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz,
Guildenstern, and Lords.

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?

He does confess he feels himself distracted,
But from what cause he will by no means speak.

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.

Did he receive you well?
Most like a gentleman.

But with much forcing of his disposition.

Niggard of question, but of our demands
Most free in his reply.

Did you assay him to any pastime?

Madam, it so fell out that certain players
123

ACT 3
Scene 1

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125 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 1

POLONIUS
KING

ROSENCRANTZ
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

and Lords exit.
KING

QUEEN
OPHELIA

Queen exits.
POLONIUS

We o’erraught on the way. Of these we told him,
And there did seem in him a kind of joy
To hear of it. They are here about the court,
And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.

’Tis most true,
And he beseeched me to entreat your Majesties
To hear and see the matter.

With all my heart, and it doth much content me
To hear him so inclined.
Good gentlemen, give him a further edge
And drive his purpose into these delights.

We shall, my lord.

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 behaved,
If ’t be th’ affliction of his love or no
That thus he suffers for.

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 honors.

Madam, I wish it may.

Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please you,

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127 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 1

KING
POLONIUS

They withdraw.

HAMLET

We will bestow ourselves. To Ophelia. Read on this
book,

That show of such an exercise may color
Your loneliness. —We are oft to blame in this
(’Tis too much proved), that with devotion’s visage
And pious action we do sugar o’er
The devil himself.

, aside O, ’tis too true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my

conscience.
The harlot’s cheek beautied with plast’ring art
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word.
O heavy burden!

I hear him coming. Let’s withdraw, my lord.

Enter Hamlet.

To be or not to be—that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. 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,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

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129 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 1

OPHELIA

HAMLET
OPHELIA

HAMLET
OPHELIA

The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ 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 undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler 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 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 remembered.

Good my lord,
How does your Honor for this many a day?

I humbly thank you, well.

My lord, I have remembrances of yours
That I have longèd long to redeliver.
I pray you now receive them.

No, not I. I never gave you aught.

My honored lord, you know right well you did,
And with them words of so sweet breath composed
As made the things more rich. Their perfume

lost,
Take these again, for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.

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131 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 1

OPHELIA
HAMLET

OPHELIA
HAMLET

OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET

HAMLET Ha, ha, are you honest?
My lord?
Are you fair?
What means your Lordship?
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty

should admit no discourse to your beauty.
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce

than with honesty?
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 believed 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 offenses
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?

At home, my lord.
Let the doors be shut upon him that he may

play the fool nowhere but in ’s own house. Farewell.
O, 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

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133 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 1

OPHELIA
HAMLET

He exits.
OPHELIA

KING

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 too, 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 your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no
more on ’t. It hath made me mad. I say we will have
no more marriage. Those that are married already,
all but one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.
To a nunnery, go.

O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue,

sword,
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mold of form,
Th’ observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his musicked vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh;
That unmatched form and stature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me
T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

, advancing with Polonius
Love? His affections do not that way tend;
Nor what he spake, though it lacked 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

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135 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

POLONIUS
KING
They exit.
HAMLET

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
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 unwatched go.

Enter Hamlet and three of the Players.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced
it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if 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. O,

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137 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

PLAYER
HAMLET
PLAYER
HAMLET

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’erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods
Herod. Pray you, avoid it.

I warrant your Honor.
Be not too tame neither, but let your own

discretion be 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 anything 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 own 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 unskillful laugh,
cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure
of the which one must in your allowance o’erweigh
a whole theater of others. O, 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 reformed that indifferently
with us, sir.

O, 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 meantime some necessary

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139 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

Players exit.

POLONIUS
HAMLET Polonius exits.

ROSENCRANTZ They exit.
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

question of the play be then to be considered.
That’s villainous and shows a most pitiful ambition
in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.

Enter Polonius, Guildenstern, and Rosencrantz.

How now, my lord, will the King hear this piece of
work?

And the Queen too, and that presently.
Bid the players make haste.

Will you two help to hasten them?
Ay, my lord.

What ho, Horatio!

Enter Horatio.

Here, sweet lord, at your service.

Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man
As e’er my conversation coped withal.

O, my dear lord—

Nay, do not think I flatter,
For what advancement may I hope from thee
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be

flattered?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath sealed thee for herself. For thou hast been
As one in suffering all that suffers nothing,
A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hast ta’en with equal thanks; and blessed are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well

commeddled

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141 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

HORATIO

Sound a flourish.
HAMLET

KING
HAMLET

KING
HAMLET

That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.—Something too much of this.—
There is a play tonight before the King.
One scene of it comes near the circumstance
Which I have told thee of my father’s death.
I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe my uncle. If his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damnèd ghost that we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan’s stithy. Give him heedful note,
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
And, after, we will both our judgments join
In censure of his seeming.

Well, my lord.
If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing
And ’scape detecting , I will pay the theft.

They are coming to the play. I must be idle.
Get you a place.

Enter Trumpets and Kettle Drums. Enter King, Queen,
Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and other

Lords attendant with the King’s guard carrying
torches.

How fares our cousin Hamlet?
Excellent, i’ faith, of the chameleon’s dish. I

eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed
capons so.

I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. These
words are not mine.

No, nor mine now. To Polonius. My lord, you
played once i’ th’ university, you say?

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143 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

QUEEN
HAMLET

Hamlet takes a place near Ophelia.
POLONIUS
HAMLET
OPHELIA

HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET

OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET

OPHELIA
HAMLET

POLONIUS That did I, my lord, and was accounted a
good actor.

What did you enact?
I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i’ th’

Capitol. Brutus killed me.
It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a

calf there.—Be the players ready?
Ay, my lord. They stay upon your

patience.
Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

No, good mother. Here’s metal more
attractive.

, to the King Oh, ho! Do you mark that?
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
No, my lord.
I mean, my head upon your lap?

Ay, my lord.
Do you think I meant country matters?
I think nothing, my lord.
That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’

legs.
What is, my lord?
Nothing.
You are merry, my lord.
Who, I?
Ay, my lord.
O God, your only jig-maker. What should a

man do but be merry? For look you how cheerfully
my mother looks, and my father died within ’s two
hours.

Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.
So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black,

for I’ll have a suit of sables. O heavens, die two
months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there’s
hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half
a year. But, by ’r Lady, he must build churches, then,

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145 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

The trumpets sounds. Dumb show follows.

Players exit.
OPHELIA
HAMLET

OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA

PROLOGUE

He exits.

or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the
hobby-horse, whose epitaph is “For oh, for oh, the
hobby-horse is forgot.”

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. He lies him down upon a bank of
flowers. She, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon
comes in another man, takes off his crown, kisses it, pours

poison in the sleeper’s ears, and leaves him. The Queen
returns, finds the King dead, makes passionate action. The
poisoner with some three or four come in again, seem to
condole with her. The dead body is carried away. The
poisoner woos the Queen with gifts. She seems harsh
awhile but in the end accepts his love.

What means this, my lord?
Marry, this is miching mallecho. It means

mischief.
Belike this show imports the argument of the

play.

Enter Prologue.

We shall know by this fellow. The players
cannot keep counsel; they’ll tell all.

Will he tell us what this show meant?
Ay, or any show that you will show him. Be

not you ashamed to show, he’ll not shame to tell you
what it means.

You are naught, you are naught. I’ll mark the
play.

For us and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently.

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147 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

OPHELIA
HAMLET

PLAYER KING

PLAYER QUEEN

PLAYER KING
PLAYER QUEEN

HAMLET Is this a prologue or the posy of a ring?
’Tis brief, my lord.
As woman’s love.

Enter the Player King and Queen.

Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round
Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbèd ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

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.
Now what my love is, proof hath made you know,
And, as my love is sized, my fear is so:
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too.
My operant powers their functions leave to do.
And thou shall live in this fair world behind,
Honored, beloved; and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou—

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 killed the first.

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149 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

PLAYER QUEEN
PLAYER KING

HAMLET That’s wormwood!

The instances that second marriage move
Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.
A second time I kill my husband dead
When second husband kisses me in bed.

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, the fruit unripe, sticks on the tree
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 change;
For ’tis a question left us yet to prove
Whether love lead fortune or else fortune love.
The great man down, you mark his favorite flies;
The poor, advanced, 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 and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
So think thou wilt no second husband wed,
But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

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151 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

HAMLET
PLAYER KING

Sleeps.
PLAYER QUEEN

Player Queen exits.

HAMLET
QUEEN

HAMLET
KING

HAMLET
KING
HAMLET
OPHELIA

PLAYER QUEEN
Nor Earth to me give food, nor 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.

If she should break it now!

’Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile.
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.

Sleep rock thy brain,
And never come mischance between us twain.

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

O, but she’ll keep her word.
Have you heard the argument? Is there no

offense in ’t?
No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest. No

offense i’ th’ world.
What do you call the play?

“The Mousetrap.” 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;
our withers are unwrung.

Enter Lucianus.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.
You are as good as a chorus, my lord.

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153 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

OPHELIA
HAMLET
OPHELIA
HAMLET

LUCIANUS

Pours the poison in his ears.
HAMLET

Claudius rises.
OPHELIA

HAMLET
QUEEN
POLONIUS
KING
POLONIUS

All but Hamlet and Horatio exit.
HAMLET

HAMLET I could interpret between you and your love,
if I could see the puppets dallying.

You are keen, my lord, you are keen.
It would cost you a groaning to take off mine

edge.
Still better and worse.
So you mis-take your husbands.—Begin,

murderer. Pox, leave thy damnable faces and
begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for
revenge.

Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time

agreeing,
Confederate season, else no creature seeing,
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
Thy natural magic and dire property
On wholesome life usurp immediately.

He poisons him i’ th’ garden for his estate. His
name’s Gonzago. The story is extant and written in
very choice Italian. You shall see anon how the
murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.

The King rises.
What, frighted with false fire?

How fares my lord?
Give o’er the play.

Give me some light. Away!
Lights, lights, lights!

Why, let the strucken deer go weep,
The hart ungallèd play.
For some must watch, while some must sleep:
Thus runs the world away.

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155 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

GUILDENSTERN

HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

GUILDENSTERN

HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers (if the
rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me) with two
Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a
fellowship in a cry of players?

Half a share.
A whole one, I.
For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself, and now reigns here
A very very—pajock.
You might have rhymed.
O good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for

a thousand pound. Didst perceive?
Very well, my lord.
Upon the talk of the poisoning?
I did very well note him.
Ah ha! Come, some music! Come, the

recorders!
For if the King like not the comedy,
Why, then, belike he likes it not, perdy.

Come, some music!

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word
with you.

Sir, a whole history.
The King, sir—

Ay, sir, what of him?
Is in his retirement marvelous

distempered.
With drink, sir?

No, my lord, with choler.
Your wisdom should show itself more richer

to signify this to the doctor, for for me to put him to
his purgation would perhaps plunge him into more
choler.

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157 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET

ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ

GUILDENSTERN Good my lord, put your discourse into
some frame and start not so wildly from my
affair.

I am tame, sir. Pronounce.
The Queen your mother, in most great

affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.
You are welcome.

Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not
of the right breed. If it shall please you to make me
a wholesome answer, I will do your mother’s
commandment. If not, your pardon and my return
shall be the end of my business.

Sir, I cannot.
What, my lord?

Make you a wholesome answer. My wit’s
diseased. But, sir, such answer as I can make, you
shall command—or, rather, as you say, my mother.
Therefore no more but to the matter. My mother,
you say—

Then thus she says: your behavior hath
struck her into amazement and admiration.

O wonderful son that can so ’stonish a mother!
But is there no sequel at the heels of this
mother’s admiration? Impart.

She desires to speak with you in her
closet ere you go to bed.

We shall obey, were she ten times our mother.
Have you any further trade with us?

My lord, you once did love me.
And do still, by these pickers and stealers.

Good my lord, what is your cause of
distemper? You do surely bar the door upon your
own liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend.

Sir, I lack advancement.
How can that be, when you have the

voice of the King himself for your succession in
Denmark?

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159 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

GUILDENSTERN
HAMLET

HAMLET Ay, sir, but “While the grass grows”—the
proverb is something musty.

Enter the Players with recorders.

O, the recorders! Let me see one. He takes a
recorder and turns to Guildenstern. To withdraw
with you: why do you go about to recover the wind
of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?

O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my
love is too unmannerly.

I do not well understand that. Will you play
upon this pipe?

My lord, I cannot.
I pray you.

Believe me, I cannot.
I do beseech you.

I know no touch of it, my lord.
It is as easy as lying. Govern these ventages

with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with
your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent
music. Look you, these are the stops.

But these cannot I command to any
utt’rance of harmony. I have not the skill.

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing
you make of me! You would play upon me, you
would seem to know my stops, you would pluck
out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me
from my lowest note to the top of my compass;
and there is much music, excellent voice, in this
little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood,
do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?
Call me what instrument you will, though you can
fret me, you cannot play upon me.

Enter Polonius.

God bless you, sir.

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161 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 2

HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
POLONIUS
HAMLET
All but Hamlet exit.
He exits.

POLONIUS My lord, the Queen would speak with you,
and presently.

Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in
shape of a camel?

By th’ Mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.
Methinks it is like a weasel.

It is backed like a weasel.
Or like a whale.

Very like a whale.
Then I will come to my mother by and by.

Aside. They fool me to the top of my bent.—I will
come by and by.

I will say so.
“By and by” is easily said. Leave me,

friends.

’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes

out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot

blood
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft, now to my mother.
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom.
Let me be cruel, not unnatural.
I will speak daggers to her, but use none.
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites:
How in my words somever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my soul, consent.

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163 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 3

KING
GUILDENSTERN
ROSENCRANTZ
KING
ROSENCRANTZ
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exit.

Enter King, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you.
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you.
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so near ’s as doth hourly grow
Out of his brows.

We will ourselves provide.
Most holy and religious fear it is
To keep those many many bodies safe
That live and feed upon your Majesty.

The single and peculiar life is bound
With all the strength and armor of the mind
To keep itself from noyance, but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests
The lives of many. The cess of majesty
Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
What’s near it with it; or it is a massy wheel
Fixed on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoined, which, when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.

Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage,
For we will fetters put about this fear,
Which now goes too free-footed.

We will haste us.

Enter Polonius.
Scene 3

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165 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 3

KING

Polonius exits.

POLONIUS
My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet.
Behind the arras I’ll convey myself
To hear the process. I’ll warrant she’ll tax him

home;
And, as you said (and wisely was it said),
’Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
Since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear
The speech of vantage. Fare you well, my liege.
I’ll call upon you ere you go to bed
And tell you what I know.

Thanks, dear my lord.

O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t,
A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will.
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin
And both neglect. What if this cursèd hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood?
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offense?
And what’s in prayer but this twofold force,
To be forestallèd ere we come to fall,
Or pardoned being down? Then I’ll look up.
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? “Forgive me my foul murder”?
That cannot be, since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder:
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain th’ offense?
In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offense’s gilded hand may shove by justice,

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167 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 3

He kneels.

HAMLET

He draws his sword.

He sheathes his sword.

And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above:
There is no shuffling; there the action lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limèd soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay.
Bow, stubborn knees, and heart with strings of steel
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe.
All may be well.

Enter Hamlet.

Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying,
And now I’ll do ’t.

And so he goes to heaven,
And so am I revenged. That would be scanned:
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven.
But in our circumstance and course of thought
’Tis heavy with him. And am I then revenged
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?
No.
Up sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,

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169 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

Hamlet exits.
KING

He exits.
POLONIUS
HAMLET
QUEEN

Polonius hides behind the arras.

HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET

Or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed,
At game, a-swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in ’t—
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damned and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

, rising
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Enter Queen and Polonius.

He will come straight. Look you lay home to him.
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear

with
And that your Grace hath screened and stood

between
Much heat and him. I’ll silence me even here.
Pray you, be round with him.

, within Mother, mother, mother!
I’ll warrant you. Fear me not. Withdraw,

I hear him coming.

Enter Hamlet.

Now, mother, what’s the matter?

Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

Mother, you have my father much offended.

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Scene 4

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171 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN
POLONIUS
HAMLET

He kills Polonius by thrusting a rapier
through the arras.

POLONIUS

QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN

HAMLET
QUEEN

QUEEN
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

Why, how now, Hamlet?

What’s the matter now?

Have you forgot me?
No, by the rood, not so.

You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,
And (would it were not so) you are my mother.

Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.

Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.

What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
Help, ho!

, behind the arras What ho! Help!

How now, a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead.

, behind the arras
O, I am slain!

O me, what hast thou done?
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?

O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

A bloody deed—almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king and marry with his brother.

As kill a king?

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173 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

He pulls Polonius’ body from behind the arras.

QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET

HAMLET Ay, lady, it was my word.

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell.
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune.
Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.
To Queen. Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit

you down,
And let me wring your heart; for so I shall
If it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damnèd custom have not brazed it so
That it be proof and bulwark against sense.

What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?

Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows
As false as dicers’ oaths—O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words! Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.

Ay me, what act
That roars so loud and thunders in the index?

Look here upon this picture and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See what a grace was seated on this brow,
Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,
An eye like Mars’ to threaten and command,
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven -kissing hill,

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175 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

QUEEN
HAMLET

A combination and a form indeed
Where every god did seem to set his seal
To give the world assurance of a man.
This was your husband. Look you now what follows.
Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed
And batten on this moor? Ha! Have you eyes?
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble
And waits upon the judgment; and what judgment
Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense
Is apoplexed; for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled,
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was ’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope. O shame, where is thy blush?
Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax
And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardor gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
And reason panders will.

O Hamlet, speak no more!
Thou turn’st my eyes into my very soul,
And there I see such black and grainèd spots
As will not leave their tinct.

Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty!

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177 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET
GHOST
HAMLET
QUEEN

QUEEN O, speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet!

A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings,
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
And put it in his pocket—

No more!
A king of shreds and patches—

Enter Ghost.

Save me and hover o’er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards!—What would your gracious

figure?
Alas, he’s mad.

Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’ important acting of your dread command?
O, say!

Do not forget. This visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But look, amazement on thy mother sits.
O, step between her and her fighting soul.
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.

How is it with you, lady?
Alas, how is ’t with you,

That you do bend your eye on vacancy
And with th’ incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,
And, as the sleeping soldiers in th’ alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,

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179 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN

HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET

Ghost exits.
QUEEN

HAMLET

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience! Whereon do you look?

On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares.
His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable. To the Ghost. Do not

look upon me,
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects. Then what I have to do
Will want true color—tears perchance for blood.

To whom do you speak this?
Do you see nothing there?

Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

Nor did you nothing hear?
No, nothing but ourselves.

Why, look you there, look how it steals away!
My father, in his habit as he lived!
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!

This is the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.

Ecstasy?
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test,
And I the matter will reword, which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul
That not your trespass but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven,

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181 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

QUEEN
HAMLET

Pointing to Polonius.

QUEEN

Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come,
And do not spread the compost on the weeds
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue,
For, in the fatness of these pursy times,
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain!

O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half!
Good night. But go not to my uncle’s bed.
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence, the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either … the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night,
And, when you are desirous to be blest,
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord

I do repent; but heaven hath pleased it so
To punish me with this and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him and will answer well
The death I gave him. So, again, good night.
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This bad begins, and worse remains behind.
One word more, good lady.

What shall I do?

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183 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

QUEEN
HAMLET
QUEEN
HAMLET

HAMLET
Not this by no means that I bid you do:
Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed,
Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses
Or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft. ’Twere good you let him know,
For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?
No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house’s top,
Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep
And break your own neck down.

Be thou assured, if words be made of breath
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.

I must to England, you know that.

Alack,
I had forgot! ’Tis so concluded on.

There’s letters sealed; and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work,
For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard; and ’t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
This man shall set me packing.

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185 Hamlet ACT 3. SC. 4

They exit, Hamlet tugging in Polonius.

I’ll lug the guts into the neighbor room.
Mother, good night indeed. This counselor
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.—
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.—
Good night, mother.

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KING
QUEEN

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exit.

KING
QUEEN

KING

Enter King and Queen, with Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern.

There’s matter in these sighs; these profound heaves
You must translate; ’tis fit we understand them.
Where is your son?

Bestow this place on us a little while.

Ah, mine own lord, what have I seen tonight!
What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

Mad as the sea and wind when both contend
Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit,
Behind the arras hearing something stir,
Whips out his rapier, cries “A rat, a rat,”
And in this brainish apprehension kills
The unseen good old man.

O heavy deed!
It had been so with us, had we been there.
His liberty is full of threats to all—
To you yourself, to us, to everyone.
Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered?
It will be laid to us, whose providence

189
ACT 4
Scene 1

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191 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 1

QUEEN
KING
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exit.
They exit.

Should have kept short, restrained, and out of haunt
This mad young man. But so much was our love,
We would not understand what was most fit,
But, like the owner of a foul disease,
To keep it from divulging, let it feed
Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?

To draw apart the body he hath killed,
O’er whom his very madness, like some ore
Among a mineral of metals base,
Shows itself pure: he weeps for what is done.

O Gertrude, come away!
The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch
But we will ship him hence; and this vile deed
We must with all our majesty and skill
Both countenance and excuse.—Ho, Guildenstern!

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Friends both, go join you with some further aid.
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
And from his mother’s closet hath he dragged him.
Go seek him out, speak fair, and bring the body
Into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this.

Come, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends
And let them know both what we mean to do
And what’s untimely done. …
Whose whisper o’er the world’s diameter,
As level as the cannon to his blank
Transports his poisoned shot, may miss our name
And hit the woundless air. O, come away!
My soul is full of discord and dismay.

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193 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 2

HAMLET

GENTLEMEN
HAMLET

ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
ROSENCRANTZ
HAMLET
Enter Hamlet.

Safely stowed.
, within Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!

But soft, what noise? Who calls on Hamlet?
O, here they come.

Enter Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and others.

What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?

Compounded it with dust, whereto ’tis kin.

Tell us where ’tis, that we may take it thence
And bear it to the chapel.

Do not believe it.
Believe what?

That I can keep your counsel and not mine
own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge, what
replication should be made by the son of a king?

Take you me for a sponge, my lord?
Ay, sir, that soaks up the King’s countenance,

his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the
King best service in the end. He keeps them like an
ape an apple in the corner of his jaw, first mouthed,
to be last swallowed. When he needs what you have
gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you
shall be dry again.

I understand you not, my lord.
I am glad of it. A knavish speech sleeps in a

foolish ear.
My lord, you must tell us where the

body is and go with us to the King.
The body is with the King, but the King is not

with the body. The King is a thing—

Scene 2

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195 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 3

HAMLET
They exit.
GUILDENSTERN
KING
ROSENCRANTZ

KING
ROSENCRANTZ

KING
ROSENCRANTZ
KING
HAMLET

A “thing,” my lord?
Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and

all after!

Enter King and two or three.

I have sent to seek him and to find the body.
How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!
Yet must not we put the strong law on him.
He’s loved of the distracted multitude,
Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes;
And, where ’tis so, th’ offender’s scourge is weighed,
But never the offense. To bear all smooth and even,
This sudden sending him away must seem
Deliberate pause. Diseases desperate grown
By desperate appliance are relieved
Or not at all.

Enter Rosencrantz.

How now, what hath befallen?

Where the dead body is bestowed, my lord,
We cannot get from him.

But where is he?

Without, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure.

Bring him before us.
Ho! Bring in the lord.

They enter with Hamlet.

Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?
At supper.

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197 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 3

HAMLET
KING
HAMLET
KING
HAMLET
KING
HAMLET

KING
HAMLET Attendants exit.
KING

HAMLET
KING
HAMLET
KING

KING At supper where?
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A

certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at
him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We
fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves
for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is
but variable service—two dishes but to one table.
That’s the end.

Alas, alas!
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat

of a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that
worm.

What dost thou mean by this?
Nothing but to show you how a king may go a

progress through the guts of a beggar.
Where is Polonius?

In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger
find him not there, seek him i’ th’ other
place yourself. But if, indeed, you find him not
within this month, you shall nose him as you go up
the stairs into the lobby.
, to Attendants. Go, seek him there.

He will stay till you come.

Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety
(Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve
For that which thou hast done) must send thee

hence
With fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself.
The bark is ready, and the wind at help,
Th’ associates tend, and everything is bent
For England.

For England?
Ay, Hamlet.

Good.

So is it, if thou knew’st our purposes.

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199 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 4

KING
HAMLET

He exits.
KING

All but the King exit.

He exits.
HAMLET

FORTINBRAS

I see a cherub that sees them. But come, for

England.
Farewell, dear mother.

Thy loving father, Hamlet.

My mother. Father and mother is man and wife,
Man and wife is one flesh, and so, my mother.—
Come, for England.

Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard.
Delay it not. I’ll have him hence tonight.
Away, for everything is sealed and done
That else leans on th’ affair. Pray you, make haste.

And England, if my love thou hold’st at aught
(As my great power thereof may give thee sense,
Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red
After the Danish sword, and thy free awe
Pays homage to us), thou mayst not coldly set
Our sovereign process, which imports at full,
By letters congruing to that effect,
The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England,
For like the hectic in my blood he rages,
And thou must cure me. Till I know ’tis done,
Howe’er my haps, my joys will ne’er begin.

Enter Fortinbras with his army over the stage.

Go, Captain, from me greet the Danish king.
Tell him that by his license Fortinbras
Craves the conveyance of a promised march
Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.

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201 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 4

CAPTAIN

FORTINBRAS All but the Captain exit.

HAMLET
CAPTAIN
HAMLET
CAPTAIN
HAMLET
CAPTAIN

HAMLET
CAPTAIN
HAMLET
CAPTAIN
HAMLET

CAPTAIN He exits.
ROSENCRANTZ

If that his Majesty would aught with us,
We shall express our duty in his eye;
And let him know so.

I will do ’t, my lord.
Go softly on.

Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and others.

Good sir, whose powers are these?
They are of Norway, sir.
How purposed, sir, I pray you?
Against some part of Poland.
Who commands them, sir?

The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.

Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
Or for some frontier?

Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

Why, then, the Polack never will defend it.

Yes, it is already garrisoned.

Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw.
This is th’ impostume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks and shows no cause without
Why the man dies.—I humbly thank you, sir.

God be wi’ you, sir.
Will ’t please you go, my lord?

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203 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 4

All but Hamlet exit.

HAMLET
I’ll be with you straight. Go a little before.

How all occasions do inform against me
And spur my dull revenge. What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure He that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused. Now whether it be
Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th’ event
(A thought which, quartered, hath but one part

wisdom
And ever three parts coward), I do not know
Why yet I live to say “This thing’s to do,”
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do ’t. Examples gross as Earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honor’s at the stake. How stand I, then,
That have a father killed, a mother stained,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men
That for a fantasy and trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,

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205 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 5

He exits.

QUEEN
GENTLEMAN

QUEEN
GENTLEMAN
HORATIO

QUEEN Gentleman exits.

Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth
My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!

Enter Horatio, Queen, and a Gentleman.

I will not speak with her.
She is importunate,

Indeed distract; her mood will needs be pitied.
What would she have?

She speaks much of her father, says she hears
There’s tricks i’ th’ world, and hems, and beats her

heart,
Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt
That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshapèd use of it doth move
The hearers to collection. They aim at it
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield

them,
Indeed would make one think there might be

thought,
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.

’Twere good she were spoken with, for she may

strew
Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.

Let her come in.
Aside. To my sick soul (as sin’s true nature is),
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

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207 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 5

OPHELIA

QUEEN
OPHELIA

QUEEN
OPHELIA
QUEEN
OPHELIA
QUEEN
OPHELIA

KING
OPHELIA

KING
OPHELIA

Enter Ophelia distracted.

Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?

How now, Ophelia?
sings

How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff
And his sandal shoon.

Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

Say you? Nay, pray you, mark.
Sings. He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.

Oh, ho!
Nay, but Ophelia—

Pray you, mark.
Sings. White his shroud as the mountain snow—

Enter King.

Alas, look here, my lord.
sings
Larded all with sweet flowers;
Which bewept to the ground did not go
With true-love showers.

How do you, pretty lady?
Well, God dild you. They say the owl was a

baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are but
know not what we may be. God be at your table.

Conceit upon her father.
Pray let’s have no words of this, but when

they ask you what it means, say you this:

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209 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 5

KING
OPHELIA
KING
OPHELIA

She exits.
KING

Horatio exits.

Sings. Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose and donned his clothes
And dupped the chamber door,
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.

Pretty Ophelia—

Indeed, without an oath, I’ll make an end on ’t:
Sings. By Gis and by Saint Charity,

Alack and fie for shame,
Young men will do ’t, if they come to ’t;
By Cock, they are to blame.
Quoth she “Before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed.”

He answers:
“So would I ’a done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.”

How long hath she been thus?
I hope all will be well. We must be patient,

but I cannot choose but weep to think they would
lay him i’ th’ cold ground. My brother shall know of
it. And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come,
my coach! Good night, ladies, good night, sweet
ladies, good night, good night.

Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.

O, this is the poison of deep grief. It springs
All from her father’s death, and now behold!
O Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions: first, her father slain;
Next, your son gone, and he most violent author
Of his own just remove; the people muddied,

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211 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 5

A noise within.

QUEEN

KING

MESSENGER

A noise within.

Thick, and unwholesome in their thoughts and
whispers

For good Polonius’ death, and we have done but
greenly

In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts;
Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France,
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father’s death,
Wherein necessity, of matter beggared,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear. O, my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murd’ring piece, in many places
Gives me superfluous death.

Alack, what noise is this?
Attend!

Where is my Switzers? Let them guard the door.

Enter a Messenger.

What is the matter?
Save yourself, my lord.

The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impiteous haste
Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
O’erbears your officers. The rabble call him “lord,”
And, as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props of every word,
They cry “Choose we, Laertes shall be king!”
Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,
“Laertes shall be king! Laertes king!”

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213 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 5

KING
LAERTES

ALL
LAERTES
ALL
LAERTES

QUEEN
LAERTES

KING

LAERTES
KING

QUEEN

KING

QUEEN
How cheerfully on the false trail they cry.
O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!

The doors are broke.

Enter Laertes with others.

Where is this king?—Sirs, stand you all without.
No, let’s come in!

I pray you, give me leave.
We will, we will.

I thank you. Keep the door. Followers exit. O, thou

vile king,
Give me my father!

Calmly, good Laertes.

That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me
bastard,

Cries “cuckold” to my father, brands the harlot
Even here between the chaste unsmirchèd brow
Of my true mother.

What is the cause, Laertes,
That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?—
Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.
There’s such divinity doth hedge a king
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.—Tell me, Laertes,
Why thou art thus incensed.—Let him go,

Gertrude.—
Speak, man.

Where is my father?
Dead.

But not by him.

Let him demand his fill.

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215 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 5

KING
LAERTES

KING

LAERTES
KING
LAERTES

KING

A noise within: “Let her come in!”
LAERTES

LAERTES
How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with.
To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes, only I’ll be revenged
Most throughly for my father.

Who shall stay you?
My will, not all the world.

And for my means, I’ll husband them so well
They shall go far with little.

Good Laertes,
If you desire to know the certainty
Of your dear father, is ’t writ in your revenge
That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and

foe,
Winner and loser?

None but his enemies.
Will you know them, then?

To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms
And, like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,
Repast them with my blood.

Why, now you speak
Like a good child and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father’s death
And am most sensibly in grief for it,
It shall as level to your judgment ’pear
As day does to your eye.

How now, what noise is that?

Enter Ophelia.

O heat, dry up my brains! Tears seven times salt
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!

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217 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 5

OPHELIA
LAERTES
OPHELIA

LAERTES
OPHELIA

LAERTES
OPHELIA
LAERTES

By heaven, thy madness shall be paid with weight
Till our scale turn the beam! O rose of May,
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
O heavens, is ’t possible a young maid’s wits
Should be as mortal as an old man’s life?
Nature is fine in love, and, where ’tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.

sings
They bore him barefaced on the bier,
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny,
And in his grave rained many a tear.

Fare you well, my dove.

Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move thus.

You must sing “A-down a-down”—and you
“Call him a-down-a.”—O, how the wheel becomes
it! It is the false steward that stole his master’s
daughter.

This nothing’s more than matter.
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.

Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies,
that’s for thoughts.

A document in madness: thoughts and remembrance
fitted.

There’s fennel for you, and columbines.
There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we
may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. You must wear
your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would
give you some violets, but they withered all when
my father died. They say he made a good end.

Sings. For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.

Thought and afflictions, passion, hell itself
She turns to favor and to prettiness.

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219 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 5

She exits.
LAERTES
KING

LAERTES
KING
They exit.

OPHELIA sings
And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
No, no, he is dead.
Go to thy deathbed.
He never will come again.

His beard was as white as snow,
All flaxen was his poll.
He is gone, he is gone,
And we cast away moan.
God ’a mercy on his soul.

And of all Christians’ souls, I pray God. God be wi’
you.

Do you see this, O God?

Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
And they shall hear and judge ’twixt you and me.
If by direct or by collateral hand
They find us touched, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
To you in satisfaction; but if not,
Be you content to lend your patience to us,
And we shall jointly labor with your soul
To give it due content.

Let this be so.
His means of death, his obscure funeral
(No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones,
No noble rite nor formal ostentation)
Cry to be heard, as ’twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call ’t in question.

So you shall,
And where th’ offense is, let the great ax fall.
I pray you, go with me.

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221 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 6

HORATIO
GENTLEMAN

HORATIO

SAILOR
HORATIO
SAILOR

He hands Horatio a letter.
HORATIO

He that thou knowest thine,
Hamlet.

Enter Horatio and others.

What are they that would speak with me?
Seafaring men, sir. They say they have

letters for you.
Let them come in. Gentleman exits. I do not

know from what part of the world I should be
greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.

Enter Sailors.

God bless you, sir.
Let Him bless thee too.

He shall, sir, an ’t please Him. There’s a letter
for you, sir. It came from th’ ambassador that was
bound for England—if your name be Horatio, as I
am let to know it is.

reads the letter Horatio, when thou shalt have
overlooked this, give these fellows some means to the
King. They have letters for him. Ere we were two days
old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave
us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on
a compelled valor, and in the grapple I boarded them.
On the instant, they got clear of our ship; so I alone
became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like
thieves of mercy, but they knew what they did: I am to
do a good turn for them. Let the King have the letters
I have sent, and repair thou to me with as much speed
as thou wouldst fly death. I have words to speak in
thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are they much too
light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows
will bring thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
hold their course for England; of them I have
much to tell thee. Farewell.

Scene 6

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223 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 7

They exit.
KING
LAERTES
KING
LAERTES

Come, I will give you way for these your letters
And do ’t the speedier that you may direct me
To him from whom you brought them.

Enter King and Laertes.

Now must your conscience my acquittance seal,
And you must put me in your heart for friend,
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
That he which hath your noble father slain
Pursued my life.

It well appears. But tell me
Why you proceeded not against these feats,
So criminal and so capital in nature,
As by your safety, greatness, wisdom, all things else,
You mainly were stirred up.

O, for two special reasons,
Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinewed,
But yet to me they’re strong. The Queen his mother
Lives almost by his looks, and for myself
(My virtue or my plague, be it either which),
She is so conjunctive to my life and soul
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her. The other motive
Why to a public count I might not go
Is the great love the general gender bear him,
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
Work like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
Convert his gyves to graces, so that my arrows,
Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
But not where I have aimed them.

And so have I a noble father lost,

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Scene 7

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225 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 7

KING
MESSENGER

KING
MESSENGER

KING

Messenger exits.

LAERTES
KING

A sister driven into desp’rate terms,
Whose worth, if praises may go back again,
Stood challenger on mount of all the age
For her perfections. But my revenge will come.

Break not your sleeps for that. You must not think
That we are made of stuff so flat and dull
That we can let our beard be shook with danger
And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more.
I loved your father, and we love ourself,
And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine—

Enter a Messenger with letters.

How now? What news?
Letters, my lord, from

Hamlet.
These to your Majesty, this to the Queen.

From Hamlet? Who brought them?

Sailors, my lord, they say. I saw them not.
They were given me by Claudio. He received them
Of him that brought them.

Laertes, you shall hear
them.—

Leave us.
Reads. High and mighty, you shall know I am set
naked on your kingdom. Tomorrow shall I beg leave to
see your kingly eyes, when I shall (first asking your
pardon) thereunto recount the occasion of my sudden
and more strange return. Hamlet.

What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
Or is it some abuse and no such thing?

Know you the hand?
’Tis Hamlet’s character. “Naked”—

And in a postscript here, he says “alone.”
Can you advise me?

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227 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 7

KING
LAERTES
KING
LAERTES
KING
LAERTES
KING

LAERTES
I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come.
It warms the very sickness in my heart
That I shall live and tell him to his teeth
“Thus didst thou.”

If it be so, Laertes
(As how should it be so? how otherwise?),
Will you be ruled by me?

Ay, my lord,
So you will not o’errule me to a peace.

To thine own peace. If he be now returned,
As checking at his voyage, and that he means
No more to undertake it, I will work him
To an exploit, now ripe in my device,
Under the which he shall not choose but fall;
And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe,
But even his mother shall uncharge the practice
And call it accident.

My lord, I will be ruled,
The rather if you could devise it so
That I might be the organ.

It falls right.
You have been talked of since your travel much,
And that in Hamlet’s hearing, for a quality
Wherein they say you shine. Your sum of parts
Did not together pluck such envy from him
As did that one, and that, in my regard,
Of the unworthiest siege.

What part is that, my lord?

A very ribbon in the cap of youth—
Yet needful too, for youth no less becomes
The light and careless livery that it wears
Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
Importing health and graveness. Two months since

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229 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 7

LAERTES
KING
LAERTES
KING
LAERTES
KING
LAERTES
KING
LAERTES

Here was a gentleman of Normandy.
I have seen myself, and served against, the French,
And they can well on horseback, but this gallant
Had witchcraft in ’t. He grew unto his seat,
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse
As had he been encorpsed and demi-natured
With the brave beast. So far he topped my thought
That I in forgery of shapes and tricks
Come short of what he did.

A Norman was ’t?
A Norman.

Upon my life, Lamord.

The very same.

I know him well. He is the brooch indeed
And gem of all the nation.

He made confession of you
And gave you such a masterly report
For art and exercise in your defense,
And for your rapier most especial,
That he cried out ’twould be a sight indeed
If one could match you. The ’scrimers of their

nation
He swore had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
If you opposed them. Sir, this report of his
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy
That he could nothing do but wish and beg
Your sudden coming-o’er, to play with you.
Now out of this—

What out of this, my lord?

Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?

Why ask you this?

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231 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 7

LAERTES
KING

KING
Not that I think you did not love your father,
But that I know love is begun by time
And that I see, in passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it,
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too-much. That we would do
We should do when we would; for this “would”

changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this “should” is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing. But to the quick of th’ ulcer:
Hamlet comes back; what would you undertake
To show yourself indeed your father’s son
More than in words?

To cut his throat i’ th’ church.

No place indeed should murder sanctuarize;
Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,
Will you do this? Keep close within your chamber.
Hamlet, returned, shall know you are come home.
We’ll put on those shall praise your excellence
And set a double varnish on the fame
The Frenchman gave you; bring you, in fine,

together
And wager on your heads. He, being remiss,
Most generous, and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils, so that with ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
A sword unbated, and in a pass of practice
Requite him for your father.

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233 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 7

KING
QUEEN

LAERTES
QUEEN

LAERTES I will do ’t,
And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death
That is but scratched withal. I’ll touch my point
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
It may be death.

Let’s further think of this,
Weigh what convenience both of time and means
May fit us to our shape. If this should fail,
And that our drift look through our bad

performance,
’Twere better not assayed. Therefore this project
Should have a back or second that might hold
If this did blast in proof. Soft, let me see.
We’ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings—
I ha ’t!
When in your motion you are hot and dry
(As make your bouts more violent to that end)
And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepared

him
A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venomed stuck,
Our purpose may hold there.—But stay, what

noise?

Enter Queen.

One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,
So fast they follow. Your sister’s drowned, Laertes.

Drowned? O, where?

There is a willow grows askant the brook

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235 Hamlet ACT 4. SC. 7

LAERTES
QUEEN
LAERTES

He exits.
KING
They exit.

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do “dead men’s fingers” call

them.
There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,
As one incapable of her own distress
Or like a creature native and endued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

Alas, then she is drowned.
Drowned, drowned.

Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears. But yet
It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will. When these are gone,
The woman will be out.—Adieu, my lord.
I have a speech o’ fire that fain would blaze,
But that this folly drowns it.

Let’s follow, Gertrude.
How much I had to do to calm his rage!
Now fear I this will give it start again.
Therefore, let’s follow.

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GRAVEDIGGER

OTHER

GRAVEDIGGER
OTHER
GRAVEDIGGER
OTHER
GRAVEDIGGER
OTHER
GRAVEDIGGER

Enter Gravedigger and Another.

Is she to be buried in Christian burial,
when she willfully seeks her own salvation?

I tell thee she is. Therefore make her grave
straight. The crowner hath sat on her and finds it
Christian burial.

How can that be, unless she drowned
herself in her own defense?

Why, ’tis found so.
It must be se offendendo; it cannot be

else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself
wittingly, it argues an act, and an act hath three
branches—it is to act, to do, to perform. Argal, she
drowned herself wittingly.

Nay, but hear you, goodman delver—
Give me leave. Here lies the water;

good. Here stands the man; good. If the man go to
this water and drown himself, it is (will he, nill he)
he goes; mark you that. But if the water come to him
and drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he
that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his
own life.

But is this law?
Ay, marry, is ’t—crowner’s ’quest law.

239

ACT 5

Scene 1

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241 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 1

GRAVEDIGGER
OTHER
GRAVEDIGGER
OTHER
GRAVEDIGGER
OTHER
GRAVEDIGGER
OTHER
GRAVEDIGGER
OTHER

GRAVEDIGGER
OTHER

GRAVEDIGGER
OTHER
GRAVEDIGGER

OTHER Will you ha’ the truth on ’t? If this had not been
a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o’
Christian burial.

Why, there thou sayst. And the more
pity that great folk should have count’nance in this
world to drown or hang themselves more than
their even-Christian. Come, my spade. There is no
ancient gentlemen but gard’ners, ditchers, and
grave-makers. They hold up Adam’s profession.

Was he a gentleman?
He was the first that ever bore arms.

Why, he had none.
What, art a heathen? How dost thou

understand the scripture? The scripture says Adam
digged. Could he dig without arms? I’ll put another
question to thee. If thou answerest me not to the
purpose, confess thyself—

Go to!
What is he that builds stronger than

either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?
The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a

thousand tenants.
I like thy wit well, in good faith. The

gallows does well. But how does it well? It does
well to those that do ill. Now, thou dost ill to say the
gallows is built stronger than the church. Argal, the
gallows may do well to thee. To ’t again, come.

“Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright,
or a carpenter?”

Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.
Marry, now I can tell.

To ’t.
Mass, I cannot tell.

Enter Hamlet and Horatio afar off.

Cudgel thy brains no more about it,

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243 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 1

The Other Man exits
and the Gravedigger digs and sings.

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER

He digs up a skull.
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO

for your dull ass will not mend his pace with
beating. And, when you are asked this question
next, say “a grave-maker.” The houses he makes
lasts till doomsday. Go, get thee in, and fetch me a
stoup of liquor.

In youth when I did love, did love,
Methought it was very sweet
To contract—O—the time for—a—my behove,
O, methought there—a—was nothing—a—meet.

Has this fellow no feeling of his business? He
sings in grave-making.

Custom hath made it in him a property of
easiness.

’Tis e’en so. The hand of little employment
hath the daintier sense.

sings
But age with his stealing steps
Hath clawed me in his clutch,
And hath shipped me into the land,
As if I had never been such.

That skull had a tongue in it and could sing
once. How the knave jowls it to the ground as if
’twere Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder!
This might be the pate of a politician which this ass
now o’erreaches, one that would circumvent God,
might it not?

It might, my lord.
Or of a courtier, which could say “Good

morrow, sweet lord! How dost thou, sweet lord?”
This might be my Lord Such-a-one that praised my
Lord Such-a-one’s horse when he went to beg it,
might it not?

Ay, my lord.

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245 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 1

GRAVEDIGGER

He digs up more skulls.
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER

HAMLET Why, e’en so. And now my Lady Worm’s,
chapless and knocked about the mazard with a
sexton’s spade. Here’s fine revolution, an we had
the trick to see ’t. Did these bones cost no more the
breeding but to play at loggets with them? Mine
ache to think on ’t.

sings
A pickax and a spade, a spade,
For and a shrouding sheet,
O, a pit of clay for to be made

For such a guest is meet.

There’s another. Why may not that be the
skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his
quillities, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why
does he suffer this mad knave now to knock him
about the sconce with a dirty shovel and will not tell
him of his action of battery? Hum, this fellow might
be in ’s time a great buyer of land, with his statutes,
his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers,
his recoveries. Is this the fine of his fines and the
recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full
of fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more
of his purchases, and double ones too, than the
length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very
conveyances of his lands will scarcely lie in this box,
and must th’ inheritor himself have no more, ha?

Not a jot more, my lord.
Is not parchment made of sheepskins?
Ay, my lord, and of calves’ skins too.
They are sheep and calves which seek out

assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow.—
Whose grave’s this, sirrah?

Mine, sir.
Sings. O, a pit of clay for to be made

For such a guest is meet.

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247 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 1

GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET

GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET

GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER

HAMLET I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in ’t.
You lie out on ’t, sir, and therefore ’tis

not yours. For my part, I do not lie in ’t, yet it is
mine.

Thou dost lie in ’t, to be in ’t and say it is thine.
’Tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou
liest.

’Tis a quick lie, sir; ’twill away again
from me to you.

What man dost thou dig it for?
For no man, sir.

What woman then?
For none, neither.

Who is to be buried in ’t?
One that was a woman, sir, but, rest

her soul, she’s dead.
How absolute the knave is! We must speak by

the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the
Lord, Horatio, this three years I have took note of
it: the age is grown so picked that the toe of the
peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he
galls his kibe.—How long hast thou been
grave-maker?

Of all the days i’ th’ year, I came to ’t
that day that our last King Hamlet overcame
Fortinbras.

How long is that since?
Cannot you tell that? Every fool can

tell that. It was that very day that young Hamlet
was born—he that is mad, and sent into England.

Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?
Why, because he was mad. He shall

recover his wits there. Or if he do not, ’tis no great
matter there.

Why?
’Twill not be seen in him there. There

the men are as mad as he.

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249 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 1

GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET
GRAVEDIGGER
HAMLET

HAMLET How came he mad?
Very strangely, they say.

How “strangely”?
Faith, e’en with losing his wits.

Upon what ground?
Why, here in Denmark. I have been

sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.
How long will a man lie i’ th’ earth ere he rot?

Faith, if he be not rotten before he die
(as we have many pocky corses nowadays that will
scarce hold the laying in), he will last you some
eight year or nine year. A tanner will last you nine
year.

Why he more than another?
Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his

trade that he will keep out water a great while; and
your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead
body. Here’s a skull now hath lien you i’ th’ earth
three-and-twenty years.

Whose was it?
A whoreson mad fellow’s it was.

Whose do you think it was?
Nay, I know not.

A pestilence on him for a mad rogue!
He poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once.
This same skull, sir, was, sir, Yorick’s skull, the
King’s jester.

This?
E’en that.

, taking the skull Let me see. Alas, poor
Yorick! I knew him, Horatio—a fellow of infinite
jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his
back a thousand times, and now how abhorred in
my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung
those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.
Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your

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251 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 1

HORATIO
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET He puts the skull down.
HORATIO
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET

They step aside.

songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to
set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your
own grinning? Quite chapfallen? Now get you to my
lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch
thick, to this favor she must come. Make her laugh
at that.—Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

What’s that, my lord?
Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this

fashion i’ th’ earth?
E’en so.
And smelt so? Pah!
E’en so, my lord.
To what base uses we may return, Horatio!

Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of
Alexander till he find it stopping a bunghole?

’Twere to consider too curiously to consider
so.

No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither,
with modesty enough and likelihood to lead it, as
thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander
returneth to dust; the dust is earth; of earth
we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he
was converted might they not stop a beer barrel?

Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O, that that earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall t’ expel the winter’s flaw!

Enter King, Queen, Laertes, Lords attendant, and the
corpse of Ophelia, with a Doctor of Divinity.

But soft, but soft awhile! Here comes the King,
The Queen, the courtiers. Who is this they follow?
And with such maimèd rites? This doth betoken
The corse they follow did with desp’rate hand
Fordo its own life. ’Twas of some estate.
Couch we awhile and mark.

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253 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 1

HAMLET
LAERTES

DOCTOR

LAERTES
DOCTOR
LAERTES
HAMLET
QUEEN

She scatters flowers.

LAERTES

Leaps in the grave.

LAERTES What ceremony else?
That is Laertes, a very noble youth. Mark.
What ceremony else?

Her obsequies have been as far enlarged
As we have warranty. Her death was doubtful,
And, but that great command o’ersways the order,
She should in ground unsanctified been lodged
Till the last trumpet. For charitable prayers
Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on

her.
Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants,
Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home
Of bell and burial.

Must there no more be done?

No more be done.
We should profane the service of the dead
To sing a requiem and such rest to her
As to peace-parted souls.

Lay her i’ th’ earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
A minist’ring angel shall my sister be
When thou liest howling.

, to Horatio What, the fair Ophelia?
Sweets to the sweet, farewell!

I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife;
I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid,
And not have strewed thy grave.

O, treble woe
Fall ten times treble on that cursèd head
Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense
Deprived thee of!—Hold off the earth awhile,
Till I have caught her once more in mine arms.

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255 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 1

HAMLET
LAERTES

HAMLET They grapple.

KING
QUEEN
ALL
HORATIO

Hamlet and Laertes are separated.
HAMLET

QUEEN
HAMLET

KING
QUEEN
HAMLET

Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
Till of this flat a mountain you have made
T’ o’ertop old Pelion or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus.

, advancing
What is he whose grief

Bears such an emphasis, whose phrase of sorrow
Conjures the wand’ring stars and makes them stand
Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,
Hamlet the Dane.

, coming out of the grave
The devil take thy soul!

Thou pray’st not well.
I prithee take thy fingers from my throat,
For though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I in me something dangerous,
Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand.

Pluck them asunder.
Hamlet! Hamlet!

Gentlemen!
Good my lord, be quiet.

Why, I will fight with him upon this theme
Until my eyelids will no longer wag!

O my son, what theme?

I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers
Could not with all their quantity of love
Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?

O, he is mad, Laertes!
For love of God, forbear him.

’Swounds, show me what thou ’t do.
Woo’t weep, woo’t fight, woo’t fast, woo’t tear

thyself,
Woo’t drink up eisel, eat a crocodile?

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257 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 1

QUEEN
HAMLET

Hamlet exits.
KING

Horatio exits.
They exit.

I’ll do ’t. Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
Be buried quick with her, and so will I.
And if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart. Nay, an thou ’lt mouth,
I’ll rant as well as thou.

This is mere madness;
And thus awhile the fit will work on him.
Anon, as patient as the female dove
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.

Hear you, sir,
What is the reason that you use me thus?
I loved you ever. But it is no matter.
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.

I pray thee, good Horatio, wait upon him.

To Laertes. Strengthen your patience in our last
night’s speech.

We’ll put the matter to the present push.—
Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.—
This grave shall have a living monument.
An hour of quiet thereby shall we see.
Till then in patience our proceeding be.

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259 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

Handing him a paper.

Enter Hamlet and Horatio.

So much for this, sir. Now shall you see the other.
You do remember all the circumstance?

Remember it, my lord!

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly—
And praised be rashness for it: let us know,
Our indiscretion sometime serves us well
When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn

us
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will—

That is most
certain.

Up from my cabin,
My sea-gown scarfed about me, in the dark
Groped I to find out them; had my desire,
Fingered their packet, and in fine withdrew
To mine own room again, making so bold
(My fears forgetting manners) to unfold
Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio,
A royal knavery—an exact command,
Larded with many several sorts of reasons
Importing Denmark’s health and England’s too,
With—ho!—such bugs and goblins in my life,
That on the supervise, no leisure bated,
No, not to stay the grinding of the ax,
My head should be struck off.

Is ’t possible?

Here’s the commission. Read it at more leisure.

Scene 2

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261 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO

But wilt thou hear now how I did proceed?
I beseech you.

Being thus benetted round with villainies,
Or I could make a prologue to my brains,
They had begun the play. I sat me down,
Devised a new commission, wrote it fair—
I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness to write fair, and labored much
How to forget that learning; but, sir, now
It did me yeoman’s service. Wilt thou know
Th’ effect of what I wrote?

Ay, good my lord.

An earnest conjuration from the King,
As England was his faithful tributary,
As love between them like the palm might flourish,
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear
And stand a comma ’tween their amities,
And many suchlike ases of great charge,
That, on the view and knowing of these contents,
Without debatement further, more or less,
He should those bearers put to sudden death,
Not shriving time allowed.

How was this sealed?

Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.
I had my father’s signet in my purse,
Which was the model of that Danish seal;
Folded the writ up in the form of th’ other,
Subscribed it, gave ’t th’ impression, placed it

safely,
The changeling never known. Now, the next day
Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent
Thou knowest already.

So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to ’t.

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263 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
OSRIC

HAMLET
Why, man, they did make love to this employment.
They are not near my conscience. Their defeat
Does by their own insinuation grow.
’Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
Between the pass and fell incensèd points
Of mighty opposites.

Why, what a king is this!

Does it not, think thee, stand me now upon—
He that hath killed my king and whored my mother,
Popped in between th’ election and my hopes,
Thrown out his angle for my proper life,
And with such cozenage—is ’t not perfect

conscience
To quit him with this arm? And is ’t not to be

damned
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil?

It must be shortly known to him from England
What is the issue of the business there.

It will be short. The interim’s mine,
And a man’s life’s no more than to say “one.”
But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
That to Laertes I forgot myself,
For by the image of my cause I see
The portraiture of his. I’ll court his favors.
But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me
Into a tow’ring passion.

Peace, who comes here?

Enter Osric, a courtier.

Your Lordship is right welcome back to
Denmark.

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265 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

HORATIO
HAMLET
OSRIC
HAMLET

OSRIC
HAMLET

OSRIC
HAMLET
OSRIC
HAMLET
OSRIC
HAMLET

HAMLET I humbly thank you, sir. Aside to Horatio.
Dost know this waterfly?

, aside to Hamlet No, my good lord.
, aside to Horatio Thy state is the more gracious,

for ’tis a vice to know him. He hath much
land, and fertile. Let a beast be lord of beasts and his
crib shall stand at the king’s mess. ’Tis a chough,
but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.

Sweet lord, if your Lordship were at leisure, I
should impart a thing to you from his Majesty.

I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of
spirit. Put your bonnet to his right use: ’tis for the
head.

I thank your Lordship; it is very hot.
No, believe me, ’tis very cold; the wind is

northerly.
It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.

But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for
my complexion.

Exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry, as
’twere—I cannot tell how. My lord, his Majesty
bade me signify to you that he has laid a great wager
on your head. Sir, this is the matter—

I beseech you, remember. He motions to
Osric to put on his hat.

Nay, good my lord, for my ease, in good faith.
Sir, here is newly come to court Laertes—believe
me, an absolute gentleman, full of most excellent
differences, of very soft society and great showing.
Indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the card or
calendar of gentry, for you shall find in him the
continent of what part a gentleman would see.

Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in
you, though I know to divide him inventorially
would dozy th’ arithmetic of memory, and yet but
yaw neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in the

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267 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

OSRIC
HAMLET

OSRIC
HORATIO

HAMLET
OSRIC
HORATIO

HAMLET
OSRIC

HAMLET

OSRIC
HAMLET
OSRIC

HAMLET
OSRIC
HAMLET
OSRIC

verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great
article, and his infusion of such dearth and rareness
as, to make true diction of him, his semblable is his
mirror, and who else would trace him, his umbrage,
nothing more.

Your Lordship speaks most infallibly of him.
The concernancy, sir? Why do we wrap the

gentleman in our more rawer breath?
Sir?

Is ’t not possible to understand in another
tongue? You will to ’t, sir, really.

, to Osric What imports the nomination of
this gentleman?

Of Laertes?
His purse is empty already; all ’s golden words

are spent.
Of him, sir.

I know you are not ignorant—
I would you did, sir. Yet, in faith, if you did, it

would not much approve me. Well, sir?
You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes

is—
I dare not confess that, lest I should compare

with him in excellence. But to know a man well
were to know himself.

I mean, sir, for his weapon. But in the imputation
laid on him by them, in his meed he’s
unfellowed.

What’s his weapon?
Rapier and dagger.

That’s two of his weapons. But, well—
The King, sir, hath wagered with him six Barbary

horses, against the which he has impawned, as I
take it, six French rapiers and poniards, with their
assigns, as girdle, hangers, and so. Three of the
carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very

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269 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

HAMLET
HORATIO
OSRIC
HAMLET
OSRIC
HAMLET
OSRIC
HAMLET
OSRIC
HAMLET
OSRIC
HAMLET
HORATIO

responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and
of very liberal conceit.

What call you the “carriages”?
I knew you must be edified by the margent

ere you had done.
The carriages, sir, are the hangers.

The phrase would be more germane to the
matter if we could carry a cannon by our sides. I
would it might be “hangers” till then. But on. Six
Barbary horses against six French swords, their
assigns, and three liberal-conceited carriages—
that’s the French bet against the Danish. Why is this
all “impawned,” as you call it?

The King, sir, hath laid, sir, that in a dozen
passes between yourself and him, he shall not
exceed you three hits. He hath laid on twelve for
nine, and it would come to immediate trial if your
Lordship would vouchsafe the answer.

How if I answer no?
I mean, my lord, the opposition of your person

in trial.
Sir, I will walk here in the hall. If it please his

Majesty, it is the breathing time of day with me. Let
the foils be brought, the gentleman willing, and the
King hold his purpose, I will win for him, an I can.
If not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd
hits.

Shall I deliver you e’en so?
To this effect, sir, after what flourish your

nature will.
I commend my duty to your Lordship.

Yours. Osric exits. He does well to commend
it himself. There are no tongues else for ’s
turn.

This lapwing runs away with the shell on his
head.

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271 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

LORD

HAMLET

LORD
HAMLET
LORD

HAMLET Lord exits.
HORATIO
HAMLET

HORATIO
HAMLET
HORATIO
HAMLET

HAMLET He did comply, sir, with his dug before he
sucked it. Thus has he (and many more of the same
breed that I know the drossy age dotes on) only got
the tune of the time, and, out of an habit of
encounter, a kind of yeasty collection, which carries
them through and through the most fanned
and winnowed opinions; and do but blow them to
their trial, the bubbles are out.

Enter a Lord.

My lord, his Majesty commended him to you by
young Osric, who brings back to him that you
attend him in the hall. He sends to know if your
pleasure hold to play with Laertes, or that you will
take longer time.

I am constant to my purposes. They follow
the King’s pleasure. If his fitness speaks, mine is
ready now or whensoever, provided I be so able as
now.

The King and Queen and all are coming down.
In happy time.

The Queen desires you to use some gentle
entertainment to Laertes before you fall to play.

She well instructs me.
You will lose, my lord.
I do not think so. Since he went into France, I

have been in continual practice. I shall win at the
odds; but thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here
about my heart. But it is no matter.

Nay, good my lord—
It is but foolery, but it is such a kind of

gaingiving as would perhaps trouble a woman.
If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will

forestall their repair hither and say you are not fit.
Not a whit. We defy augury. There is a

special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be
now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be

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273 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

KING

He puts Laertes’ hand into Hamlet’s.
HAMLET

LAERTES

now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The
readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves
knows, what is ’t to leave betimes? Let be.

A table prepared. Enter Trumpets, Drums, and Officers
with cushions, King, Queen, Osric, and all the state,

foils, daggers, flagons of wine, and Laertes.

Come, Hamlet, come and take this hand from me.

, to Laertes
Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong;
But pardon ’t as you are a gentleman. This presence

knows,
And you must needs have heard, how I am punished
With a sore distraction. What I have done
That might your nature, honor, and exception
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
Was ’t Hamlet wronged Laertes? Never Hamlet.
If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away,
And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not; Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then? His madness. If ’t be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wronged;
His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy.
Sir, in this audience
Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts
That I have shot my arrow o’er the house
And hurt my brother.

I am satisfied in nature,
Whose motive in this case should stir me most
To my revenge; but in my terms of honor
I stand aloof and will no reconcilement
Till by some elder masters of known honor
I have a voice and precedent of peace
To keep my name ungored. But till that time

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275 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

HAMLET

LAERTES
HAMLET

LAERTES
HAMLET
KING

HAMLET
KING
LAERTES
HAMLET
OSRIC

Prepare to play.
KING

I do receive your offered love like love
And will not wrong it.

I embrace it freely
And will this brothers’ wager frankly play.—
Give us the foils. Come on.

Come, one for me.

I’ll be your foil, Laertes; in mine ignorance
Your skill shall, like a star i’ th’ darkest night,
Stick fiery off indeed.

You mock me, sir.
No, by this hand.

Give them the foils, young Osric. Cousin Hamlet,
You know the wager?

Very well, my lord.
Your Grace has laid the odds o’ th’ weaker side.

I do not fear it; I have seen you both.
But, since he is better, we have therefore odds.

This is too heavy. Let me see another.

This likes me well. These foils have all a length?

Ay, my good lord.

Set me the stoups of wine upon that table.—
If Hamlet give the first or second hit
Or quit in answer of the third exchange,
Let all the battlements their ordnance fire.
The King shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath,
And in the cup an union shall he throw,
Richer than that which four successive kings
In Denmark’s crown have worn. Give me the cups,

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277 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

Trumpets the while.
HAMLET
LAERTES They play.
HAMLET
LAERTES
HAMLET

OSRIC
LAERTES

KING

He drinks and then drops the pearl in the cup.
Drum, trumpets, and shot.

HAMLET
LAERTES
KING
QUEEN

She lifts the cup.
HAMLET
KING
QUEEN

She drinks.
KING

And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth,
“Now the King drinks to Hamlet.” Come, begin.
And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.

Come on, sir.
Come, my lord.
One.
No.
Judgment!

A hit, a very palpable hit.
Well, again.

Stay, give me drink.—Hamlet, this pearl is thine.
Here’s to thy health.

Give him the cup.

I’ll play this bout first. Set it by awhile.
Come. They play. Another hit. What say you?

A touch, a touch. I do confess ’t.

Our son shall win.

He’s fat and scant of breath.—
Here, Hamlet, take my napkin; rub thy brows.
The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.

Good madam.
Gertrude, do not drink.

I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me.

, aside
It is the poisoned cup. It is too late.

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279 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

QUEEN
LAERTES
KING
LAERTES
HAMLET

LAERTES Play.
OSRIC
LAERTES

Laertes wounds Hamlet. Then in scuffling they change
rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes.

KING
HAMLET

The Queen falls.
OSRIC
HORATIO

OSRIC
LAERTES

He falls.

HAMLET
KING
QUEEN

She dies.
HAMLET

Osric exits.

HAMLET
I dare not drink yet, madam—by and by.

Come, let me wipe thy face.
, to Claudius

My lord, I’ll hit him now.
I do not think ’t.

, aside
And yet it is almost against my conscience.

Come, for the third, Laertes. You do but dally.
I pray you pass with your best violence.
I am afeard you make a wanton of me.

Say you so? Come on.
Nothing neither way.

Have at you now!

Part them. They are incensed.
Nay, come again.

Look to the Queen there, ho!

They bleed on both sides.—How is it, my lord?
How is ’t, Laertes?

Why as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric.

I am justly killed with mine own treachery.

How does the Queen?
She swoons to see them bleed.

No, no, the drink, the drink! O, my dear Hamlet!
The drink, the drink! I am poisoned.

O villainy! Ho! Let the door be locked.
Treachery! Seek it out.

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281 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

HAMLET

Hurts the King.
ALL
KING

HAMLET

Forcing him to drink the poison.
King dies.

LAERTES

Dies.
HAMLET

HORATIO

LAERTES
It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain.
No med’cine in the world can do thee good.
In thee there is not half an hour’s life.
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
Unbated and envenomed. The foul practice
Hath turned itself on me. Lo, here I lie,
Never to rise again. Thy mother’s poisoned.
I can no more. The King, the King’s to blame.

The point envenomed too! Then, venom, to thy

work.
Treason, treason!

O, yet defend me, friends! I am but hurt.

Here, thou incestuous, murd’rous, damnèd Dane,
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?

Follow my mother.
He is justly served.

It is a poison tempered by himself.
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.
Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee,
Nor thine on me.

Heaven make thee free of it. I follow thee.—
I am dead, Horatio.—Wretched queen, adieu.—
You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death,
Is strict in his arrest), O, I could tell you—
But let it be.—Horatio, I am dead.
Thou livest; report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.

Never believe it.

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283 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

He picks up the cup.
HAMLET

A march afar off and shot within.

OSRIC
HAMLET

Dies.
HORATIO

March within.

FORTINBRAS

I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.
Here’s yet some liquor left.

As thou ’rt a man,
Give me the cup. Let go! By heaven, I’ll ha ’t.
O God, Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall I leave behind

me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story.

What warlike noise is this?

Enter Osric.

Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,
To th’ ambassadors of England gives
This warlike volley.

O, I die, Horatio!
The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit.
I cannot live to hear the news from England.
But I do prophesy th’ election lights
On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice.
So tell him, with th’ occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited—the rest is silence.
O, O, O, O!

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Why does the drum come hither?

Enter Fortinbras with the English Ambassadors with
Drum, Colors, and Attendants.

Where is this sight?

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285 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

FORTINBRAS

AMBASSADOR

HORATIO
FORTINBRAS
HORATIO

HORATIO What is it you would see?
If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.

This quarry cries on havoc. O proud Death,
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell
That thou so many princes at a shot
So bloodily hast struck?

The sight is dismal,
And our affairs from England come too late.
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing
To tell him his commandment is fulfilled,
That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Where should we have our thanks?

Not from his
mouth,

Had it th’ ability of life to thank you.
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
Are here arrived, give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placed to the view,
And let me speak to th’ yet unknowing world
How these things came about. So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall’n on th’ inventors’ heads. All this can I
Truly deliver.

Let us haste to hear it
And call the noblest to the audience.
For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune.
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.

Of that I shall have also cause to speak,

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287 Hamlet ACT 5. SC. 2

FORTINBRAS

They exit, marching, after the which, a peal of
ordnance are shot off.

And from his mouth whose voice will draw on
more.

But let this same be presently performed
Even while men’s minds are wild, lest more

mischance
On plots and errors happen.

Let four captains
Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage,
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royal; and for his passage,
The soldier’s music and the rite of war
Speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this
Becomes the field but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

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