The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

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The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 124

by William Shakespeare


  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.

  OPHELIA My lord, he hath importun’d me with love

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  In honourable fashion.

  POLONIUS Ay, fashion you may call it. Go to, go to.

  OPHELIA

  And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,

  With almost all the holy vows of heaven.

  POLONIUS Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,

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  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

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  Be something scanter of your maiden presence,

  Set your entreatments at a higher rate

  Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,

  Believe so much in him that he is young,

  And with a larger tether may he walk

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  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

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  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

  As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.

  Look to’t, I charge you. Come your ways.

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  OPHELIA I shall obey, my lord. Exeunt.

  1.4 Enter HAMLET, HORATIO and MARCELLUS.

  HAMLET The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold.

  HORATIO It is a nipping and an eager air.

  HAMLET What hour now?

  HORATIO I think it lacks of twelve.

  MARCELLUS No, it is struck.

  HORATIO Indeed? I heard it not.

  It then draws near the season

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  Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

  [A flourish of trumpets, and two pieces of ordnance go off.]

  What does this mean, my lord?

  HAMLET

  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,

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  The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out

  The triumph of his pledge.

  HORATIO Is it a custom?

  HAMLET Ay marry is’t,

  But to my mind, though I am native here

  And to the manner born, it is a custom

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  More honour’d in the breach than the observance.

  This heavy-headed revel east and west

  Makes us traduc’d and tax’d of other nations –

  They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase

  Soil our addition; and indeed it takes

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  From our achievements, though perform’d 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

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  (Since nature cannot choose his origin),

  By their 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,

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  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

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  From that particular fault. The dram of evil

  Doth all the noble substance often dout

  To his own scandal.

  Enter Ghost.

  HORATIO Look, my lord, it comes.

  HAMLET Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

  Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,

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  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.

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  Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell

  Why thy canoniz’d bones, hearsed in death,

  Have burst their cerements, why the sepulchre

  Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d

  Hath op’d his ponderous and marble jaws

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  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

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  With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

  Say why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?

  [Ghost beckons.]

  HORATIO It beckons you to go away with it,

  As if it some impartment did desire

  To you alone.

  MARCELLUS Look with what courteous action

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  It waves you to a more removed ground.

  But do not go with it.

  HORATIO No, by no means.

  HAMLET It will not speak. Then I will follow it.

  HORATIO Do not, my lord.

  HAMLET Why, what should be the fear?

  I do not set my life at a pin’s fee,

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  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.

  HORATIO

  What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,

  Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff

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  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,

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  Without more motive, into every brain

  That looks so many fathoms to the sea

  And hears it roar beneath.

  HAMLET It waves me still.

  Go on, I’ll follow thee.

  MARCELLUS You shall not go, my lord.

  HAMLET Hold off your hands.

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  HORATIO Be rul’d; you shall not go.

  HAMLET My fate cries out

  And makes each petty artire in this body

  As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.

  Still am I call’d. Unhand me, gentlemen.

  By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me.

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  I say away. – Go on, I’ll follow thee.

  Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet.

  HORATIO He waxes desperate with imagination.

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

  HORATIO Have after. To what issue will this come?

  MARCELLUS

  Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

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  HORATIO Heaven will direct it.

  MARCELLUS Nay, let’s follow him.

  Exeunt.

  1.5 Enter Ghost and HAMLET.

  HAMLET

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

  GHOST Mark me.
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  HAMLET I will.

  GHOST My hour is almost come

  When I to sulph’rous and tormenting flames

  Must render up myself.

  HAMLET Alas, poor ghost.

  GHOST Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing

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  To what I shall unfold.

  HAMLET Speak, I am bound to hear.

  GHOST So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear.

  HAMLET What?

  GHOST I am thy father’s spirit,

  Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,

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  And for the day confin’d to fast in fires,

  Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

  Are burnt and purg’d away. But that I am forbid

  To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

  I could a tale unfold whose lightest word

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  Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

  Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,

  Thy knotted and combined locks to part,

  And each particular hair to stand an end

  Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

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  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 –

  HAMLET O God!

  GHOST Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

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  HAMLET Murder!

  GHOST Murder most foul, as in the best it is,

  But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

  HAMLET

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

  As meditation or the thoughts of love

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  May sweep to my revenge.

  GHOST 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,

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  A serpent stung me – so the whole ear of Denmark

  Is by a forged process of my death

  Rankly abus’d – but know, thou noble youth,

  The serpent that did sting thy father’s life

  Now wears his crown.

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  HAMLET O my prophetic soul! My uncle!

  GHOST Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,

  With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts –

  O wicked wit, and gifts that have the power

  So to seduce! – won to his shameful lust

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  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

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  Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor

  To those of mine.

  But virtue, as it never will be mov’d,

  Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,

  So lust, though to a radiant angel link’d,

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  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,

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  Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole

  With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,

  And in the porches of my ears did pour

  The leperous distilment, whose effect

  Holds such an enmity with blood of man

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  That swift as quicksilver it courses through

  The natural gates and alleys of the body,

  And with a sudden vigour it doth posset

  And curd, like eager droppings into milk,

  The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine,

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  And a most instant tetter bark’d 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 dispatch’d,

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  Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,

  Unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d,

  No reck’ning made, but sent to my account

  With all my imperfections on my head.

  O horrible! O horrible! most horrible!

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  If thou has nature in thee, bear it not,

  Let not the royal bed of Denmark be

 

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