The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 127
QUEEN
But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.
POLONIUS Away, I do beseech you both, away.
I’ll board him presently. O give me leave.
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Exeunt King and Queen and attendants.
How does my good Lord Hamlet?
HAMLET Well, God-a-mercy.
POLONIUS Do you know me, my lord?
HAMLET Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.
POLONIUS Not I, my lord.
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HAMLET Then I would you were so honest a man.
POLONIUS Honest, my lord?
HAMLET Ay sir. To be honest, as this world goes, is to
be one man picked out of ten thousand.
POLONIUS That’s very true, my lord.
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HAMLET For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog,
being a good kissing carrion – Have you a daughter?
POLONIUS I have, my lord.
HAMLET Let her not walk i’th’ sun. Conception is a
blessing, but as your daughter may conceive – friend,
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look to’t.
POLONIUS [aside] How say you by that? Still harping on
my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first; a said I was
a fishmonger. A is far gone. And truly in my youth I
suffered much extremity for love, very near this. I’ll
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speak to him again. – What do you read, my lord?
HAMLET Words, words, words.
POLONIUS What is the matter, my lord?
HAMLET Between who?
POLONIUS I mean the matter that you read, my lord.
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HAMLET 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,
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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.
POLONIUS [aside] Though this be madness, yet there is
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method in’t. – Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
HAMLET Into my grave?
POLONIUS 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
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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.
HAMLET You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I
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will not more willingly part withal – except my life,
except my life, except my life.
POLONIUS Fare you well, my lord.
HAMLET These tedious old fools.
Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
POLONIUS You go to seek the Lord Hamlet. There he is.
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ROSENCRANTZ God save you, sir. Exit Polonius.
GUILDENSTERN My honoured lord.
ROSENCRANTZ My most dear lord.
HAMLET My excellent good friends. How dost thou,
Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz. Good lads, how do
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you both?
ROSENCRANTZ As the indifferent children of the earth.
GUILDENSTERN Happy in that we are not over-happy:
on Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.
HAMLET Nor the soles of her shoe?
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ROSENCRANTZ Neither, my lord.
HAMLET Then you live about her waist, or in the
middle of her favours?
GUILDENSTERN Faith, her privates we.
HAMLET In the secret parts of Fortune? O most true,
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she is a strumpet. What news?
ROSENCRANTZ None, my lord, but the world’s grown
honest.
HAMLET Then is doomsday near. But your news is not
true. Let me question more in particular. What have
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you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of
Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?
GUILDENSTERN Prison, my lord?
HAMLET Denmark’s a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ Then is the world one.
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HAMLET A goodly one, in which there are many
confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one
o’th’ worst.
ROSENCRANTZ We think not so, my lord.
HAMLET Why, then ’tis none to you; for there is nothing
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either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it
is a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ Why, then your ambition makes it one:
’tis too narrow for your mind.
HAMLET O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and
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count myself a king of infinite space – were it not that
I have bad dreams.
GUILDENSTERN Which dreams indeed are ambition; for
the very substance of the ambitious is merely the
shadow of a dream.
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HAMLET A dream itself is but a shadow.
ROSENCRANTZ Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and
light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
HAMLET Then are our beggars bodies, and our
monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars’
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shadows. Shall we to th’ court? For by my fay, I cannot
reason.
ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN We’ll wait upon you.
HAMLET No such matter. I will not sort you with the
rest of my servants; for, to speak to you like an honest
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man, I am most dreadfully attended. But in the beaten
way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?
ROSENCRANTZ To visit you, my lord, no other occasion.
HAMLET Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks,
but I thank you. And sure, dear friends, my thanks are
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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.
GUILDENSTERN What should we say, my lord?
HAMLET Anything but to th’ purpose. You were sent
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for, and there is a kind of confession in your looks,
which your modesties have not craft enough to colour.
I know the good King and Queen have sent for you.
ROSENCRANTZ To what end, my lord?
HAMLET That, you must teach me. But let me conjure
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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.
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ROSENCRANTZ [aside to Guildenstern] What say you?
HAMLET Nay, then I have an eye of you. If you love me,
hold not off.
GUILDENSTERN My lord, we were sent for.
HAMLET I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
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prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the King
and Queen moult no feather. I have of late, but
wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; an
d indeed it goes so heavily with
my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems
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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 vapours. What piece of work is a man,
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how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form
and moving how express and admirable, in action how
like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the
beauty of the world, the paragon of animals – and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights
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not me – nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.
ROSENCRANTZ My lord, there was no such stuff in my
thoughts.
HAMLET Why did ye laugh then, when I said man
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delights not me?
ROSENCRANTZ 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.
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HAMLET 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
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are tickle a’th’ sear, and the lady shall say her mind
freely – or the blank verse shall halt for’t. What
players are they?
ROSENCRANTZ Even those you were wont to take such
delight in, the tragedians of the city.
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HAMLET How chances it they travel? Their residence,
both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.
ROSENCRANTZ I think their inhibition comes by the
means of the late innovation.
HAMLET Do they hold the same estimation they did
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when I was in the city? Are they so followed?
ROSENCRANTZ No, indeed are they not.
HAMLET How comes it? Do they grow rusty?
ROSENCRANTZ Nay, their endeavour keeps in the
wonted pace; but there is, sir, an eyrie of children,
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little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and
are most tyrannically clapped for’t. These are now the
fashion, and so berattle the common stages – so they
call them – that many wearing rapiers are afraid of
goose-quills and dare scarce come thither.
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HAMLET What, are they children? Who maintains ’em?
How are they escotted? 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
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better – their writers do them wrong to make them
exclaim against their own succession?
ROSENCRANTZ 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
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argument unless the poet and the player went to cuffs
in the question.
HAMLET Is’t possible?
GUILDENSTERN O, there has been much throwing about
of brains.
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HAMLET Do the boys carry it away?
ROSENCRANTZ Ay, that they do, my lord, Hercules and
his load too.
HAMLET It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of
Denmark, and those that would make mouths at him
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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.
[A flourish of trumpets.]
GUILDENSTERN There are the players.
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HAMLET 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
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entertainment than yours. You are welcome. But my
uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.
GUILDENSTERN In what, my dear lord?
HAMLET I am but mad north-north-west. When the
wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
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