With all the strength and armour 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
15
Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
What’s near it with it. Or it is a massy wheel
Fix’d on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortis’d and adjoin’d, which when it falls,
20
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never alone
Did the King sigh, but with a general groan.
KING Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage,
For we will fetters put about this fear
25
Which now goes too free-footed.
ROSENCRANTZ We will haste us.
Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Enter POLONIUS.
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 –
30
’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.
KING Thanks, dear my lord.
35
Exit Polonius.
O, my offence 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,
40
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
45
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what’s in prayer but this twofold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall
Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up.
50
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 possess’d
Of those effects for which I did the murder –
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
55
May one be pardon’d and retain th’offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above:
60
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compell’d
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?
65
Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that struggling to be free
Art more engag’d! Help, angels! Make assay.
Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel,
70
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.
All may be well. [He kneels.]
Enter HAMLET.
HAMLET Now might I do it pat, now a is a-praying.
And now I’ll do’t. [Draws his sword.]
And so a goes to heaven;
And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d:
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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.
A took my father grossly, full of bread,
80
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 reveng’d,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
85
When he is fit and season’d for his passage?
No.
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed,
90
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 damn’d and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.
95
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days. Exit.
KING My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. Exit.
3.4 Enter QUEEN and POLONIUS.
POLONIUS
A 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 screen’d and stood between
Much heat and him. I’ll silence me even here.
Pray you be round.
QUEEN I’ll war’nt you, fear me not.
5
Withdraw, I hear him coming.
[Polonius hides behind the arras.]
Enter HAMLET.
HAMLET Now mother, what’s the matter?
QUEEN Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
HAMLET Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
10
HAMLET Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
QUEEN Why, how now, Hamlet?
HAMLET What’s the matter now?
QUEEN Have you forgot me?
HAMLET 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.
15
QUEEN Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.
HAMLET
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.
QUEEN What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
20
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [behind the arras] What ho! Help!
HAMLET How now? A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead.
[Thrusts his rapier through the arras.]
POLONIUS [behind] O, I am slain.
QUEEN O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET Nay, I know not.
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Is it the King?
[Lifts up the arras and discovers Polonius, dead.]
QUEEN O what a rash and bloody deed is this!
HAMLET A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king and marry with his brother.
QUEEN As kill a king?
HAMLET Ay, lady, it was my word. –
30
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. –
Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down,
And let me wring your heart; for so I shall
35
If
it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damned custom have not braz’d it so,
That it be proof and bulwark against sense.
QUEEN
What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?
HAMLET Such an act
40
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
45
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 tristful visage, as against the doom,
50
Is thought-sick at the act.
QUEEN Ay me, what act
That roars so loud and thunders in the index?
HAMLET Look here upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See what a grace was seated on this brow,
55
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,
A combination and a form indeed
60
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 mildew’d ear
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
65
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
70
Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense
Is apoplex’d, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thrall’d
But it reserv’d some quantity of choice
75
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozen’d 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
80
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
85
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn
And reason panders will.
QUEEN O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st my eyes into my very soul,
And there I see such black and grained spots
90
As will not leave their tinct.
HAMLET Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty!
QUEEN O speak to me no more.
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
95
No more, sweet Hamlet.
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
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And put it in his pocket –
QUEEN No more.
HAMLET 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?
105
QUEEN Alas, he’s mad.
HAMLET Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command?
O say.
GHOST Do not forget. This visitation
110
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.
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 132