The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

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The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 132

by William Shakespeare


  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:

  75

  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.

  25

  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

  100

  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.

 

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