The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  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 appal the free,

  Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed

  The very faculty 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 th’ 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 ’a’ fatted all the region kites

  With this slave’s offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!

  Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

  O, vengeance!—

  Why, what an ass am I? Ay, sure, this is most brave,

  That I, the son of the dear 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 scullion! Fie upon‘t, foh!—About, my brain.

  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 a but blench,

  I know my course. The spirit that I have seen

  May be the 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.

  Exit

  3.1 Enter King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and lords

  KING CLAUDIUS (to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)

  And can you by no drift of circumstance

  Get from him why he puts on this confusion,

  Grating so harshly all his days of quiet

  With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

  ROSENCRANTZ

  He does confess he feels himself distracted,

  But from what cause a will by no means speak.

  GUILDENSTERN

  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.

  QUEEN GERTRUDE Did he receive you well?

  ROSENCRANTZ Most like a gentleman.

  GUILDENSTERN

  But with much forcing of his disposition.

  ROSENCRANTZ

  Niggard of question, but of our demands

  Most free in his reply.

  QUEEN GERTRUDE

  Did you assay him

  To any pastime?

  ROSENCRANTZ

  Madam, it so fell out that certain players

  We o’er-raught on the way. Of these we told him,

  And there did seem in him a kind of joy

  To hear of it. They are about the court,

  And, as I think, they have already order

  This night to play before him.

  POLONIUS

  ’Tis most true, And he beseeched me to entreat your majesties

  To hear and see the matter.

  KING CLAUDIUS

  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 on

  To these delights.

  ROSENCRANTZ We shall, my lord.

  Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

  KING CLAUDIUS 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.

  QUEEN GERTRUDE

  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 honours.

  OPHELIA

  Madam, I wish it may.

  Exit Gertrude

  POLONIUS

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

  We will bestow ourselves.—Read on this book,

  That show of such an exercise may colour

  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.

  KING CLAUDIUS

  O, ’tis too true.

  (Aside) 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!

  POLONIUS

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

  Exeunt Claudius and Polonius

  Enter Prince Hamlet

  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,

  The pangs of disprized 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 these 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 traveller 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 pith 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.

  OPHELIA

  Good my lord,

  How does your honour for this many a day?

  HAMLET

  I humbly thank you, well, well, well.

  OPHELIA

  My lord, I have remembrances of yours

  That I have longed long to redeliver.

  I pray you now receive them.

  HAMLET

  No, no, I never gave you aught.

  OPHELIA

  My honoured 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.

  HAMLET Ha, ha? Are you honest?

  OPHELIA My lord.

  HAMLET Are you fair?

  OPHELIA What means your lordship?

  HAMLET That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

  OPHELIA Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

  HAMLET 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.

  OPHELIA Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

  HAMLET You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.

  OPHELIA I was the more deceived.

  HAMLET 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 offences 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 heaven and earth? We are arrant knaves, all. Believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?

  OPHELIA At home, my lord.

  HAMLET Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in ’s own house. Farewell.

  OPHELIA O help him, you sweet heavens!

  HAMLET 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 nunnery, go, 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.

  OPHELIA O heavenly powers, restore him!

  HAMLET I have heard of your paintings, too, well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and you lisp, and 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 marriages. Those that are married already—all but one—shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. Exit

  OPHELIA

  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 mould of form,

  Th‘observed of all observers, quite, quite, down!

  And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

  That sucked the honey of his music vows,

  Now see that noble and most sovereign reason

  Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh;

  That unmatched form and feature of blown youth

  Blasted with ecstasy. O woe is me,

  T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

  Enter King Claudius and Polonius

  KING CLAUDIUS

  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 to prevent

  I have in quick determination

  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?

  POLONIUS

  It shall do well. But yet do I believe

  The origin and commencement of this 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 griefs. 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.

  KING CLAUDIUS

  It shall be so.

  Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

  Exeunt

  3.2 Enter Prince Hamlet and two or three of the Players

  HAMLET Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you—trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier had 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 the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, 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.

  A PLAYER I warrant your honour.

  HAMLET 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 overdone 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 make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre 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 the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor no 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.

  A PLAYER I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir.

  HAMLET 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 mean time some necessary 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. Exeunt Players

 
Enter Polonius, Guildenstern, and Rosencrantz

  (To Polonius) How now, my lord? Will the King hear this piece of work?

  POLONIUS And the Queen too, and that presently. HAMLET Bid the players make haste. Exit Polonius

  Will you two help to hasten them?

  ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN We will, my lord.

  Exeunt

  HAMLET

  What ho, Horatio!

  Enter Horatio

  HORATIO

  Here, sweet lord, at your service.

  HAMLET

  Horatio, thou art e‘en as just a man

  As e’er my conversation coped withal.

  HORATIO

  O my dear lord—

  HAMLET

  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 feigning. 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 suff‘ring all that suffers nothing,

  A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards

  Hath ta’en with equal thanks; and blest are those

  Whose blood and judgement are so well commingled

  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 mine uncle. If his occulted guilt

  Do not itself unkennel in one speech,

  It is a damned 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 judgements join

  To censure of his seeming.

  HORATIO Well, my lord.

  If a steal aught the whilst this play is playing