Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see! 165 Reënter KING and POLONIUS King. Love? His affections do not that way tend; Nor what he spake, though it lack'd 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 170 Will be some danger: which for to prevent, I have in quick determination Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England, Haply the seas and countries different With variable objects shall expel This something-settled matter in his heart, But yet do I believe of his grief The origin and commencement 175 181 You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said; King. It shall be so. Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go. SCENE II. A Hall in the Castle Enter HAMLET and Players 185 190 [Exeunt. 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 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 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. First Player. I warrant your honour. 15 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 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. First Player. I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir. 38 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 villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. 46 [Exeunt Players. Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN 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. We will, my lord. 51 [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. 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 cop'd° withal. Horatio. O, my dear lord, — Hamlet. 55 Nay, do not think I flatter; For what advancement may I hope from thee To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd? No, let the candi'd° tongue lick absurd pomp, And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee 60 65 71 |