66

"It came to pass, As most like it was."

The first row of the pious chanson will shew you more; for look where my abridgments come.

Enter Four or Five Players.

You are welcome, masters; welcome, all:-I am glad to see thee well:-welcome, good friends.— O, old friend! why thy face is valanced since I saw thee last; comest thou to beard me in Denmark?—What, my young lady and mistress! By-'r-lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.— Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en to it like French falconers, fly at anything we see: we'll have a speech straight: come, give us a taste of your quality; come, a passionate speech. 1st Play. What speech, my lord?

Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once,— but it was never acted; or, if it was, not above once for the play, I remember, pleased not the million: 'twas caviarie to the general: but it was (as I received it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of mine) an excellent play; well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember one said, there were no sallets in the lines, to make the matter savoury: nor no matter in the phrase that might indite the author of affectation: but called it, an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I chiefly loved: 't was Æneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of Priam's

slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at this line; let me see, let me see ;

The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,—
'Tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus.

The rugged Pyrrhus,-he, whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble,
When he lay couchéd in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smeared
With heraldry more dismal; head to foot

Now is he total gules; horridly tricked

With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons;
Baked and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and a damnéd light

To their lord's murder: roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.

So, proceed you.

Pol. 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken; with good accent and good discretion.

1st Player.

Anon he finds him

Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command. Unequal matched,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage, strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base; and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear; for, lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head

Of reverend Priam, seemed in the air to stick :
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood;
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.

But as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death: anon, the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region: so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
A roused vengeance sets him new a work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour, forged for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.-

Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod, take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!

Pol. This is too long.

Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard. -Pr'y thee, say on: he's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps: say on: come to Hecuba.

1st Player.

But who, ah woe! had seen the mobled queen-
Ham. The mobled queen?

Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good.
1st Player.

Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood; and, for a robe,
About her lank and all o'er-teeming loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped,
'Gainst fortune's state would treason have pro-
nounced:

But if the gods themselves did see her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport,
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs;
The instant burst of clamour that she made
(Unless things mortal move them not at all)
Would have made milch the burning eye of heaven,
And passion in the gods.

Pol. Look whether he has not turned his colour, and has tears in 's eyes!-Pr'y thee, no more.

Ham. "Tis well; I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.-Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.

Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Ham. Odd's bodikin, man, much better: use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit,
That from her working, all his visage wanned;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspéct,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

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 faculties 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 the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha! Why, 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 have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless
villain !

Why, what an ass am I? This is most brave;
That I, the son of a dear father 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 brains!-Humph!
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 he do blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be a devil; and the devil hath power
To 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.

SCENE I.-A Room in the Castle.

Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA,
ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENStern.

King. And can you by no drift of conference,
Get from him, why he puts on this confusion;
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

Ros. He does confess he feels himself distracted;

But from what cause he will by no means speak. Guil. 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.

To hear him so inclined.

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
And drive his purpose on to these delights.
Ros. We shall, my lord.

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
King. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too:
For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither
That he, as 't were 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 the affliction of his love, or no,
That thus he suffers for.

Queen.
I shall obey you:
And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cause

Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 't is 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 heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,-'t is 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,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's con-

tumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takés,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would 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,

I never gave you aught.

Oph. 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.

Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest?
Oph. My lord?

Ham. Are you fair?

Oph. What means your lordship?

Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty. Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

Ham. 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 some time a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.

So.

Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe

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

Oph. I was the more deceived.

Ham. 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?

Oph. At home, my lord. Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in 's own house. Farewell.

Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens!

Ham. 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; 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.

Oph. Heavenly powers, restore him!

Ham. 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 of '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, [Exit.

go.

Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue,

sword;

The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The 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!

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Re-enter KING and POLONIUS.

King. 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?
Pol. It shall do well: but yet do I believe,
The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love.-How now, Ophelia?

Enter HAMLET, and certain Players. Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue : but if you mouth it, as many of our 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) 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'er-doing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it. 1st Play. I warrant your honour.

Ham. 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'er-step 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 't were, the mirror up to nature; to shew 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 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.

1st Play. I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us.

Ham. 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 shews a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. [Exeunt Players

Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDEN

Ham.

Nay, do not think I flatter:
For what advancement may I hope from thee,
That no revénue 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 fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish her election,
She hath sealed thee for herself: for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards
Has ta'en with equal thanks: and blessed are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well co-mingled,
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please: give me that inan
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 to-night before the king;
One scene of it comes near the circumstance
Which I have told thee of my father's death:
I pr'y thee, when thou seest that act a-foot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe my uncle: if his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,