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Act III

Scene I

A room in the Castle.

Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia,

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING.

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 he 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.

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.

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 beseech’d me to entreat your Majesties

To hear and see the matter.

KING.

With all my heart; and it doth much content me

To hear him so inclin’d.

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.

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 behav’d,

If’t be th’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

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 Queen.]

POLONIUS.

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

We will bestow ourselves.-[To Ophelia.] Read on this book,

That show of such an exercise may colour

Your loneliness.-We are oft to blame in this,

’Tis too much prov’d, that with devotion’s visage

And pious action we do sugar o’er

The devil himself.

KING.

[Aside.] O ’tis too true!

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!

The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering 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 King and Polonius.]

Enter 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 heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. 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 contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the 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 undiscover’d 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 remember’d.

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 re-deliver.

I pray you, now receive them.

HAMLET.

No, not I.

I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA.

My honour’d lord, you know right well you did,

And with them words of so sweet breath compos’d

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 earth and heaven? 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’observ’d of all observers, quite, quite down!

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

That suck’d the honey of his music vows,

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,

Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh,

That unmatch’d 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 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

Will be some danger, which for 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 his 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 grief, let her be round with him,

And I’ll be plac’d, 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.

It shall be so.

Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.

[Exeunt.]

Scene II

A hall in the Castle.

Enter Hamlet and certain 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 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 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.

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 reform’d 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 meantime 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.

[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 and GUILDENSTERN.

We will, my lord.

[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.

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 flatter’d?

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

Hath seal’d thee for herself. For thou hast been

As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,

A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards

Hast ta’en with equal thanks. And bles’d 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 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 prythee, when thou see’st that act a-foot,

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 judgments join

In censure of his seeming.

HORATIO.

Well, my lord.

If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,

And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

HAMLET.

They are coming to the play. I must be idle.

Get you a place.

Danish march. A flourish. Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and others.

KING.

How fares our cousin Hamlet?

HAMLET.

Excellent, i’ faith; of the chameleon’s dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.

KING.

I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not mine.

HAMLET.

No, nor mine now. [To Polonius.] My lord, you play’d once i’ th’university, you say?

POLONIUS.

That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.

HAMLET.

What did you enact?

POLONIUS.

I did enact Julius Caesar. I was kill’d i’ th’ Capitol. Brutus killed me.

HAMLET.

It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there. Be the players ready?

ROSENCRANTZ.

Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.

QUEEN.

Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

HAMLET.

No, good mother, here’s metal more attractive.

POLONIUS.

[To the King.] O ho! do you mark that?

HAMLET.

Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

[Lying down at Ophelia’s feet.]

OPHELIA.

No, my lord.

HAMLET.

I mean, my head upon your lap?

OPHELIA.

Ay, my lord.

HAMLET.

Do you think I meant country matters?

OPHELIA.

I think nothing, my lord.

HAMLET.

That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.

OPHELIA.

What is, my lord?

HAMLET.

Nothing.

OPHELIA.

You are merry, my lord.

HAMLET.

Who, I?

OPHELIA.

Ay, my lord.

HAMLET.

O God, your only jig-maker! What should a man do but be merry? For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within’s two hours.

OPHELIA.

Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.

HAMLET.

So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I’ll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year. But by’r lady, he must build churches then; or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is ‘For, O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot!’

Trumpets sound. The dumb show enters. Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing him and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck. Lays him down upon a bank of flowers. She, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, pours poison in the King’s ears, and exits. The Queen returns, finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The Poisoner with some three or four Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner woos the Queen with gifts. She seems loth and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love.

[Exeunt.]

OPHELIA.

What means this, my lord?

HAMLET.

Marry, this is miching mallicho; it means mischief.

OPHELIA.

Belike this show imports the argument of the play.

Enter Prologue.

HAMLET.

We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel; they’ll tell all.

OPHELIA.

Will they tell us what this show meant?

HAMLET.

Ay, or any show that you’ll show him. Be not you ashamed to show, he’ll not shame to tell you what it means.

OPHELIA.

You are naught, you are naught: I’ll mark the play.

PROLOGUE.

For us, and for our tragedy,

Here stooping to your clemency,

We beg your hearing patiently.

HAMLET.

Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

OPHELIA.

’Tis brief, my lord.

HAMLET.

As woman’s love.

Enter a King and a Queen.

PLAYER KING.

Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round

Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground,

And thirty dozen moons with borrow’d sheen

About the world have times twelve thirties been,

Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands

Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

PLAYER QUEEN.

So many journeys may the sun and moon

Make us again count o’er ere love be done.

But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,

So far from cheer and from your former state,

That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,

Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must:

For women’s fear and love holds quantity,

In neither aught, or in extremity.

Now what my love is, proof hath made you know,

And as my love is siz’d, my fear is so.

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;

Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

PLAYER KING.

Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too:

My operant powers their functions leave to do:

And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,

Honour’d, belov’d, and haply one as kind

For husband shalt thou-

PLAYER QUEEN.

O confound the rest.

Such love must needs be treason in my breast.

In second husband let me be accurst!

None wed the second but who kill’d the first.

HAMLET.

[Aside.] Wormwood, wormwood.

PLAYER QUEEN.

The instances that second marriage move

Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.

A second time I kill my husband dead,

When second husband kisses me in bed.

PLAYER KING.

I do believe you think what now you speak;

But what we do determine, oft we break.

Purpose is but the slave to memory,

Of violent birth, but poor validity:

Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,

But fall unshaken when they mellow be.

Most necessary ’tis that we forget

To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.

What to ourselves in passion we propose,

The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.

The violence of either grief or joy

Their own enactures with themselves destroy.

Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;

Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.

This world is not for aye; nor ’tis not strange

That even our loves should with our fortunes change,

For ’tis a question left us yet to prove,

Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.

The great man down, you mark his favourite flies,

The poor advanc’d makes friends of enemies;

And hitherto doth love on fortune tend:

For who not needs shall never lack a friend,

And who in want a hollow friend doth try,

Directly seasons him his enemy.

But orderly to end where I begun,

Our wills and fates do so contrary run

That our devices still are overthrown.

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

So think thou wilt no second husband wed,

But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

PLAYER QUEEN.

Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light,

Sport and repose lock from me day and night,

To desperation turn my trust and hope,

An anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope,

Each opposite that blanks the face of joy,

Meet what I would have well, and it destroy!

Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,

If, once a widow, ever I be wife.

HAMLET.

[To Ophelia.] If she should break it now.

PLAYER KING.

’Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile.

My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile

The tedious day with sleep.

[Sleeps.]

PLAYER QUEEN.

Sleep rock thy brain,

And never come mischance between us twain.

[Exit.]

HAMLET.

Madam, how like you this play?

QUEEN.

The lady protests too much, methinks.

HAMLET.

O, but she’ll keep her word.

KING.

Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in’t?

HAMLET.

No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i’ th’ world.

KING.

What do you call the play?

HAMLET.

The Mousetrap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna. Gonzago is the Duke’s name, his wife Baptista: you shall see anon; ’tis a knavish piece of work: but what o’ that? Your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. Let the gall’d jade wince; our withers are unwrung.

Enter Lucianus.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.

OPHELIA.

You are a good chorus, my lord.

HAMLET.

I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets dallying.

OPHELIA.

You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

HAMLET.

It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.

OPHELIA.

Still better, and worse.

HAMLET.

So you mistake your husbands.-Begin, murderer. Pox, leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.

LUCIANUS.

Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing,

Confederate season, else no creature seeing;

Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,

With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,

Thy natural magic and dire property

On wholesome life usurp immediately.

[Pours the poison into the sleeper’s ears.]

HAMLET.

He poisons him i’ th’garden for’s estate. His name’s Gonzago. The story is extant, and written in very choice Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.

OPHELIA.

The King rises.

HAMLET.

What, frighted with false fire?

QUEEN.

How fares my lord?

POLONIUS.

Give o’er the play.

KING.

Give me some light. Away.

All.

Lights, lights, lights.

[Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio.]

HAMLET.

Why, let the strucken deer go weep,

The hart ungalled play;

For some must watch, while some must sleep,

So runs the world away.

Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me; with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?

HORATIO.

Half a share.

HAMLET.

A whole one, I.

For thou dost know, O Damon dear,

This realm dismantled was

Of Jove himself, and now reigns here

A very, very-pajock.

HORATIO.

You might have rhymed.

HAMLET.

O good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound. Didst perceive?

HORATIO.

Very well, my lord.

HAMLET.

Upon the talk of the poisoning?

HORATIO.

I did very well note him.

HAMLET.

Ah, ha! Come, some music. Come, the recorders.

For if the king like not the comedy,

Why then, belike he likes it not, perdie.

Come, some music.

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

GUILDENSTERN.

Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

HAMLET.

Sir, a whole history.

GUILDENSTERN.

The King, sir-

HAMLET.

Ay, sir, what of him?

GUILDENSTERN.

Is in his retirement, marvellous distempered.

HAMLET.

With drink, sir?

GUILDENSTERN.

No, my lord; rather with choler.

HAMLET.

Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to the doctor, for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far more choler.

GUILDENSTERN.

Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair.

HAMLET.

I am tame, sir, pronounce.

GUILDENSTERN.

The Queen your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.

HAMLET.

You are welcome.

GUILDENSTERN.

Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother’s commandment; if not, your pardon and my return shall be the end of my business.

HAMLET.

Sir, I cannot.

GUILDENSTERN.

What, my lord?

HAMLET.

Make you a wholesome answer. My wit’s diseased. But, sir, such answer as I can make, you shall command; or rather, as you say, my mother. Therefore no more, but to the matter. My mother, you say,-

ROSENCRANTZ.

Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into amazement and admiration.

HAMLET.

O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother! But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother’s admiration?

ROSENCRANTZ.

She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed.

HAMLET.

We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any further trade with us?

ROSENCRANTZ.

My lord, you once did love me.

HAMLET.

And so I do still, by these pickers and stealers.

ROSENCRANTZ.

Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do surely bar the door upon your own liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend.

HAMLET.

Sir, I lack advancement.

ROSENCRANTZ.

How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself for your succession in Denmark?

HAMLET.

Ay, sir, but while the grass grows-the proverb is something musty.

Re-enter the Players with recorders.

O, the recorders. Let me see one.-To withdraw with you, why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?

GUILDENSTERN.

O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.

HAMLET.

I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?

GUILDENSTERN.

My lord, I cannot.

HAMLET.

I pray you.

GUILDENSTERN.

Believe me, I cannot.

HAMLET.

I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN.

I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET.

’Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN.

But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony. I have not the skill.

HAMLET.

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.

Enter Polonius.

God bless you, sir.

POLONIUS.

My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.

HAMLET.

Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?

POLONIUS.

By the mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.

HAMLET.

Methinks it is like a weasel.

POLONIUS.

It is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET.

Or like a whale.

POLONIUS.

Very like a whale.

HAMLET.

Then will I come to my mother by and by.-They fool me to the top of my bent.-I will come by and by.

POLONIUS.

I will say so.

[Exit.]

HAMLET.

By and by is easily said. Leave me, friends.

[Exeunt all but Hamlet.]

’Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,

And do such bitter business as the day

Would quake to look on. Soft now, to my mother.

O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever

The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:

Let me be cruel, not unnatural.

I will speak daggers to her, but use none;

My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.

How in my words somever she be shent,

To give them seals never, my soul, consent.

[Exit.]