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The QUEEN’S Apartment. | |
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Enter QUEEN and POLONIUS. | |
| Pol. He 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 | 5 |
| Much heat and him. I’ll silence me e’en here. | |
| Pray you, be round with him. | |
| Ham. [Within.] Mother, mother, mother! | |
| Queen. I’ll warrant you; | |
| Fear me not. Withdraw, I hear him coming. [POLONIUS hides behind the arras. | 10 |
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Enter HAMLET. | |
| Ham. Now, mother, what’s the matter? | |
| Queen Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. | |
| Ham. Mother, you have my father much offended. | |
| Queen. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. | 15 |
| Ham. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue. | |
| Queen. Why, how now, Hamlet! | |
| Ham. What’s the matter now? | |
| Queen. Have you forgot me? | |
| Ham. No, by the rood, not so: | 20 |
| You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife; | |
| And,—would it were not so!—you are my mother. | |
| Queen. Nay then, I’ll set those to you that can speak. | |
| Ham. Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge; | |
| You go not, till I set you up a glass | 25 |
| Where you may see the inmost part of you. | |
| Queen. What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me? | |
| Help, help, ho! | |
| Pol. [Behind.] What, ho! help! help! help! | |
| Ham. [Draws.] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead! [Makes a pass through the arras. | 30 |
| Pol. [Behind.] O! I am slain. | |
| Queen O me! what hast thou done? | |
| Ham. Nay, I know not: is it the king? | |
| Queen. O! what a rash and bloody deed is this! | |
| Ham. A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother, | 35 |
| As kill a king, and marry with his brother. | |
| Queen. As kill a king! | |
| Ham. Ay, lady, ’twas my word. [Lifts up the arras and discovers POLONIUS. | |
| [To POLONIUS.] Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! | |
| I took thee for thy better; take thy fortune; | 40 |
| 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 | |
| If it be made of penetrable stuff, | |
| If damned custom have not brass’d it so | 45 |
| That it is proof and bulwark against sense | |
| Queen. What have I done that thou dar’st wag thy tongue | |
| In noise so rude against me? | |
| Ham. Such an act | |
| That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, | 50 |
| 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 | |
| As from the body of contraction plucks | 55 |
| The very soul, and sweet religion makes | |
| A rhapsody of words; heaven’s face doth glow, | |
| Yea, this solidity and compound mass, | |
| With tristful visage, as against the doom, | |
| Is thought-sick at the act. | 60 |
| Queen. Ay me! what act, | |
| That roars so loud and thunders in the index? | |
| Ham. Look here, upon this picture, and on this; | |
| The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. | |
| See, what a grace was seated on this brow; | 65 |
| 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, | 70 |
| 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? | 75 |
| 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 hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble, | |
| And waits upon the judgment; and what judgment | 80 |
| 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, | 85 |
| 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 | 90 |
| 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 | 95 |
| 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 mine eyes into my very soul; | 100 |
| And there I see such black and grained spots | |
| As will not leave their tinct. | |
| Ham. Nay, but to live | |
| In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, | |
| Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love | 105 |
| Over the nasty sty,— | |
| Queen. O! speak to me no more; | |
| These words like daggers enter in mine ears; | |
| No more, sweet Hamlet! | |
| Ham. A murderer, and a villain; | 110 |
| A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe | |
| Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings; | |
| A cut-purse of the empire and the rule, | |
| That from a shelf the precious diadem stole, | |
| And put it in his pocket! | 115 |
| Queen. No more! | |
| Ham. A king of shreds and patches,— | |
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Enter Ghost. | |
| Save me, and hover o’er me with your wings, | |
| You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure? | 120 |
| Queen. Alas! he’s mad! | |
| Ham. Do you not come your tardy son to chide, | |
| That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go by | |
| The important acting of your dread command? | |
| O! say. | 125 |
| Ghost. Do not forget: this visitation | |
| 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: | 130 |
| Speak to her, Hamlet. | |
| Ham. How is it with you, lady? | |
| Queen. Alas! how is ’t with you, | |
| That you do bend your eye on vacancy | |
| And with the incorporal air do hold discourse? | 135 |
| Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep; | |
| And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, | |
| Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, | |
| Starts up and stands an end. O gentle son! | |
| Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper | 140 |
| Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? | |
| Ham. On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares! | |
| His form and cause conjoin’d, preaching to stones, | |
| Would make them capable. Do not look upon me; | |
| Lest with this piteous action you convert | 145 |
| My stern effects: then what I have to do | |
| Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood. | |
| Queen. To whom do you speak this? | |
| Ham. Do you see nothing there? | |
| Queen. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see. | 150 |
| Ham. Nor did you nothing hear? | |
| Queen. No, nothing but ourselves. | |
| Ham. Why, look you there! look, how it steals away; | |
| My father, in his habit as he liv’d; | |
| Look! where he goes, even now, out at the portal. [Exit Ghost. | 155 |
| Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain: | |
| This bodiless creation ecstasy | |
| Is very cunning in. | |
| Ham. Ecstasy! | |
| My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, | 160 |
| And makes as healthful music. It is not madness | |
| That I have utter’d: bring me to the test, | |
| And I the matter will re-word, which madness | |
| Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, | |
| Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, | 165 |
| That not your trespass but my madness speaks; | |
| It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, | |
| Whiles rank corruption, mining all within, | |
| Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven; | |
| Repent what’s past; avoid what is to come; | 170 |
| And do not spread the compost on the weeds | |
| To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue; | |
| For in the fatness of these pursy times | |
| Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, | |
| Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good. | 175 |
| Queen. O Hamlet! thou hast cleft my heart in twain. | |
| Ham. O! throw away the worser part of it, | |
| And live the purer with the other half. | |
| Good night; but go not to mine uncle’s bed; | |
| Assume a virtue, if you have it not. | 180 |
| That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, | |
| Of habits devil, is angel yet in this, | |
| That to the use of actions fair and good | |
| He likewise gives a frock or livery, | |
| That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night; | 185 |
| And that shall lend a kind of easiness | |
| To the next abstinence: the next more easy; | |
| For use almost can change the stamp of nature, | |
| And master ev’n the devil or throw him out | |
| With wondrous potency. Once more, goodnight: | 190 |
| And when you are desirous to be bless’d, | |
| I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord, [Pointing to POLONIUS. | |
| I do repent: but heaven hath pleas’d it so, | |
| To punish me with this, and this with me, | |
| That I must be their scourge and minister. | 195 |
| I will bestow him, and will answer well | |
| The death I gave him. So, again, good-night. | |
| I must be cruel only to be kind: | |
| Thus bad begins and worse remains behind. | |
| One word more, good lady. | 200 |
| Queen. What shall I do? | |
| Ham. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: | |
| Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed; | |
| Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse; | |
| And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, | 205 |
| Or paddling in your neck with his damn’d fingers, | |
| Make you to ravel all this matter out, | |
| That I essentially am not in madness, | |
| But mad in craft. ’Twere good you let him know; | |
| For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise, | 210 |
| Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib, | |
| Such dear concernings hide? who would do so? | |
| No, in despite of sense and secrecy, | |
| Unpeg the basket on the house’s top, | |
| Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape, | 215 |
| To try conclusions, in the basket creep, | |
| And break your own neck down. | |
| Queen. Be thou assur’d, if words be made of breath, | |
| And breath of life, I have no life to breathe | |
| What thou hast said to me. | 220 |
| Ham. I must to England; you know that? | |
| Queen. Alack! | |
| I had forgot: ’tis so concluded on. | |
| Ham. There’s letters seal’d; and my two schoolfellows, | |
| Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d, | 225 |
| They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way, | |
| And marshal me to knavery. Let it work, | |
| For ’tis the sport to have the enginer | |
| Hoist with his own petar: and it shall go hard | |
| But I will delve one yard below their mines, | 230 |
| And blow them at the moon. O! ’tis most sweet, | |
| When in one line two crafts directly meet. | |
| This man shall set me packing; | |
| I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room. | |
| Mother, good-night. Indeed this counsellor | 235 |
| Is now most still, most secret, and most grave, | |
| Who was in life a foolish prating knave. | |
| Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. | |
| Good-night, mother. [Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in the body of POLONIUS. | |
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