O, my old friend! Thy face is valanc'd 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't 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.
- What speech, my good lord? - 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 caviar 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, or no matter in the phrase
which 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: 'twas AEneas' 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 th' Hyrcanian beast, it is not so...
- It begins with Pyrrhus. - It begins with Pyrrhus.
'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
black as his purpose, did the night resemble
when he lay couched in the ominous horse,
hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
with heraldry more dismal,
head to foot now is be total gules,
horridly trick'd with blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
bak'd and impasted with the parching streets, that lend
a tyrannous and a damned light to their vile murders:
roasted in wrath and fire,
and thus o'ersized with coagulate gore,
with eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
old grandsire Priam seeks.'
So, proceed you.
'Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good discretion.
Anon he finds him,
striking too short at Greeks:
his antique sword, rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
repugnant to command:
unequal match'd, 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,
seem'd i' 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
forg'd 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!' - This is too long.
It shall to the barber's, with your beard.
Pr'ythee say on. He's for a jig
or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps.
Say on,
- come to Hecuba. - 'But who, o who,
- had seen the mobled queen...' - 'The mobled queen'?
That's good! 'Mobled queen' is good.
'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'erteemed loins,
a blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up,
who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounc'd:
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 eyes of heaven,
and passion in the gods.'
Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in's eyes.
Pray you, no more!
'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.
My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
God's bodykins, man, better!
Use every man after his desert,
and who should scape whipping?
Use them after your own honour and dignity:
the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
- Take them in. - Come, sirs.
Follow him, friends. We'll hear a play to-morrow.
Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play 'The Murder of Gonzago'?
- Ay, my lord. - We'll ha't to-morrow night.
You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines
which I would set down and insert in't? Could you not?
- Ay, my lord. - Very well. Follow that lord
and look you:
mock him not.
My good friends, I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore.
- Good my lord! - Ay, so. Good-bye to you.
Now I am alone.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
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 wan'd,
tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, 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 damn'd 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?
'Swounds! I should take it: for it cannot be but I am pigeon-liver'd,
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!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, that I,
the son of a dear father murder'd,
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 proclaim'd 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 but blench, I know my course.
The spirit that I have seen may be the 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.
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?
He does confess he feels himself distracted,
but from what cause he will by no means speak.
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.
- Did he receive you well? - Most like a gentleman.
But with much forcing of his disposition.
Niggard of question, but, of our demands, most free in his reply.
Did you assay him to any pastime?
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. - 'Tis most true,
and he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties
- to hear and see the matter. - 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 in to these delights.
We shall, my lord.
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 the affliction of his love or no that thus he suffers for.
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. - Madam, I wish it may.
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 prov'd,
that with devotion's visage and pious action
- we do sugar o'er the Devil himself. - 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! - I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord.
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 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 despis'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 doth 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.
Good my lord, how does your honour for this many a day?
I humbly thank you.
Well,
well,
well.
My lord,
I have remembrances of yours that I have longed long to re-deliver.
- I pray you, now receive them. - No.
- Not I, I never gave you aught. - 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.
Ha?
- Are you honest? - My lord?
- Are you fair? - What means your lordship?
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
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. - Indeed, my lord,
- you made me believe so. - You should not have believ'd me,
for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not.
- I was the more deceived. - 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?
At home, my lord.
Let the doors be shut upon him,
that he may play the fool nowhere but in's own house.
Farewell.
O, help him, you sweet heavens!
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.
O heavenly powers, restore him!
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.
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 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, to have seen what I have seen,
- see what I see! - 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? - 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.
It shall be so:
madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.
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 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'erdoing Termagant,
it out-herods Herod: pray you avoid it.
- I warrant your honour. - 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.
I hope we have reform'd that indifferently with us.
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.
How now, my lord! Will the king hear this piece of work?
- And the queen too, and that presently. - Bid the players make haste.
- Will you two help to hasten them? - We will, my lord.
- What, ho, Horatio! - Here, sweet lord, at your service.
Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man as e'er my conversation cop'd withal.
- O, my dear lord, - 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 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 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'ythee, 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.
Well, my lord:
if he steal aught the whilst this play is playing, and scape detecting,
I will pay the theft.
They are coming to the play. I must be idle: get you a place.
- How fares our cousin Hamlet? - Excellent, i' faith,
of the chameleon's dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed.
You cannot feed capons so.
I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet, these words are not mine.
No, nor mine now.
My lord,
you play'd once i' the university, you say?
That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.
- What did you enact? - I did enact Julius Caesar,
I was kill'd i' the Capitol, Brutus killed me.
It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.
- Be the players ready? - Ay, my lord, they stay upon your patience.
Come hither, my good Hamlet, sit by me.
No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.
O, ho! Do you mark that?
- Lady, shall I lie in your lap? - No, my lord.
- I mean, my head upon your lap? - Ay, my lord.
- Do you think I meant country matters? - I think nothing, my lord.
That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
- What is, my lord? - Nothing.
- You are merry, my lord. - Who, I? O, 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.
Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.
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!'
- What means this, my lord? - Marry, this is miching mallecho,
it means mischief.
Belike this show imports the argument of the play.
We shall know by this fellow:
the players cannot keep counsel, they'll tell all.
Will he tell us what this show meant?
Ay, or any show that you'll show him:
show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means.
You are naught, you are naught:
- I'll mark the play. - For us, and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your clemency, We beg your hearing patiently.
Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
- 'Tis brief, my lord. - As woman's love.
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.
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 hold quantity,
in either naught, 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.
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, - 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.
- That's wormwood, wormwood. - 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.
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,
and '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'll mark his favourite flies,
poor men advanc'd make friends of enemies,
and hitherto does 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.
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!
If she should break it now!
'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile,
my spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
the tedious day with sleep.
Sleep rock thy brain, and never come mischance between us twain!
- Madam, how like you this play? - The lady does protests too much, methinks.
O, but she'll keep her word.
Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in't?
No, no! They do but jest, poison in jest, no offence i' the world.
- What do you call the play? - "The Mouse-trap". 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.
This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.
You are a good chorus, my lord.
I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets dallying.
You are keen, my lord. You are keen.
It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.
- Still better, and worse. - So you must take your husbands.
Begin, murderer, pox, leave thy damnable faces, and begin.
Come: 'The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.'
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.
He poisons him i' the 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!
The king rises!
What, frighted with false fire!
- How fares my lord? - Give o'er the play!
Give me some light.
- Away! - Lights, lights, lights!
Horatio!
Why, let the strucken deer go weep, the hart ungalled play,
for some must watch, while some must sleep: thus 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?
- Half a share. - 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. - You might have rhymed.
O good Horatio,
I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound! Didst perceive?
- Very well, my lord. - Upon the talk of the poisoning?
- I did very well note him. - Ah, ha!
Come, some music! Come, the recorders!
For if the king like not the comedy, why then, belike he likes it not, perdy.
Come, some music!
Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.
- Sir, a whole history. - The king, sir...
- Ay, sir, what of him? - Is, in his retirement,
marvellous distempered.
- With drink, sir? - No, my lord, rather with choler.
Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to his doctor.
For, for me to put him to his purgation
might perhaps plunge him into far more choler.
Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame,
- and start not so wildly from my affair. - I am tame, sir: pronounce.
The queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.
- You are welcome. - 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.
- Sir, I cannot. - What, my lord?
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,
Then thus she says:
your behaviour hath struck her into amazement and admiration.
O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother!
But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's admiration? Impart.
She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed.
We shall obey, were she ten times our mother.
Have you any further trade with us?
- My lord, you once did love me. - And so I do still,
by these pickers and stealers.
Good my lord, what is the cause of your distemper?
You do, surely, bar the door upon your own liberty
if you deny your griefs to your friend.
- Sir, I lack advancement. - How can that be,
when you have the voice of the king himself for your succession in Denmark?
Ay, sir, but 'While the grass grows' the proverb is something musty.
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?
O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.
I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?
- My lord, I cannot. - I pray you.
- Believe me, I cannot. - I do beseech you.
- I know, no touch of it, my lord. - '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.
But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony, I have not the skill.
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you would 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 upon than a pipe?
Call me what instrument you will! Though you can fret me,
yet, you cannot play upon me. God bless you, sir!
My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently.
Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
By the mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed.
- Methinks it is like a weasel. - It is backed like a weasel.
- Or like a whale. - Very like a whale.
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.
- I will say so. - By-and-by is easily said.
Leave me, friends.
I like him not, nor stands it safe with us to let his madness range.
Therefore prepare you, I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
and he to England shall along with you:
the terms of our estate may not endure hazard so dangerous
as doth hourly grow out of his lunacies.
We will ourselves provide:
most holy and religious fear it is
to keep those many many bodies safe that live and feed upon your majesty.
The single and peculiar life is bound, by all the strength and armour of the mind,
to keep itself from 'noyance,
but much more that spirit upon whose weal depend and rest the lives of many.
The cease of majesty dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw what's near it with it:
it is a massy wheel, fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
to whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things are mortis'd and adjoin'd,
which, when it falls, each small annexment,
petty consequence, attends the boisterous ruin.
Never alone did the king sigh, but with a general groan.
Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage,
for we will fetters put upon this fear, which now goes too free-footed.
- We will haste us. - My lord...
he's going to his mother's closet: behind the arras I'll convey myself
to hear the process, I'll warrant she'll tax him home:
and, as you said, and wisely was it said,
'tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear the speech, of vantage.
Fare you well, my liege: I'll call upon you ere you go to bed, and tell you what I know.
Thanks, dear my lord.
'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!
O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven,
it hath the primal eldest curse upon't,
a brother's murder!
Pray can I not, though inclination be as sharp as will:
my stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,
and, like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
and both neglect.
What if this cursed hand were thicker than itself with brother's blood?
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heaven to wash it white as snow?
Whereto serves mercy but to confront the visage of offence?
And what's in prayer but this twofold force,
to be forestalled ere we come to fall, or pardon'd being down?
Then I'll look up, my fault is past.
But, o, what form of prayer can serve my turn?
Forgive me my foul murder! That cannot be,
since I am still possess'd of those effects for which I did the murder,
my crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
and oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself buys out the law,
but 'tis not so above, there is no shuffling,
there the action lies in his true nature,
and we ourselves compell'd,
even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, to give in evidence.
What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one cannot repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free, art more engag'd!
Help, angels! Make assay:
bow, stubborn knees,
and, heart, with strings of steel, be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!
All may be well.
Now might I do it pat,
now he is praying, and now I'll do't,
and so he goes to heaven,
and so am I reveng'd.
That would be scann'd:
a villain kills my father, and for that, I, his sole son,
do this same villain send to heaven?
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread,
with all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May,
and how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought, 'tis heavy with him:
and am I, then, reveng'd, to take him in the purging of his soul,
when he is fit and season'd for his passage?
No!
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent:
when he is drunk, asleep, or in his rage,
or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed, at gaming, at swearing,
or about some act that has no relish of salvation in't,
then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
and that his soul may be as damn'd and black as hell, whereto it goes.
My mother stays:
this physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
words without thoughts never to heaven go.
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 much heat and him.
I'll silence me even here. Pray you, be round with him.
- I'll warrant you, fear me not! - Mother, mother, mother!
Withdraw, I hear him coming.
Now, mother, what's the matter?
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Mother, you have my father much offended.
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
- Why, how now, Hamlet! - What's the matter now?
- Have you forgot me? - No, by the rood, not so:
you are the queen, your husband's brother's wife,
and, would it were not so, you are my mother...
Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.
Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge,
you go not till I set you up a glass where you may see the inmost part of you.
What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
- Help, help, ho! - What, ho! help, help, help!
Dead, for a ducat, dead!
O, I am slain!
O me, what hast thou done?
Nay, I know not: is it the king?
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
A bloody deed! Almost as bad, good mother, as kill a king, and marry with his brother.
- As kill a king! - Ay, lady, 'twas my word.
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune,
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 that it is proof and bulwark against sense.
What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue in noise so rude against me?
Such an act that blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
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 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!
Ay me, what act, that roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
the counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow,
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, 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?
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 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 reserved some quantity of choice,
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
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
when the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
since frost itself as actively doth burn and reason panders will!
O Hamlet, speak no more: thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul,
and there I see such black and grained spots as will not leave their tinct.
Nay, but to live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty,
O, speak to me no more, these words, like daggers, enter in mine ears!
- No more, sweet Hamlet! - A murderer and a villain,
a slave that is not twentieth part the tithe of your precedent lord,
a vice of kings, a cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
that from a shelf the precious diadem stole, and put it in his pocket!
- No more! - A king of shreds and patches!
Save me,
and hover o'er me with your wings, you heavenly guards!
- What would your gracious figure? - Alas, he's mad!
Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
that, lapsed in time and passion,
lets go by the important acting of your dread command?
- O, say! - 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.
Speak to her, Hamlet.
- How is it with you, lady? - Alas, how is't with you,
that you do bend your eye on vacancy and with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
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 on end.
O gentle son, upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
sprinkle cool patience.
Whereon do you look?
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 my stern effects:
then what I have to do will want true colour,
tears perchance for blood.
- To whom do you speak this? - Do you see nothing there?
- Nothing at all, yet all that is I see. - Nor did you nothing hear?
- No, nothing but ourselves. - Why, look you there!
Look, how it steals away! My father, in his habit as he lived!
Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!
This the very coinage of your brain:
this bodiless creation ecstasy is very cunning in.
Ecstasy!
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
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,
that not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
it will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
whilst rank corruption, mining all within, infects unseen.
Confess yourself to heaven, repent what's past,
avoid what is to come, 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.
O Hamlet...
thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
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.
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, 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 either shame the devil, or throw him out with wondrous potency.
Once more, good night:
and when you are desirous to be bless'd,
I'll blessing beg of you.
For this same lord, I do repent,
but heaven hath pleased it so, to punish me with this and this with me,
that I must be their scourge and minister.
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. - What shall I do?
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, 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,
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, to try conclusions,
in the basket creep, and break your own neck down.
Be thou assured,
if words be made of breath, and breath of life,
I have no life to breathe what thou hast said to me.
I must to England, you know that?
Alack, I had forgot.
- 'Tis so concluded on. - There's letters seal'd,
and my two schoolfellows, whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,
they bear the mandate, they must sweep my way, and marshal me to knavery.
Let it work, for 'tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard:
and 't shall go hard
but I will delve one yard below their mines,
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 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.
There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves:
you must translate: 'tis fit we understand them. Where is your son?
Bestow this place on us a little while.
Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night!
What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?
Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend which is the mightier.
In his lawless fit, behind the arras hearing something stir,
whips out his rapier, cries, 'A rat, a rat!'
and, in this brainish apprehension,
kills the unseen good old man.
O heavy deed!
It had been so with us, had we been there!
His liberty is full of threats to all, to you yourself, to us, to every one.
Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd?
It will be laid to us,
whose providence should have kept short, restrain'd and...
out of haunt, this mad young man.
But so much was our love, we would not understand what was most fit,
but, like the owner of a foul disease, to keep it from divulging,
let it feed even on the pith of life.
- Where is he gone? - To draw apart the body he hath kill'd:
o'er whom his very madness, like some ore among a mineral of metals base,
shows itself pure, he weeps for what is done.
O Gertrude, come away!
The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch, but we will ship him hence:
and this vile deed we must, with all our majesty and skill,
both countenance and excuse.
Ho, Guildenstern! Friends both, go join you with some further aid.
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
and from his mother's closet hath he dragg'd him.
Go seek him out, speak fair, and bring the body into the chapel.
Come on! I pray you, haste in this!
Come, Gertrude, we'll call up our wisest friends,
and let them know, both what we mean to do, and what's untimely done.
So envious slander, whose whisper o'er the world's diameter
as level as the cannon to his blank, transports the poisoned shot
may miss our name and hit the woundless air.
O, come away!
My soul is full of discord and dismay.
- Safely stowed. - Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!
But soft, what noise? Who calls on Hamlet?
- Hamlet! - O, here they come.
What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?
Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.
Tell us where 'tis, that we may take it thence and bear it to the chapel.
- Do not believe it. - Believe what?
That I can keep your counsel and not mine own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge!
What replication should be made by the son of a king?
Take you me for a sponge, my lord?
Ay, sir, that soaks up the king's countenance, his rewards, his authorities.
But such officers do the king best service in the end.
He keeps them, like an ape, an apple, in the corner of his jaw,
first mouthed, to be last swallowed.
When he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you,
- and, sponge, you shall be dry again. - I understand you not, my lord.
I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.
My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king.
The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body.
- The king is a thing... - A thing, my lord!
...of nothing. Bring me to him.
- My lord! - Hide fox, and all after.
My lord!
My good lord Hamlet!
My good lord!
Hamlet!
I have sent to seek him, and to find the body.
How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!
Yet must not we put the strong law on him: he's loved of the distracted multitude,
who like not in their judgment, but their eyes,
and, where 'tis so, the offender's scourge is weigh'd, but never the offence.
To bear all smooth and even, this sudden sending him away
must seem deliberate pause.
Diseases desperate grown by desperate appliance are relieved, or not at all.
How now! What hath befall'n?
Where the dead body is bestow'd, my lord, we cannot get from him.
- But where is he? - Without, my lord,
- guarded, to know your pleasure. - Bring him before us.
Ho, Guildenstern! Bring in my lord.
- Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius? - At supper.
- At supper! Where? - Not where he eats, but where he is eaten.
A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him.
Your worm is your only emperor for diet:
we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots:
your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service,
two dishes, but to one table That's the end.
- Alas, alas! - A man may fish with the worm
that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
- What dost you mean by this? - Nothing but to show you how a king
may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.
Where is Polonius?
In heaven. Send hither to see...
If your messenger find him not there,
seek him i' the other place yourself. But if indeed
you find him not within this month,
you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.
Go seek him there.
- He will stay till ye come. - Hamlet...
this deed, for thine especial safety, which we do tender,
as we dearly grieve for that which thou hast done,
must send thee hence with fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself,
the bark is ready, and the wind at help, the associates tend, and every thing
- is bent for England. - For England!
- Ay, Hamlet. - Good.
- So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes. - I see a cherub that sees them.
But, come, for England! Farewell, dear mother.
- Thy loving father, Hamlet. - Mother.
Father and mother is man and wife. Man and wife is one flesh,
and so, my mother.
Come, for England!
Follow him at foot, tempt him with speed aboard,
delay it not, I'll have him hence to-night. Away!
For every thing is seal'd and done that else leans on the affair.
Pray you, make haste!
And, England, if my love thou hold'st at aught
as my great power thereof may give thee sense,
since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red after the Danish sword,
and thy free awe pays homage to us
thou mayst not coldly set our sovereign process, which imports at full,
by letters congruing to that effect, the present death of Hamlet.
Do it, England, for like the hectic in my blood he rages,
and thou must cure me! Till I know 'tis done,
howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun.
Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king.
Tell him that, by his licence, Fortinbras craves the conveyance
of a promised march over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.
If that his majesty would aught with us,
we shall express our duty in his eye,
- and let him know so. - I will do't, my lord.
Go softly on.
- Good sir, whose powers are these? - They are of Norway, sir.
- How purposed, sir, I pray you? - Against some part of Poland.
- Who commands them, sir? - The nephew of old Norway, Fortinbras.
Goes it against the main of Poland, sir, or...
- for some frontier? - Truly to speak,
and with no addition,
we go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it,
nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole a ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.
- Why, then the Polack never will defend it. - Yes, it is already garrison'd.
Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
will not debate the question of this straw.
This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
that inward breaks, and shows no cause without why the man dies.
- I humbly thank you, sir. - God be wi' you, sir.
- Wilt please you go, my lord? - I'll be with you straight.
Go a little before.
How all occasions do inform against me,
and spur my dull revenge!
What is a man,
if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed?
A beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
looking before and after, gave us not that
capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused!
Now, whether it be bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
of thinking too precisely on the event,
a thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward,
I do not know why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do',
sith I have cause and will and strength and means to do't.
Examples gross as earth exhort me:
witness this army of such mass and charge
led by a delicate and tender prince,
whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
makes mouths at the invisible event,
exposing what is mortal and unsure
to all that fortune, death and danger dare,
even for an egg-shell.
Rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument,
but greatly to find quarrel in a straw
when honour's at the stake.
How stand I then, that have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
excitements of my reason and my blood,
and let all sleep? While, to my shame,
I see the imminent death of twenty thousand men,
that, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
go to their graves like beds,
fight for a plot whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
which is not tomb enough and continent to hide the slain?
O, from this time forth,
my thoughts be bloody,
or be nothing worth!
When sorrows come, they come not single spies
but in battalions.
First, her father slain, next, your son gone
and he most violent author of his own just remove,
the people muddied, thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers,
for good Polonius' death and we have done but greenly, in hugger-mugger to inter him.
Poor Ophelia divided from herself and her fair judgment,
without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts.
Last, and as much containing as all these, her brother is in secret come from France
feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
and wants not buzzers to infect his ear
with pestilent speeches of his father's death wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
will nothing stick our person to arraign in ear and ear.
O my dear Gertrude, this, like to a murdering-piece, in many places
gives me superfluous death.
- I will not speak with her. - She is importunate,
indeed distract, her mood will needs be pitied.
- What would she have? - She speaks much of her father
says she hears there's tricks i' the world and hems, and beats her heart
spurns enviously at straws speaks things in doubt, that carry but half sense.
Her speech is nothing, yet the unshaped use of it doth move the hearers to collection
they aim at it, and botch the words up fit to their own thoughts which,
as her winks, and nods, and gestures yield them,
indeed would make one think there might be thought,
though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
'Twere good she were spoken with for she may strew dangerous conjectures
- in ill-breeding minds. - Let her come in.
To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is,
each toy seems prologue to some great amiss,
so full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?
- How now, Ophelia! - How should I your true love know
from another one?
By his cockle hat and staff, and his sandal shoon.
Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
Say you? Nay,
pray you, mark.
He is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone
at his head a grass-green turf, at his heels a stone.
- Nay, but, Ophelia, - Pray you, mark.
- White his shroud as the mountain snow, - Alas, look here, my lord.
Larded with sweet flowers,
which bewept to the grave did go with true-love showers.
How do you, pretty lady?
Well, God 'ild you! They say the owl was a baker's daughter.
Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.
- God be at your table! - Conceit upon her father.
Pray you!
Let's have no words of this!