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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 wished. To die ;-to sleep :-
To sleep! perchance to dream;-ay, there's
the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,1
Must give us pause: There's the respect,2
That makes calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's con-
tumely,

The pangs of 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 bodkins? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life!
But that the dread of something after death,-
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourne5
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 6
Be all my sins remember'd.

Oph.

Good my lord, How does your honour for this many a day? Ham. I humbly thank you; well.

Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours, That I have longed long to re-deliver; pray you, now receive them. Ham.

I

I never gave you aught.

No, not I:

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Oph. I was the more deceived. Ham. Get thee to a nunnery; Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things, that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck, than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in: What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven! We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us: Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father?

Oph. At home, my lord.

Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him; that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.

Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens!

Ham. If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry; Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery; farewell: Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough, what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell.

Oph. Heavenly powers, restore him.

Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; Nature hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance: Go to; I'll no more of't; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages; those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. a nunnery, go.

To

[Exit Hamlet.

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

The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers! quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his musick 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
Blasted with ecstasy1; O, woe is me! [youth,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Re-enter King and Polonius.

King. Love! his affections do not that way tend; Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little, Was not like madness. There's something in his O'er which his melancholy sits on brood; [soul, 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? Pol. It shall do well: but yet I do believe,

1 Frenzy.

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 SAME.

Enter Hamlet, and certain Players. Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief 2 the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, (and as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipt for o'er-doing Termagant; it outherods Herod: Pray you, avoid it.

1 Play. I warrant your honour. Hum. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'er-step not the modesty of nature: for any thing 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 which one, must, in your allowance, o'er-weigh 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.

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

Ham. O, reform it altogether. And let those, that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them, that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play 1 Speak strongly to. 3 Spectators in the Pit. 2 As willingly. 4 Impress.

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Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service.
Ham. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
As e'er my conversation cop'd withal.
Hor. O, my dear lord,

Нат.
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 pregnant1 hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may followfawning. Dost thouhear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish her election,
She hath seal'd theefor 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 bless'd are
those
[mingled,
Whose blood and judgment are so well co-
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 afoot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe my 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.

Hor.
Well, my lord:
If he steal aught, the whilst this play is playing,
And 'scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

Ham. They are coming to the play; I must be
Get you a place.

[idle:

Danish March. A Flourish. Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and others.

King. How fares our cousin Hamlet? Ham. Excellent, i' faith; of the camelion's dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed: You cannot feed capons so. 1 Ready.

2 Secret.

3 Smithy. 4 Judgment.

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

Ham. No, nor mine now. [To Polonius.] My lord,-you played once in the university, you say?

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

Ham. And what did you enact?

Pol. I did enact Julius Caesar; I was kill'd i' the Capitol; Brutus killed me.

Ham. It was a brute part of him, to kill so capital a calf there.-Be the players ready? Ros. Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience. Queen. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me. Ham. No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.

Pol. [To the King.]O ho! do you mark that?
Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
[Lying down at Ophelia's feet.

Oph. No, my lord.
Ham. I mean, my head upon your lap?
Oph. Ay, my
lord.

Ham. Do you think, I meant country matters?
Oph. I think nothing, my lord.

Ham. That's a fair thought.

Oph. What is, my lord.

Ham. Nothing.

Oph. You are merry, my lord.
Ham. Who, I?
Oph. Ay, my lord.

Ham. 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 these two hours.

Oph. Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord. Ham. So long? Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. 2 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 he must build churches then: or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby horse; whose epitaph is, For, O, for, 0, the hobby-horse is forgot.

Trumpets sound. The dumb Show follows. 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, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the king dead, and makes passionate action. The poisoner, with some two or three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts; she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but, in the end, accepts his love. [Exeunt.

Oph. What means this, my lord?
Ham. Marry, this is miching mallechos; it
means mischief.

Oph. Belike, this show imports the argument of the play.

1 Metrical dialogues during dances. 2 A rich dress.

3 Secret wickedness.

Enter Prologue.

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

Oph. Will he tell us what this show meant?
Ham. Ay.

Oph. I'll mark the play.

Pro For us, and for our tragedy,

Here stooping to your clemency, We beg your hearing patiently. Ham. Is this a prologue, or the poesy of aring? Oph. "Tis brief, my lord. Ham. As woman's love.

Enter a King and a Queen.

P. 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,i About the world have times twelve thirties been; Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands, Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

P. 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 fear too much, even as they love;
And women's fear and love hold quantity;
In neither aught, or in extremity. [know;
Now, what my love is, proof hath made you
And as my love is siz'd,2 my fear is so,
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows
there.

P. King. 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and

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riage move,

Are base respects of thrift, but none of love. A second time, I kill my husband dead, When second husband wins me to his bed.

P. 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;
1 Lustre. 2 Measured. 8 Active. 4 Motives.

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