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Fye upon't! foh! About my brains 76! Humph! I

have heard,

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play 77,
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 78 to the quick; if he do blench 79,
I know my course. The spirit, that I have seen,
May be a devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy
(As he is very potent with such spirits),
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative 80 than this: The play's the thing,
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

[Exit.

76 It seems extraordinary that Mason and Steevens could ever conceive that there was any allusion here to the nautical phrase, about ship. About my brains' is nothing more than to work my brains.' The common phrase, to go about a thing, is not yet obsolete. Falstaff humours the equivocal use of the word in The Merry Wives of Windsor :- No quips now, Pistol; indeed I am in the waist too yards about; but I am now about no waste; I am about thrift.' Steevens's quotation from Heywood's Iron Age should have taught him better:

My brain about again! for thou hast found
New projects now to work on,'

77 A number of instances of the kind are collected by Thomas Heywood in his Apology for Actors.

78 To tent was to probe, to search a wound.

79 To blench is to shrink or start.

Sc. 2, p. 21.

Vide Winter's Tale, Acti.

89 i.e. more near, more immediately connected. The first quarto reads, I will have sounder proofs.'

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 conference1 Get from him why he puts on this confusion; Grating 'so harshly all his days of quiet With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

Ros. He does confess, he feels himself distracted; But from what cause he will by no means speak. Guil. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded; But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,

When we would bring him on to some confession Of his true state.

Queen.

Did he receive you well? Ros. Most like a gentleman.

Guil. But with much forcing of his disposition. Ros. Niggard of question; but, of our demands, Most free in his reply 2.

Queen.

To any pastime?

Did

you assay him

Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain players We o'er-raught3 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.

1 Folio-circumstance.

2 Slow to begin conversation, but free enough in answering our demands.'

3 i. e. reached, overtook.

Pol.

'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 con

tent me

To hear him so inclin'd.

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

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
King.
Sweet Gertrude, leave us too:

For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither;
That he, as 'twere by accident, may here
Affront Ophelia :

Her father, and myself (lawful espials 5),

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.

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.

Oph.

Madam, I wish it may.

[Exit Queen.

Pol. Ophelia, walk you here:-Gracious, so

please you,

4 i. e. meet her, encounter her; affrontare, Ital. See Winter's Tale, Act v. Sc. 1, vol iv. p. 109.

5 [Lawful espials;] that is, lawful spies. An espiall in warres, a scoutwatche, a beholder, a viewer.'-Baret. See King Henry VI. Part I. Act i. Sc. 4, p.2 26. An espy was also in use for a spy. The two words are only found in the folio.

6

We will bestow ourselves:-Read on this book;

[To OPHELIA.

That show of such an exercise may colour

Your loneliness7.—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.
O, 'tis too true! how smart
A lash that speech doth give my conscience!
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it,
Than is my deed to my most painted word:
O heavy burden!

[Aside. Pol. I hear him coming; let's withdraw, my lord. [Exeunt King and POLONIUS.

Enter HAMlet.

Ham 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-ach, 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 8,

6 [Bestow ourselves] is here used for hide or place ourselves. We have the word in the same sense in a subsequent scene:'Where the dead body is bestow'd, my lord, We cannot get from him.'

We now use stow. One of our old dictionaries makes a discrimination between the acceptations of this word, thus:- To bestow, or lay out; to bestow, or give; to bestow, or place.' 7 Quarto-lowliness."

6

[This mortal coil;] that is, the tumult and bustle of this

10

11

Must give us pause: There's the respect9,
That makes calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time 1o,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely 1
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 12 make
With a bare bodkin 13? who would fardels 14 bear,
To grunt 15 and sweat under a weary life;

life.' It is remarkable that under garbuglio, which has the same meaning in Italian as our coil, Florio has a pecke of troubles;' of which Shakspeare's 'sea of troubles' in only an aggrandized idea.

9 i. e. the consideration. This is Shakspeare's most usual sense of the word.

10 Time, for the time, is a very usual expression with our old writers. Thus in Ben Jonson's Every Man Out of his Humour: 'Oh, how I hate the monstrousness of time.'

In Cardanus Comfort, by Thomas Bedingfield, 1599, is a description of the miseries of life strongly resembling that in the 1 text:- - Hunger, thirste, sleape not plentiful or quiet as deade men have, heate in somer, colde in winter, disorder of tyme, terroure of warres, controlment of parents, cares of wedlocke, studye for children, slouthe of servaunts, contention of sutes, and that which is most of all, the condycyon of tyme wherein honestye is disdayned as folye, and crafte is honoured as wisdome.' 11 Folio- the poor man's contumely.'

12 The allusion is to the term quietus est, used in settling accounts at exchequer audits. Thus Webster in his Dutchess of Malfy::

'You had the trick in audit time to be sick,

Till I had sign'd your quietus.'

And, more appositely, in Sir Thomas Overbury's character of a Franklin ::- Lastly to end him, he cares not when his end comes; he needs not feare his audit, for his quietus is in heaven.'

13 Bodkin was the ancient term for a small dagger.' Vide note on Act iii. Sc. 2, p. 251.

14 Packs, burdens.

15 Though to grunt has been degraded in modern language, it appears to have conveyed no vulgar or low image to the ear of our ancestors, as many quotations from the old translations of the classics would show. 'Loke that the places about thee be

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