HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK.

The Poisoner, with some two or three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. Poisoner woos the Queen with gifts; she seems The Loath and unwilling awhile; but, in the end, accepts his love. [Exeunt.

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

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

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, or any show that you'll show him: Be not you ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means.2

Oph. You are naught, you are naught; 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 posy of a ring? This world is not for ave; nor 'tis not strange,

Oph. "Tis brief, my lord,

Ham. As woman's love.

Enter a King and a Queen.

P. King. Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart3

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.

P. Queen. So many journeys may the sun and

Make us again count o'er, ere love be done!
But, wo 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;4
And women's fear and love hold quantity;
In neither aught, or in extremity.
Now, what my love is, proof hath made
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.
P. King. 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and
shortly too;

III. Act iii. Sc. 2.
7 Instances are motives. See note on King Richard

Part I.
8 But thought's the slave of life.-King Henry IV.

9. i. e. their own determinations, what they enact.
10 See note on Act i. Sc. 3. This quaint phrase (says
position. Why infests? Surely it is as forcible and
Steevens), infests almost every ancient English com-
intelligible as many other metaphorical expressions
retained in the language. It has been remarked that
our ancestors were much better judges of the powers of
language than we are. The Latin writers did not scru-
ple to apply their verb condire in the same manner.
11 Anchor's for anchoret's. Thus in Hall's second
Satire, b. iv. :-

'Sit seven years pining in an unchor's cheyre, To win some patched shreds of minivere.'"

Ham. O, but she'll keep her word. King. Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in't?

Ham. No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest ; no offence i' the world.

King. What do you call the play? Ham. The mouse-trap.1 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 of that? your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not: Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.

Enter LUCIANUS.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king,
Oph. You are as good as a chorus, my lord.
Ham. I could interpret between you and your
love, if I could see the puppets dallying.

Oph. You are keen, my lord, you are keen. Ham. It would cost you a groaning, to take off my edge.

Oph. Still better, and worse.

Ham. So you mistake your husbands.-Begin, murderer ;-leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come ;

The croaking raven

Doth bellow for revenge.

Luc. Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and
time agreeing;

Confederate season, else no creature seeing;
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecat'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. Ham. He poisons him i' the garden for his 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. Oph. The king rises.

Ham. What! frighted with false fire!
Queen. How fares my lord?

Pol. Give o'er the play.

King. Give me some light:-away!
Pol. Lights, lights, lights!

[Ereunt all but HAMLET and HORATIO.

1 'The mouse-trap,' i. e.

the thing In which he'll catch the conscience of the king.' 2 First quarto-trapically. It is evident that a pun

was intended.

Ham. 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 fel-
lowship in a cry1o of players, sir?
Hor. Half a share.11
Ham. 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-peacock.12

Hor. You might have rhymed.

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

Hor. Very well, my lord.

Ham. Upon the talk of the poisoning,-
Hor. I did very well note him.

Ham. Ah, ha!-come, some music; come, the recorders.13_

For if the king like not the comedy,

14

Why, then, belike, he likes it not, perdy.1a
Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

Come, some music.

Guil. Good, my lord, vouchsafe me a word with

you,

Ham. Sir, a whole history.

Guil. The king, sir,

Ham. Ay, sir, what of him?

Guil. Is, in his retirement, marvellous distem pered.

Ham. With drink, sir?

Guil. No, my lord, with choler.

Ham. Your wisdom should show itself more

richer, to signify this to the doctor; for, for me to
him into more choler.
put him to his purgation, would, perhaps, plunge

Guil. Good, my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair. Ham. I am tame, sir:-pronounce.

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

Ham. You are welcome.

the right breed. If it shall please you to make me Guil. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of

ing that the Provincial roses took their name from Previns, in Lower Brie, and not from ProvENCE. Razed shoes are most probably embroidered shoes. The quano reads, ruc'd. To race, or rase, was to stripe. 3 Gonzago is the duke's name, his wife, Baptista ;' 10A cry of players. It was usual to call a pack of all the old copies read thus. Yet in the dumb show we hounds a cry; from the French meute de chieus: it is have, Enter a King and Queen; and at the end of here humorously applied to a troop or company of this speech, Lucianus, nephew to the King. This players. It is used again in Coriolanus: Menenius seeming inconsistency, however, may be reconciled.says to the citizens, you have made good work, you Though the interlude is the image of the murder of the and your cry. In the very curious catalogue of The duke of Vienna, or in other words, founded upon that Companyes of Bestys, given in The Boke of St. Albans, story, the poet might make the principal person in his many equally singular terms may be found, which seem fable a king. Baptista is never used singly by the Ita-to have exercised the wit and ingenuity of our ancestors; lians, being uniformly compounded with Giam and as a thrave of throshers, a scull or shoal of monks, &c. Giovanni. It is needless to remark that it is always 11 The players were paid not by salaries, but by shares the name of a man. or portions of the profit, according to merit. See Malone's Account of the Ancient Theatres, passim.

4 The use to which Shakspeare put the chorus may be seen in King Henry V. Every motion or puppetshow was accompanied by an interpreter or showman.

Thin The Two Gentlemen of Verona :—

O excellent motion: O exceeding puppet! Now will he interpret for her.'

12A very, very-peacock, The old copies reat paiock, and paioche. The peacock was as proverbindly used for a proud fool as the lapwing for a silly one 'Pavoneggiare, to court it, to brave it, to prorockice B, to wantonise it, to get up and down fondly, gazing upen 5 The first quarto- So you must take your husband.' himself as a peacock does.'-Florio, Ital, D1, 158 Hamlet puns upon the word mistake: So you mis-take Theobald proposed to read paddock; and in the last or take your husbands amiss for better and worse.' The scene, Hamlet bestows this opprobrious name upon the word was often thus misused for any thing done wrong-king. Mr. Blakeway has suggested that we might read fully, and even for privy stealing. In one of Bastard's Epigrams, 1598, cited by Steevens

nonc that seeth her face and making, Will judge her stol'n but by mistaking. 6 Midnight weeds. Thus in Macbeth:'Root of hemlock, digg'di' the dark.' 7 See note on As You Like It, Act ii. Sc. 1. 8 To turn Turk, was a familiar phrase for any lent change in condition or character.

puttock, which means a base degenerate hawk, a kre; which Shakspeare does indeed contrast with the eagle in Cymbeline, Act i. Sc. 2:-

'I chose an eagle, and did avoid a puttock, 13 The recorders. See note on a Midsummer Night's Dream, Act i. Sc. 1. It is difficult to settle exactly the form of this instrument: old writers in general vio-make no distinction between a flute, a pipe, and a re corder; but Hawkins has shown clearly, from a passage in Lord Bacon's Natural History, that the tiute and the recorder were distinct instruments.

9 Provincial roses, on my razed shoes. Provincial was erroneously changed to Provençal, at the suggestion of Warton. Mr. Douce rectified the error by show

14 Perdy is a corruption of the French par Dieu.

a wholesome answer, I will do your mother's com-
mandment: if not, your pardon, and my return shall
be the end of my business.
Ham. Sir, I cannot.
Guil. What, my lord?

Ham. 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,

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

a

Ham. O, wonderful son, that can so astonish mother!-But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's admiration? impart.

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

Ham. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any further trade with us? Ros. My lord, you once did love me.

Ham. And do still, by these pickers and stealers. Ros. Good, my lord, what is your cause of distemper? you do, surely, but bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to your friend.

Ham. Sir, I lack advancement.

Ros. How can that be, when you have the voice of the king himself for your succession in Den

mark?

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

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

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

Guil. My lord, I cannot.

Ham. I pray you.

Guil. Believe me, I cannot.
Ham. I do beseech you.

Guil. I know no touch of it, my lord.

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

Pol. Very like a whale.

by.-They fool me to the top of my bent.—I will
Ham. Then will I come to my mother by and
come by and by.
Pol. I will say so.
[Exit POLONIUS.
Ham. By and by is easily said.-Leave me,
'Tis now the very witching time of night;
friends.
[Exeunt Ros. GUIL. HOR, &c.
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 days
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 ;
I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
Let me be cruel, not unnatural:
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites:
To give them seals, never, my soul, consent' [Exit.
How in my words soever she be shent,
SCENE III. A Room in the same.
Enter King,

ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.
King. I like him not: nor stands it safe with us,
To let his madness range. Therefore, prepare you;
your commission will forthwith despatch,
The terms of our estate may not endure
And he to England shall along with you:
Hazard so near us, as doth hourly grow

Out of his lunacies.

Guil.

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.

Ros. The single and peculiar life is bound,
With 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

Guil. But these cannot I command to any utter-Dies not alone: but, like a gulf, doth draw ance of harmony; I have not the skill.

Ham. 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.

1 To withdraw with you.' Malone added here a stage direction [Taking Guild, aside.] Steevens thinks an answer to a motion Guildenstern had used, for HamJet to withdraw with him. I think that it means no more than to draw back with you,' to leave that scent or trail. It is a hunting term, like that which follows. 2 To recover the wind of me.' This is a term which has been left unexplained. It is borrowed from hunting, as the context shows; and means, to take advantage of the animal pursued, by getting to the windward of it, that it may not scent its pursuers. 'Observe how the wind is, that you may set the net so as the hare and, wind may come together; if the wind be sideways it may do well enough, but never if it blow over the net into the hare's face, for he will scent both it and you at a distance.'-Gentleman's Recreation.

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 boist'rous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.
King. Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy

Voyage;

For we will fetters put upon10 this fear,
Which now goes too free-footed.

Ros. Guil. We will haste us.

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUIL. Malone has made it the sounds produced.' King Henry V. Prologue :

Rumour is a pipe

And of so easy and so plain a stop.'

5 See note on Act ii. Sc. 2.

6 The quarto reads:

And do such business as the bitter day,' &c. 7 They are pestilent fellows, they speak nothing but bodkins.-Return from Parnassus. In the Aulularia of Plautus a phrase not less singular occurs:'Me' Quia mitri miseri cerebrum excutiunt, Tua dicta soror: lapides loqueris, Act ii. Sc. 1.

8 To shend is to injure, whether by reproof, blows, or otherwise. Shakspeare generally uses shent for reproved, threatened with angry words. To give his 3 Hamlet may say with propriety, 'I do not well un-words seals' is therefore to carry his punishment beyond derstand that. Perhaps Guildenstern means, 'If my duty to the king makes me too bold, my love to you makes me importunate even to rudeness.'

4 The ventages are the holes of the pipe. The stops means the mode of stopping those ventages to produce

reproof. The allusion is to the sealing a deed to render
it effective. The quarto of 1603 :-

'I will speak daggers; those sharp words being spent,
To do her wrong my soul shall ne'er consent.'
9 Folio reads spirits.' 10 Quarto-' about,

Enter POLONIUS.

Pol. 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.

King.

Thanks, dear my lord.
[Exit POLONIUS.
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 ;4
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 heavens,
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy,
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what's in prayer, but this two-fold 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

No.

But, in our circumstance and course of though
'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?
Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent :*
When he is drunk, asleep, or in his rage;
Or, in the incestuous pleasures of his bed;
That has no relish of salvation in't:
At gaming, swearing; or about some act

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.

The King rises and advances.

[Exit.

tween

Much heat and him. I'll silence me e'en here.

Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder!-'Pray you, be round with him.''

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 is seen, the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: But 'tis not so above:
There is no shutiling, 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!

Queen.
I'll warrant you;
Fear me not-withdraw, I hear him coming.

[POLONIUS hides himself.

Enter HAMLet.

Ham. Now, mother; what's the matter?
Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much of

fended.

Ham. Mother, you have my father much offended.
Queen. Come, come, you answer with an idle

tongue.

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:
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

Where

you may see the inmost part of you. Queen. What wilt thou do? thou wilt not mur

der me?

Help, help, ho!

Pol. [Behind.] What, ho! help!
Ham

Dead, for a ducat, dead.

How now! a rat?

[Draws.

[HAMLET makes a pass through the Arras.

Pol. [Behind.]

O, I am slain.

[Falls, and dies.

horrifying to the ears of our ancestors. In times of less civilization, revenge was held almost a sacred duty;

3 Warburton explains of vantage, by some op.and the purpose of the appearance of the ghost in this portunity of secret observation. I incline to think that play is chiefly to excite Hamlet to it. The more fell of vantage, in Shakspeare's language, is for advan-and terrible the retributive act, the more meritorious à tage, commodi causa.

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,

To serve in such a difference.] What devil was't

Queen. What have I done, that thou dar'st wag That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman blind?

The expectancy and rose of the fair state." 3 The quarto of 1604 gives this passage thus:Heaven's face does glow

O'er this solidity and compound mass
With heated visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.

4 The index, or table of contents, was formerly placed
at the beginning of books. In Othello, Act ii. Sc. 7, we
have an inder and obscure prologue to the history of
foul and lustful thoughts.'

5 It is evident from this passage that whole length pictures of the two kings were formerly introduced. Station does not mean the spot where any one is placed, but the act of standing, the attitude. So in Antony and Cleopatra, Actii. Sc. 3:

'Her motion and her station are as one.'