well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.

Po. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Ham. Odd's bodikin, man, much better: use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

Po. Come, sirs.

[Exit Polonius, with some of the Players.

Ham. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play tomorrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend? can you play the murder of Gonzago?

1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. We'll have it 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?

1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. Very well.-Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exit Player.] My good friends, [to Ro. and Guil.] I'll leave you till night: you are

welcome to Elsinore.

Ro. Good my lord!

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Ham. 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 wann'd;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect,

A oroken 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 ear1 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 2 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!

1 i. e. the ear of all mankind.

Destruction.

Why, 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 1 vil-

lain!

Why, what an ass am 1! 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 brains! Humph! 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 do blench,3
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be a devil; and the devil hath power

1 Unnatural.

3 Shrink or start.

2 Search his wounda

'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.

[Exit.

ACT III.

Enter KING,

SCENE I.

A room in the castle.

QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSEN.
CRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.

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?

Ro. 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?

Ro. Most like a gentleman.

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

Queen.

To any pastime ?

Did you assay him

Ro. Madam, it so fell out, that certain players

1

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.

Po.

'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 content me

To hear him so inclined.

Good gentlemen, give him a farther edge,

And drive his purpose on to these delights.
Ro. We shall, my lord.

King.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
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,3

Will so bestow ourselves, that, seeing, unseen,
We
may of their encounter frankly judge;

And gather by him, as he is behaved,
If 't be the affliction of his love, or no,

1 Overtook.

2 Meet.

3 Spies.