between heaven and earth? We are arrant knaves, 130 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. Oh, 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, go; farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, 140 marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell.

Oph. O heavenly powers, restore him!

Ham. 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 nick-name 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 mar150 riages; those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. Oph. Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

[Exit

The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mold of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite, down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled out of tune, and harsh;
That unmatched form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy; Oh, woe is me,

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 lacked 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,

160

170

Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
From fashion of himself. What think you

on't?

Pol. It shall do well; but yet do I believe
180 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 placed, 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.

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 your players do, I had as lief 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) the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwigpated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to 10 split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise; I could have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod; pray you, avoid it.

1 Play. I warrant your honor.

Ham. 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 20 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 unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance

o'erweigh a whole theater of others. Oh, there be 30 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, sir.

Ham. Oh, reform it altogether. And let those 40 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 be then to be considered; that's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. [Exeunt Players Enter POLONIUs, Rosencrantz, and GuildENSTERN How now, my lord! will the king hear this piece of work?

50 Pol. And the queen too, and that presently.

[Exit POLO

Ham. Bid the players make haste.
NIUS] Will you two help to hasten them?