Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

350 Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,

To tell my story.

[March afar off, and shot within

What warlike noise is this?

Osr. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from

Poland,

To the ambassadors of England gives

This warlike volley.

Ham.

Oh, I die, Horatio;

The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit;
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights

On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice;

360 So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,

Which have solicited

The rest is silence.

[Dies

Hor. Now cracks a noble heart. Good night,

sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Why does the drum come hither?

[March within

Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambassadors, with

drum, colors, and Attendants

Fort. Where is this sight?

Hor.

What is it ye would see?

If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.

Fort. This quarry cries on havoc. - O proud

death!

What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,

That thou so many princes at a shot

So bloodily hast struck?

1 Amb.

The sight is dismal;

370

And our affairs from England come too late;

The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
To tell him his commandment is fulfilled,

That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

Where should we have our thanks?

Hor.

Not from his mouth,

Had it the ability of life to thank you;
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
Are here arrived, give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placed to the view;
And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
How these things came about: so shall you
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,

hear

380

And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

Fallen on the inventors' heads. All this can I

Truly deliver.

Fort.

Let us haste to hear it,

390 And call the noblest to the audience.

For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune;
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.

Hor. Of that I shall have also cause to speak,
And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more;
But let this same be presently performed,

E'en while men's minds are wild; lest more mischance,
On plots and errors, happen.

Let four captains

Fort.
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
400 For he was likely, had he been put on,

To have proved most royally: and, for his passage, ·
The soldiers' music, and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.-

Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this

Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.

Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

[A dead march

[Exeunt, bearing off the bodies; after which a peal

of ordnance is shot off