The heart-ach, and the thousand natural shocks
The 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,
Must give us pause: There's the respect,
That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
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 make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To groan and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after death,-
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns,-puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of;
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.-Soft you, now!
[Seeing OPHELIA.
The fair Ophelia :-Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd!

Oph. Good my lord,

How does your honour for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thank you; well.

Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours,

That I have longed long to re-deliver;

I

pray you, now receive them.

Ham. No, not I;

I never gave you aught.

Oph. My honour'd lord, you know right well, you did;

And, with them, words of so sweet breath compos'd
As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
Take these again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.

Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest?
Oph. My lord!

Ham. Are you fair?

Oph. What means your lordship?

Ham. That, if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness this was some time a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.

:

Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

Ham. You should not have believ'd me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it: I lov'd you not.

Oph. I was the more deceiv'd.

Ham. Get thee to a nunnery: Why would'st thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things, that it were better, my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck, than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in: What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and Heaven? We are arrant knaves, 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. O 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. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough, what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go.

Oph. Heavenly powers, restore him!

Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; Heaven hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp; you nickname Heaven's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance: Go to; Ill no more of't; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. [Exit HAMLET,

Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The observ'd of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh,
O, woe is me!

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
[Exit OPHELIA,

Enter KING and POLONIUS.

King. Love! his affections do not that way tend; Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little, Was not like madness. There's something in his

soul,

O'er which his melancholy sits on brood.
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;
Whereon his brain's still-beating puts him thus
From fashion of himself. What think you
on't?

Pol. It shall do well: But yet do I believe,
The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love.

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 plac'd, so please you, in the ear
Of all their conferences: If she find him not,
To England send him; or confine him, where
Your wisdom best shall think.

King. It shall be so :

Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.

SCENE II.

Enter the first ACTOR, and HAMLET.

[Exeunt.

Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but, if you mouthe it, as many of our 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,) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows, and noise: I would have

such a fellow whipp'd for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod : 'Pray you, avoid it.

1 Act. I warrant your honour.

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 any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirrour 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 unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.-0, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly,-not to speak it profanely, that neither having the accent of christian, nor the gait of christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted, and bellow'd, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

1 Act. I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us.

Ham. O, reform it altogether. And let those, 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.

Horatio!

[Exit FIRST ACTOR.

Enter HORATIO.

Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service.