Fort.

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 hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I
Truly deliver.

Let us haste to hear it,

And call the noblest to the audience.

For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune:

390

I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, 400
Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.

Hor. Of that I shall have also cause to speak,

Fort.

And from his mouth whose voice will draw on

more:

But let this same be presently perform'd,

Even while men's minds are wild; lest more mischance

On plots and errors happen.

Let four captains
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
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

410

Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

[A dead march. Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies: after which a peal of ordnance is shot off.

NOTES AND COMMENT