O, vengeance!

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Why, what an ass am I! 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 brain! 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;

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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 but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil; and the devil hath power
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.

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ACT THIRD

SCENE I

A room in the castle.

Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA,
ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.

King. And can you, by no drift of circumstance,
Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
Ros. 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?
Ros. Most like a gentleman.

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

Queen.

To any pastime?

Did you assay him

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

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,

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Pol.

And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.

'Tis most true:

And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties

To hear and see the matter.

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King. With all my heart; and it doth much content

me

To hear him so inclined.

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
And drive his purpose on to these delights.

Ros. 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,

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
That thus he suffers for.

Queen.

Oph.

I shall obey you.

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish

That your good beauties be the happy cause

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Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,

To both your honors.

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Madam, I wish it may. [Exit Queen.

Pol. Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious, so please you,

We will bestow ourselves. [To Ophelia.] Read on this book;

That show of such an exercise may color

Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,— 'Tis too much proved-that with devotion's visage And pious action we do sugar o'er

The devil himself.

King. [Aside] O, 'tis too true!

How smart a lash that speech doth give my con

science!

The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it

Than is my deed to my most painted word:
O heavy burthen!

Pol. I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord.

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[Exeunt King and Polonius.

Enter HAMLET.

Ham. To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep; 60
No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That 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,

Oph.

Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

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For who would bear the whips and scorns of

time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised 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 grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveler 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 pitch and moment
With this regard their current turn awry,
And lose the name of action.-Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

Good my lord,
How does your honor for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thank you: well, well, well.
Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver;
I pray you, now receive them.

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