Hamlet. 'Tis well; I'll have thee speak out the rest soon. Good my lord, will you see the players well bestow'd? Do you hear, let them be well us'd; for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

Polonius. My lord, I will use them according to their desert. Hamlet. 'Od's bodykins, man, much better! Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

Polonius. Come, sirs.

Hamlet. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow. [Exit Polonius with all the Players but the First.] Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play the Murder of Gonzago? First Player. Ay, my lord.

1

Hamlet. We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study 1 a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and insert in't, could you not?

First Player. Ay, my lord.

Hamlet. Very well.

Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exit First Player.] My good friends, I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore.

Rosencrantz. Good my lord!

Hamlet. Ay, so, God be wi' 2

ye.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Now I am alone.

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I !
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit 3
That from her working all his visage wann'd,

1 Commit to memory.

2 "God be wi' you" is a step, in the abbreviation of "God be with you," to our "good-by."

3 The idea he had conceived.

Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect',

A broken voice, and his whole function1 suiting
With forms to his conceit ? And all for nothing!

For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her?

What would he do,

Had he the motive and the cue 2 for passion

That I have ? He would drown the stage with tears,

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;

Make mad the guilty, and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,3
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant 5 of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life

A damn'd defeat 6 was made. Am I a coward ?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across ?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face ?

Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs ? Who does me this?

Ha!

'Swounds, I should take it! for it cannot be But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall

1 Mental and bodily energy.

2 Prompting; technically, among players, the last word of the preceding speech prefixed to the speech of an actor to let him know that he is to come on the stage.

3 Mope.

4 "' John-a-dreams' (i.e., ' of dreams ') means only 'John the dreamer,' a nickname, I suppose, for any ignorant, silly fellow. Thus the puppet formerly thrown at during the season of Lent was called 'Jack-a-lent,' and the ignis fatuus, Jack-a-lantern.'"-JOHNSON and STEEVENS: Shakespeare (edition 1785).

5 Incapable.

6 Ruin.

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

I should have fatted all the region kites

With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless 1 villain !

O, vengeance !

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 wench, unpack my heart with words,
And fall acursing, 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;

2

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 3 him to the quick if he but blench,4
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.5 I'll have grounds
More relative than this: the play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.

1 Void of natural feeling.

2 Evil deeds.

3 Probe.

4 Shrink with fear.

5 "Abuses me to damn me," i.e., misleads me to my ruin.

6 To the purpose.

[Exit.

ACT III.

SCENE I. A Room in the Castle.

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

King. And can you, by no drift of circumstance,1
Get from him why he puts on this confusion,

Grating so harshly all his days of quiet

With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

Rosencrantz. He does confess he feels himself distracted; But from what cause he will by no means speak.

^Guildenstern. 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?

Rosencrantz. Most like a gentleman.

Guildenstern. But with much forcing of his disposition. Rosencrantz. Niggard of question, but of our demands Most free in his reply.

Queen.

To any pastime ?

Did you assay 2 him

Rosencrantz. Madam, it so fell out that certain players We o'erraught 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,
And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.

Polonius.

'Tis most true;

And he beseech'd me to entreat your Majesties

To hear and see the matter.

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

1 "Drift of circumstance," i.e., indirect way.

2 Tempt.

To hear him so inclin'd.

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
And drive his purpose on to these delights.
Rosencrantz. 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
Affront1 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 behav'd,
If't be the affliction of his love, or no,
That thus he suffers for.

Queen.

I shall obey you.-

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish

That your good beauties be the happy cause

Of Hamlet's wildness: 2 so shall I hope your virtues

Will bring him to his wonted way again,

To both your honors.

Ophelia.

Madam, I wish it may.

[Exit Queen.

Polonius. Ophelia, walk you here.— Gracious,3 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 prov'd,—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 conscience!
The harlot's cheek, beauti'd with plast'ring art,

1 Confront; meet.

2 Eccentricities.

3 Addressed to the King.