the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

Pol. Come, sirs.

Ham. Follow him, friends; we'll hear a play 575 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 Play. Ay, my lord.

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

First Play. Ay, my lord.
Ham. 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.

Ros. Good my lord!

580

585

590

595

Ham. Ay, so, God buy 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
That from her working all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for 600
nothing!

For Hecuba!

605

910

615

620

6:25

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 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 appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damned defeat 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 can not be
But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall
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

villain!

O, vengeance!

Why, what an ass I am! This is most brave, That I, the son of a dear father murdered, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and 680 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 proclaimed their malefactions.
For murder, though it have no tongue, will
speak

685

With most miraculous organ. I'll have these 640 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 645
T'assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,

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,
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; 5 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 con

fession

Of his true state.

Queen.

Did he receive you

well? 10

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.

Did you assay him