Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - 3

HAMLET. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good
kissing carrion,— Have you a daughter?
POLONIUS. I have, my lord.
HAMLET. Let her not walk i’ th’ sun. Conception is a blessing, but not
as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to’t.
POLONIUS. How say you by that? [_Aside._] Still harping on my daughter.
Yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger. He is far
gone, far gone. And truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for
love; very near this. I’ll speak to him again.—What do you read, my
lord?
HAMLET. Words, words, words.
POLONIUS. What is the matter, my lord?
HAMLET. Between who?
POLONIUS. I mean the matter that you read, my lord.
HAMLET. Slanders, sir. For the satirical slave says here that old men
have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes purging
thick amber and plum-tree gum; and that they have a plentiful lack of
wit, together with most weak hams. All which, sir, though I most
powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it
thus set down. For you yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a
crab you could go backward.
POLONIUS. [_Aside._] Though this be madness, yet there is a method
in’t.— Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
HAMLET. Into my grave?
POLONIUS. Indeed, that is out o’ the air. [_Aside._] How pregnant
sometimes his replies are! A happiness that often madness hits on,
which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I
will leave him and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him
and my daughter. My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave
of you.
HAMLET. You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more
willingly part withal, except my life, except my life, except my life.
POLONIUS. Fare you well, my lord.
HAMLET. These tedious old fools.
Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
POLONIUS. You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.
ROSENCRANTZ. [_To Polonius._] God save you, sir.
[_Exit Polonius._]
GUILDENSTERN. My honoured lord!
ROSENCRANTZ. My most dear lord!
HAMLET. My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah,
Rosencrantz. Good lads, how do ye both?
ROSENCRANTZ. As the indifferent children of the earth.
GUILDENSTERN. Happy in that we are not over-happy; On Fortune’s cap we
are not the very button.
HAMLET. Nor the soles of her shoe?
ROSENCRANTZ. Neither, my lord.
HAMLET. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?
GUILDENSTERN. Faith, her privates we.
HAMLET. In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true; she is a
strumpet. What’s the news?
ROSENCRANTZ. None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest.
HAMLET. Then is doomsday near. But your news is not true. Let me
question more in particular. What have you, my good friends, deserved
at the hands of Fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?
GUILDENSTERN. Prison, my lord?
HAMLET. Denmark’s a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ. Then is the world one.
HAMLET. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and
dungeons, Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.
ROSENCRANTZ. We think not so, my lord.
HAMLET. Why, then ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or
bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ. Why, then your ambition makes it one; ’tis too narrow for
your mind.
HAMLET. O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a
king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
GUILDENSTERN. Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very
substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
HAMLET. A dream itself is but a shadow.
ROSENCRANTZ. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality
that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
HAMLET. Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretch’d
heroes the beggars’ shadows. Shall we to th’ court? For, by my fay, I
cannot reason.
ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. We’ll wait upon you.
HAMLET. No such matter. I will not sort you with the rest of my
servants; for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully
attended. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at
Elsinore?
ROSENCRANTZ. To visit you, my lord, no other occasion.
HAMLET. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you.
And sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you
not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come,
deal justly with me. Come, come; nay, speak.
GUILDENSTERN. What should we say, my lord?
HAMLET. Why, anything. But to the purpose. You were sent for; and there
is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties have not
craft enough to colour. I know the good King and Queen have sent for
you.
ROSENCRANTZ. To what end, my lord?
HAMLET. That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights
of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of
our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could
charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent
for or no.
ROSENCRANTZ. [_To Guildenstern._] What say you?
HAMLET. [_Aside._] Nay, then I have an eye of you. If you love me, hold
not off.
GUILDENSTERN. My lord, we were sent for.
HAMLET. I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your
discovery, and your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no feather. I
have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition
that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory;
this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging
firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it
appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of
vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason? How infinite
in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable? In action
how like an angel? In apprehension, how like a god? The beauty of the
world, the paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this
quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither,
though by your smiling you seem to say so.
ROSENCRANTZ. My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.
HAMLET. Why did you laugh then, when I said ‘Man delights not me’?
ROSENCRANTZ. To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what Lenten
entertainment the players shall receive from you. We coted them on the
way, and hither are they coming to offer you service.
HAMLET. He that plays the king shall be welcome,—his Majesty shall have
tribute of me; the adventurous knight shall use his foil and target;
the lover shall not sigh gratis, the humorous man shall end his part in
peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickle a’ th’
sere; and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall
halt for’t. What players are they?
ROSENCRANTZ. Even those you were wont to take such delight in—the
tragedians of the city.
HAMLET. How chances it they travel? Their residence, both in reputation
and profit, was better both ways.
ROSENCRANTZ. I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late
innovation.
HAMLET. Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the
city? Are they so followed?
ROSENCRANTZ. No, indeed, they are not.
HAMLET. How comes it? Do they grow rusty?
ROSENCRANTZ. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace; but there
is, sir, an ayry of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of
question, and are most tyrannically clapped for’t. These are now the
fashion, and so berattle the common stages—so they call them—that many
wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and dare scarce come
thither.
HAMLET. What, are they children? Who maintains ’em? How are they
escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing?
Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common
players—as it is most like, if their means are no better—their writers
do them wrong to make them exclaim against their own succession?
ROSENCRANTZ. Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the
nation holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy. There was for a
while, no money bid for argument unless the poet and the player went to
cuffs in the question.
HAMLET. Is’t possible?
GUILDENSTERN. O, there has been much throwing about of brains.
HAMLET. Do the boys carry it away?
ROSENCRANTZ. Ay, that they do, my lord. Hercules and his load too.
HAMLET. It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, and
those that would make mouths at him while my father lived, give twenty,
forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little.
’Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy
could find it out.
[_Flourish of trumpets within._]
GUILDENSTERN. There are the players.
HAMLET. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come. The
appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply with you
in this garb, lest my extent to the players, which I tell you must show
fairly outward, should more appear like entertainment than yours. You
are welcome. But my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.
GUILDENSTERN. In what, my dear lord?
HAMLET. I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I
know a hawk from a handsaw.
Enter Polonius.
POLONIUS. Well be with you, gentlemen.
HAMLET. Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too, at each ear a hearer. That
great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts.
ROSENCRANTZ. Happily he’s the second time come to them; for they say an
old man is twice a child.
HAMLET. I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players. Mark
it.—You say right, sir: for a Monday morning ’twas so indeed.
POLONIUS. My lord, I have news to tell you.
HAMLET. My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in
Rome—
POLONIUS. The actors are come hither, my lord.
HAMLET. Buzz, buzz.
POLONIUS. Upon my honour.
HAMLET. Then came each actor on his ass—
POLONIUS. The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy,
history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral,
tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene
individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus
too light, for the law of writ and the liberty. These are the only men.
HAMLET. O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!
POLONIUS. What treasure had he, my lord?
HAMLET. Why— ’One fair daughter, and no more, The which he loved
passing well.’
POLONIUS. [_Aside._] Still on my daughter.
HAMLET. Am I not i’ th’ right, old Jephthah?
POLONIUS. If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I
love passing well.
HAMLET. Nay, that follows not.
POLONIUS. What follows then, my lord?
HAMLET. Why, As by lot, God wot, and then, you know, It came to pass,
as most like it was. The first row of the pious chanson will show you
more. For look where my abridgement comes.
Enter four or five Players.
You are welcome, masters, welcome all. I am glad to see thee well.
Welcome, good friends. O, my old friend! Thy face is valanc’d since I
saw thee last. Com’st thou to beard me in Denmark? What, my young lady
and mistress! By’r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I
saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. Pray God your voice, like a
piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring. Masters, you
are all welcome. We’ll e’en to’t like French falconers, fly at anything
we see. We’ll have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your
quality. Come, a passionate speech.
FIRST PLAYER. What speech, my lord?
HAMLET. I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted, or
if it was, not above once, for the play, I remember, pleased not the
million, ’twas caviare to the general. But it was—as I received it, and
others, whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of mine—an
excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much
modesty as cunning. I remember one said there were no sallets in the
lines to make the matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that
might indite the author of affectation, but called it an honest method,
as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One
speech in it, I chiefly loved. ’Twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido, and
thereabout of it especially where he speaks of Priam’s slaughter. If it
live in your memory, begin at this line, let me see, let me see: _The
rugged Pyrrhus, like th’ Hyrcanian beast,—_ It is not so: it begins
with Pyrrhus— _The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms, Black as his
purpose, did the night resemble When he lay couched in the ominous
horse, Hath now this dread and black complexion smear’d With heraldry
more dismal. Head to foot Now is he total gules, horridly trick’d With
blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, Bak’d and impasted with the
parching streets, That lend a tyrannous and a damned light To their
vile murders. Roasted in wrath and fire, And thus o’ersized with
coagulate gore, With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus Old
grandsire Priam seeks._ So, proceed you.
POLONIUS. ’Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good
discretion.
FIRST PLAYER. _Anon he finds him, Striking too short at Greeks. His
antique sword, Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls, Repugnant to
command. Unequal match’d, Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes
wide; But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword Th’unnerved father
falls. Then senseless Ilium, Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming
top Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash Takes prisoner
Pyrrhus’ ear. For lo, his sword, Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem’d i’ th’air to stick. So, as a painted tyrant,
Pyrrhus stood, And like a neutral to his will and matter, Did nothing.
But as we often see against some storm, A silence in the heavens, the
rack stand still, The bold winds speechless, and the orb below As hush
as death, anon the dreadful thunder Doth rend the region; so after
Pyrrhus’ pause, Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work, And never did
the Cyclops’ hammers fall On Mars’s armour, forg’d for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword Now falls on Priam. Out,
out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods, In general synod, take away
her power; Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl
the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends._
POLONIUS. This is too long.
HAMLET. It shall to the barber’s, with your beard.—Prythee say on. He’s
for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps. Say on; come to Hecuba.
FIRST PLAYER. _But who, O who, had seen the mobled queen,—_
HAMLET. ‘The mobled queen’?
POLONIUS. That’s good! ‘Mobled queen’ is good.
FIRST PLAYER. _Run barefoot up and down, threat’ning the flames With
bisson rheum. A clout upon that head Where late the diadem stood, and
for a robe, About her lank and all o’erteemed loins, A blanket, in
th’alarm of fear caught up— Who this had seen, with tongue in venom
steep’d, ’Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have pronounc’d. But if
the gods themselves did see her then, When she saw Pyrrhus make
malicious sport In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs, The
instant burst of clamour that she made,— Unless things mortal move them
not at all,— Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, And
passion in the gods._
POLONIUS. Look, where he has not turn’d his colour, and has tears in’s
eyes. Pray you, no more.
HAMLET. ’Tis well. I’ll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.—Good
my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them
be well used; 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. God’s bodikin, man, better. Use every man after his desert, and
who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour 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 tomorrow.
[_Exeunt 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.
HAMLET. We’ll ha’t tomorrow 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 PLAYER. Ay, my lord.
HAMLET. Very well. Follow that lord, and look you mock him not.
[_Exit First Player._]
[_To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern_] My good friends, I’ll leave you
till night. You are welcome to Elsinore.
ROSENCRANTZ. Good my lord.
[_Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern._]
HAMLET. Ay, so, God b’ wi’ ye. 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 wan’d; Tears in his eyes,
distraction in’s aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function 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 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 damn’d 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’ th’ 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 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! Oh 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 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. 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 T’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.
[_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 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. Did you assay him to any pastime?
ROSENCRANTZ. 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, 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 me 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.
[_Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern._]
KING. 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 behav’d, If’t be th’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: so shall I
hope your virtues Will bring him to his wonted way again, To both your
honours.
OPHELIA. Madam, I wish it may.
[_Exit Queen._]
POLONIUS. 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 colour 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, 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 burden!
POLONIUS. I hear him coming. Let’s withdraw, my lord.
[_Exeunt King and Polonius._]
Enter Hamlet.
HAMLET. 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, 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, 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 dispriz’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 these 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 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, The fair Ophelia!
Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember’d.
OPHELIA. Good my lord, How does your honour for this many a day?
HAMLET. I humbly thank you; well, well, well.
OPHELIA. My lord, I have remembrances of yours That I have longed long
to re-deliver. I pray you, now receive them.
HAMLET. No, not I. I never gave you aught.
OPHELIA. 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.
HAMLET. Ha, ha! Are you honest?
OPHELIA. My lord?
HAMLET. Are you fair?
OPHELIA. What means your lordship?
HAMLET. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no
discourse to your beauty.
OPHELIA. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
HAMLET. 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 sometime a paradox, but
now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.
OPHELIA. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
HAMLET. You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate
our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.
OPHELIA. I was the more deceived.
HAMLET. Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst 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?
OPHELIA. At home, my lord.
HAMLET. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool
nowhere but in’s own house. Farewell.
OPHELIA. O help him, you sweet heavens!
HAMLET. 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, go: farewell. 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; and quickly too. Farewell.
OPHELIA. O heavenly powers, restore him!
HAMLET. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath given
you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and
you lisp, and nickname God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your
ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’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._]
OPHELIA. O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown! The courtier’s,
soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword, Th’expectancy and rose of the
fair state, The glass of fashion and the mould of form, Th’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, That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth Blasted with
ecstasy. O woe is me, T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see.
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, And I do doubt the
hatch and the disclose Will be some danger, which for to prevent, I
have in quick determination Thus set it down: 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 brains still beating puts him
thus From fashion of himself. What think you on’t?