Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - 4

POLONIUS. It shall do well. But yet do I believe The origin and
commencement of his grief Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia?
You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said, We heard it all. My lord,
do as you please, But if you hold it fit, after the play, Let his queen
mother all alone entreat him To show his grief, let her be round with
him, And I’ll be plac’d, so please you, in the ear Of all their
conference. If she find him not, To England send him; or confine him
where Your wisdom best shall think.
KING. It shall be so. Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.
[_Exeunt._]
SCENE II. A hall in the Castle.
Enter Hamlet and certain Players.
HAMLET. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of your players
do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very
torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of passion, you must
acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a
passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings,
who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb
shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing
Termagant. It out-Herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.
FIRST PLAYER. I warrant your honour.
HAMLET. Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your
tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this
special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature; for
anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at
the first and now, was and is, to hold as ’twere the mirror up to
nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the
very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, this
overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot
but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in
your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players
that I have seen play—and heard others praise, and that highly—not to
speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor
the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed
that I have thought some of Nature’s journeymen had made men, and not
made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
FIRST PLAYER. I hope we have reform’d that indifferently with us, sir.
HAMLET. O reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns
speak no more than is set down for them. For there be of them that will
themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh
too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then
to be considered. That’s villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition
in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.
[_Exeunt Players._]
Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
How now, my lord? Will the King hear this piece of work?
POLONIUS. And the Queen too, and that presently.
HAMLET. Bid the players make haste.
[_Exit Polonius._]
Will you two help to hasten them?
ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. We will, my lord.
[_Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern._]
HAMLET. What ho, Horatio!
Enter Horatio.
HORATIO. Here, sweet lord, at your service.
HAMLET. Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man As e’er my conversation
cop’d withal.
HORATIO. O my dear lord.
HAMLET. Nay, do not think I flatter; For what advancement may I hope
from thee, That no revenue hast, but thy good spirits To feed and
clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter’d? No, let the candied
tongue lick absurd pomp, And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear? Since my dear soul was
mistress of her choice, And could of men distinguish, her election Hath
seal’d thee for herself. For thou hast been As one, in suffering all,
that suffers nothing, A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards Hast
ta’en with equal thanks. And bles’d are those Whose blood and judgment
are so well co-mingled That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger To
sound what stop she please. Give me that man That is not passion’s
slave, and I will wear him In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of
heart, As I do thee. Something too much of this. There is a play
tonight before the King. One scene of it comes near the circumstance
Which I have told thee, of my father’s death. I prythee, when thou
see’st that act a-foot, Even with the very comment of thy soul Observe
mine uncle. If his occulted guilt Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen; And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan’s stithy. Give him heedful note; For I mine eyes will rivet
to his face; And after we will both our judgments join In censure of
his seeming.
HORATIO. Well, my lord. If he steal aught the whilst this play is
playing, And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.
HAMLET. They are coming to the play. I must be idle. Get you a place.
Danish march. A flourish. Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia,
Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and others.
KING. How fares our cousin Hamlet?
HAMLET. Excellent, i’ faith; of the chameleon’s dish: I eat the air,
promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.
KING. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not
mine.
HAMLET. No, nor mine now. [_To Polonius._] My lord, you play’d once i’
th’university, you say?
POLONIUS. That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.
HAMLET. What did you enact?
POLONIUS. I did enact Julius Caesar. I was kill’d i’ th’ Capitol.
Brutus killed me.
HAMLET. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there. Be
the players ready?
ROSENCRANTZ. Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.
QUEEN. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
HAMLET. No, good mother, here’s metal more attractive.
POLONIUS. [_To the King._] O ho! do you mark that?
HAMLET. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
[_Lying down at Ophelia’s feet._]
OPHELIA. No, my lord.
HAMLET. I mean, my head upon your lap?
OPHELIA. Ay, my lord.
HAMLET. Do you think I meant country matters?
OPHELIA. I think nothing, my lord.
HAMLET. That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.
OPHELIA. What is, my lord?
HAMLET. Nothing.
OPHELIA. You are merry, my lord.
HAMLET. Who, I?
OPHELIA. Ay, my lord.
HAMLET. O God, your only jig-maker! What should a man do but be merry?
For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died
within’s two hours.
OPHELIA. Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.
HAMLET. So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I’ll have a
suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet?
Then there’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a
year. But by’r lady, he must build churches then; or else shall he
suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is ‘For, O,
for O, the hobby-horse is forgot!’
Trumpets sound. The dumb show enters.
_Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing him and he
her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her
up, and declines his head upon her neck. Lays him down upon a bank of
flowers. She, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow,
takes off his crown, kisses it, pours poison in the King’s ears, and
exits. The Queen returns, finds the King dead, and makes passionate
action. The Poisoner with some three or four Mutes, comes in again,
seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner
woos the Queen with gifts. She seems loth and unwilling awhile, but in
the end accepts his love._
[_Exeunt._]
OPHELIA. What means this, my lord?
HAMLET. Marry, this is miching mallicho; it means mischief.
OPHELIA. Belike this show imports the argument of the play.
Enter Prologue.
HAMLET. We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel;
they’ll tell all.
OPHELIA. Will they tell us what this show meant?
HAMLET. Ay, or any show that you’ll show him. Be not you ashamed to
show, he’ll not shame to tell you what it means.
OPHELIA. You are naught, you are naught: I’ll mark the play.
PROLOGUE. _For us, and for our tragedy, Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently._
HAMLET. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
OPHELIA. ’Tis brief, my lord.
HAMLET. As woman’s love.
Enter a King and a Queen.
PLAYER KING. Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round Neptune’s
salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground, And thirty dozen moons with
borrow’d sheen About the world have times twelve thirties been, Since
love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands Unite commutual in most sacred
bands.
PLAYER QUEEN. So many journeys may the sun and moon Make us again count
o’er ere love be done. But, woe is me, you are so sick of late, So far
from cheer and from your former state, That I distrust you. Yet, though
I distrust, Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must: For women’s fear
and love holds quantity, In neither aught, or in extremity. Now what my
love is, proof hath made you know, And as my love is siz’d, my fear is
so. Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; Where little
fears grow great, great love grows there.
PLAYER KING. Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too: My
operant powers their functions leave to do: And thou shalt live in this
fair world behind, Honour’d, belov’d, and haply one as kind For husband
shalt thou—
PLAYER QUEEN. O confound the rest. Such love must needs be treason in
my breast. In second husband let me be accurst! None wed the second but
who kill’d the first.
HAMLET. [_Aside._] Wormwood, wormwood.
PLAYER QUEEN. The instances that second marriage move Are base respects
of thrift, but none of love. A second time I kill my husband dead, When
second husband kisses me in bed.
PLAYER KING. I do believe you think what now you speak; But what we do
determine, oft we break. Purpose is but the slave to memory, Of violent
birth, but poor validity: Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the
tree, But fall unshaken when they mellow be. Most necessary ’tis that
we forget To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt. What to ourselves
in passion we propose, The passion ending, doth the purpose lose. The
violence of either grief or joy Their own enactures with themselves
destroy. Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament; Grief joys, joy
grieves, on slender accident. This world is not for aye; nor ’tis not
strange That even our loves should with our fortunes change, For ’tis a
question left us yet to prove, Whether love lead fortune, or else
fortune love. The great man down, you mark his favourite flies, The
poor advanc’d makes friends of enemies; And hitherto doth love on
fortune tend: For who not needs shall never lack a friend, And who in
want a hollow friend doth try, Directly seasons him his enemy. But
orderly to end where I begun, Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown. Our thoughts are ours, their
ends none of our own. So think thou wilt no second husband wed, But die
thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.
PLAYER QUEEN. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light, Sport and
repose lock from me day and night, To desperation turn my trust and
hope, An anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope, Each opposite that
blanks the face of joy, Meet what I would have well, and it destroy!
Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife, If, once a widow, ever I
be wife.
HAMLET. [_To Ophelia._] If she should break it now.
PLAYER KING. ’Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile. My spirits
grow dull, and fain I would beguile The tedious day with sleep.
[_Sleeps._]
PLAYER QUEEN. Sleep rock thy brain, And never come mischance between us
twain.
[_Exit._]
HAMLET. Madam, how like you this play?
QUEEN. The lady protests too much, methinks.
HAMLET. O, but she’ll keep her word.
KING. Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in’t?
HAMLET. No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i’ th’
world.
KING. What do you call the play?
HAMLET. _The Mousetrap._ Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image
of a murder done in Vienna. Gonzago is the Duke’s name, his wife
Baptista: you shall see anon; ’tis a knavish piece of work: but what o’
that? Your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. Let
the gall’d jade wince; our withers are unwrung.
Enter Lucianus.
This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.
OPHELIA. You are a good chorus, my lord.
HAMLET. I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the
puppets dallying.
OPHELIA. You are keen, my lord, you are keen.
HAMLET. It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.
OPHELIA. Still better, and worse.
HAMLET. So you mistake your husbands.—Begin, murderer. Pox, leave thy
damnable faces, and begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for
revenge.
LUCIANUS. Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing,
Confederate season, else no creature seeing; Thou mixture rank, of
midnight weeds collected, With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice
infected, Thy natural magic and dire property On wholesome life usurp
immediately.
[_Pours the poison into the sleeper’s ears._]
HAMLET. He poisons him i’ th’garden for’s estate. His name’s Gonzago.
The story is extant, and written in very choice Italian. You shall see
anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.
OPHELIA. The King rises.
HAMLET. What, frighted with false fire?
QUEEN. How fares my lord?
POLONIUS. Give o’er the play.
KING. Give me some light. Away.
All. Lights, lights, lights.
[_Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio._]
HAMLET. Why, let the strucken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play; For
some must watch, while some must sleep, So runs the world away. Would
not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, if the rest of my fortunes
turn Turk with me; with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me
a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?
HORATIO. Half a share.
HAMLET. A whole one, I. For thou dost know, O Damon dear, This realm
dismantled was Of Jove himself, and now reigns here A very,
very—pajock.
HORATIO. You might have rhymed.
HAMLET. O good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand
pound. Didst perceive?
HORATIO. Very well, my lord.
HAMLET. Upon the talk of the poisoning?
HORATIO. I did very well note him.
HAMLET. Ah, ha! Come, some music. Come, the recorders. For if the king
like not the comedy, Why then, belike he likes it not, perdie. Come,
some music.
Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
GUILDENSTERN. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.
HAMLET. Sir, a whole history.
GUILDENSTERN. The King, sir—
HAMLET. Ay, sir, what of him?
GUILDENSTERN. Is in his retirement, marvellous distempered.
HAMLET. With drink, sir?
GUILDENSTERN. No, my lord; rather with choler.
HAMLET. Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to
the doctor, for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him
into far more choler.
GUILDENSTERN. Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and
start not so wildly from my affair.
HAMLET. I am tame, sir, pronounce.
GUILDENSTERN. The Queen your mother, in most great affliction of
spirit, hath sent me to you.
HAMLET. You are welcome.
GUILDENSTERN. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right
breed. If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do
your mother’s commandment; if not, your pardon and my return shall be
the end of my business.
HAMLET. Sir, I cannot.
GUILDENSTERN. What, my lord?
HAMLET. Make you a wholesome answer. My wit’s diseased. But, sir, such
answer as I can make, you shall command; or rather, as you say, my
mother. Therefore no more, but to the matter. My mother, you say,—
ROSENCRANTZ. Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into
amazement and admiration.
HAMLET. O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother! But is there no
sequel at the heels of this mother’s admiration?
ROSENCRANTZ. She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to
bed.
HAMLET. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any
further trade with us?
ROSENCRANTZ. My lord, you once did love me.
HAMLET. And so I do still, by these pickers and stealers.
ROSENCRANTZ. Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do
surely bar the door upon your own liberty if you deny your griefs to
your friend.
HAMLET. Sir, I lack advancement.
ROSENCRANTZ. How can that be, when you have the voice of the King
himself for your succession in Denmark?
HAMLET. Ay, sir, but while the grass grows—the proverb is something
musty.
Re-enter the Players with recorders.
O, the recorders. Let me see one.—To withdraw with you, why do you go
about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?
GUILDENSTERN. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too
unmannerly.
HAMLET. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?
GUILDENSTERN. My lord, I cannot.
HAMLET. I pray you.
GUILDENSTERN. Believe me, I cannot.
HAMLET. I do beseech you.
GUILDENSTERN. I know no touch of it, my lord.
HAMLET. ’Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your finger
and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most
eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.
GUILDENSTERN. But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony. I
have not the skill.
HAMLET. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You
would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck
out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in
this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood, do you think
I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you
will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.
Enter Polonius.
God bless you, sir.
POLONIUS. My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.
HAMLET. Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
POLONIUS. By the mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.
HAMLET. Methinks it is like a weasel.
POLONIUS. It is backed like a weasel.
HAMLET. Or like a whale.
POLONIUS. Very like a whale.
HAMLET. Then will I come to my mother by and by.—They fool me to the
top of my bent.—I will come by and by.
POLONIUS. I will say so.
[_Exit._]
HAMLET. By and by is easily said. Leave me, friends.
[_Exeunt all but Hamlet._]
’Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn, and
hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot
blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on.
Soft now, to my mother. O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever The
soul of Nero enter this firm bosom: Let me be cruel, not unnatural. I
will speak daggers to her, but use none; My tongue and soul in this be
hypocrites. How in my words somever she be shent, To give them seals
never, my soul, consent.
[_Exit._]
SCENE III. A room in the Castle.
Enter King, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
KING. I like him not, nor stands it safe with us To let his madness
range. Therefore prepare you, I your commission will forthwith
dispatch, And he to England shall along with you. The terms of our
estate may not endure Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow Out of his
lunacies.
GUILDENSTERN. We will ourselves provide. Most holy and religious fear
it is To keep those many many bodies safe That live and feed upon your
Majesty.
ROSENCRANTZ. The single and peculiar life is bound With all the
strength and armour of the mind, To keep itself from ’noyance; but much
more That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest The lives of many. The
cease of majesty Dies not alone; but like a gulf doth draw What’s near
it with it. It is a massy wheel Fix’d on the summit of the highest
mount, To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things Are mortis’d and
adjoin’d; which when it falls, Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never alone Did the King sigh, but with a
general groan.
KING. Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage; For we will fetters
put upon this fear, Which now goes too free-footed.
ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. We will haste us.
[_Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern._]
Enter Polonius.
POLONIUS. My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet. Behind the arras
I’ll convey myself To hear the process. I’ll warrant she’ll tax him
home, And as you said, and wisely was it said, ’Tis meet that some more
audience than a mother, Since nature makes them partial, should
o’erhear The speech of vantage. Fare you well, my liege, I’ll call upon
you ere you go to bed, And tell you what I know.
KING. Thanks, dear my lord.
[_Exit Polonius._]
O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest
curse upon’t,— A brother’s murder! Pray can I not, Though inclination
be as sharp as will: My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent, And,
like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall
first begin, And both neglect. What if this cursed hand Were thicker
than itself with brother’s blood, Is there not rain enough in the sweet
heavens To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy But to confront
the visage of offence? And what’s in prayer but this twofold force, To
be forestalled ere we come to fall, Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll
look up. My fault is past. But O, what form of prayer Can serve my
turn? Forgive me my foul murder! That cannot be; since I am still
possess’d Of those effects for which I did the murder,— My crown, mine
own ambition, and my queen. May one be pardon’d and retain th’offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world Offence’s gilded hand may shove
by justice, And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law.
But ’tis not so above; There is no shuffling, there the action lies In
his true nature, and we ourselves compell’d Even to the teeth and
forehead of our faults, To give in evidence. What then? What rests? Try
what repentance can. What can it not? Yet what can it, when one cannot
repent? O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul, that
struggling to be free, Art more engag’d! Help, angels! Make assay: Bow,
stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel, Be soft as sinews of
the new-born babe. All may be well.
[_Retires and kneels._]
Enter Hamlet.
HAMLET. Now might I do it pat, now he is praying. And now I’ll do’t.
And so he goes to heaven; And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d:
A villain kills my father, and for that I, his sole son, do this same
villain send To heaven. O, this is hire and salary, not revenge. He
took my father grossly, full of bread, With all his crimes broad blown,
as flush as May; And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven? But
in our circumstance and course of thought, ’Tis heavy with him. And am
I then reveng’d, To take him in the purging of his soul, When he is fit
and season’d for his passage? No. Up, sword, and know thou a more
horrid hent: When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage, Or in
th’incestuous pleasure of his bed, At gaming, swearing; or about some
act That has no relish of salvation in’t, Then trip him, that his heels
may kick at heaven, And that his soul may be as damn’d and black As
hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays. This physic but prolongs thy
sickly days.
[_Exit._]
The King rises and advances.
KING. My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts
never to heaven go.
[_Exit._]
SCENE IV. Another room in the Castle.
Enter Queen and Polonius.
POLONIUS. He will come straight. Look you lay home to him, Tell him his
pranks have been too broad to bear with, And that your Grace hath
screen’d and stood between Much heat and him. I’ll silence me e’en
here. Pray you be round with him.
HAMLET. [_Within._] Mother, mother, mother.
QUEEN. I’ll warrant you, Fear me not. Withdraw, I hear him coming.
[_Polonius goes behind the arras._]
Enter Hamlet.
HAMLET. Now, mother, what’s the matter?
QUEEN. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
HAMLET. Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
HAMLET. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
QUEEN. Why, how now, Hamlet?
HAMLET. What’s the matter now?
QUEEN. Have you forgot me?
HAMLET. No, by the rood, not so. You are the Queen, your husband’s
brother’s wife, And, would it were not so. You are my mother.
QUEEN. Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.
HAMLET. Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge. You go not
till I set you up a glass Where you may see the inmost part of you.
QUEEN. What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me? Help, help, ho!
POLONIUS. [_Behind._] What, ho! help, help, help!
HAMLET. How now? A rat? [_Draws._] Dead for a ducat, dead!
[_Makes a pass through the arras._]
POLONIUS. [_Behind._] O, I am slain!
[_Falls and dies._]
QUEEN. O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET. Nay, I know not. is it the King?
[_Draws forth Polonius._]
QUEEN. O what a rash and bloody deed is this!
HAMLET. A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king and
marry with his brother.
QUEEN. As kill a king?
HAMLET. Ay, lady, ’twas my word.— [_To Polonius._] Thou wretched, rash,
intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune,
Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.— Leave wringing of your
hands. Peace, sit you down, And let me wring your heart, for so I
shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff; If damned custom have not
braz’d it so, That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
QUEEN. What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue In noise so
rude against me?
HAMLET. Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls
virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an
innocent love, And sets a blister there. Makes marriage vows As false
as dicers’ oaths. O such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s
face doth glow, Yea this solidity and compound mass, With tristful
visage, as against the doom, Is thought-sick at the act.
QUEEN. Ay me, what act, That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
HAMLET. Look here upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit
presentment of two brothers. See what a grace was seated on this brow,
Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to
threaten and command, A station like the herald Mercury New lighted on
a heaven-kissing hill: A combination and a form indeed, Where every god
did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man. This
was your husband. Look you now what follows. Here is your husband, like
a mildew’d ear Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you
on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? Ha! have
you eyes? You cannot call it love; for at your age The hey-day in the
blood is tame, it’s humble, And waits upon the judgment: and what