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Pol. This is too long. Had he the motive and the cue for passion, Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard. That I have? He would drown the stage with tears Pr'ythee, say on:-He's for a jig, or a tale of baw-And cleave the general ear with horrid speech; dry, or he sleeps:-say on: come to Hecuba. Make mad the guilty, and appal the free, Confound the ignorant; and amaze, indeed, The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,

1 Play. But who, ah wo! had seen the mobled

queen

Ham. The mobled queen?

Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good.

1 Play. 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'er-teemed loins,

A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pro-

nounc'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,)

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

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'the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ila!

Why, 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,' vil-
lain!

Would have made milch the burning eye of Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave;

heaven,

And passion in the gods.

Pol. Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in's eyes.-Pr'ythee, no more. Ham. '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 abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time; After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.

Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Ham. Odd's bodikin, man, much better: Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

Pol. Come, sirs.

[Exit Polonius, with some of the Players. Ham. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play tomorrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of Gonzago?

1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. We'll have it 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?

1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. Very well.-Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exit Player.] My good friends, [To Ros. and Guil.] I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore.

Ros. Good my lord! [Exeunt Ros. and Guil.
Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' you:-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 wann'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,

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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 brains! Humph! 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 do blench,"
know my course. The spirit, that I have seen,
May be a 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.

I

ACT III.

[Exil

SCENE I.-A room in the castle. Enter King,
Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and
Guildenstern.

King. And can you by no drift of conference
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,

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1 Play. What speech, my lord?

forty, fifty, a hundred ducats a-piece, for his picture | straight: Come, give us a taste of your quality; in little. 'Sblood, there is something in this more come, a passionate speech. than natural, if philosophy could find it out. [Flourish of trumpets within. Guil. There are the players. Ham. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands. Come then 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-one said, there were no sallads in the lines, to mother, are deceived.

Guil. In what, my dear lord?

Ham. I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a hand-saw. Enter Polonius.

Ham. 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:10 but it was (as I received it, and others, whose judgments, in such matters, cried in the top of mine,) an excel lent play; well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember,

make the matter savoury; nor no matter in the phrase, that might indite12 the author of affection:" 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 Æneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of Priam's slaughter: If it live in your me

The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,—, 'tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus.

Pol. Well be with you, gentlemen! Ham. Hark you, Guildenstern;-and you too;mory, begin at this line; let me see, let me see ;— at each ear a hearer: that great baby, you see there, is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts. Ros. Happily, he's the second time come to them; for, they say, an old man is twice a child. Ham. I will prophesy, he comes to tell me of the players; mark it.You say right, sir: o'Monday morning: 'twas then, indeed.

Pol. My lord, I have news to tell you.
Ham. My lord, I have news to tell you; When
Roscius was an actor in Rome,-

Pol. The actors are come hither, my lord.
Ham. Buzz, buzz!

Pol. Upon mine honour,

Ham. Then came each actor on his ass,Pol. 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.

Ham. O Jephthah, judge of Israel,-what a treasure hadst thou!

Pol. What a treasure had he, my lord?
Ham. Why-One fair daughter and no more,
The which he loved passing well.

[Aside.

Pol. Still on my daughter.
Ham. Am I not i'the right, old Jephthah?
Pol. If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a
daughter, that I love passing well.
Ham. Nay, that follows not.

Pol. What follows then, my lord?

Ham. 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, my abridgment comes.

Enter four or five Players.

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;14 horridly trick'd's
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 lord's murder: Roasted in wrath, and
fire,
And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks ;-So proceed you.

Pol. 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken; with good accent, and good discretion.

1 Play. 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
The 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'the 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,
roused vengeance sets him new a-work;

You are welcome, masters; Welcome, all:-I am glad to see thee well:-welcome, good friends.O, old friend! Why, thy face is valenced since I saw thee last; Com'st thou to beard me in Den-And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall mark?-What! my young lady and mistress! By'r- On Mars's armour, forg'd for proof eterne,'* lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven, than when With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. Pray Now falls on Priam.-

God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods, not cracked with the ring.-Masters, you are all In general synod, take away her power; welcome. We'll e'en to't like French falconers, Break all the spokes and fellics from her wheel, fly at any thing we see: We'll have a speech And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends!

(1) Miniature. (2) Compliment. (3) Writing.
(4) Christmas carols. (5) Fringed.
(6) Defy. (7) Clog, (8) Profession.
(9) An Italian dish, made of the roes of fishes.

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Pol. This is too long.

Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard. Pr'ythee, say on:-He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps:-say on: come to Hecuba.

1 Play. But who, ah wo! had seen the mobled

queen

Ham. The mobled queen?

Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good.

1 Play. 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'er-teemed loins,

A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
"Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pro-

nounc'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 eye

heaven,

And passion in the gods.

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'the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha!

Why, 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,' vil.
lain!
of 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!

Pol. Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in's eyes.-Pr'ythee, no more. Ham. '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 abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time; After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.

Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their

desert.

Ham. Odd's bodikin, man, much better: Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

Pol. Come, sirs.

[Exit Polonius, with some of the Players. Ham. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play tomorrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of Gonzago?

1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. We'll have it 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?

1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. Very well.-Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exit Player.] My good friends, To Ros. and Guil.] I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore.

Ros. Good my lord!

[Exeunt Ros. and Guil.
Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' you:-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 wann'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,

(1) Muffled. (2) Blind.
(4) Destruction.

VOL. II.

(3) Milky. (5) Unnatural."

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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;
The spirit, that I have seen,
I'll tent him to the quick; if he do blench,"
I know my course.
May be a 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.

ACT III.

[Exit.

SCENE I.—A room in the castle. Enter King,
Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and
Guildenstern.

King. And can you by no drift of conference
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. Bet with much forcing of his disposition.
Ros. Niggard of question; but, of our demands,

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1

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To hear him so inclin'd.

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
And drive his purpose on to these delights.
Ros. We shall, my lord. [Exe. Ros. and Guil.
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,3)

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: so shall I hope, your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honours.

Oph.

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Madam, I wish it may.

[Exit Queen. Pol. Ophelia, walk you here;-Gracious, so please you,

We will bestow ourselves:-Read on this book;

[To Ophelia.

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.

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!

[Aside. Pol. I hear him coming; let's withdraw, my lord. [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
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ach, 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;

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 despis'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 10 make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels12 bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after death,-
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn1s
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 orisons14
Be all my sins remember'd."

Oph.
Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thank you; well.

Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours
That I have longed long to re-deliver;

I pray you, now receive them.
Ham.

I never gave you aught.

No, not I ;

Oph. 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.

Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest?
Oph. My lord?

Ham. Are you fair?

Oph. What means your lordship?

Ham. That if you be honest, and fair, you should admit no discourse to your beauty.

Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

Ham. 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 some time a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.

Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. Ham. You should not have believed me: for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it: I loved you not.

Oph. I was the more deceived.

Ham. Get thee to a nunnery; Why would'st thon 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 sleep,-very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more of fences 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?

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,"

(1) Overtook. (2) Meet. (3) Epics.
(4) Freely. (5) Place. (6) Too frequent.
(7) Stir, bustle. (8) Consideration.
Rudeness. (10) Acquittance.

Oph. At home, my lord.

Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him; that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.

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Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens! lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw Ham. If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all plague for thy dowry; Be thou as chaste as ice, as gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acthee to a nunnery; farewell: Or, if thou wilt needs quire and beget a temperance, that may give it marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear enough, what monsters you make of them. To a a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell. tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of no

Oph. Heavenly powers, restore him! Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well thing but inexplicable dumb show, and noise: I enough; God hath given you one face, and you would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing Termake yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and magant; it out-herods Herod: Pray you, avoid it. you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make 1 Play. I warrant your honour. your wantonness your ignorance: Go to; I'll no Ham. Be not too tame neither, but let your own more of't; it hath made me mad. I say, we will discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the have no more marriages: those that are married word, the word to the action; with this special obalready, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep servance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of naas they are. To a nunnery, go. [Erit Hamlet. ture: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose Oph. O, what a noble mind here o'erthrown! of playing, whose end, both at first, and now, was, The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; sword: 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 which one, must, in your allowance,' o'er-weigh 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.

The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould' of form,
The 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 :2 O, wo is me!

To have scen what I have seen, see what I see!

Re-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?
Pol. It shall do well: But yet I do 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. Enter Hamlet,

SCENE II-A hall in the same.
and certain Players.
Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pro-
nounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if
you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as

(1) The model by whom all endeavoured to form themselves.

(2) Alienation of mind.

(3) Reprimand him with freedom.

1 Play. I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us.

Ham. 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 mean time, 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?

Pol. And the queen too, and that presently.
Ham. Bid the players make haste.-[Ex. Pol.
Will you two help to hasten them?

Both. Av, my lord. [Exeunt Ros. and Guil
Ham. What, ho; Horatio!

Enter Horatio.

Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service.
Ham. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
As e'er my conversation cop'd withal.
Hor. O, my dear lord,-

Ham.

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?

(4) The meaner people then seem to have sat in the pit.

(5) Herod's character was always violent.
(6) Impression, resemblance. (7) Approbation.
(8) Conversation, discourse. (9) Quick, ready.

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