William Shakespeare - Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Collins edition)

Are here arriv'd, give order that these bodies

High on a stage be placed to the view;

And let me speak to the yet unknowing world

How these things came about: so shall you hear

Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts;

Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;

Of deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause;

And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I

Truly deliver.

Fort.

Let us haste to hear it,

And call the noblest to the audience.

For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune:

I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,

Which now, to claim my vantage doth invite me.

Hor.

Of that I shall have also cause to speak,

And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more:

But let this same be presently perform'd,

Even while men's minds are wild: lest more mischance

On plots and errors happen.

Fort.

Let four captains

Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage;

For he was likely, had he been put on,

To have prov'd most royally: and, for his passage,

The soldiers' music and the rites of war

Speak loudly for him.--

Take up the bodies.--Such a sight as this

Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.

Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

[ A dead march. ]

[ Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after the which a peal of ordnance is shot off. ]