William Shakespeare - William Shakespeare - Complete Works

Why thy canoniz’d bones, hearsed in death,

Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,

Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d,

Hath op’d his ponderous and marble jaws

To cast thee up again! What may this mean,

That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel,

Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,

Making night hideous, and we fools of nature

So horridly to shake our disposition

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?

[ GHOST beckons HAMLET. ]

HORATIO.

It beckons you to go away with it,

As if it some impartment did desire

To you alone.

MARCELLUS.

Look with what courteous action

It waves you to a more removed ground.

But do not go with it.

HORATIO.

No, by no means.

HAMLET.

It will not speak; then will I follow it.

HORATIO.

Do not, my lord.

HAMLET.

Why, what should be the fear?

I do not set my life at a pin’s fee;

And for my soul, what can it do to that,

Being a thing immortal as itself?

It waves me forth again. I’ll follow it.

HORATIO.

What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,

Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff

That beetles o’er his base into the sea,

And there assume some other horrible form

Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,

And draw you into madness? Think of it.

The very place puts toys of desperation,

Without more motive, into every brain

That looks so many fadoms to the sea

And hears it roar beneath.

HAMLET.

It waves me still.

Go on, I’ll follow thee.

MARCELLUS.

You shall not go, my lord.

HAMLET.

Hold off your hands.

HORATIO.

Be rul’d; you shall not go.

HAMLET.

My fate cries out,

And makes each petty artery in this body

As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.

[ GHOST beckons. ]

Still am I call’d. Unhand me, gentlemen.

[ Breaking free from them. ]

By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me.

I say, away!—Go on, I’ll follow thee.

[ Exeunt GHOST and HAMLET. ]

HORATIO.

He waxes desperate with imagination.

MARCELLUS.

Let’s follow; ’tis not fit thus to obey him.

HORATIO.

Have after. To what issue will this come?

MARCELLUS.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

HORATIO.

Heaven will direct it.

MARCELLUS.

Nay, let’s follow him.

[ Exeunt. ]

Enter GHOST and HAMLET.

HAMLET.

Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak, I’ll go no further.

GHOST.

Mark me.

HAMLET.

I will.

GHOST.

My hour is almost come,

When I to sulph’rous and tormenting flames

Must render up myself.

HAMLET.

Alas, poor ghost!

GHOST.

Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing

To what I shall unfold.

HAMLET.

Speak, I am bound to hear.

GHOST.

So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

HAMLET.

What?

GHOST.

I am thy father’s spirit,

Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,

And for the day confin’d to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purg’d away. But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part,

And each particular hair to stand on end

Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.

But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!

If thou didst ever thy dear father love—

HAMLET.

O God!

GHOST.

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET.

Murder!

GHOST.

Murder most foul, as in the best it is;

But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

HAMLET.

Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift

As meditation or the thoughts of love

May sweep to my revenge.

GHOST.

I find thee apt;

And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed

That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,

Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear.

’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,

A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark

Is by a forged process of my death

Rankly abus’d; but know, thou noble youth,

The serpent that did sting thy father’s life

Now wears his crown.

HAMLET.

O my prophetic soul!

Mine uncle!

GHOST.

Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,

With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,—

O wicked wit, and gifts, that have the power

So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust

The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.

O Hamlet, what a falling off was there,

From me, whose love was of that dignity

That it went hand in hand even with the vow

I made to her in marriage; and to decline

Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor

To those of mine. But virtue, as it never will be mov’d,

Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven;

So lust, though to a radiant angel link’d,

Will sate itself in a celestial bed

And prey on garbage.

But soft! methinks I scent the morning air;

Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,

My custom always of the afternoon,

Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole

With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,

And in the porches of my ears did pour

The leperous distilment, whose effect

Holds such an enmity with blood of man

That swift as quicksilver it courses through

The natural gates and alleys of the body;

And with a sudden vigour it doth posset

And curd, like eager droppings into milk,

The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine;

And a most instant tetter bark’d about,

Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust

All my smooth body.

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand,

Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatch’d:

Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,

Unhous’led, disappointed, unanel’d;

No reckoning made, but sent to my account

With all my imperfections on my head.

O horrible! O horrible! most horrible!

If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;

Let not the royal bed of Denmark be

A couch for luxury and damned incest.

But howsoever thou pursu’st this act,

Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive

Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven,

And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,

To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!

The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,

And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

Adieu, adieu, adieu. Hamlet, remember me.

[ Exit. ]

HAMLET.

O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?

And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, my heart;

And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,

But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?

Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat

In this distracted globe. Remember thee?

Yea, from the table of my memory

I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,

That youth and observation copied there;

And thy commandment all alone shall live

Within the book and volume of my brain,