William Shakespeare - William Shakespeare - Complete Works

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

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