Andrew Williams - Textausgabe + Lektüreschlüssel. William Shakespeare - Hamlet

Flourish without.

GUILDENSTERN. There are the players.

HAMLET. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore – your hands … come then [Takes them by the hand], th’ appurte-nance 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 outwards, should more appear like entertainment than yours … You are welcome: but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.

GUILDENSTERN. In what, my dear lord?

HAMLET. I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw. 14

Enter Polonius.

POLONIUS. Well be with you, gentlemen!

HAMLET. [Softly.] Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too, at each [81] ear a hearer – 15that great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts.

ROSENCRANTZ. [Softly.] Happily he is the second time come to them, for they say an old man is twice a child.

HAMLET. [Softly.] I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players, mark it. [Aloud.] You say right, sir, a’ Monday morning, ’twas then indeed.

POLONIUS. My lord, I have news to tell you.

HAMLET. My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in Rome …

POLONIUS. The actors are come hither, my lord.

HAMLET. Buzz, buzz …

POLONIUS. Upon my honour …

HAMLET. “Then came each actor on his ass” … 16

POLONIUS. 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.

[82] HAMLET. O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!

POLONIUS. What a treasure had he, my lord?

HAMLET. Why,

“One fair daughter, and no more,

The which he lovèd passing well.” 17

POLONIUS. [Aside.] Still on my daughter.

HAMLET. Am I not i’th’ right, old Jephthah?

POLONIUS. If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter

that I love passing well.

HAMLET. Nay, that follows not.

POLONIUS. What follows then, my lord?

HAMLET. 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 where my abridgement comes.

Enter the Players.

You are welcome, masters, welcome all – I am glad to see thee well – Welcome, good friends – O, old friend! Why, thy face is valanced since I saw thee last, com’st thou to beard [83] me in Denmark? – What, my young lady and mistress! By’r Lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine; pray God your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring … Masters, you are all welcome. We’ll e’en to’t like French falconers, 18fly at any thing we see – we’ll have a speech straight. [To the First Player.] Come, give us a taste of your quality, come, a passionate speech.

FIRST PLAYER. What speech, my good lord?

HAMLET. 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 caviary to the general, 19but it was – as I received it, and others, whose judgements in such matters cried in the top of mine – an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as [84] cunning. I remember one said there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might indict 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’t I chiefly loved, ’twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido, 20and thereabout of it especially where he speaks of Priam’s slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at this line … let me see, let me see …

“The ruggèd Pyrrhus, like th’ Hyrcanian beast” –

’tis not so, it begins with Pyrrhus …

“The ruggèd Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,

Black as his purpose, did the night resemble

When he lay couched in th’ ominous horse,

[85] Hath now this dread and black complexion smeared

With heraldy more dismal: head to foot

Now is he total gules, horridly tricked

With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,

Baked and impasted with the parching streets,

That lend a tyrannous and a damnèd light

To their lord’s murder. Roasted in wrath and fire,

And thus o’er-sizèd with coagulate gore,

With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus

Old grandsire Priam seeks …”

So proceed you.

POLONIUS. ’Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent

and good discretion.

FIRST PLAYER. “Anon he finds him

Striking too short at Greeks, his antique sword,

Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,

[86] Repugnant to command. Unequal matched,

Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide,

But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword

Th’ unnervèd 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, seemed i’th’ 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,

[87] The bold winds speechless, and the orb below

As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder

Doth rend the region – so after Pyrrhus’ pause,

A rousèd vengeance sets him new a-work,

And never did the Cyclops’ hammers fall

On Mars’s armour, forged for proof eterne,

With less remorse than Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword

Now falls on Priam.

Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,

In general synod take away her power,

Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,

And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven

As low as to the fiends.”

POLONIUS. This is too long.

HAMLET. It shall to the barber’s with your beard. – Prithee, say

[88] on; he’s for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps – say on,

come to Hecuba.

FIRST PLAYER. “But who, ah woe! had seen the mobled queen …”

HAMLET. “The mobled queen”?

POLONIUS. That’s good, “mobled queen” is good.

FIRST PLAYER. “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-teemèd 21loins

A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up –

Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped,

’Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have pronounced;

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,

[89] Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,

And passion in the gods.”

POLONIUS. Look whe’er he has not turned his colour and has tears in’s eyes – prithee, no more.

HAMLET. ’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 abstracts and brief chronicles of the time; after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.