Complete Plays, The (89 page)

Enter Polonius

God bless you, sir!

Lord Polonius

My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently.

Hamlet

Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?

Lord Polonius

By the mass, and ’tis like a camel, indeed.

Hamlet

Methinks it is like a weasel.

Lord Polonius

It is backed like a weasel.

Hamlet

Or like a whale?

Lord Polonius

Very like a whale.

Hamlet

Then I will come to my mother by and by. They fool me to the top of my bent. I will come by and by.

Lord Polonius

I will say so.

Hamlet

By and by is easily said.

Exit Polonius

Leave me, friends.

Exeunt all but Hamlet

Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother.
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:
Let me be cruel, not unnatural:
I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites;
How in my words soever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my soul, consent!

Exit

S
CENE
III. A
ROOM
IN
THE
CASTLE
.

Enter King Claudius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern

King Claudius

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you;
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you:
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow
Out of his lunacies.

Guildenstern

We will ourselves provide:
Most holy and religious fear it is
To keep those many many bodies safe
That live and feed upon your majesty.

Rosencrantz

The single and peculiar life is bound,
With all the strength and armour of the mind,
To keep itself from noyance; but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest
The lives of many. The cease of majesty
Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
What’s near it with it: it is a massy wheel,
Fix’d on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoin’d; which, when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.

King Claudius

Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage;
For we will fetters put upon this fear,
Which now goes too free-footed.

Rosencrantz

Guildenstern

We will haste us.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Enter Polonius

Lord Polonius

My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet:
Behind the arras I’ll convey myself,
To hear the process; and warrant she’ll tax him home:
And, as you said, and wisely was it said,
’Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
Since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear
The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege:
I’ll call upon you ere you go to bed,
And tell you what I know.

King Claudius

Thanks, dear my lord.

Exit Polonius

O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what’s in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up;
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’?
That cannot be; since I am still possess’d
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
May one be pardon’d and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but ’tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell’d,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well.

Retires and kneels

Enter Hamlet

Hamlet

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged. That would be scann’d:
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
’Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season’d for his passage?
No!
Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in’t;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn’d and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

Exit

King Claudius

[Rising]
 
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Exit

S
CENE
IV. T
HE
Q
UEEN
’
S
CLOSET
.

Enter Queen Margaret and Polonius

Lord Polonius

He will come straight. Look you lay home to him:
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
And that your grace hath screen’d and stood between
Much heat and him. I’ll sconce me even here.
Pray you, be round with him.

Hamlet

[Within]
 
Mother, mother, mother!

Queen Gertrude

I’ll warrant you,
Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.

Polonius hides behind the arras

Enter Hamlet

Hamlet

Now, mother, what’s the matter?

Queen Gertrude

Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

Hamlet

Mother, you have my father much offended.

Queen Gertrude

Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

Hamlet

Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

Queen Gertrude

Why, how now, Hamlet!

Hamlet

What’s the matter now?

Queen Gertrude

Have you forgot me?

Hamlet

No, by the rood, not so:
You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife;
And — would it were not so!— you are my mother.

Queen Gertrude

Nay, then, I’ll set those to you that can speak.

Hamlet

Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.

Queen Gertrude

What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help, ho!

Lord Polonius

[Behind]
 
What, ho! help, help, help!

Hamlet

[Drawing]
 
How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!

Makes a pass through the arras

Lord Polonius

[Behind]
 
O, I am slain!

Falls and dies

Queen Gertrude

O me, what hast thou done?

Hamlet

Nay, I know not:
Is it the king?

Queen Gertrude

O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

Hamlet

A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

Queen Gertrude

As kill a king!

Hamlet

 
Ay, lady, ’twas my word.

Lifts up the array and discovers Polonius

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;
Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.
Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down,
And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damned custom have not brass’d it so
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

Queen Gertrude

What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?

Hamlet

Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
As false as dicers’ oaths: O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words: heaven’s face doth glow:
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.

Queen Gertrude

Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

Hamlet

Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow;
Hyperion’s curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man:
This was your husband. Look you now, what follows:
Here is your husband; like a mildew’d ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
You cannot call it love; for at your age
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,
And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment
Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense
Is apoplex’d; for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thrall’d
But it reserved some quantity of choice,
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope.
O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn
And reason panders will.

Queen Gertrude

O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.

Hamlet

Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty,—

Queen Gertrude

O, speak to me no more;
These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet!

Hamlet

A murderer and a villain;
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket!

Queen Gertrude

No more!

Hamlet

A king of shreds and patches,—

Enter Ghost

Save me, and hover o’er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

Queen Gertrude

Alas, he’s mad!

Hamlet

Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
The important acting of your dread command? O, say!

Ghost

Do not forget: this visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
O, step between her and her fighting soul:
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
Speak to her, Hamlet.

Hamlet

How is it with you, lady?

Queen Gertrude

Alas, how is’t with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?