Complete Plays, The (95 page)

Authors: William Shakespeare

BOOK: Complete Plays, The

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Hamlet

Not a whit, we defy augury: there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes?

Enter King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Laertes, Lords, Osric, and Attendants with foils, & c

King Claudius

Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.

King Claudius puts Laertes’ hand into Hamlet’s

Hamlet

Give me your pardon, sir: I’ve done you wrong;
But pardon’t, as you are a gentleman.
This presence knows,
And you must needs have heard, how I am punish’d
With sore distraction. What I have done,
That might your nature, honour and exception
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet:
If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away,
And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then? His madness: if’t be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d;
His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy.
Sir, in this audience,
Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts,
That I have shot mine arrow o’er the house,
And hurt my brother.

Laertes

I am satisfied in nature,
Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most
To my revenge: but in my terms of honour
I stand aloof; and will no reconcilement,
Till by some elder masters, of known honour,
I have a voice and precedent of peace,
To keep my name ungored. But till that time,
I do receive your offer’d love like love,
And will not wrong it.

Hamlet

I embrace it freely;
And will this brother’s wager frankly play.
Give us the foils. Come on.

Laertes

Come, one for me.

Hamlet

I’ll be your foil, Laertes: in mine ignorance
Your skill shall, like a star i’ the darkest night,
Stick fiery off indeed.

Laertes

You mock me, sir.

Hamlet

No, by this hand.

King Claudius

Give them the foils, young Osric. Cousin Hamlet,
You know the wager?

Hamlet

Very well, my lord
Your grace hath laid the odds o’ the weaker side.

King Claudius

I do not fear it; I have seen you both:
But since he is better’d, we have therefore odds.

Laertes

This is too heavy, let me see another.

Hamlet

This likes me well. These foils have all a length?

They prepare to play

Osric

Ay, my good lord.

King Claudius

Set me the stoops of wine upon that table.
If Hamlet give the first or second hit,
Or quit in answer of the third exchange,
Let all the battlements their ordnance fire:
The king shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath;
And in the cup an union shall he throw,
Richer than that which four successive kings
In Denmark’s crown have worn. Give me the cups;
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth,
‘Now the king dunks to Hamlet.’ Come, begin:
And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.

Hamlet

Come on, sir.

Laertes

Come, my lord.

They play

Hamlet

One.

Laertes

No.

Hamlet

Judgment.

Osric

A hit, a very palpable hit.

Laertes

Well; again.

King Claudius

Stay; give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine;
Here’s to thy health.

Trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within

Give him the cup.

Hamlet

I’ll play this bout first; set it by awhile. Come.

They play

Another hit; what say you?

Laertes

A touch, a touch, I do confess.

King Claudius

Our son shall win.

Queen Gertrude

He’s fat, and scant of breath.
Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows;
The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.

Hamlet

Good madam!

King Claudius

Gertrude, do not drink.

Queen Gertrude

I will, my lord; I pray you, pardon me.

King Claudius

[Aside]

It is the poison’d cup: it is too late.

Hamlet

I dare not drink yet, madam; by and by.

Queen Gertrude

Come, let me wipe thy face.

Laertes

My lord, I’ll hit him now.

King Claudius

I do not think’t.

Laertes

[Aside]

And yet ’tis almost ’gainst my conscience.

Hamlet

Come, for the third, Laertes: you but dally;
I pray you, pass with your best violence;
I am afeard you make a wanton of me.

Laertes

Say you so? come on.

They play

Osric

Nothing, neither way.

Laertes

Have at you now!

Laertes wounds Hamlet; then in scuffling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes

King Claudius

Part them; they are incensed.

Hamlet

Nay, come, again.

Queen Gertrude falls

Osric

Look to the queen there, ho!

Horatio

They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?

Osric

How is’t, Laertes?

Laertes

Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric;
I am justly kill’d with mine own treachery.

Hamlet

How does the queen?

King Claudius

She swounds to see them bleed.

Queen Gertrude

No, no, the drink, the drink,— O my dear Hamlet,—
The drink, the drink! I am poison’d.

Dies

Hamlet

O villany! Ho! let the door be lock’d:
Treachery! Seek it out.

Laertes

It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art slain;
No medicine in the world can do thee good;
In thee there is not half an hour of life;
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
Unbated and envenom’d: the foul practise
Hath turn’d itself on me lo, here I lie,
Never to rise again: thy mother’s poison’d:
I can no more: the king, the king’s to blame.

Hamlet

The point!— envenom’d too!
Then, venom, to thy work.

Stabs King Claudius

All

Treason! treason!

King Claudius

O, yet defend me, friends; I am but hurt.

Hamlet

Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.

King Claudius dies

Laertes

He is justly served;
It is a poison temper’d by himself.
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet:
Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee,
Nor thine on me.

Dies

Hamlet

Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.
I am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu!
You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time — as this fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest — O, I could tell you —
But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;
Thou livest; report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.

Horatio

Never believe it:
I am more an antique Roman than a Dane:
Here’s yet some liquor left.

Hamlet

As thou’rt a man,
Give me the cup: let go; by heaven, I’ll have’t.
O good Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.

March afar off, and shot within

What warlike noise is this?

Osric

Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,
To the ambassadors of England gives
This warlike volley.

Hamlet

O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o’er-crows my spirit:
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.

Dies

Horatio

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
Why does the drum come hither?

March within

Enter Fortinbras, the English Ambassadors, and others

Prince Fortinbras

Where is this sight?

Horatio

What is it ye would see?
If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.

Prince Fortinbras

This quarry cries on havoc. O proud death,
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes at a shot
So bloodily hast struck?

First Ambassador

The sight is dismal;
And our affairs from England come too late:
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
To tell him his commandment is fulfill’d,
That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead:
Where should we have our thanks?

Horatio

Not from his mouth,
Had it the ability of life to thank you:
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
Are here arrived 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 forced cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall’n on the inventors’ reads: all this can I
Truly deliver.

Prince Fortinbras

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.

Horatio

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.

Prince Fortinbras

Let four captains
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved 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 which a peal of ordnance is shot off

Troilus and Cressida

T
ABLE
OF
C
ONTENTS

C
HARACTERS
OF
THE
P
LAY

P
ROLOGUE

A
CT
I

S
CENE
I. T
ROY
. B
EFORE
P
RIAM
’
S
PALACE
.