Ham. "By-and-by" is easily said.-Leave me, friends. [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, HORATIO, &c.

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!

SCENE III-A Room in the same.

[Exit.

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

Guil. 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.

Ros. 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 gulph, doth draw
What's near it with it: it is a massy wheel,
Fixed on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoined; 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. Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy
voyage;

For we will fetters put upon this fear,

Which now goes too free-footed.

Enter POLONIUS.

Pol. My lord, he's going to his mother's closet: Behind the arras I'll convey myself,

To hear the process; I'll warrant she'll tax him home:

And, as you said, and wisely was it said,

"Tis meet that some more audience than a mo

ther,

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.

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 twofold force,— To be forestalléd ere we come to fall, Or pardoned, 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 mur

der!

That cannot be; since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder?
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned 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 't is not so above:
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compelled,
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 cannot repent?
O wretched state! O bosom, black as death!
O liméd soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels, make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees! and heart, with strings of

Enter HAMLET.

Ham. 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 scanned;
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.

Why, 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 seasoned for his
No.

passage?

Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk, asleep, or in his rage;
Or in the incestuous pleasures 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 damned and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:-
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days. [Exit.

The KING rises, and advances.

:

Ham.

What's the matter now?

Queen. Have you forgot me?
Ham.

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

Ham. 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. What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?

If damnéd custom hath not brazed it so,
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
Queen. What have I done, that thou darest wag
thy tongue

In noise so rude against me?
Ham.
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,

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 mildewed 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 heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgment: and what judg-

ment

Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,

Else could you not have motion: but sure that

sense

Is apoplexed: for madness would not err;
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thralled,
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was 't
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,

Ham. On him! on him!-Look you, how pale he glares!

His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones, Would make them capable.-Do not look upon

me;

Lest, with this piteous action, you convert
My stern effects: then what I have to do
Will want true colour; tears, perchance, for blood.
Queen. To whom do you speak this?
Ham. Do you see nothing there?
Queen. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
Ham. Nor did you nothing hear?
Queen. No, nothing, but ourselves.

Ham. Why, look you there! look how it steals away!

My father, in his habit as he lived;

Look where he goes, even now, out at the portal! [Exit Ghost. Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain: This bodiless creation ecstasy

My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered: bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness, speaks:
It will but skin, and film the ulcerous place;
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my
virtue :

For, in the fatness of these pursy times,
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg;
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
Queen. O, Hamlet! thou hast cleft my heart in
twain.

Ham. O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
Good night but go not to my uncle's bed;
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habit's devil, is angel yet in this;
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night:
And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence: the next more easy: For use almost can change the stamp of nature, And either curb the devil, or throw him out With wondrous potency. Once more, good night;

And when you are desirous to be blessed,
I'll blessing beg of you.-For this same lord,
[Pointing to POLONIUS.

I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So, again, good night!—
I must be cruel only to be kind :

Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.—
One word more, good lady.

Ham. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed: Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse; And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,

Or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft. 'T were good you let him know:
For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
Such dear concernings hide? who would do so?
No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house's top,
Let the birds fly; and, like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep,
And break your own neck down.

Queen. Be thou assured, if words be made of

breath,

And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.

Ham. I must to England; you know that?
Queen. Alack,

I had forgot; 't is so concluded on.

Ham. There's letters sealed: and my two schoolfellows,-

Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged,They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way,

And marshal me to knavery :-let it work;
For 't is the sport, to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petar: and it shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon: O, 't is most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet!-
This man shall set me packing.

I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.—
Mother, good night.-Indeed, this counsellor
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.-
Good night, mother.

[Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in
POLONIUS.