O, vengeance!

Ay sure, 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! Hum, 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 proclaimed 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
To 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.

ACT III.

SCENE I. The same.

KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.

King.

ND can you, by no drift of circumstance,
Get from him why he puts on this confu-

sion?

Ros. He does confess he feels himself dis

tracted;

But from what cause he will by no means speak.
Queen. Did you assay him

To any pastime ?

Ros. 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.

Pol.

'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 inclined.

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge

And drive his purpose on to these delights.

[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 behaved,

If't be the 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.

Oph.

Madam, I wish it may. [Exit Queen. Pol. 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.

[Exit Ophelia.

I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord.

[Exeunt King and Polonius.

Enter HAMLET.

Ham. 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 despised 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.

Good my lord,

Oph.
How does your honour for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thank you; well, well, well.
Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver;

I pray you, now receive them.

Ham.

I never gave you aught.

No, not I;

Oph. My honour'd lord, you know right well you

did;

And with them words of so sweet breath composed

As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,

Take these again; for to the noble mind Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. . There, my lord.

Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest ?
Oph. My lord?

Ham. Are you fair?

Oph. What means your lordship?

Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.

Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

Ham. You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not.

Oph. I was the more deceived.

Ham. Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more of fences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.— Where's your father?

Oph. At home, my lord.

Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.

Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens !

Ham. If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters »