for the play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general: but it was an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. One speech in it I chiefly loved: 'twas Æneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of Priam's slaughter: if it live in your memory, begin at this line:

"The rugged Pyrrhus, like th' Hyrcanian beast,❞—

It is not so it begins with "Pyrrhus." Let me see, let me see:

"The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms, Black as his purpose, did the night resemble When he lay couched in the ominous horse, With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus Old grandsire Priam seeks."

So! Proceed

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,
Repugnant to command: unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls.

But as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region, so after Pyrrhus' pause
Aroused 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!"

This is too long.

POLONIUS.

HAMLET.

It shall to the barber's, with your beard.

Prithee, say on: he's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps: say on: come to Hecuba.

FIRST PLAYER.

"But who, O, who had seen the mobled

queen-"

HAMLET.

"The mobled queen?"

POLONIUS.

That's good; "mobled queen" is good.

FIRST PLAYER.

"Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames;

A clout upon that head

Where late the diadem stood; and for a robe,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up:

Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd '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,
Would have made milch the burning eyes of
heaven

And passion in the gods."

POLONIUS.

Look, whether 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 abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

POLONIUS.

My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

HAMLET.

God's bodykins, man, much better: use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

Come, sirs.

POLONIUS.

HAMLET.

Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to

morrow.

(Exit POLONIUS with all the PLAYERS but the FIRST.)

Dost thou hear me, old friend? (To ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.) My good friends, I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore.

Good my lord!

ROSENCRANTZ.

HAMLET.

Ay, so, God be wi' ye!

(Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.) Can you play the Murder of Gonzago?

We'll ha 't to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down and insert in 't, could you not?

Ay, my lord.

Very well.

FIRST PLAYER.

HAMLET.

Follow that lord; and look you (Exit FIRST PLAyer.)

mock him not.

Now I am alone.

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,

Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with

tears

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and appal the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed

The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the
throat,

As deep as to the lungs?

Ha!

Who does me this?

S'wounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless vil-
lain!

O, vengeance!

Why, what an ass am I! 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 proclaim'd their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.

players

I'll have these

Play something like the murder of my father