Complete Plays, The (90 page)

Hamlet

On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares!
His form and cause conjoin’d, 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 Gertrude

To whom do you speak this?

Hamlet

Do you see nothing there?

Queen Gertrude

Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

Hamlet

Nor did you nothing hear?

Queen Gertrude

No, nothing but ourselves.

Hamlet

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 Gertrude

This the very coinage of your brain:
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.

Hamlet

Ecstasy!
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
That I have utter’d: 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 mattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst 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 Gertrude

O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

Hamlet

O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
Good night: but go not to mine uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits 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 ... the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night:
And when you are desirous to be bless’d,
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.

Queen Gertrude

What shall I do?

Hamlet

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 damn’d fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft. ’Twere 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 Gertrude

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.

Hamlet

I must to England; you know that?

Queen Gertrude

Alack,
I had forgot: ’tis so concluded on.

Hamlet

There’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way,
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
For ’tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard: and ’t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon: O, ’tis 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

A
CT
IV

S
CENE
I. A
ROOM
IN
THE
CASTLE
.

Enter King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern

King Claudius

There’s matter in these sighs, these profound heaves:
You must translate: ’tis fit we understand them.
Where is your son?

Queen Gertrude

Bestow this place on us a little while.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night!

King Claudius

What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

Queen Gertrude

Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend
Which is the mightier: in his lawless fit,
Behind the arras hearing something stir,
Whips out his rapier, cries, ‘A rat, a rat!’
And, in this brainish apprehension, kills
The unseen good old man.

King Claudius

O heavy deed!
It had been so with us, had we been there:
His liberty is full of threats to all;
To you yourself, to us, to every one.
Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer’d?
It will be laid to us, whose providence
Should have kept short, restrain’d and out of haunt,
This mad young man: but so much was our love,
We would not understand what was most fit;
But, like the owner of a foul disease,
To keep it from divulging, let it feed
Even on the pith of Life. Where is he gone?

Queen Gertrude

To draw apart the body he hath kill’d:
O’er whom his very madness, like some ore
Among a mineral of metals base,
Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done.

King Claudius

O Gertrude, come away!
The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch,
But we will ship him hence: and this vile deed
We must, with all our majesty and skill,
Both countenance and excuse. Ho, Guildenstern!

Re-enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Friends both, go join you with some further aid:
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
And from his mother’s closet hath he dragg’d him:
Go seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body
Into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Come, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends;
And let them know, both what we mean to do,
And what’s untimely done. O, come away!
My soul is full of discord and dismay.

Exeunt

S
CENE
II. A
NOTHER
ROOM
IN
THE
CASTLE
.

Enter Hamlet

Hamlet

Safely stowed.

Rosencrantz

and

Guildenstern

[Within]
 
Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!

Hamlet

What noise? who calls on Hamlet?
O, here they come.

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Rosencrantz

What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?

Hamlet

Compounded it with dust, whereto ’tis kin.

Rosencrantz

Tell us where ’tis, that we may take it thence
And bear it to the chapel.

Hamlet

Do not believe it.

Rosencrantz

Believe what?

Hamlet

That I can keep your counsel and not mine own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge! what replication should be made by the son of a king?

Rosencrantz

Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

Hamlet

Ay, sir, that soaks up the king’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the king best service in the end: he keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be last swallowed: when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.

Rosencrantz

I understand you not, my lord.

Hamlet

I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

Rosencrantz

My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king.

Hamlet

The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing —

Guildenstern

A thing, my lord!

Hamlet

Of nothing: bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.

Exeunt

S
CENE
III. A
NOTHER
ROOM
IN
THE
CASTLE
.

Enter King Claudius, attended

King Claudius

I have sent to seek him, and to find the body.
How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!
Yet must not we put the strong law on him:
He’s loved of the distracted multitude,
Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes;
And where tis so, the offender’s scourge is weigh’d,
But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,
This sudden sending him away must seem
Deliberate pause: diseases desperate grown
By desperate appliance are relieved,
Or not at all.

Enter Rosencrantz

How now! what hath befall’n?

Rosencrantz

Where the dead body is bestow’d, my lord,
We cannot get from him.

King Claudius

But where is he?

Rosencrantz

Without, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure.

King Claudius

Bring him before us.

Rosencrantz

Ho, Guildenstern! bring in my lord.

Enter Hamlet and Guildenstern

King Claudius

Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?

Hamlet

At supper.

King Claudius

At supper! where?

Hamlet

Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that’s the end.

King Claudius

Alas, alas!

Hamlet

A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and cat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

King Claudius

What dost you mean by this?

Hamlet

Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

King Claudius

Where is Polonius?

Hamlet

In heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger find him not there, seek him i’ the other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

King Claudius

Go seek him there.

To some Attendants

Hamlet

He will stay till ye come.

Exeunt Attendants

King Claudius

Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,—
Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve
For that which thou hast done,— must send thee hence
With fiery quickness: therefore prepare thyself;
The bark is ready, and the wind at help,
The associates tend, and every thing is bent
For England.

Hamlet

 
For England!

King Claudius

Ay, Hamlet.

Hamlet

Good.

King Claudius

So is it, if thou knew’st our purposes.

Hamlet

I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for
England! Farewell, dear mother.

King Claudius

Thy loving father, Hamlet.

Hamlet

My mother: father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England!

Exit

King Claudius

Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard;
Delay it not; I’ll have him hence to-night:
Away! for every thing is seal’d and done
That else leans on the affair: pray you, make haste.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

And, England, if my love thou hold’st at aught —
As my great power thereof may give thee sense,
Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red
After the Danish sword, and thy free awe
Pays homage to us — thou mayst not coldly set
Our sovereign process; which imports at full,
By letters congruing to that effect,
The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England;
For like the hectic in my blood he rages,
And thou must cure me: till I know ’tis done,
Howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.

Exit

S
CENE
IV. A
PLAIN
IN
D
ENMARK
.