Ham.

A king of shreds and patches!-- [Enter Ghost.]

Save me and hover o'er me with your wings, You heavenly guards!--What would your gracious figure?

Queen.

Alas, he's mad!

Ham.

Do you not come your tardy son to chide, That, laps'd in time and pa.s.sion, lets go by The important acting of your dread command?

O, say!

Ghost.

Do not forget. This visitation Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

But, look, amazement on thy mother sits: O, step between her and her fighting soul,-- Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works,-- Speak to her, Hamlet.

Ham.

How is it with you, lady?

Queen.

Alas, how is't with you, That you do bend your eye on vacancy, And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?

Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep; And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements, Start up and stand an end. O gentle son, Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper Sprinkle cool patience! Whereon do you look?

Ham.

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.

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 liv'd!

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 Is very cunning in.

Ham.

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 flattering unction to your soul That not your trespa.s.s, 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.

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 mine uncle's bed; a.s.sume a virtue, if you have it not.

That monster custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits evil, 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 bles'd, I'll blessing beg of you.--For this same lord [Pointing to Polonius.]

I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd 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.

What shall I do?

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 d.a.m.n'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.

Be thou a.s.sur'd, 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: 'tis so concluded on.

Ham.

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 enginer 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 peating knave.

Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you:-- Good night, mother.

[Exeunt severally; Hamlet, dragging out Polonius.]

ACT IV.

Scene I. A room in the Castle.

[Enter King, Queen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

King.

There's matter in these sighs. These profound heaves You must translate: 'tis fit we understand them.

Where is your son?

Queen.

Bestow this place on us a little while.

[To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who go out.]

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

King.

What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

Queen.

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.

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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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.

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.

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: so haply slander,-- Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter, As level as the cannon to his blank, Transports his poison'd shot,--may miss our name, And hit the woundless air.--O, come away!

My soul is full of discord and dismay.

[Exeunt.]