Queen. O Hamlet! thou hast cleft my heart in
Ham. O, throw away the worser part of it, [twain.
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 bless'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.—
But one word more, good lady.

Queen.

do:

What shall I do? Ham. Not this, by no means, that I bid you Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed; Pinch wanton on your cheek; call his mouse*; And let him, for a pair of reechyt kisses, Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers, Make you to ravel all this matter out,

you

That I essentially am not in madness,

* A term of endearment.

+ Steaming with heat.

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 gibt,
Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?
No, in despite of sense and secresy,

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 assur'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?
Qaeen.

I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on.

Alack, [fellows,

Ham. There's letters seal'd: and my two school-
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 petar||: and it shall go hard,
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon.

And

ACT IV.

HAMLET'S IRRESOLUTION.

How all occasions do inform against me, spur my dull revenge! What is a man, If his chief good, and market¶ of his time, Be but to sleep, and feed? a beast, no more.

*Toad. + Cat. Experiments.

Blown up with his own bomb.
z 3

S Having their teeth. ¶ Profit.

Sure, he, that made us with such large discourse*,
Looking before, and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason

To fust in us unus'd. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,

[dom,
A thought, which, quarter'd, hath but one part wis-
And, ever, three parts coward.—I do not know
Why yet I live to say, This thing's to do; [means,
Siths I have cause, and will, and strength, and
To do't. Examples, gross as earth, exhort me:
Witness, this army of such mass, and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince;
Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff'd,
Makes mouths at the invisible event;
Exposing what is mortal and unsure,
To all that fortune, death, and danger, dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great,
Is, not to stir without great argument;
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy, and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds; fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough, and continent
To hide the slain?-O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

SORROWS RARELY SINGLE.

O Gertrude, Gertrude,

* Power of comprehension.

Cowardly.

+ Grow mouldy.
§ Since.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions!

THE DIVINITY OF KINGS.

Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person; There's such divinity doth hedge a king, That treason can but peep to what it would, Acts little of his will.

DESCRIPTION OF OPHELIA'S DEATH.

Queen. There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; Therewith fantastic garlands did she make

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples*,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies, and herself,
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, a while they bore her up;
Which time, she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or, like a creature native and indu'd

Unto that element: but long it could not be,
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

ACT V.

HAMLET'S REFLECTIONS ON YORICK'S SCULL. Grave-digger. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! he poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head

Orchis morio mas. + Licentious.

Insensible.

once. This same scull, sir, was Yorick's scull,

the king's jester. Ham. This?

Grave-digger. E'en that.

[Takes the Scull.

Ham. Alas! poor Yorick!-I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest; of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips, that

Where be your

I have kissed I know not how oft. gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour* she must come; make her laugh at that.

OPHELIA'S INTERMENT.

Lay her i' the earth ;

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh,

May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
A ministering angel shall my sister be,
When thou liest howling.

MELANCHOLY.

This is mere madness:

And thus a while the fit will work on him:
Anon, as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclos'dt.
His silence will sit drooping.

PROVIDENCE DIRECTS OUR ACTIONS.

And that should teach us,

* Countenance, complexion.

+ Hatched.