Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly
Or – not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus – you’ll tender me a fool.
OPHELIA My lord, he hath importun’d me with love
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In honourable fashion.
POLONIUS Ay, fashion you may call it. Go to, go to.
OPHELIA
And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
POLONIUS Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
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When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both
Even in their promise as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time
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Be something scanter of your maiden presence,
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him that he is young,
And with a larger tether may he walk
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Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds
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The better to beguile. This is for all.
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth
Have you so slander any moment leisure
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to’t, I charge you. Come your ways.
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OPHELIA I shall obey, my lord. Exeunt.
1.4 Enter HAMLET, HORATIO and MARCELLUS.
HAMLET The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold.
HORATIO It is a nipping and an eager air.
HAMLET What hour now?
HORATIO I think it lacks of twelve.
MARCELLUS No, it is struck.
HORATIO Indeed? I heard it not.
It then draws near the season
5
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
[A flourish of trumpets, and two pieces of ordnance go off.]
What does this mean, my lord?
HAMLET
The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swagg’ring upspring reels;
And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
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The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
HORATIO Is it a custom?
HAMLET Ay marry is’t,
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
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More honour’d in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduc’d and tax’d of other nations –
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
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From our achievements, though perform’d at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.
So, oft it chances in particular men
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty
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(Since nature cannot choose his origin),
By their o’ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit, that too much o’erleavens
The form of plausive manners – that these men,
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Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being Nature’s livery or Fortune’s star,
His virtues else, be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo,
Shall in the general censure take corruption
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From that particular fault. The dram of evil
Doth all the noble substance often dout
To his own scandal.
Enter Ghost.
HORATIO Look, my lord, it comes.
HAMLET Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,
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Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou com’st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane. O answer me.
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Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell
Why thy canoniz’d bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements, why the sepulchre
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d
Hath op’d his ponderous and marble jaws
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To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
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With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?
[Ghost beckons.]
HORATIO It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.
MARCELLUS Look with what courteous action
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It waves you to a more removed ground.
But do not go with it.
HORATIO No, by no means.
HAMLET It will not speak. Then I will follow it.
HORATIO Do not, my lord.
HAMLET Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life at a pin’s fee,
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And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again. I’ll follow it.
HORATIO
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
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That beetles o’er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? Think of it.
The very place puts toys of desperation,
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Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.
HAMLET It waves me still.
Go on, I’ll follow thee.
MARCELLUS You shall not go, my lord.
HAMLET Hold off your hands.
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HORATIO Be rul’d; you shall not go.
HAMLET My fate cries out
And makes each petty artire in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.
Still am I call’d. Unhand me, gentlemen.
By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me.
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I say away. – Go on, I’ll follow thee.
Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet.
HORATIO He waxes desperate with imagination.
MARCELLUS Let’s follow. ’Tis not fit thus to obey him.
HORATIO Have after. To what issue will this come?
MARCELLUS
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
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HORATIO Heaven will direct it.
MARCELLUS Nay, let’s follow him.
Exeunt.
1.5 Enter Ghost and HAMLET.
HAMLET
Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak, I’ll go no further.
GHOST Mark me.
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HAMLET I will.
GHOST My hour is almost come
When I to sulph’rous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.
HAMLET Alas, poor ghost.
GHOST Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
5
To what I shall unfold.
HAMLET Speak, I am bound to hear.
GHOST So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear.
HAMLET What?
GHOST I am thy father’s spirit,
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,
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And for the day confin’d to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg’d away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
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Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand an end
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
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But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love –
HAMLET O God!
GHOST Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
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HAMLET Murder!
GHOST Murder most foul, as in the best it is,
But this most foul, strange and unnatural.
HAMLET
Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love
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May sweep to my revenge.
GHOST I find thee apt.
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear.
’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
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A serpent stung me – so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abus’d – but know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father’s life
Now wears his crown.
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HAMLET O my prophetic soul! My uncle!
GHOST Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts –
O wicked wit, and gifts that have the power
So to seduce! – won to his shameful lust
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The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.
O Hamlet, what a falling off was there,
From me, whose love was of that dignity
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage, and to decline
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Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine.
But virtue, as it never will be mov’d,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel link’d,
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Will sate itself in a celestial bed
And prey on garbage.
But soft, methinks I scent the morning air:
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
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Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leperous distilment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
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That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine,
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And a most instant tetter bark’d about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust
All my smooth body.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand
Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatch’d,
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Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d,
No reck’ning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
O horrible! O horrible! most horrible!
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If thou has nature in thee, bear it not,
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 124
