Enter POLONIUS.
POLONIUS Well be with you, gentlemen.
HAMLET Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too – at each
ear a hearer. That great baby you see there is not yet
out of his swaddling-clouts.
ROSENCRANTZ Happily he is the second time come to
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them, for they say an old man is twice a child.
HAMLET I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the
players. Mark it. – You say right, sir, a Monday
morning, ’twas then indeed.
POLONIUS My lord, I have news to tell you.
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HAMLET My lord, I have news to tell you. When
Roscius was an actor in Rome –
POLONIUS The actors are come hither, my lord.
HAMLET Buzz, buzz.
POLONIUS Upon my honour –
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HAMLET Then came each actor on his ass –
POLONIUS The best actors in the world, either for
tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical comical
historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlim-
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ited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too
light. For the law of writ, and the liberty, these are
the only men.
HAMLET O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure
hadst thou!
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POLONIUS What a treasure had he, my lord?
HAMLET Why,
One fair daughter and no more,
The which he loved passing well.
POLONIUS [aside] Still on my daughter.
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HAMLET Am I not i’th’ right, old Jephthah?
POLONIUS If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a
daughter that I love passing well.
HAMLET Nay, that follows not.
POLONIUS What follows then, my lord?
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HAMLET Why,
As by lot God wot,
and then, you know,
It came to pass, as most like it was.
The first row of the pious chanson will show you
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more, for look where my abridgement comes.
Enter the Players.
You are welcome, masters. Welcome, all. – I am glad to
see thee well. – Welcome, good friends. – O, old
friend, why, thy face is valanced since I saw thee last.
Com’st thou to beard me in Denmark? – What, my
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young lady and mistress! By’r lady, your ladyship is
nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the
altitude of a chopine. Pray God your voice, like a
piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the
ring. – Masters, you are all welcome. We’ll e’en to’t
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like French falconers, fly at anything we see. We’ll
have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your
quality. Come, a passionate speech.
1 PLAYER What speech, my good lord?
HAMLET I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was
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never acted, or if it was, not above once – for the play,
I remember, pleased not the million, ’twas caviare to
the general. But it was, as I received it – and others,
whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of
mine – an excellent play, well digested in the scenes,
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set down with as much modesty as cunning. I
remember one said there were no sallets in the lines to
make the matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase
that might indict the author of affection, but called it
an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very
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much more handsome than fine. One speech in’t I
chiefly loved – ’twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido – and
thereabout of it especially when he speaks of Priam’s
slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at this line –
let me see, let me see –
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The rugged Pyrrhus, like th’Hyrcanian beast –
’Tis not so. It begins with Pyrrhus –
The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
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Hath now this dread and black complexion smear’d
With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot
Now is he total gules, horridly trick’d
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Bak’d and impasted with the parching streets,
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That lend a tyrannous and a damned light
To their lord’s murder. Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o’ersized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.
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So proceed you.
POLONIUS ’Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good
accent and good discretion.
1 PLAYER Anon he finds him,
Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword,
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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
Th’unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
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Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus’ ear. For lo, his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem’d i’th’ air to stick;
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So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
And like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
But as we often see against some storm
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
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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 awork,
And never did the Cyclops’ hammers fall
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On Mars’s armour, forg’d for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.
Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods
In general synod take away her power,
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Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven
As low as to the fiends.
POLONIUS This is too long.
HAMLET It shall to the barber’s with your beard. –
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Prithee say on. He’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he
sleeps. Say on, come to Hecuba.
1 PLAYER
But who – ah, woe! – had seen the mobbled queen –
HAMLET ‘The mobbled queen’.
POLONIUS That’s good.
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1 PLAYER
Run barefoot up and down, threat’ning the flames
With bisson rheum, a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and, for a robe,
About her lank and all o’erteemed loins
A blanket, in th’alarm of fear caught up –
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Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep’d,
’Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have pronounc’d.
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,
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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 whe’er he has not turned his colour
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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.
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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 bodkin, man, much better. Use every
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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.
POLONIUS Come, sirs.
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HAMLET Follow him, friends. We’ll hear a play
tomorrow. [to First Player] Dost thou hear me, old
friend? Can you play The Murder of Gonzago?
1 PLAYER Ay, my lord.
HAMLET We’ll ha’t tomorrow night. You could for a
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need study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines,
which I would set down and insert in’t, could you not?
1 PLAYER Ay, my lord.
HAMLET Very well. [to all the Players] Follow that lord,
and look you mock him not.
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Exeunt Polonius and Players.
[to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern] My good friends, I’ll
leave you till night. You are welcome to Elsinore.
ROSENCRANTZ Good my lord.
Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
HAMLET Ay, so, God buy to you. Now I am alone.
O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
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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 his aspect,
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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 her,
That he should weep for her? What would he do
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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
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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,
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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’th’ throat
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As deep as to the lungs – who does me this?
Ha!
’Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
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I should ha’ fatted all the region kites
With this slave’s offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,
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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 brains. Hum – I have heard
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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
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With most miraculous organ. I’ll have these players
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 128
