Speak to her, Hamlet.
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HAMLET How is it with you, lady?
QUEEN Alas, how is’t with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,
And, as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm,
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Your bedded hair, 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?
HAMLET
On him, on him. Look you how pale he glares.
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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.
130
QUEEN To whom do you speak this?
HAMLET Do you see nothing there?
QUEEN Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
HAMLET Nor did you nothing hear?
QUEEN No, nothing but ourselves.
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HAMLET 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
140
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
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.
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Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
150
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
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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.
HAMLET O throw away the worser part of it
And live the purer with the other half.
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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 habits evil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
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He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,
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,
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And either lodge the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night,
And when you are desirous to be blest,
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so,
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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.
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This bad begins, and worse remains behind.
One word more, good lady.
QUEEN 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,
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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,
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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,
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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
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What thou hast said to me.
HAMLET I must to England, you know that?
QUEEN 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 –
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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
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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
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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.
Exit lugging in Polonius. The Queen remains.
4.1 To the QUEEN, enter KING, with 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.
Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Ah, mine own lord, what have I seen tonight!
5
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’,
10
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 everyone.
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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,
20
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
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Among a mineral of metals base,
Shows itself pure – a 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
30
We must with all our majesty and skill
Both countenance and excuse. – Ho, Guildenstern!
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.
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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 envious slander,
40
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.
45
4.2 Enter HAMLET.
HAMLET Safely stowed. [calling within] But soft, what
noise? Who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come.
Enter ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN and others.
ROSENCRANTZ What have you done, my lord, with the
dead body?
HAMLET Compounded it with dust, whereto ’tis kin.
5
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
10
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
15
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.
20
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.
25
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. Exeunt.
4.3 Enter KING and two or three lords.
KING 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 lov’d of the distracted multitude,
Who like not in their judgment but their eyes,
5
And where ’tis so, th’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 reliev’d,
10
Or not at all.
Enter ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN and others.
How now, what hath befall’n?
ROSENCRANTZ
Where the dead body is bestow’d, my lord,
We cannot get from him.
KING But where is he?
ROSENCRANTZ
Without, my lord, guarded, to know your pleasure.
KING Bring him before us.
ROSENCRANTZ Ho! Bring in the lord.
15
Enter HAMLET with guards.
KING Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?
HAMLET At supper.
KING At supper? Where?
HAMLET Not where he eats, but where a is eaten. A
certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him.
20
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.
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 133
