Or—not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus—you’ll tender me a fool.
OPHELIA
My lord, he hath importuned me with love
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 all the vows of heaven.
POLONIUS
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know
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, daughter,
Be somewhat 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
Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers,
Not of the dye which their investments show,
But mere imploratators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds
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.
OPHELIA I shall obey, my lord.
Exeunt
1.4 Enter Prince 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. Then it draws near the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
A flourish of trumpets, and two pieces of ordnance goes 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
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
HORATIO Is it a custom?
HAMLET Ay, marry is’t,
And to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honoured in the breach than the observance.
Enter the Ghost, as before
HORATIO Look, my lord, it comes.
HAMLET
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
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!
Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsèd in death,
Have burst their cerements, why the sepulchre
Wherein we saw thee quietly enurned
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws
To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corpse, again in complete steel,
Revisitst thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?
The Ghost beckons Hamlet
HORATIO
It beckons you to go away with it
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.
MARCELLUS (to Hamlet) Look with what courteous action
It wafts you to a more removed ground.
But do not go with it.
HORATIO (to Hamlet)
No, by no means.
HAMLET
It will not speak. Then will I 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,
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
The Ghost beckons Hamlet
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
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 Ghost beckons Hamlet
HAMLET
It wafts me still. (To the Ghost) Go on, I’ll follow thee.
MARCELLUS
You shall not go, my lord.
HAMLET
Hold off your hand.
HORATIO
Be ruled. You shall not go.
HAMLET
My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artere in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.
The Ghost beckons Hamlet
Still am I called. Unhand me, gentlemen.
By heav’n, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me.
I say, away! (To the Ghost) Go on, I’ll follow thee.
Exeunt the 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.
HORATIO
Heaven will direct it.
MARCELLUS
Nay, let’s follow him.
Exeunt
1.5 Enter the Ghost, and Prince Hamlet following
HAMLET
Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak. I’ll go no further.
GHOST
Mark me.
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
To what I shall unfold.
HAMLET
GHOST
So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear.
HAMLET What?
GHOST I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,
Thy knotty and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, Hamlet, list, O list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love—
HAMLET O God!
GHOST
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
HAMLET Murder?
GHOST
Murder most foul, as in the best it is,
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
HAMLET
Haste, haste me to know it, that with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love
May sweep to my revenge.
GHOST
I find thee apt,
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf
Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear.
’Tis given out that, sleeping in mine orchard,
A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father’s life
Now wears his crown.
HAMLET
O my prophetic soul! Mine 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
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
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine.
But virtue, as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel linked,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage.
But soft, methinks I scent the morning’s air.
Brief let me be. Sleeping within mine orchard,
My custom always in the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of mine ears did pour
The leperous distilment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
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;
And a most instant tetter barked 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 dispatched,
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhouseled, dis-appointed, unaneled,
No reck’ning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
O horrible, O horrible, most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest.
But howsoever thou pursuest this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven,
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once.
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
Adieu, adieu, Hamlet. Remember me. Exit
HAMLET
O all you host of heaven! Oearth! What else?
And shall I couple hell? O fie! Hold, hold, my heart,
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain
Unmixed with baser matter. Yes, yes, by heaven.
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,
My tables—meet it is I set it down
That one may smile and smile and be a villain.
At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark.
He writes
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word:
It is ‘Adieu, adieu, remember me’.
I have sworn’t.
HORATIO and MARCELLUS (within) My lord, my lord.
Enter Horatio and Marcellus
MARCELLUS (calling) Lord Hamlet! 115
HORATIO Heaven secure him.
HAMLET So be it.
HORATIO (calling) Illo, ho, ho, my lord.
HAMLET
Hillo, ho, ho, boy; come, bird, come.
MARCELLUS How is’t, my noble lord?
HORATIO (to Hamlet) What news, my lord?
HAMLET O wonderful!
HORATIO
Good my lord, tell it.
HAMLET
No, you’ll reveal it.
HORATIO
Not I, my lord, by heaven.
MARCELLUS
Nor I, my lord.
HAMLET
How say you then, would heart of man once think it?
But you’ll be secret?
HORATIO and MARCELLUS Ay, by heav’n, my lord.
HAMLET
There’s ne’er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he’s an arrant knave.
HORATIO
There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this.
HAMLET
Why, right, you are i’th’ right,
And so without more circumstance at all
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part,
You as your business and desires shall point you—
For every man has business and desire,
Such as it is—and for mine own poor part,
Look you, I’ll go pray.
HORATIO
These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.
HAMLET
I’m sorry they offend you, heartily,
Yes, faith, heartily.
HORATIO
There’s no offence, my lord.
HAMLET
Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
And much offence, too. Touching this vision here,
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you.
For your desire to know what is between us,
O’ermaster’t as you may. And now, good friends,
As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,
Give me one poor request.
HORATIO
What is’t, my lord? We will.
HAMLET
Never make known what you have seen tonight.
HORATIO and MARCELLUS
My lord, we will not.
HAMLET
Nay, but swear’t.
HORATIO
In faith, my lord, not I.
MARCELLUS
Nor I, my lord, in faith.
HAMLET
Upon my sword.
MARCELLUS
We have sworn, my lord, already.
HAMLET
Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.
The Ghost cries under the stage
GHOST
Swear.
HAMLET
Ah ha, boy, sayst thou so? Art thou there, truepenny?—
Come on. You hear this fellow in the cellarage.
Consent
to swear.
HORATIO
Propose the oath, my lord.
HAMLET
Never to speak of this that you have seen,
Swear by my sword.
GHOST (under the stage) Swear.
⌈They swear⌉
HAMLET
Hic et ubique? Then we’ll shift our ground.—
Come hither, gentlemen,
And lay your hands again upon my sword.
Never to speak of this that you have heard,
Swear by my sword.
GHOST (under the stage) Swear.
⌈They swear⌉
HAMLET
Well said, old mole. Canst work i’th’ earth so fast?
A worthy pioneer.—Once more remove, good friends.
HORATIO
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
HAMLET
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy. But come,
Here as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd soe‘er I bear myself—
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on—
That you at such time seeing me never shall,
With arms encumbered thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase
As ‘Well, we know’ or ‘We could an if we would’,
Or ‘If we list to speak’, or ‘There be, an if they might’,
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me—this not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you, swear.
GHOST (under the stage) Swear.
⌈They swear⌉
HAMLET
Rest, rest, perturbed spirit.—So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you,
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do t’express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together,
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint. O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let’s go together. Exeunt
2.1 Enter old Polonius with his man Reynaldo
POLONIUS
Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.
REYNALDO I will, my lord.
POLONIUS
You shall do marv’lous wisely, good Reynaldo,
Before you visit him to make enquire
Of his behaviour.
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 225
