Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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1.3 Enter Laertes and Ophelia, his sister

LAERTES

My necessaries are inbarqued. Farewell.

And, sister, as the winds give benefit

And convoy is assistant, do not sleep

But let me hear from you.

OPHELIA

Do you doubt that?

LAERTES

For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour,

Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,

A violet in the youth of primy nature,

Forward not permanent, sweet not lasting,

The perfume and suppliance of a minute,

No more.

OPHELIA

No more but so?

LAERTES

Think it no more.

For nature crescent does not grow alone

In thews and bulk, but as his temple waxes

The inward service of the mind and soul

Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,

And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch

The virtue of his will; but you must fear,

His greatness weighed, his will is not his own,

For he himself is subject to his birth.

He may not, as unvalued persons do,

Carve for himself, for on his choice depends

The sanity and health of the whole state;

And therefore must his choice be circumscribed

Unto the voice and yielding of that body

Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,

It fits your wisdom so far to believe it

As he in his peculiar sect and force

May give his saying deed, which is no further

Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.

Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain

If with too credent ear you list his songs,

Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open

To his unmastered importunity.

Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,

And keep within the rear of your affection,

Out of the shot and danger of desire.

The chariest maid is prodigal enough

If she unmask her beauty to the moon.

Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes.

The canker galls the infants of the spring

Too oft before their buttons be disclosed,

And in the morn and liquid dew of youth

Contagious blastments are most imminent.

Be wary then; best safety lies in fear;

Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.

OPHELIA

I shall th’effect of this good lesson keep

As watchman to my heart; but, good my brother,

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven

Whilst like a puffed and reckless libertine

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads

And recks not his own rede.

LAERTES

O fear me not.

Enter Polonius

I stay too long—but here my father comes.

A double blessing is a double grace;

Occasion smiles upon a second leave.

POLONIUS

Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!

The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,

And you are stayed for. There—my blessing with thee,

And these few precepts in thy memory

See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar.

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel,

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

Of each new-hatched unfledged comrade. Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,

Bear’t that th’opposèd may beware of thee.

Give every man thine ear but few thy voice.

Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not expressed in fancy; rich not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man,

And they in France of the best rank and station

Are of all most select and generous chief in that.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all—to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Farewell—my blessing season this in thee.

LAERTES

Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

POLONIUS

The time invites you. Go; your servants tend.

LAERTES

Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well

What I have said to you.

OPHELIA

’Tis in my memory locked,

And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

LAERTES Farewell.

Exit

POLONIUS

What is’t, Ophelia, he hath said to you?

OPHELIA

So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.

POLONIUS Marry, well bethought.

‘Tis told me he hath very oft of late

Given private time to you, and you yourself

Have of your audience been most free and bounteous.

If it be so—as so ’tis put on me,

And that in way of caution—I must tell you

You do not understand yourself so clearly

As it behoves my daughter and your honour.

What is between you? Give me up the truth.

OPHELIA

He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders

Of his affection to me.

POLONIUS

Affection, pooh! You speak like a green girl

Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.

Do you believe his ‘tenders’ as you call them?

OPHELIA

I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

POLONIUS

Marry, I’ll teach you: think yourself a baby

That you have ta’en his tenders for true pay,

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 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.

REYNALDO

My lord, I did intend it.

POLONIUS

Marry, well said, very well said. Look you, sir,

Enquire me first what Danskers are in Paris,

And how, and who, what means, and where they keep,

What company, at what expense; and finding

By this encompassment and drift of question

That they do know my son, come you more nearer

Than your particular demands will touch it.

Take you, as ‘twere, some distant knowledge of him,

As thus: ‘I know his father and his friends,

And in part him’—do you mark this, Reynaldo?

REYNALDO Ay, very well, my lord.

POLONIUS

‘And in part him, but’, you may say, ‘not well,

But if’t be he I mean, he’s very wild,

Addicted so and so’; and there put on him

What forgeries you please—marry, none so rank

As may dishonour him, take heed of that—

But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips

As are companions noted and most known

To youth and liberty.

REYNALDO As gaming, my lord?

POLONIUS

Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing,

Quarrelling, drabbing—you may go so far.

REYNALDO

My lord, that would dishonour him.

POLONIUS

Faith, no, as you may season it in the charge.

You must not put another scandal on him,

That he is open to incontinency.

That’s not my meaning—but breathe his faults so

quaintly

That they may seem the taints of liberty,

The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,

A savageness in unreclaimed blood,

Of general assault.

REYNALDO

But, my good lord—

POLONIUS

Wherefore should you do this?

REYNALDO

Ay, my lord.

I would know that.

POLONIUS

Marry, sir, here’s my drift,

And I believe it is a fetch of warrant:

You laying these slight sullies on my son,

As ‘twere a thing a little soiled i’th’ working,

Mark you, your party in converse, him you would

sound,

Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes

The youth you breathe of guilty, be assured

He closes with you in this consequence:

‘Good sir’, or so, or ‘friend’, or ‘gentleman’,

According to the phrase and the addition

Of man and country.

REYNALDO

Very good, my lord.

POLONIUS

And then, sir, does a this—a does—

what was I about to say? By the mass, I was about to

say something. Where did I leave?

REYNALDO

At ‘closes in the consequence’, at ‘friend,

Or so’, and ‘gentleman’.

POLONIUS

At ‘closes in the consequence’—ay, marry,

He closes with you thus: ‘I know the gentleman,

I saw him yesterday’—or t‘other day,

Or then, or then—’with such and such, and, as you

say,

There was a gaming, there o‘ertook in ’s rouse,

There falling out at tennis’, or perchance

‘I saw him enter such a house of sale’,

Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth. See you now,

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth;

And thus do we of wisdom and of reach

With windlasses and with assays of bias

By indirections find directions out.

So, by my former lecture and advice,

Shall you my son. You have me, have you not?

REYNALDO My lord, I have.

POLONIUS God b’wi’ ye. Fare ye well.

REYNALDO Good my lord.

POLONIUS

Observe his inclination in yourself.

REYNALDO I shall, my lord.

POLONIUS And let him ply his music.

REYNALDO Well, my lord.

Enter Ophelia

POLONIUS

Farewell.

Exit Reynaldo

How now, Ophelia, what’s the matter?

OPHELIA

Alas, my lord, I have been so affrighted.

POLONIUS With what, i’th’ name of God?

OPHELIA

My lord, as I was sewing in my chamber,

Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,

No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,

Ungartered, and down-gyvèd to his ankle,

Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,

And with a look so piteous in purport

As if he had been loosed out of hell

To speak of horrors, he comes before me.

POLONIUS

Mad for thy love?

OPHELIA

My lord, I do not know,

But truly I do fear it.

POLONIUS

What said he?

OPHELIA

He took me by the wrist and held me hard,

Then goes he to the length of all his arm,

And with his other hand thus o’er his brow

He falls to such perusal of my face

As a would draw it. Long stayed he so.

At last, a little shaking of mine arm,

And thrice his head thus waving up and down,

He raised a sigh so piteous and profound

That it did seem to shatter all his bulk

And end his being. That done, he lets me go,

And, with his head over his shoulder turned,

He seemed to find his way without his eyes,

For out o’ doors he went without their help,

And to the last bended their light on me.

POLONIUS

Come, go with me. I will go seek the King.

This is the very ecstasy of love,

Whose violent property fordoes itself

And leads the will to desperate undertakings

As oft as any passion under heaven

That does afflict our natures. I am sorry—

What, have you given him any hard words of late?

OPHELIA

No, my good lord, but as you did command

I did repel his letters and denied

His access to me.

POLONIUS

That hath made him mad.

I am sorry that with better speed and judgement

I had not quoted him. I feared he did but trifle

And meant to wreck thee. But beshrew my jealousy!

By heaven, it is as proper to our age

To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions

As it is common for the younger sort

To lack discretion. Come, go we to the King.

This must be known, which, being kept close, might

move

More grief to hide than hate to utter love. Exeunt