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

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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2.2 ⌈Flourish.⌉ Enter King Claudius and Queen Gertrude, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with others

KING CLAUDIUS

Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Moreover that we much did long to see you,

The need we have to use you did provoke

Our hasty sending. Something have you heard

Of Hamlet’s transformation—so I call it,

Since not th‘exterior nor the inward man

Resembles that it was. What it should be,

More than his father’s death, that thus hath put him

So much from th’understanding of himself,

I cannot deem of. I entreat you both

That, being of so young days brought up with him,

And since so neighboured to his youth and humour,

That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court

Some little time, so by your companies

To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather,

So much as from occasions you may glean,

Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus

That, opened, lies within our remedy.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Good gentlemen, he hath much talked of you,

And sure I am two men there is not living

To whom he more adheres. If it will please you

To show us so much gentry and good will

As to expend your time with us a while

For the supply and profit of our hope,

Your visitation shall receive such thanks

As fits a king’s remembrance.

ROSENCRANTZ

Both your majesties

Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,

Put your dread pleasures more into command

Than to entreaty.

GUILDENSTERN

But we both obey,

And here give up ourselves in the full bent

To lay our service freely at your feet

To be commanded.

KING CLAUDIUS

Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.

And I beseech you instantly to visit

My too-much changed son.—Go, some of ye,

And bring the gentlemen where Hamlet is.

GUILDENSTERN

Heavens make our presence and our practices

Pleasant and helpful to him.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Ay, amen!

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ⌈with others⌉ Enter Polonius

POLONIUS

Th’ambassadors from Norway, my good lord,

Are joyfully returned.

KING CLAUDIUS

Thou still hast been the father of good news.

POLONIUS

Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege,

I hold my duty, as I hold my soul,

Both to my God and to my gracious King.

And I do think—or else this brain of mine

Hunts not the trail of policy so sure

As it hath used to do—that I have found

The very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy.

KING CLAUDIUS

O speak of that, that I do long to hear!

POLONIUS

Give first admittance to th’ambassadors.

My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.

KING CLAUDIUS

Thyself do grace to them, and bring them in.

Exit Polonius

He tells me, my sweet queen, that he hath found

The head and source of all your son’s distemper.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

I doubt it is no other but the main—

His father’s death and our o’er-hasty marriage.

KING CLAUDIUS

Well, we shall sift him.

Enter Polonius, Valtemand, and Cornelius Welcome, my good friends.

Say, Valtemand, what from our brother Norway?

VALTEMAND

Most fair return of greetings and desires.

Upon our first he sent out to suppress

His nephew’s levies, which to him appeared

To be a preparation ‘gainst the Polack;

But better looked into, he truly found

It was against your highness; whereat grieved

That so his sickness, age, and impotence

Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests

On Fortinbras, which he, in brief, obeys,

Receives rebuke from Norway, and, in fine,

Makes vow before his uncle never more

To give th’essay of arms against your majesty;

Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,

Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee

And his commission to employ those soldiers

So levied as before, against the Polack,

With an entreaty herein further shown,

He gives a letter to Claudius

That it might please you to give quiet pass

Through your dominions for his enterprise

On such regards of safety and allowance

As therein are set down.

KING CLAUDIUS

It likes us well,

And at our more considered time we’ll read,

Answer, and think upon this business.

Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour.

Go to your rest; at night we’ll feast together.

Most welcome home.

Exeunt Valtemand and Cornelius

POLONIUS

This business is very well ended.

My liege, and madam, to expostulate

What majesty should be, what duty is,

Why day is day, night night, and time is time,

Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time.

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,

And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,

I will be brief. Your noble son is mad—

‘Mad’ call I it, for to define true madness,

What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?

But let that go.

QUEEN GERTRUDE More matter with less art.

POLONIUS

Madam, I swear I use no art at all.

That he is mad, ‘tis true; ’tis true ‘tis pity,

And pity ’tis ‘tis true—a foolish figure,

But farewell it, for I will use no art.

Mad let us grant him, then; and now remains

That we find out the cause of this effect—

Or rather say ’the cause of this defect‘,

For this effect defective comes by cause.

Thus it remains, and the remainder thus.

Perpend.

I have a daughter—have whilst she is mine—

Who in her duty and obedience, mark,

Hath given me this. Now gather and surmise.

He reads a letter

’To the celestial and my soul’s idol, the most beautified

Ophelia‘—that’s an ill phrase, a vile phrase, ‘beautified’

is a vile phrase. But you shall hear—‘these in her

excellent white bosom, these’.

QUEEN GERTRUDE Came this from Hamlet to her?

POLONIUS

Good madam, stay a while. I will be faithful.

‘Doubt thou the stars are fire,

Doubt that the sun doth move,

Doubt truth to be a liar,

But never doubt I love.

O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers. I have not

art to reckon my groans. But that I love thee best, O

most best, believe it. Adieu.

Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this

machine is to him,

Hamlet.’

This in obedience hath my daughter showed me,

And more above hath his solicitings,

As they fell out by time, by means, and place,

All given to mine ear.

KING CLAUDIUS

But how hath she

Received his love?

POLONIUS

What do you think of me?

KING CLAUDIUS

As of a man faithful and honourable.

POLONIUS

I would fain prove so. But what might you think,

When I had seen this hot love on the wing,

As I perceived it—I must tell you that—

Before my daughter told me, what might you,

Or my dear majesty your queen here, think,

If I had played the desk or table-book,

Or given my heart a winking mute and dumb,

Or looked upon this love with idle sight—

What might you think? No, I went round to work,

And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:

‘Lord Hamlet is a prince out of thy star.

This must not be’. And then I precepts gave her,

That she should lock herself from his resort,

Admit no messengers, receive no tokens;

Which done, she took the fruits of my advice,

And he, repulsèd-a short tale to make—

Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,

Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,

Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,

Into the madness wherein now he raves,

And all we wail for.

KING CLAUDIUS (to Gertrude) Do you think ’tis this?

QUEEN GERTRUDE It may be; very likely.

POLONIUS

Hath there been such a time—I’d fain know that—

That I have positively said ‘ ’Tis so’

When it proved otherwise?

KING CLAUDIUS

Not that I know.

POLONIUS (touching his head, then his shoulder)

Take this from this if this be otherwise.

If circumstances lead me I will find

Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed

Within the centre.

KING CLAUDIUS

How may we try it further?

POLONIUS

You know sometimes he walks four hours together

Here in the lobby.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

So he does indeed.

POLONIUS

At such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him.

(To Claudius) Be you and I behind an arras then.

Mark the encounter. If he love her not,

And be not from his reason fall’n thereon,

Let me be no assistant for a state,

But keep a farm and carters.

KING CLAUDIUS

We will try it.

Enter Prince Hamlet, madly attired, reading on a book

QUEEN GERTRUDE

But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.

POLONIUS

Away, I do beseech you both, away.

I’ll board him presently. O give me leave.

Exeunt Claudius and Gertrude

How does my good Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET Well, God-‘a’-mercy.

POLONIUS Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET Excellent, excellent well. You’re a fishmonger.

POLONIUS Not I, my lord.

HAMLET Then I would you were so honest a man.

POLONIUS Honest, my lord?

HAMLET Ay, sir. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

POLONIUS That’s very true, my lord.

HAMLET For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion—have you a daughter?

POLONIUS I have, my lord.

HAMLET Let her not walk i’th’ sun. Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to’t.

POLONIUS (aside) How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first—a said I was a fishmonger. A is far gone, far gone, and truly, in my youth I suffered much extremity for love, very near this. I’ll speak to him again.—What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET Words, words, words.

POLONIUS What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET Between who?

POLONIUS I mean the matter you read, my lord.

HAMLET Slanders, sir; for the satirical slave says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber, or plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams. All which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir, should be old as I am—if, like a crab, you could go backward.

POLONIUS (aside) Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.—Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET Into my grave.

POLONIUS Indeed, that is out o’th’ air. (Aside) How pregnant sometimes his replies are! A happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter.—My lord, I will take my leave of you.

HAMLET You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal—except my life, my life, my life.

POLONIUS (going) Fare you well, my lord.

HAMLET These tedious old fools! ⌈Enter Guildenstern and Rosencrantz⌉

POLONIUS You go to seek the Lord Hamlet. There he is.

ROSENCRANTZ God save you, sir.

GUILDENSTERN ⌈to Polonius⌉ Mine honoured lord. ⌈Exit Polonius⌉

ROSENCRANTZ (to Hamlet) My most dear lord.

HAMLET My ex’llent good friends. How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz—good lads, how do ye both?

ROSENCRANTZ

As the indifferent children of the earth.

GUILDENSTERN

Happy in that we are not over-happy,

On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.

HAMLET Nor the soles of her shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ Neither, my lord.

HAMLET Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favour?

GUILDENSTERN Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true, she is a strumpet. What’s the news?

ROSENCRANTZ None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest.

HAMLET Then is doomsday near. But your news is not true. Let me question more in particular. What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN Prison, my lord?

HAMLET Denmark’s a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ Then is the world one.

HAMLET A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’th’ worst.

ROSENCRANTZ We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET Why, then ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ Why, then your ambition makes it one; ’tis too narrow for your mind.

HAMLET O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN Which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.

HAMLET Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars’ shadows. Shall we to th’ court? For, by my fay, I cannot reason.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN We’ll wait upon you.

HAMLET No such matter. I will not sort you with the rest of my servants, for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. But in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?

ROSENCRANTZ To visit you, my lord, no other occasion.

HAMLET Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks, but I thank you; and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, deal justly with me. Come, come. Nay, speak. 278

GUILDENSTERN What should we say, my lord?

HAMLET Why, anything—but to th’ purpose. You were sent for, and there is a kind of confession in your looks which your modesties have not craft enough to colour. I know the good King and Queen have sent for you.

ROSENCRANTZ To what end, my lord?

HAMLET That you must teach me. But let me conjure you by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me whether you were sent for or no.

ROSENCRANTZ (to Guildenstern) What say you?

HAMLET Nay then, I have an eye of you—if you love me, hold not off.

GUILDENSTERN My lord, we were sent for.

HAMLET I will tell you why. So shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no feather. I have of late—but wherefore I know not—tost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god—the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

ROSENCRANTZ My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.

HAMLET Why did you laugh, then, when I said ‘Man delights not me’?

ROSENCRANTZ To think, my lord, if you delight not in man what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you. We coted them on the way, and hither are they coming to offer you service.

HAMLET He that plays the King shall be welcome; his majesty shall have tribute of me. The adventurous Knight shall use his foil and target, the Lover shall not sigh gratis, the Humorous Man shall end his part in peace, the Clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickled o’th’ sear, and the Lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for’t. What players are they?

ROSENCRANTZ Even those you were wont to take delight in, the tragedians of the city.

HAMLET How chances it they travel? Their residence both in reputation and profit was better both ways.

ROSENCRANTZ I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late innovation.

HAMLET Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? Are they so followed?

ROSENCRANTZ No, indeed, they are not.

HAMLET How comes it? Do they grow rusty?

ROSENCRANTZ Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace. But there is, sir, an eyrie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question and are most tyrannically clapped for’t. These are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages—so they call them—that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither.

HAMLET What, are they children? Who maintains ’em? How are they escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing? Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players—as it is like most will, if their means are not better—their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim against their own succession?

ROSENCRANTZ Faith, there has been much to-do on both sides, and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy. There was for a while no money bid for argument unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.

HAMLET Is’t possible?

GUILDENSTERN O, there has been much throwing about of brains.

HAMLET Do the boys carry it away?

ROSENCRANTZ Ay, that they do, my lord, Hercules and his load too.

HAMLET It is not strange; for mine uncle is King of Denmark, and those that would make mows at him while my father lived give twenty, forty, an hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little. ’Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.

A flourish for the Players

GUILDENSTERN There are the players.

HAMLET Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come. Th’appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply with you in the garb, lest my extent to the players—which, I tell you, must show fairly outward—shoutd more appear like entertainment than yours.

⌈He shakes hands with them⌉

You are welcome. But my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.

GUILDENSTERN In what, my dear lord?

HAMLET I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Enter Polonius

POLONIUS Well be with you, gentlemen.

HAMLET (aside) Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too—at each ear a hearer—that great baby you see there is not yet out of his swathing-clouts.

ROSENCRANTZ (aside) Haply he’s the second time come to them, for they say an old man is twice a child.

HAMLET (aside) I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players. Mark it.—You say right, sir, for o’ Monday morning, ’twas so indeed.

POLONIUS My lord, I have news to tell you.

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 mine honour—

HAMLET Then came each actor on his ass.

POLONIUS The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastorical-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable or poem unlimited. 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!

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.

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?

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 more, for look where my abridgements come.

Enter four or five Players

You’re welcome, masters, welcome all.—Iam glad to see thee well.—Welcome, good friends.—O, my old friend! Thy face is valanced since I saw thee last. Com‘st thou to beard me in Denmark?—What, my young lady and mistress. By’r Lady, your ladyship is nearer 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 like French falc’ners, fly at anything we see. We’ll have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your quality. Come, a passionate speech.

FIRST PLAYER What speech, my good lord?

HAMLET I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was 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 judgements in such matters cried in the top of mine—an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember one said there was no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of affectation, but called it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I chiefly loved, ’twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido, and thereabout of it especially where he speaks of Priam’s slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at this line—let me see, let me see: ‘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, Hath now this dread and black complexion smeared With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot Now is he total gules, horridly tricked With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, Baked and impasted with the parching streets, That lend a tyrranous and damned light To their vile murders. Roasted in wrath and fire, And thus o’er-sizèd with coagulate gore, With eyes like carbuncles the hellish Pyrrhus Old grandsire Priam seeks’ So, proceed you.

POLONIUS Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good discretion.

FIRST PLAYER ‘Anon he finds him,

Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword,

Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,

Repugnant to command. Unequal match,

Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide;

But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword

Th‘unnervèd father falls. Then senseless Ilium,

Seeming to feel his 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, seemed i’th’ air to stick.

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,

The bold winds speechless, and the orb below

As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder

Doth rend the region: so, after Pyrrhus’ pause,

A rousèd vengeance sets him new a-work;

And never did the Cyclops’ hammers fall

On Mars his armour, forged 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,

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. (To First Player) Prithee, say on. He’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps. Say on, come to Hecuba.

FIRST PLAYER

‘But who, O who had seen the mobbled queen’—

HAMLET ‘The mobbled queen’?

POLONIUS That’s good; ‘mobbled queen’ is good.

FIRST 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‘er-teemèd loins,

A blanket in th’alarm of fear caught up—

Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped,

‘Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have pronounced.

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,

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, and has tears in ’s eyes. (To First Player) Prithee, no more.

HAMLET (to First Player) ’Tis well. I’ll have thee speak out the rest soon. (To Polonius) Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do ye hear?—let them be well used, for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. 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 bodykins, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who should 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 (to Players) Come, sirs. Exit

HAMLET (to Players) Follow him, friends. We’ll hear a play tomorrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play the murder of Gonzago?

⌈PLAYERS⌉ Ay, my lord.

HAMLET We’ll ha’t tomorrow night. You could for a need study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and insert in’t, could ye not?

⌈PLAYERS⌉ Ay, my lord.

HAMLET Very well. Follow that lord, and look you mock him not. ⌈Exeunt Players⌉ My good friends, I’ll leave you till night. You are welcome to Elsinore.

ROSENCRANTZ Good my lord.

HAMLET

Ay, so. God b‘wi’ ye. Exeunt all but Hamlet

Now I am alone.

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am Il

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his whole conceit

That from her working all his visage wanned,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in ’s aspect,

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 Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do

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

The very faculty 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

Upon whose property and most dear life

A damned 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 th’ nose, gives me the lie i’th’ throat

As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?

Ha? ‘Swounds, I should take it; for it cannot be

But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

I should ’a’ fatted all the region kites

With this slave’s offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

O, vengeance!—

Why, what an ass am I? Ay, sure, this is most brave,

That I, the son of the dear murdered,

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 brain.

I have heard 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 proclaimed their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ. I’ll have these players

Play something like the murder of my father

Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks,

I’ll tent him to the quick. If a but blench,

I know my course. The spirit that I have seen

May be the devil, and the devil hath power

T’assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps,

Out of my weakness and my melancholy—

As he is very potent with such spirits—

Abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds

More relative than this. The play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.

Exit