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

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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3.1 Enter King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and lords

KING CLAUDIUS (to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)

And can you by no drift of circumstance

Get from him why he puts on this confusion,

Grating so harshly all his days of quiet

With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

ROSENCRANTZ

He does confess he feels himself distracted,

But from what cause a will by no means speak.

GUILDENSTERN

Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,

But with a crafty madness keeps aloof

When we would bring him on to some confession

Of his true state.

QUEEN GERTRUDE Did he receive you well?

ROSENCRANTZ Most like a gentleman.

GUILDENSTERN

But with much forcing of his disposition.

ROSENCRANTZ

Niggard of question, but of our demands

Most free in his reply.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Did you assay him

To any pastime?

ROSENCRANTZ

Madam, it so fell out that certain players

We o’er-raught on the way. Of these we told him,

And there did seem in him a kind of joy

To hear of it. They are about the court,

And, as I think, they have already order

This night to play before him.

POLONIUS

’Tis most true, And he beseeched me to entreat your majesties

To hear and see the matter.

KING CLAUDIUS

With all my heart; and it doth much content me

To hear him so inclined.—Good gentlemen,

Give him a further edge, and drive his purpose on

To these delights.

ROSENCRANTZ We shall, my lord.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

KING CLAUDIUS Sweet Gertrude, leave us too,

For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,

That he, as ‘twere by accident, may here

Affront Ophelia.

Her father and myself, lawful espials,

Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,

We may of their encounter frankly judge,

And gather by him, as he is behaved,

If’t be th’affliction of his love or no

That thus he suffers for.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

I shall obey you.

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish

That your good beauties be the happy cause

Of Hamlet’s wildness; so shall I hope your virtues

Will bring him to his wonted way again,

To both your honours.

OPHELIA

Madam, I wish it may.

Exit Gertrude

POLONIUS

Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please you,

We will bestow ourselves.—Read on this book,

That show of such an exercise may colour

Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this:

‘Tis too much proved that with devotion’s visage

And pious action we do sugar o’er

The devil himself.

KING CLAUDIUS

O, ’tis too true.

(Aside) How smart a lash that speech doth give my

conscience.

The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plast’ring art,

Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it

Than is my deed to my most painted word.

O heavy burden!

POLONIUS

I hear him coming. Let’s withdraw, my lord.

Exeunt Claudius and Polonius

Enter Prince Hamlet

HAMLET

To be, or not to be; that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep—

No more, and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep.

To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life,

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th‘oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of disprized love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action. Soft you, now,

The fair Ophelia!—Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remembered.

OPHELIA

Good my lord,

How does your honour for this many a day?

HAMLET

I humbly thank you, well, well, well.

OPHELIA

My lord, I have remembrances of yours

That I have longed long to redeliver.

I pray you now receive them.

HAMLET

No, no, I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA

My honoured lord, you know right well you did,

And with them words of so sweet breath composed

As made the things more rich. Their perfume lost,

Take these again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

There, my lord.

HAMLET Ha, ha? Are you honest?

OPHELIA My lord.

HAMLET Are you fair?

OPHELIA What means your lordship?

HAMLET That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPHELIA Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

HAMLET Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.

OPHELIA Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.

OPHELIA I was the more deceived.

HAMLET Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth? We are arrant knaves, all. Believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?

OPHELIA At home, my lord.

HAMLET Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in ’s own house. Farewell.

OPHELIA O help him, you sweet heavens!

HAMLET If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go, farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly, too. Farewell.

OPHELIA O heavenly powers, restore him!

HAMLET I have heard of your paintings, too, well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t. It hath made me mad. I say we will have no more marriages. Those that are married already—all but one—shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. Exit

OPHELIA

O what a noble mind is here o‘erthrown!

The courtier’s, soldier‘s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword,

Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

Th‘observed of all observers, quite, quite, down!

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

That sucked the honey of his music vows,

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason

Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh;

That unmatched form and feature of blown youth

Blasted with ecstasy. O woe is me,

T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Enter King Claudius and Polonius

KING CLAUDIUS

Love? His affections do not that way tend,

Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little,

Was not like madness. There’s something in his soul

O’er which his melancholy sits on brood,

And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose

Will be some danger; which to prevent

I have in quick determination

Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England

For the demand of our neglected tribute.

Haply the seas and countries different,

With variable objects, shall expel

This something-settled matter in his heart,

Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus

From fashion of himself. What think you on’t?

POLONIUS

It shall do well. But yet do I believe

The origin and commencement of this grief

Sprung from neglected love.—How now, Ophelia?

You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said;

We heard it all.—My lord, do as you please,

But, if you hold it fit, after the play

Let his queen mother all alone entreat him

To show his griefs. Let her be round with him,

And I’ll be placed, so please you, in the ear

Of all their conference. If she find him not,

To England send him, or confine him where

Your wisdom best shall think.

KING CLAUDIUS

It shall be so.

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

Exeunt

3.2 Enter Prince Hamlet and two or three of the Players

HAMLET Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you—trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier had spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.

A PLAYER I warrant your honour.

HAMLET Be not too tame, neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance: that you o‘erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor no man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

A PLAYER I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir.

HAMLET O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That’s villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready. Exeunt Players

Enter Polonius, Guildenstern, and Rosencrantz

(To Polonius) How now, my lord? Will the King hear this piece of work?

POLONIUS And the Queen too, and that presently. HAMLET Bid the players make haste. Exit Polonius

Will you two help to hasten them?

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN We will, my lord.

Exeunt

HAMLET

What ho, Horatio!

Enter Horatio

HORATIO

Here, sweet lord, at your service.

HAMLET

Horatio, thou art e‘en as just a man

As e’er my conversation coped withal.

HORATIO

O my dear lord—

HAMLET

Nay, do not think I flatter;

For what advancement may I hope from thee,

That no revenue hast but thy good spirits

To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be

flattered?

No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,

And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee

Where thrift may follow feigning. Dost thou hear?—

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice

And could of men distinguish, her election

Hath sealed thee for herself; for thou hast been

As one in suff‘ring all that suffers nothing,

A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards

Hath ta’en with equal thanks; and blest are those

Whose blood and judgement are so well commingled

That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger

To sound what stop she please. Give me that man

That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him

In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,

As I do thee. Something too much of this.

There is a play tonight before the King.

One scene of it comes near the circumstance

Which I have told thee of my father’s death.

I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,

Even with the very comment of thy soul

Observe mine uncle. If his occulted guilt

Do not itself unkennel in one speech,

It is a damned ghost that we have seen,

And my imaginations are as foul

As Vulcan’s stithy. Give him heedful note,

For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,

And after, we will both our judgements join

To censure of his seeming.

HORATIO Well, my lord.

If a steal aught the whilst this play is playing

And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

⌈Sound a flourish⌉

HAMLET

They are coming to the play. I must be idle.

Get you a place.

⌈Danish march. Enter King Claudius, Queen

Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz,

Guildenstern, and other lords attendant, with the

King’s guard carrying torches⌉

KING CLAUDIUS How fares our cousin Hamlet?

HAMLET Excellent, i’faith, of the chameleon’s dish. I eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so.

KING CLAUDIUS I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet.

These words are not mine.

HAMLET No, nor mine now. (To Polonius) My lord, you played once i’th’ university, you say.

POLONIUS That I did, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.

HAMLET And what did you enact?

POLONIUS I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i’th’ Capitol. Brutus killed me.

HAMLET It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.—Be the players ready?

ROSENCRANTZ Ay, my lord, they stay upon your patience.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Come hither, my good Hamlet. Sit by me.

HAMLET No, good-mother, here’s mettle more attractive.

He sits by Ophelia

POLONTUS (aside) O ho, do you mark that?

HAMLET (to Ophelia) Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

OPHELIA No, my lord.

HAMLET I mean my head upon your lap?

OPHELIA Ay, my lord.

HAMLET Do you think I meant country matters?

OPHELIA I think nothing, my lord.

HAMLET That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.

OPHELIA What is, my lord?

HAMLET No thing.

OPHELIA You are merry, my lord.

HAMLET Who, I?

OPHELIA Ay, my lord.

HAMLET O God, your only jig-maker! What should a man do but be merry? For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within ’s two hours.

OPHELIA Nay, ’tis twice two mqnths, my lord. 122

HAMLET So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I’ll have a suit of sables. O heavens, die two months ago and not forgotten yet! Then there’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year. But, by‘r Lady, a must build churches then, or else shall a suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is ‘For O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot.’

Hautboys play. The dumb show enters. Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly, the Queen embracing him. She kneels and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up and declines his head upon her neck. He lays him down upon a bank of flowers. She, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King’s ears, and exits. The Queen returns, finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The poisoner, with some two or three mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The poisoner woos the Queen with gifts. She seems loath and unwilling a while, but in the end accepts his love. Exeunt the Players

OPHELIA What means this, my lord?

HAMLET Marry, this is miching malhecho. That means mischief.

OPHELIA Belike this show imports the argument of the play. Enter Prologue

HAMLET We shall know by this fellow. The players cannot keep counsel, they’ll tell all.

OPHELIA Will a tell us what this show meant?

HAMLET Ay, or any show that you’ll show him. Be not you ashamed to show, he’ll not shame to tell you what it means.

OPHELIA You are naught, you are naught. I’ll mark the play.

PROLOGUE

For us and for our tragedy

Here stooping to your clemency,

We beg your hearing patiently. Exit

HAMLET Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

OPHELIA ’Tis brief, my lord.

HAMLET As woman’s love.

Enter the Player King and his Queen

PLAYER KING

Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round

Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbèd ground,

And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen

About the world have times twelve thirties been

Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands

Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

PLAYER QUEEN

So many journeys may the sun and moon

Make us again count o’er ere love be done.

But woe is me, you are so sick of late,

So far from cheer and from your former state,

That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,

Discomfort you my lord it nothing must.

For women’s fear and love holds quantity,

In neither aught, or in extremity.

Now what my love is, proof hath made you know,

And as my love is sized, my fear is so.

PLAYER KING

Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too.

My operant powers their functions leave to do,

And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,

Honoured, beloved; and haply one as kind

For husband shalt thou—

PLAYER QUEEN O, confound the rest!

Such love must needs be treason in my breast.

In second husband let me be accurst;

None wed the second but who killed the first.

HAMLET Wormwood, wormwood.

PLAYER QUEEN

The instances that second marriage move

Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.

A second time I kill my husband dead

When second husband kisses me in bed.

PLAYER KING

I do believe you think what now you speak;

But what we do determine oft we break.

Purpose is but the slave to memory,

Of violent birth but poor validity,

Which now like fruit unripe sticks on the tree,

But fall unshaken when they mellow be.

Most necessary ‘tis that we forget

To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.

What to ourselves in passion we propose,

The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.

The violence of either grief or joy

Their own enactures with themselves destroy.

Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;

Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.

This world is not for aye, nor ’tis not strange

That even our loves should with our fortunes change;

For ’tis a question left us yet to prove

Whether love lead fortune or else fortune love.

The great man down, you mark his favourite flies;

The poor advanced makes friends of enemies.

And hitherto doth love on fortune tend,

For who not needs shall never lack a friend,

And who in want a hollow friend doth try

Directly seasons him his enemy.

But orderly to end where I begun,

Our wills and fates do so contrary run

That our devices still are overthrown;

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

So think thou wilt no second husband wed;

But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

PLAYER QUEEN

Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light,

Sport and repose lock from me day and night,

Each opposite that blanks the face of joy

Meet what I would have well and it destroy,

Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife

If, once a widow, ever I be wife.

HAMLET If she should break it now!

PLAYER KING (to Player Queen)

’Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here a while.

My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile

The tedious day with sleep.

PLAYER QUEEN Sleep rock thy brain,

And never come mischance between us twain.

Player King sleeps. Player Queen exits

HAMLET (to Gertrude) Madam, how like you this play?

QUEEN GERTRUDE The lady protests too much, methinks.

HAMLET O, but she’ll keep her word.

KING CLAUDIUS Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in’t?

HAMLET No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest. No offence i’th’ world.

KING CLAUDIUS What do you call the play?

HAMLET The Mousetrap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna. Gonzago is the Duke’s name, his wife Baptista. You shall see anon. ’Tis a knavish piece of work; but what o’ that? Your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.

Enter Player Lucianus

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.

OPHELIA You are as good as a chorus, my lord.

HAMLET I could interpret between you and your love if I could see the puppets dallying.

OPHELIA You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

HAMLET It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge.

OPHELIA Still better, and worse.

HAMLET So you mis-take your husbands. (To Lucianus) Begin, murderer. Pox, leave thy damnable faces and begin. Come: ‘the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge’.

PLAYER LUCIANUS

Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time

agreeing,

Confederate season, else no creature seeing;

Thou mixture rank of midnight weeds collected,

With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,

Thy natural magic and dire property

On wholesome life usurp immediately.

He pours the poison in the Player King’s ear

HAMLET A poisons him i’th’ garden for ’s estate. His name’s Gonzago. The story is extant, and writ in choice Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.

OPHELIA The King rises.

HAMLET What, frighted with false fire?

QUEEN GERTRUDE (to Claudius) How fares my lord?

POLONIUSGive o’er the play.

KING CLAUDIUS Give me some light. Away. ⌈COURTIERS⌉ Lights, lights, lights!

Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio

HAMLET

Why, let the stricken deer go weep,

The hart ungallèd play,

For some must watch, while some must sleep,

So runs the world away.

Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, if the rest

of my fortunes turn Turk with me, with two Provençal

roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry

of players, sir?

HORATIO Half a share.

HAMLET A whole one, I.

For thou dost know, O Damon dear,

This realm dismantled was

Of Jove himself, and now reigns here

A very, very—pajock.

HORATIO You might have rhymed.

HAMLET O good Horatio, I’ll take the Ghost’s word for a thousand pound. Didst perceive?

HORATIO Very well, my lord.

HAMLET Upon the talk of the pois’ning?

HORATIO I did very well note him.

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

HAMLET Ah ha! Come, some music, come, the recorders,

For if the King like not the comedy,

Why then, belike he likes it not, pardie.

Come, some music.

GUILDENSTERN Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

HAMLET Sir, a whole history.

GUILDENSTERN The King, sir—

HAMLET Ay, sir, what of him?

GUILDENSTERN Is in his retirement marvellous distempered.

HAMLET With drink, sir?

GUILDENSTERN No, my lord, rather with choler.

HAMLET Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to his doctor, for for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far more choler.

GUILDENSTERN Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair.

HAMLET I am tame, sir. Pronounce.

GUILDENSTERN The Queen your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.

HAMLET You are welcome.

GUILDENSTERN Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother’s commandment; if not, your pardon and my return shall be the end of my business.

HAMLET Sir, I cannot.

GUILDENSTERN What, my lord?

HAMLET Make you a wholesome answer. My wit’s diseased. But, sir, such answers as I can make, you shall command; or rather, as you say, my mother. Therefore no more, but to the matter. My mother, you say?

ROSENCRANTZ Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into amazement and admiration.

HAMLET O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother! But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother’s admiration?

ROSENCRANTZ She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed. 319

HAMLET We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any further trade with us?

ROSENCRANTZ My lord, you once did love me.

HAMLET So I do still, by these pickers and stealers.

ROSENCRANTZ Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do freely bar the door of your own liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend.

HAMLET Sir, I lack advancement.

ROSENCRANTZ How can that be when you have the voice of the King himself for your succession in Denmark?

HAMLET Ay, but ‘while the grass grows ...’—the proverb is something musty.

Enter one with a recorder

O, the recorder. Let me see. (To Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern, taking them aside) To withdraw with you,

why do you go about to recover the wind of me as if

you would drive me into a toil?

GUILDENSTERN O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.

HAMLET I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?

GUILDENSTERN My lord, I cannot.

HAMLET I pray you.

GUILDENSTERN Believe me, I cannot.

HAMLET I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET ’Tis as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most excellent music. Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony. I have not the skill.

HAMLET Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.

Enter Polonius

God bless you, sir.

POLONIUS My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.

HAMLET Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?

POLONIUS By th’ mass, and ’tis: like a camel, indeed.

HAMLET Methinks it is like a weasel.

POLONIUS It is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET Or like a whale.

POLONIUS Very like a whale.

HAMLET Then will I come to my mother by and by. (Aside) They fool me to the top of my bent. (To Polonius) I will come by and by.

POLONIUS I will say so.

HAMLET ’By and by’ is easily said. Exit Polonius

Leave me, friends.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

’Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,

And do such bitter business as the day

Would quake to look on. Soft, now to my mother.

O heart, lose not thy nature! Let not ever

The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom.

Let me be cruel, not unnatural.

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites—

How in my words somever she be shent,

To give them seals never my soul consent. Exit