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

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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3.3 Enter King Claudius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern

KING CLAUDIUS

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us

To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you.

I your commission will forthwith dispatch,

And he to England shall along with you.

The terms of our estate may not endure

Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow

Out of his lunacies.

GUILDENSTERN

We will ourselves provide.

Most holy and religious fear it is

To keep those many many bodies safe

That live and feed upon your majesty.

ROSENCRANTZ

The single and peculiar life is bound

With all the strength and armour of the mind

To keep itself from noyance; but much more

That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests

The lives of many. The cease of majesty

Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw

What’s near it with it. It is a massy wheel

Fixed on the summit of the highest mount,

To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things

Are mortised and adjoined, which when it falls

Each small annexment, petty consequence,

Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never alone

Did the King sigh, but with a general groan.

KING CLAUDIUS

Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage,

For we will fetters put upon this fear

Which now goes too free-footed.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN

We will haste us.

Exeunt both

Enter Polonius

POLONIUS

My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet.

Behind the arras I’ll convey myself

To hear the process. I’ll warrant she’ll tax him home.

And, as you said—and wisely was it said—

‘Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,

Since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear

The speech of vantage. Fare you well, my liege.

I’ll call upon you ere you go to bed,

And tell you what I know.

KING CLAUDIUS

Thanks, dear my lord.

Exit Polonius

O, my offence is rank! It smells to heaven.

It hath the primal eldest curse upon‘t,

A brother’s murder. Pray can I not.

Though inclination be as sharp as will,

My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,

And like a man to double business bound

I stand in pause where I shall first begin,

And both neglect. What if this cursed hand

Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,

Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy

But to confront the visage of offence?

And what’s in prayer but this twofold force,

To be forestalled ere we come to fall,

Or pardoned being down? Then I’ll look up.

My fault is past-but O, what form of prayer

Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’?

That cannot be, since I am still possessed

Of those effects for which I did the murder—

My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.

May one be pardoned and retain th’offence?

In the corrupted currents of this world

Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,

And oft ‘tis seen the wicked prize itself

Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above.

There is no shuffling, there the action lies

In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled

Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults

To give in evidence. What then? What rests?

Try what repentance can. What can it not?

Yet what can it when one cannot repent?

O wretched state, O bosom black as death,

O limed soul that, struggling to be free,

Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay.

Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel,

Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.

All may be well.

He kneels.

Enter Prince Hamlet behind him

HAMLET

Now might I do it pat, now a is praying,

And now I’ll do‘t,

⌈He draws his sword⌉

and so a goes to heaven,

And so am I revenged. That would be scanned.

A villain kills my father, and for that

I, his sole son, do this same villain send

To heaven.

O, this is hire and salary, not revenge!

A took my father grossly, full of bread,

With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;

And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?

But in our circumstance and course of thought

’Tis heavy with him. And am I then revenged

To take him in the purging of his soul,

When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?

No.

He sheathes his sword

Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hint.

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,

Or in th‘incestuous pleasure of his bed,

At gaming, swearing, or about some act

That has no relish of salvation in’t,

Then trip him that his heels may kick at heaven,

And that his soul may be as damned and black

As hell whereto it goes. My mother stays.

This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

Exit

KING CLAUDIUS

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Exit

3.4 Enter Queen Gertrude and Polonius

POLONIUS

A will come straight. Look you lay home to him.

Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,

And that your grace hath screened and stood between

Much heat and him. I’ll silence me e’en here.

Pray you be round with him.

HAMLET (within) Mother, mother, mother!

QUEEN GERTRUDE

I’ll warr’nt you. Fear me not. Withdraw; I hear him

coming.

Polonius hides behind the arras.

Enter Prince Hamlet

HAMLET Now, mother, what’s the matter?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended,.

HAMLET

Mother, you have my father much offended.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

HAMLET

Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Why, how now, Hamlet?

HAMLET

What’s the matter now?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Have you forgot me?

HAMLET

No, by the rood, not so.

You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife. But—would you were not so—you are my mother.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Nay, then, I’ll set those to you that can speak.

HAMLET

Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge.

You go not till I set you up a glass

Where you may see the inmost part of you.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?

Help, help, ho!

POLONIUS (behind the arras) What ho! Help, help, help!

HAMLET

How now, a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead.

He thrusts his sword through the arras

POLONIUS

O, I am slain!

QUEEN GERTRUDE (to Hamlet) O me, what hast thou done?

HAMLET

Nay, I know not. Is it the King?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

HAMLET

A bloody deed—almost as bad, good-mother,

As kill a king and marry with his brother.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

As kill a king?

HAMLET Ay, lady, ’twas my word.

(To Polonius) Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool,

farewell.

I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune.

Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.—

Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down,

And let me wring your heart; for so I shall

If it be made of penetrable stuff,

If damned custom have not brassed it so

That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue

In noise so rude against me?

HAMLET Such an act

That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,

Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose

From the fair forehead of an innocent love

And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows

As false as dicers’ oaths—O, such a deed

As from the body of contraction plucks

The very soul, and sweet religion makes

A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face doth glow,

Yea, this solidity and compound mass

With tristful visage, as against the doom,

Is thought-sick at the act.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Ay me, what act,

That roars so loud and thunders in the index?

HAMLET

Look here upon this picture, and on this,

The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.

See what a grace was seated on this brow—

Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,

An eye like Mars, to threaten or command,

A station like the herald Mercury

New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;

A combination and a form indeed

Where every god did seem to set his seal

To give the world assurance of a man.

This was your husband. Look you now what follows.

Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear

Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?

Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,

And batten on this moor? Ha, have you eyes?

You cannot call it love, for at your age

The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble,

And waits upon the judgement; and what judgement

Would step from this to this? What devil was’t

That thus hath cozened you at hood-man blind?

O shame, where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,

If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,

To flaming youth let virtue be as wax

And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame

When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,

Since frost itself as actively doth burn,

And reason panders will.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O Hamlet, speak no more!

Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,

And there I see such black and grained spots

As will not leave their tinct.

HAMLET Nay, but to live

In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,

Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love

Over the nasty sty—

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O, speak to me no more!

These words like daggers enter in mine ears.

No more, sweet Hamlet.

HAMLET A murderer and a villain,

A slave that is not twenti’th part the tithe

Of your precedent lord, a vice of kings,

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,

That from a shelf the precious diadem stole

And put it in his pocket—

QUEEN GERTRUDE No more.

HAMLET A king of shreds and patches—

Enter the Ghost in his nightgown

Save me and hover o’er me with your wings,

You heavenly guards! (To the Ghost) What would

you, gracious figure? 95

QUEEN GERTRUDE Alas, he’s mad.

HAMLET (to the Ghost)

Do you not come your tardy son to chide,

That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by

Th’important acting of your dread command?

O, say!

GHOST Do not forget. This visitation

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

But look, amazement on thy mother sits.

O, step between her and her fighting soul.

Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.

Speak to her, Hamlet.

HAMLET How is it with you, lady?

QUEEN GERTRUDE Alas, how is’t with you,

That you do bend your eye on vacancy,

And with th‘incorporal air do hold discourse?

Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,

And, as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm,

Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,

Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper

Sprinkle cool patience! Whereon do you look?

HAMLET

On him, on him. Look you how pale he glares.

His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,

Would make them capable. (To the Ghost) Do not look

upon me,

Lest with this piteous action you convert

My stern effects. Then what I have to do

Will want true colour—tears perchance for blood.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET Do you see nothing there?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.

HAMLET

Nor did you nothing hear?

QUEEN GERTRUDE No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET

Why, look you there. Look how it steals away.

My father, in his habit as he lived.

Look where he goes even now out at the portal.

Exit the Ghost

QUEEN GERTRUDE

This is the very coinage of your brain.

This bodiless creation ecstasy

Is very cunning in.

HAMLET Ecstasy?

My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,

And makes as healthful music. It is not madness

That I have uttered. Bring me to the test,

And I the matter will reword, which madness

Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace

Lay not a flattering unction to your soul

That not your trespass but my madness speaks.

It will but skin and film the ulcerous place

Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,

Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;

Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come,

And do not spread the compost o’er the weeds

To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue,

For in the fatness of these pursy times

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,

Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain!

HAMLET

O, throw away the worser part of it,

And live the purer with the other half!

Good night—but go not to mine uncle’s bed.

Assume a virtue if you have it not.

Refrain tonight,

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence. Once more, good night;

And when you are desirous to be blest,

I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,

I do repent. But heaven hath pleased it so

To punish me with this, and this with me,

That I must be their scourge and minister.

I will bestow him, and will answer well

The death I gave him. So, again, good night.

I must be cruel only to be kind.

Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

QUEEN GERTRUDE What shall I do?

HAMLET

Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:

Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed,

Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,

And let him for a pair of reechy kisses,

Or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers,

Make you to ravel all this matter out,

That I essentially am not in madness,

But mad in craft. ’Twere good you let him know,

For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,

Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,

Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?

No, in despite of sense and secrecy,

Unpeg the basket on the house’s top,

Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape,

To try conclusions in the basket creep,

And break your own neck down.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,

And breath of life, I have no life to breathe

What thou hast said to me.

HAMLET

I must to England.

You know that?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alack, I had forgot.

’Tis so concluded on.

HAMLET

This man shall set me packing.

I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.

Mother, good night indeed. This counsellor

Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,

Who was in life a foolish prating knave.—

Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.—

Good night, mother. Exit, tugging in Polonius

4.1 Enter King Claudius to Queen Gertrude

KING CLAUDIUS

There’s matter in these sighs, these profound heaves;

You must translate. ’Tis fit we understand them.

Where is your son?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Ah, my good lord, what have I seen tonight!

KING CLAUDIUS What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Mad as the sea and wind when both contend

Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit,

Behind the arras hearing something stir,

He whips his rapier out and cries ‘A rat, a ratl’,

And in his brainish apprehension kills

The unseen good old man.

KING CLAUDIUS

O heavy deed!

It had been so with us had we been there.

His liberty is full of threats to all—

To you yourself, to us, to everyone.

Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered?

It will be laid to us, whose providence

Should have kept short, restrained, and out of haunt

This mad young man. But so much was our love,

We would not understand what was most fit,

But, like the owner of a foul disease,

To keep it from divulging, let it feed

Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

To draw apart the body he hath killed,

O’er whom—his very madness, like some ore

Among a mineral of metals base,

Shows itself pure—a weeps for what is done.

KING CLAUDIUS

O Gertrude, come away!

The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch

But we will ship him hence; and this vile deed

We must with all our majesty and skill

Both countenance and excuse.—Ho, Guildensternl

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Friends both, go join you with some further aid.

Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,

And from his mother’s closet hath he dragged him.

Go seek him out, speak fair, and bring the body

Into the chapel. I pray you haste in this.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Come, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends

To let them know both what we mean to do

And what’s untimely done. O, come away!

My soul is full of discord and dismay.

Exeunt

4.2 Enter Prince Hamlet

HAMLET Safely stowed.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN (within)

Hamlet, Lord Hamlet!

HAMLET

What noise? Who calls on Hamlet?

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

O, here they come.

ROSENCRANTZ

What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?

HAMLET

Compounded it with dust, whereto ’tis kin.

ROSENCRANTZ

Tell us where ’tis, that we may take it thence

And bear it to the chapel.

HAMLET Do not believe it.

ROSENCRANTZ Believe what?

HAMLET That I can keep your counsel and not mine own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge—what replication should be made by the son of a king?

ROSENCRANTZ Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

HAMLET Ay, sir, that soaks up the King’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the King best service in the end. He keeps them, like an ape an apple in the corner of his jaw, first mouthed to be last swallowed. When he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.

ROSENCRANTZ I understand you not, my lord.

HAMLET I am glad of it. A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

ROSENCRANTZ My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the King.

HAMLET The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body. The King is a thing—

GUILDENSTERN A thing, my lord?

HAMLET Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.

Exit running, pursued by the others

4.3 Enter King Claudius

KING CLAUDIUS

I have sent to seek him, and to find the body.

How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!

Yet must not we put the strong law on him.

He’s loved of the distracted multitude,

Who like not in their judgement but their eyes,

And where ‘tis so, th’offender’s scourge is weighed,

But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,

This sudden sending him away must seem

Deliberate pause. Diseases desperate grown

By desperate appliance are relieved,

Or not at all.

Enter Rosencrantz

How now, what hath befall’n?

ROSENCRANTZ

Where the dead body is bestowed, my lord,

We cannot get from him.

KING CLAUDIUS But where is he?

ROSENCRANTZ

Without, my lord, guarded to know your pleasure.

KING CLAUDIUS Bring him before us.

ROSENCRANTZ

Ho, Guildenstern! Bring in my lord.

Enter Prince Hamlet and Guildenstern

KING CLAUDIUS

Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?

HAMLET At supper.

KING CLAUDIUS At supper? Where?

HAMLET Not where he eats, but where a is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end.

KING CLAUDIUS Alas, alas!

HAMLET A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

KING CLAUDIUS What dost thou mean by this?

HAMLET Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar. 31

KING CLAUDIUS Where is Polonius?

HAMLET In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i’th’ other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him not this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby. 36

KING CLAUDIUS ⌈to Rosencrantz⌉ Go seek him there.

HAMLET ⌈to Rosencrantz⌉ A will stay till ye come.

Exit ⌈Rosencrantz⌉

KING CLAUDIUS

Hamlet, this deed of thine, for thine especial safety—

Which we do tender as we dearly grieve

For that which thou hast done—must send thee hence

With fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself.

The barque is ready, and the wind at help,

Th’associates tend, and everything is bent

For England.

HAMLET For England?

KING CLAUDIUS Ay, Hamlet.

HAMLET Good.

KING CLAUDIUS

So is it if thou knew’st our purposes.

HAMLET

I see a cherub that sees them. But come, for

England. Farewell, dear mother.

KING CLAUDIUS Thy loving father, Hamlet.

HAMLET My mother. Father and mother is man and wife, man and wife is one flesh, and so my mother. Come, for England. Exit

KING CLAUDIUS ⌈to Guildenstern⌉

Follow him at foot. Tempt him with speed aboard. 56

Delay it not. I’ll have him hence tonight.

Away, for everything is sealed and done

That else leans on th’affair. Pray you, make haste.

Exit ⌈Guildenstern⌉

And, England, if my love thou hold‘st at aught—

As my great power thereof may give thee sense,

Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red

After the Danish sword, and thy free awe

Pays homage to us—thou mayst not coldly set

Our sovereign process, which imports at full,

By letters conjuring to that effect,

The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England,

For like the hectic in my blood he rages,

And thou must cure me. Till I know ’tis done,

Howe‘er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.

Exit

4.4 Enter Fortinbras with an army over the stage

FORTINBRAS

Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king.

Tell him that by his licence Fortinbras

Claims the conveyance of a promised march

Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.

If that his majesty would aught with us,

We shall express our duty in his eye,

And let him know so.

CAPTAIN I will do’t, my lord.

⌈Exit⌉

FORTINBRAS Go safely on.

Exeunt marching