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

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4.5 Enter Queen Gertrude and Horatio

QUEEN GERTRUDE

I will not speak with her.

HORATIO

She is importunate,

Indeed distraught. Her mood will needs be pitied.

QUEEN GERTRUDE What would she have?

HORATIO

She speaks much of her father, says she hears

There’s tricks i’th’ world, and hems, and beats her

heart,

Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt

That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,

Yet the unshapèd use of it doth move

The hearers to collection. They aim at it,

And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,

Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,

Indeed would make one think there might be thought,

Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

’Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew

Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.

Let her come in.

⌈Horatio withdraws to admit Ophelia⌉

To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is,

Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.

So full of artless jealousy is guilt,

It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

Enter Ophelia mad, ⌈her hair down, with a lute⌉

OPHELIA

Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?

QUEEN GERTRUDE How now, Ophelia?

OPHELIA (sings)

How should I your true love know

From another one?—

By his cockle hat and staff,

And his sandal shoon.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

OPHELIA Say you? Nay, pray you, mark. (Sings)

He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone.

At his head a grass-green turf,

At his heels a stone.

QUEEN GERTRUDE Nay, but Ophelia—

OPHELIA Pray you, mark.

(Sings)

White his shroud as the mountain snow—

Enter King Claudius

QUEEN GERTRUDE Alas, look here, my lord.

OPHELIA (sings)

Larded with sweet flowers,

Which bewept to the grave did—not—go

With true-love showers.

KING CLAUDIUS How do ye, pretty lady?

OPHELIA Well, God’ield you. They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!

KING CLAUDIUS (to Gertrude) Conceit upon her father.

OPHELIA Pray you, let’s have no words of this, but when they ask you what it means, say you this. (Sings)

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,

All in the morning betime,

And I a maid at your window

To be your Valentine.

Then up he rose, and donned his clothes,

And dupped the chamber door;

Let in the maid, that out a maid

Never departed more.

KING CLAUDIUS Pretty Ophelia—

OPHELIA Indeed, la? Without an oath, I’ll make an end on’t.

(Sings) By Gis, and by Saint Charity,

Alack, and fie for shame!

Young men will do’t if they come to‘t,

By Cock, they are to blame.

Quoth she ‘Before you tumbled me,

You promised me to wed.’

So would I ‘a’ done, by yonder sun,

An thou hadst not come to my bed.

KING CLAUDIUS (to Gertrude) How long hath she been thus?

OPHELIA I hope all will be well. We must be patient. But I cannot choose but weep to think they should lay him i’th’ cold ground. My brother shall know of it. And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night. Exit

KING CLAUDIUS (to Horatio)

Follow her close. Give her good watch, I pray you.

Exit Horatio

O, this is the poison of deep grief! It springs

All from her father’s death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,

When sorrows come they come not single spies,

But in battalions. First, her father slain;

Next, your son gone, and he most violent author

Of his own just remove; the people muddied,

Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers

For good Polonius’ death; and we have done but

greenly

In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia

Divided from herself and her fair judgement,

Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts;

Last, and as much containing as all these,

Her brother is in secret come from France,

Feeds on this wonder, keeps himself in clouds,

And wants not buzzers to infect his ear

With pestilent speeches of his father’s death;

Wherein necessity, of matter beggared,

Will nothing stick our persons to arraign

In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,

Like to a murd’ring-piece, in many places

Gives me superfluous death.

A noise within

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alack, what noise is this?

KING CLAUDIUS

Where is my Switzers? Let them guard the door.

Enter a Messenger

What is the matter?

MESSENGER

Save yourself, my lord.

The ocean, overpeering of his list,

Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste

Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,

O‘erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord,

And, as the world were now but to begin,

Antiquity forgot, custom not known,

The ratifiers and props of every word,

They cry ‘Choose we! Laertes shall be king.’

Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,

‘Laertes shall be king, Laertes king.’

QUEEN GERTRUDE

How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!

A noise within

O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!

KING CLAUDIUS The doors are broke.

Enter Laertes ⌈with his followers at the door⌉

LAERTES

Where is the King?—Sirs, stand you all without.

ALL HIS FOLLOWERS No, let’s come in.

LAERTES I pray you, give me leave.

ALL HIS FOLLOWERS We will, we will.

LAERTES

I thank you. Keep the door.

⌈exeunt followers⌉

O thou vile king,

Give me my father.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Calmly, good Laertes.

LAERTES

That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard,

Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot

Even here between the chaste unsmirchèd brow

Of my true mother.

KING CLAUDIUS

What is the cause, Laertes,

That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?—

Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.

There’s such divinity doth hedge a king

That treason can but peep to what it would,

Acts little of his will.—Tell me, Laertes,

Why thou art thus incensed.—Let him go, Gertrude.—

Speak, man.

LAERTES

Where is my father?

KING CLAUDIUS

Dead.

QUEEN GERTRUDE (to Laertes)

But not by him.

KING CLAUDIUS

Let him demand his fill.

LAERTES

How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with.

To hell, allegiance! Vows to the blackest devil!

Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit!

I dare damnation. To this point I stand,

That both the worlds I give to negligence,

Let come what comes. Only I’ll be revenged

Most throughly for my father.

KING CLAUDIUS Who shall stay you?

LAERTES My will, not all the world;

And for my means, I’ll husband them so well

They shall go far with little.

KING CLAUDIUS

Good Laertes,

If you desire to know the certainty

Of your dear father’s death, is’t writ in your revenge

That, sweepstake, you will draw both friend and foe,

Winner and loser?

LAERTES None but his enemies.

KING CLAUDIUS Will you know them then?

LAERTES

To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms,

And, like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,

Repast them with my blood.

KING CLAUDIUS

Why, now you speak

Like a good child and a true gentleman.

That I am guiltless of your father’s death,

And am most sensibly in grief for it,

It shall as level to your judgement pierce

As day does to your eye.

A noise within

VOICES (within) Let her come in.

LAERTES How now, what noise is that?

Enter Ophelia as before

O heat dry up my brains! Tears seven times salt

Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!

By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight

Till our scale turns the beam. O rose of May,

Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!

O heavens, is’t possible a young maid’s wits

Should be as mortal as an old man’s life?

Nature is fine in love, and where ’tis fine

It sends some precious instance of itself

After the thing it loves.

OPHELIA (sings)

They bore him barefaced on the bier,

Hey non nony, nony, hey nony,

And on his grave rained many a tear—

Fare you well, my dove.

LAERTES

Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge,

It could not move thus.

OPHELIA You must sing ‘Down, a-down’, and you, ‘Call him a-down-a’. O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward that stole his master’s daughter. LAERTES This nothing’s more than matter.

OPHELIA There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray, love, remember. And there is pansies; that’s for thoughts.

LAERTES

A document in madness—thoughts and remembrance fitted.

OPHELIA There’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it herb-grace o’ Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died. They say a made a good end.

(Sings) For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.

LAERTES

Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself

She turns to favour and to prettiness.

OPHELIA (sings)

And will a not come again,

And will a not come again?

No, no, he is dead,

Go to thy death-bed,

He never will come again.

His beard as white as snow,

All flaxen was his poll.

He is gone, he is gone,

And we cast away moan.

God ‘a’ mercy on his soul.

And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God b’wi’ ye.

⌈Exeunt Ophelia and Gertrude⌉

LAERTES Do you see this, O God?

KING CLAUDIUS

Laertes, I must commune with your grief,

Or you deny me right. Go but apart,

Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,

And they shall hear and judge ’twixt you and me.

If by direct or by collateral hand

They find us touched, we will our kingdom give,

Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,

To you in satisfaction. But if not,

Be you content to lend your patience to us,

And we shall jointly labour with your soul

To give it due content.

LAERTES

Let this be so.

His means of death, his obscure burial—

No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o‘er his bones,

No noble rite nor formal ostentation—

Cry to be heard, as ’twere from heaven to earth,

That I must call’t in question.

KING CLAUDIUS

So you shall;

And where th’offence is, let the great axe fall.

I pray you go with me.

Exeunt

4.6 Enter Horatio with a Servant

HORATIO

What are they that would speak with me?

SERVANT

Sailors, sir. They say they have letters for you.

HORATIO Let them come in.

Exit Servant

I do not know from what part of the world

I should be greeted if not from Lord Hamlet.

Enter ⌈Sailors⌉

A SAILOR God bless you, sir.

HORATIO Let him bless thee too.

A SAILOR A shall, sir, an’t please him. There’s a letter for you, sir. It comes from th’ambassador that was bound for England—if your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is.

HORATIO (reads) ‘Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked this, give these fellows some means to the King. They have letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour, and in the grapple I boarded them. On the instant they got clear of our ship, so I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy; but they knew what they did: I am to do a good turn for them. Let the King have the letters I have sent, and repair thou to me with as much haste as thou wouldst fly death. I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb, yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows will bring thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England. Of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell.

He that thou knowest thine,

Hamlet.’

Come, I will give you way for these your letters,

And do’t the speedier that you may direct me

To him from whom you brought them. Exeunt

4.7 Enter King Claudius and Laertes

KING CLAUDIUS

Now must your conscience my acquittance seal,

And you must put me in your heart for friend,

Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,

That he which hath your noble father slain

Pursued my life.

LAERTES

It well appears. But tell me

Why you proceeded not against these feats,

So crimeful and so capital in nature,

As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,

You mainly were stirred up.

KING CLAUDIUS

O, for two special reasons,

Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinewed,

And yet to me they’re strong. The Queen his mother

Lives almost by his looks; and for myself—

My virtue or my plague, be it either which—

She’s so conjunctive to my life and soul

That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,

I could not but by her. The other motive

Why to a public count I might not go

Is the great love the general gender bear him,

Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,

Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,

Convert his guilts to graces; so that my arrows,

Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind,

Would have reverted to my bow again,

And not where I had aimed them.

LAERTES

And so have I a noble father lost,

A sister driven into desp’rate terms,

Who has, if praises may go back again,

Stood challenger, on mount, of all the age

For her perfections. But my revenge will come.

KING CLAUDIUS

Break not your sleeps for that. You must not think

That we are made of stuff so flat and dull

That we can let our beard be shook with danger,

And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more.

I loved your father, and we love ourself.

And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine—

Enter a Messenger with letters

How now? What news?

MESSENGER

Letters, my lord, from Hamlet.

This to your majesty; this to the Queen.

KING CLAUDIUS From Hamlet? Who brought them?

MESSENGER

Sailors, my lord, they say. I saw them not.

They were given me by Claudio. He received them.

KING CLAUDIUS

Laertes, you shall hear them.—Leave us.

Exit Messenger

(Reads) ‘High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. Tomorrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes, when I shall, first asking your pardon, thereunto recount th’occasions of my sudden and more strange return.

Hamlet.’

What should this mean? Are all the rest come back? Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?

LAERTES

Know you the hand?

KING CLAUDIUS

’Tis Hamlet’s character.

‘Naked’—and in a postscript here he says

‘Alone’. Can you advise me?

LAERTES

I’m lost in it, my lord. But let him come.

It warms the very sickness in my heart

That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,

‘Thus diddest thou’.

KING CLAUDIUS

If it be so, Laertes—

As how should it be so, how otherwise?—

Will you be ruled by me?

LAERTES

If so you’ll not o’errule me to a peace.

KING CLAUDIUS

To thine own peace. If he be now returned,

As checking at his voyage, and that he means

No more to undertake it, I will work him

To an exploit, now ripe in my device,

Under the which he shall not choose but fall;

And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe;

But even his mother shall uncharge the practice

And call it accident. Some two months since

Here was a gentleman of Normandy.

I’ve seen myself, and served against, the French,

And they can well on horseback; but this gallant

Had witchcraft in’t. He grew into his seat,

And to such wondrous doing brought his horse

As had he been incorpsed and demi-natured

With the brave beast. So far he passed my thought

That I in forgery of shapes and tricks

Come short of what he did.

LAERTES A Norman was’t?

KING CLAUDIUS A Norman.

LAERTES

Upon my life, Lamord.

KING CLAUDIUS

The very same.

LAERTES

I know him well. He is the brooch indeed,

And gem, of all the nation.

KING CLAUDIUS He made confession of you,

And gave you such a masterly report

For art and exercise in your defence,

And for your rapier most especially,

That he cried out ‘twould be a sight indeed

If one could match you. Sir, this report of his

Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy

That he could nothing do but wish and beg

Your sudden coming o’er to play with him.

Now, out of this—

LAERTES What out of this, my lord?

KING CLAUDIUS

Laertes, was your father dear to you?

Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,

A face without a heart?

LAERTES Why ask you this?

KING CLAUDIUS

Not that I think you did not love your father,

But that I know love is begun by time,

And that I see, in passages of proof,

Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.

Hamlet comes back. What would you undertake

To show yourself your father’s son in deed

More than in words?

LAERTES To cut his throat i’th’ church.

KING CLAUDIUS

No place indeed should murder sanctuarize.

Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,

Will you do this?—keep close within your chamber.

Hamlet returned shall know you are come home.

We’ll put on those shall praise your excellence,

And set a double varnish on the fame

The Frenchman gave you; bring you, in fine, together,

And wager on your heads. He, being remiss,

Most generous, and free from all contriving,

Will not peruse the foils; so that with ease,

Or with a little shuffling, you may choose

A sword unbated, and, in a pass of practice,

Requite him for your father.

LAERTES I will do’t,

And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword.

I bought an unction of a mountebank

So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,

Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,

Collected from all simples that have virtue

Under the moon, can save the thing from death

That is but scratched withal. I’ll touch my point

With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly,

It may be death.

KING CLAUDIUS Let’s further think of this;

Weigh what convenience both of time and means

May fit us to our shape. If this should fail,

And that our drift look through our bad performance,

‘Twere better not essayed. Therefore this project

Should have a back or second that might hold

If this should blast in proof. Soft, let me see.

We’ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings ...

I ha’t! When in your motion you are hot and dry—

As make your bouts more violent to that end—

And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepared him

A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,

If he by chance escape your venomed stuck,

Our purpose may hold there.—

Enter Queen Gertrude

How now, sweet Queen?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,

So fast they follow. Your sister’s drowned, Laertes.

LAERTES Drowned? O, where?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

There is a willow grows aslant a brook

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.

Therewith fantastic garlands did she make

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,

That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.

There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds

Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,

When down the weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,

And mermaid-like a while they bore her up;

Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and endued

Unto that element. But long it could not be

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay

To muddy death.

LAERTES Alas, then is she drowned.

QUEEN GERTRUDE Drowned, drowned.

LAERTES

Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,

And therefore I forbid my tears. But yet

It is our trick; nature her custom holds,

Let shame say what it will.

He weeps

When these are gone,

The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord.

I have a speech of fire that fain would blaze,

But that this folly douts it.

Exit

KING CLAUDIUS

Let’s follow, Gertrude.

How much I had to do to calm his rage!

Now fear I this will give it start again;

Therefore let’s follow.

Exeunt

5.1 Enter two Clowns ⌈carrying a spade and a pickaxe⌉

FIRST CLOWN Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation?

SECOND CLOWN I tell thee she is, and therefore make her grave straight. The coroner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial.

FIRST CLOWN How can that be unless she drowned herself in her own defence?

SECOND CLOWN Why, ’tis found so.

FIRST CLOWN It must be se offendendo, it cannot be else; for here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act; and an act hath three branches: it is to act, to do, and to perform. Argal she drowned herself wittingly.

SECOND CLOWN Nay, but hear you, Goodman Delver.

FIRST CLOWN Give me leave. Here lies the water—good. Here stands the man—good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he goes. Mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself; argal he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.

SECOND CLOWN But is this law?

FIRST CLOWN Ay, marry, is’t: coroner’s quest law.

SECOND CLOWN Will you ha’ the truth on’t? If this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o’ Christian burial.

FIRST CLOWN Why, there thou sayst, and the more pity that great folk should have count’nance in this world to drown or hang themselves more than their even Christian. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and gravemakers; they hold up Adam’s profession.

⌈First Clown digs⌉

SECOND CLOWN Was he a gentleman?

FIRST CLOWN A was the first that ever bore arms.

SECOND CLOWN Why, he had none.

FIRST CLOWN What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture? The Scripture says Adam digged. Could he dig without arms? I’ll put another question to thee. If thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself—

SECOND CLOWN Go to.

FIRST CLOWN What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

SECOND CLOWN The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.

FIRST CLOWN I like thy wit well, in good faith. The gallows does well. But how does it well? It does well to those that do ill. Now thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the church, argal the gallows may do well to thee. To’t again, come.

SECOND CLOWN ‘Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?’

FIRST CLOWN Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.

SECOND CLOWN Marry, now I can tell.

FIRST CLOWN To’t.

SECOND CLOWN Mass, I cannot tell.

Enter Prince Hamlet and Horatio afar off

FIRST CLOWN Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating; and when you are asked this question next, say ‘a grave-maker’; the houses that he makes lasts till doomsday. Go, get thee to Johan. Fetch me a stoup of liquor.

Exit Second Clown

(Sings)

In youth when I did love, did love,

Methought it was very sweet

To contract-O-the time for-a-my behove,

O methought there-a-was nothing-a-meet.

HAMLET Has this fellow no feeling of his business that a sings at grave-making?

HORATIO Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

HAMLET ‘Tis e’en so; the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.

FIRST CLOWN (sings)

But age with his stealing steps

Hath caught me in his clutch,

And hath shipped me intil the land,

As if I had never been such.

⌈He throws up a skull⌉

HAMLET That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to th’ ground as if ‘twere Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician which this ass o’er-offices, one that would circumvent God, might it not? HORATIO It might, my lord.

HAMLET Or of a courtier, which could say ‘Good morrow, sweet lord. How dost thou, good lord?’ This might be my lord such a one, that praised my lord such a one’s horse when a meant to beg it, might it not?

HORATIO Ay, my lord.

HAMLET Why, e‘en so, and now my lady Worm’s, chapless, and knocked about the mazard with a sexton’s spade. Here’s fine revolution, an we had the trick to see’t. Did these bones cost no more the breeding but to play at loggats with ’em? Mine ache to think on’t.

FIRST CLOWN (sings)

A pickaxe and a spade, a spade,

For and a shrouding-sheet;

O, a pit of clay for to be made

For such a guest is meet.

⌈He throws up another skull⌉

HAMLET There’s another. Why might not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? H‘m! This fellow might be in ’s time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries. Is this the fine of his fines and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must th’inheritor himself have no more, ha?

HORATIO Not a jot more, my lord.

HAMLET Is not parchment made of sheepskins?

HORATIO Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too.

HAMLET They are sheep and calves that seek out assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow. (To the First Clown) Whose grave’s this, sirrah?

FIRST CLOWN Mine, sir.

(Sings)

O, a pit of clay for to be made

For such a guest is meet.

HAMLET I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in’t.

FIRST CLOWN You lie out on‘t, sir, and therefore it is not yours. For my part, I do not lie in’t, and yet it is mine.

HAMLET Thou dost lie in‘t, to be in’t and say ’tis thine. ’Tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.

FIRST CLOWN ‘Tis a quick lie, sir, ’twill away again from me to you.

HAMLET What man dost thou dig it for?

FIRST CLOWN For no man, sir.

HAMLET What woman, then?

FIRST CLOWN For none, neither.

HAMLET Who is to be buried in’t?

FIRST CLOWN One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she’s dead.

HAMLET How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it. The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe. (To the First Clown) How long hast thou been a grave-maker?

FIRST CLOWN Of all the days i‘th’ year I came to’t that day that our last King Hamlet o’ercame Fortinbras.

HAMLET How long is that since?

FIRST CLOWN Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that. It was the very day that young Hamlet was born—he that was mad and sent into England.

HAMLET Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?

FIRST CLOWN Why, because a was mad. A shall recover his wits there; or if a do not, ’tis no great matter there.

HAMLET Why?

FIRST CLOWN ’Twill not be seen in him there. There the men are as mad as he.

HAMLET How came he mad?

FIRST CLOWN Very strangely, they say.

HAMLET How strangely?

FIRST CLOWN Faith, e’en with losing his wits.

HAMLET Upon what ground?

FIRST CLOWN Why, here in Denmark. I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.

HAMLET How long will a man lie i’th’ earth ere he rot?

FIRST CLOWN I’faith, if a be not rotten before a die—as we have many pocky corpses nowadays, that will scarce hold the laying in—a will last you some eight year or nine year. A tanner will last you nine year.

HAMLET Why he more than another?

FIRST CLOWN Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade that a will keep out water a great while, and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. Here’s a skull, now. This skull has lain in the earth three-and-twenty years.

HAMLET Whose was it?

FIRST CLOWN A whoreson mad fellow’s it was. Whose do you think it was?

HAMLET Nay, I know not.

FIRST CLOWN A pestilence on him for a mad rogue—a poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once! This same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the King’s jester.

HAMLET This?

FIRST CLOWN E’en that.

HAMLET Let me see.

He takes the skull

Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio—a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred my imagination is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chop-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

HORATIO What’s that, my lord?

HAMLET Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’th’ earth?

HORATIO E’en so.

HAMLET And smelt so? Pah!

⌈He throws the skull down⌉

HORATIO E’en so, my lord.

HAMLET To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till a find it stopping a bung-hole?

HORATIO ’Twere to consider too curiously to consider so.

HAMLET No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it, as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel?

Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,

Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

O, that that earth which kept the world in awe

Should patch a wall t’expel the winter’s flaw!

But soft, but soft; aside.

Hamlet and Horatio stand aside. Enter King

Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Laertes, and a coffin,

with a Priest and lords attendant

Here comes the King,

The Queen, the courtiers—who is that they follow,

And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken

The corpse they follow did with desp‘rate hand

Fordo it own life. ’Twas of some estate.

Couch we a while, and mark.

LAERTES What ceremony else?

HAMLET (aside to Horatio)

That is Laertes, a very noble youth. Mark.

LAERTES What ceremony else?

PRIEST

Her obsequies have been as far enlarged

As we have warrantise. Her death was doubtful,

And but that great command o’ersways the order

She should in ground unsanctified have lodged

Till the last trumpet. For charitable prayers,

Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her,

Yet here she is allowed her virgin rites,

Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home

Of bell and burial.

LAERTES Must there no more be done?

PRIEST No more be done.

We should profane the service of the dead

To sing sage requiem and such rest to her

As to peace-parted souls.

LAERTES Lay her i’th’ earth,

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring. I tell thee, churlish priest,

A minist’ring angel shall my sister be

When thou liest howling.

HAMLET (aside) What, the fair Ophelia!

QUEEN GERTRUDE (scattering flowers)

Sweets to the sweet. Farewell.

I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife.

I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid,

And not t’have strewed thy grave.

LAERTES

O, treble woe

Fall ten times treble on that cursed head

Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense

Deprived thee of!—Hold off the earth a while,