Else, could you not have motion: But, sure, that
Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err;
Nor sense to ecstasy* was ne'er so thrail'd,
But it reserv'd some quantity of choice,
To serve in such a difference. What devil was't,
That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman blind!t
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hand or eyes, smelling sanst all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope,§.
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. 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.||
Ham. Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings, You heavenly guards!--What would your gracicus figure?
Ham. Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, laps'd in time and passion, let's go by
The 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.
How is it with you, la Queen. Alas, how is't with you?
* Frenzy. + Blindman's-buff.
That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with the incorporeal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,*
Starts up, and stands on end. O, gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?
Hum. On him! On him!-Look you, how pale be
glares!
His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable.f-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. To whom do you speak this?
Do you see nothing there? Queen. Nothing at all; yet all, that is, I see. Ham. Nor did you nothing hear?
Queen. No, nothing, but ourselves.
Ham. Why, look you there! look, how it steals away!
My father, in his habit as he liv'd!
Look, where he goes, ev'n now, out at the portal!
[Exit GHOST. Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain: This bodiless creation 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 re-word: which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul.
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place;
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
*The hair of animals is excrementitious, that is, without life or sensation.
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost* on 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, curbt and woo, for leave to do him good.
Queen. O Hamlet! thou hast cleft my heart in
twain.
Ham. O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
Good night, but go not to my uncle's bed;
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth cat
Of habit's devil, is angel yet in this;
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock, or livery,
That aptly is put on: Refrain to-night;
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy:
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either curb the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night
And when you are desirous to be bless'd,
I'll blessing beg of you.-For this same lord,
I do repent: But heaven hath pleas'd 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.-
But one word more, good lady.
Ham. 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,
* Manure. † Bend. § Steaming with heat.
Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd 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 gih,f
Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?
No, in despite of sense and secresy,
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. Be thou assur'd, if words be made of breath,
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.
Ham. I must to England: you know that?
Queen.
I had forgot; 'tis so concluded on.
Ham. There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows,-
Whom I will trust, as I will adders fang'd,§
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way, And marshal me to knavery: Let it work;
For 'tis the sport, to have the engineer
Hoist from his own petar: and it shall go hard,
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon.
HAMLET'S IRRESOLUTION.
How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, If his chief good, and market¶ of his time, Re but to sleep, and feed? a beast, no more. Sure, he, that made us with such large discourse,** Looking before, and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust* in us unus'd. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some cravent scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,-
A thought, which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom,
And, ever, three parts coward,-I do not know
Why yet I live to say, This thing's to do;
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and
To do't. Examples, gross as earth, exhort me:
Witness, this army of such mass, and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince;
Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff'd,
Makes mouths at the invisible event;
Exposing what is mortal, and unsure,
To all that fortune, death, and danger, dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great,
Is, not to stir without great argument;
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd
Excitements of my reason, and my blood.
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy, and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds: fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough, and continent,
To hide the slain?-O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
SORROWS RARELY SINGLE.
O Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions!
THE DIVINITY OF KINGS.
Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person;
There's such a divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but keep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.
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