How Conscience Makes Cowards of Us All

144Enter HAMLET

Ham. Ha ha! are you honest?⁹

Oph. My lord!

Ham. Are you fair?

Oph. What means your lordship?

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

Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce¹⁰ than with honesty?

145Ham. 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.

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

Ham. You should not have believ’d me, for virtue cannot so inoculate¹¹ our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.

Oph. I was the more deceived.

Ham. 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?

146Oph. At home, my lord.

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

Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens!

Ham. 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!

Oph. O heavenly powers, restore him!

Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God has given you one face and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and you lisp and nick-name 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.

147Re-enter KING and POLONIUS

[SCENE II. A hall in the castle]

Enter HAMLET and Players

Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc’d 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 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 passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to see a robustious¹⁶ periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings¹⁷ who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. I could have such a fellow whipp’d for o’erdoing Termagant.¹⁸ It out-herods Herod.¹⁹ Pray you, avoid it.

1481. Play. I warrant your honour.

Ham. 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 modesty²⁰ 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 age²¹ and body of the time his form and pressure.²² Now this overdone, or come tardy off,²³ though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure²⁴ 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 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.

1. Play. I hope we have reform’d that indifferently with us, sir.

Ham. 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 villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the Fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.

Exeunt Players.

149Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN

Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

Enter HORATIO

150Danish march. A flourish. Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and other Lords attendant, with the guard carrying torches

King. How fares our cousin Hamlet?

Ham. Excellent, i’ faith,—of the chameleon’s dish. I eat the air, promise-cramm’d. You cannot feed capons so.

King. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not mine.

Ham. No, nor mine now. [To POLONIUS.] My lord, you play’d once i’ the university, you say?

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

Ham. And what did you enact?

Pol. I did enact Julius Caesar. I was kill’d i’ the Capitol; Brutus kill’d me.

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

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

Queen. Come hither, my good Hamlet, sit by me.

Ham. No, good mother, here’s metal more attractive.

151[Lying down at OPHELIA’S feet.]

Ham. 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.

Oph. Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.

Ham. So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I’ll have a suit of sables.³⁰ 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, he must build churches then, or else shall he 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 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; 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 exit. 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.

Enter PROLOGUE

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

Oph. Will they tell us what this show meant?

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

Oph. You are naught,³² you are naught. I’ll mark the play.

Enter [two Players,] a King and his Queen

154Ham. The Mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically.³⁹ 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 gall’d jade wince, our withers are unwrung.

155Enter LUCIANUS

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.

Oph. You are a good chorus, my lord.

Ham. I could interpret between you and your love,⁴⁰ if I could see the puppets dallying.⁴¹

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

Ham. It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.

Oph. Still better, and worse.

Ham. So you mistake⁴² your husbands. Begin, murderer; pox, leave thy damnable faces and begin. Come, “the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.”

Pours the poison in [to the sleeper’s] ears.

Ham. He poisons him i’ the 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.

Exeunt all but HAMLET and HORATIO.

156Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers⁴⁴—if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me—with two Provincial roses⁴⁵ on my raz’d⁴⁶ shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?

Hor. You might have rhym’d.

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

Hor. Very well, my lord.

Ham. Upon the talk of the poisoning?

Hor. I did very well note him.

Re-enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN

Ham. 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.

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

Ham. I am tame, sir; pronounce.

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

Ham. You are welcome.

157Guil. 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.

Ham. Make you a wholesome answer. My wit ’s diseas’d. 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,—

Ros. Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into amazement and admiration.⁴⁹

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

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

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

Ros. My lord, you once did love me.

Ham. So I do still, by these pickers and stealers.⁵⁰

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

Ham. Sir, I lack advancement.

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

Ham. Ay, but “While the grass grows,”—⁵¹ the proverb is something musty.

Re-enter one with a recorder

O, the recorder! Let me see.—To withdraw⁵² with you:—why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?

158Guil. O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.

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

Guil. My lord, I cannot.

Ham. I pray you.

Guil. Believe me, I cannot.

Ham. I do beseech you.

Guil. I know no touch of it, my lord.

Ham. ’Tis as easy as lying. Govern these ventages⁵³ with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most excellent music. Look you, these are the stops.

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

Ham. 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 that I am easier to be play’d on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret⁵⁴ me, you cannot play upon me.

Enter POLONIUS

God bless you, sir.

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

Ham. Do you see that cloud that’s almost in shape like a camel?

Pol. By the mass, and it’s like a camel, indeed.

Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel.

Pol. It is back’d like a weasel.

Ham. Or like a whale?

Pol. Very like a whale.

Ham. Then will I come to my mother by and by. [Aside.] They fool me to the top of my bent.—I will come by and by.

Pol. I will say so. Exit.

The reading stops at the foot of page 158 with Polonius’s exit; Act III, Scene II goes on on page 159.