Where's your father? OPHELIA At home, my lord. HAMLET Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where 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 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 OPHELIA O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mould of form, The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That suck'd the honey of his music vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
Re-enter KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS KING CLAUDIUS Love! his affections do not that way tend;Nor what he spake, though it lack'd 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 for 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? LORD POLONIUS It shall do well: but yet do I believe The origin and commencement of his 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 grief: 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 unwatch'd go.
Exeunt SCENE II. A hall in the castle. Enter HAMLET and 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 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 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 dumbshows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it. First 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 o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing 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 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. First 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 villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.
Exeunt Players Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERNHow now, my lord! I will the king hear this piece of work? LORD POLONIUS And the queen too, and that presently. HAMLET Bid the players make haste.
Exit POLONIUS
Will you two help to hasten them? ROSENCRANTZ GUILDENSTERN We will, my lord.
Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN 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 flatter'd?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
