His nephew’s levies; which to him appear’d
To be a preparation ’gainst the Polack;
But, better look’d into, he truly found
It was against your highness: whereat grieved,
That so his sickness, age and impotence
Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests
On Fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys;
Receives rebuke from Norway, and in fine
Makes vow before his uncle never more
To give the assay of arms against your majesty.
Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,
Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee,
And his commission to employ those soldiers,
So levied as before, against the Polack:
With an entreaty, herein further shown,
Giving a paper
That it might please you to give quiet pass
Through your dominions for this enterprise,
On such regards of safety and allowance
As therein are set down.
King Claudius
It likes us well;
And at our more consider’d time well read,
Answer, and think upon this business.
Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour:
Go to your rest; at night we’ll feast together:
Most welcome home!
Exeunt Voltimand and Cornelius
Lord Polonius
This business is well ended.
My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief: your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go.
Queen Gertrude
More matter, with less art.
Lord Polonius
Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
That he is mad, ’tis true: ’tis true ’tis pity;
And pity ’tis ’tis true: a foolish figure;
But farewell it, for I will use no art.
Mad let us grant him, then: and now remains
That we find out the cause of this effect,
Or rather say, the cause of this defect,
For this effect defective comes by cause:
Thus it remains, and the remainder thus. Perpend.
I have a daughter — have while she is mine —
Who, in her duty and obedience, mark,
Hath given me this: now gather, and surmise.
[Reads] ‘To the celestial and my soul’s idol, the most beautified Ophelia,’— That’s an ill phrase, a vile phrase; ‘beautified’ is a vile phrase: but you shall hear. Thus:
[Reads] ‘In her excellent white bosom, these, &c.’
Queen Gertrude
Came this from Hamlet to her?
Lord Polonius
Good madam, stay awhile; I will be faithful.
[Reads] ‘Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
‘O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers;
I have not art to reckon my groans: but that
I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu.
‘Thine evermore most dear lady, whilst
this machine is to him, Hamlet.’
This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me,
And more above, hath his solicitings,
As they fell out by time, by means and place,
All given to mine ear.
King Claudius
But how hath she
Received his love?
Lord Polonius
What do you think of me?
King Claudius
As of a man faithful and honourable.
Lord Polonius
I would fain prove so. But what might you think,
When I had seen this hot love on the wing —
As I perceived it, I must tell you that,
Before my daughter told me — what might you,
Or my dear majesty your queen here, think,
If I had play’d the desk or table-book,
Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb,
Or look’d upon this love with idle sight;
What might you think? No, I went round to work,
And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:
‘Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star;
This must not be:’ and then I precepts gave her,
That she should lock herself from his resort,
Admit no messengers, receive no tokens.
Which done, she took the fruits of my advice;
And he, repulsed — a short tale to make —
Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,
Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,
Into the madness wherein now he raves,
And all we mourn for.
King Claudius
Do you think ’tis this?
Queen Gertrude
It may be, very likely.
Lord Polonius
Hath there been such a time — I’d fain know that —
That I have positively said ’Tis so,’
When it proved otherwise?
King Claudius
Not that I know.
Lord Polonius
[Pointing to his head and shoulder]
Take this from this, if this be otherwise:
If circumstances lead me, I will find
Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
Within the centre.
King Claudius
How may we try it further?
Lord Polonius
You know, sometimes he walks four hours together
Here in the lobby.
Queen Gertrude
So he does indeed.
Lord Polonius
At such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him:
Be you and I behind an arras then;
Mark the encounter: if he love her not
And be not from his reason fall’n thereon,
Let me be no assistant for a state,
But keep a farm and carters.
King Claudius
We will try it.
Queen Gertrude
But, look, where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.
Lord Polonius
Away, I do beseech you, both away:
I’ll board him presently.
Exeunt King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, and Attendants
Enter Hamlet, reading
O, give me leave:
How does my good Lord Hamlet?
Hamlet
Well, God-a-mercy.
Lord Polonius
Do you know me, my lord?
Hamlet
Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.
Lord Polonius
Not I, my lord.
Hamlet
Then I would you were so honest a man.
Lord Polonius
Honest, my lord!
Hamlet
Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
Lord Polonius
That’s very true, my lord.
Hamlet
For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion,— Have you a daughter?
Lord Polonius
I have, my lord.
Hamlet
Lord Polonius
[Aside] How say
you by that? Still harping on my daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I’ll speak to him again. What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet
Words, words, words.
Lord Polonius
What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet
Between who?
Lord Polonius
I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
Hamlet
Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.
Lord Polonius
[Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
Hamlet
Into my grave.
Lord Polonius
Indeed, that is out o’ the air.
Aside
How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter.— My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.
Hamlet
You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.
Lord Polonius
Fare you well, my lord.
Hamlet
These tedious old fools!
Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Lord Polonius
You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.
Rosencrantz
[To Polonius] God save you, sir!
Exit Polonius
Guildenstern
My honoured lord!
Rosencrantz
My most dear lord!
Hamlet
My excellent good friends! How dost thou,
Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?
Rosencrantz
As the indifferent children of the earth.
Guildenstern
Happy, in that we are not over-happy;
On fortune’s cap we are not the very button.
Hamlet
Nor the soles of her shoe?
Rosencrantz
Neither, my lord.
Hamlet
Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?
Guildenstern
’Faith, her privates we.
Hamlet
In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet. What’s the news?
Rosencrantz
None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest.
Hamlet
Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true. Let me question more in particular: what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?
Guildenstern
Prison, my lord!
Hamlet
Denmark’s a prison.
Rosencrantz
Then is the world one.
Hamlet
A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ the worst.
Rosencrantz
We think not so, my lord.
Hamlet
Why, then, ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.
Rosencrantz
Why then, your ambition makes it one; ’tis too narrow for your mind.
Hamlet
O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
Guildenstern
Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
Hamlet
A dream itself is but a shadow.
Rosencrantz
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
Hamlet
Rosencrantz
Guildenstern
We’ll wait upon you.
Hamlet
No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest of my servants, for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?
Rosencrantz
To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.
Hamlet
Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak.
Guildenstern
What should we say, my lord?
Hamlet
Why, any thing, but to the purpose. You were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks which your modesties have not craft enough to colour: I know the good king and queen have sent for you.
Rosencrantz
To what end, my lord?
Hamlet
That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for, or no?
Rosencrantz
[Aside to Guildenstern] What say you?
Hamlet
[Aside] Nay, then, I have an eye of you.— If you love me, hold not off.
Guildenstern
My lord, we were sent for.
Hamlet
I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no feather. I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
Rosencrantz
My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.
Hamlet
Why did you laugh then, when I said ‘man delights not me’?
Rosencrantz
To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you: we coted them on the way; and hither are they coming, to offer you service.
Hamlet
He that plays the king shall be welcome; his majesty shall have tribute of me; the adventurous knight shall use his foil and target; the lover shall not sigh gratis; the humourous man shall end his part in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickled o’ the sere; and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for’t. What players are they?
Rosencrantz
Even those you were wont to take delight in, the tragedians of the city.
Hamlet
How chances it they travel? their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.
Rosencrantz
I think their inhibit
ion comes by the means of the late innovation.
Hamlet
Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? are they so followed?
Rosencrantz
No, indeed, are they not.
Hamlet
How comes it? do they grow rusty?
Rosencrantz
Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace: but there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for’t: these are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages — so they call them — that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and dare scarce come thither.
Hamlet
What, are they children? who maintains ’em? how are they escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing? will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players — as it is most like, if their means are no better — their writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their own succession?
Rosencrantz
’Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy: there was, for a while, no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.
Hamlet
Is’t possible?
Guildenstern
O, there has been much throwing about of brains.
Hamlet
Do the boys carry it away?
Rosencrantz
Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load too.
Hamlet
It is not very strange; for mine uncle is king of Denmark, and those that would make mows at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, an hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in little. ’sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.
Flourish of trumpets within
Guildenstern
There are the players.
Hamlet
Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come then: the appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony: let me comply with you in this garb, lest my extent to the players, which, I tell you, must show fairly outward, should more appear like entertainment than yours. You are welcome: but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.
Guildenstern
In what, my dear lord?
Hamlet
I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Enter Polonius
Lord Polonius
Well be with you, gentlemen!
Hamlet
Hark you, Guildenstern; and you too: at each ear a hearer: that great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts.
Rosencrantz
Happily he’s the second time come to them; for they say an old man is twice a child.
Hamlet
I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players; mark it. You say right, sir: o’ Monday morning; ’twas so indeed.