QUEEN. Alas, how is 't with you, That you do bend your eye on vacancy And with the incorporal air do hold discourse? His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, My stern effects: then what I have to do Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood. QUEEN. To whom do you speak this? HAM. 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 lived! Look, where he goes, even 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 utter'd: bring me to the test, And I the matter will re-word; which madness Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven; Yea, curb 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 mine uncle's bed; That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, That to the use of actions fair and good 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 . . . the devil, or throw him out I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord, [Pointing to POLONIUS. I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so, Thus bad begins and worse remains behind. QUEEN. What shall I do? 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 And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, his mouse; 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 ; Unpeg the basket on the house's top, Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape, And break your own neck down. QUEEN. Be thou assured, 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? I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on. Alack, HAM. There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows, Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd, Hoist with his own petar: and't shall go hard I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room. Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. [Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in POLONIUS. ACT THE FOURTH. SCENE I. A room in the castle. Enter KING, QUEEN, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN. KING. There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves: You must translate: 'tis fit we understand them. Where is your son? QUEEN. Bestow this place on us a little while. [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night! KING. What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet? QUEEN. Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend Which is the mightier: in his lawless fit, KING. O heavy deed! It had been so with us, had we been there : His liberty is full of threats to all; To you yourself, to us, to every one. Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd? |