POL. My lord, I will use them according to their desert. HAM. Odd's bodikin man, better: Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping! Use them after your own honour and dignity: The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

POL. Come, sirs. [Exit POLONIUS with some of the Players. HAM. Follow him, friends: we 'll hear a play to-morrow. -Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murther of Gonzago?

1 PLAY. Ay, my lord.

HAM. We'll have 't to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down, and insert in 't? could you not?

1 PLAY. Ay, my lord.

HAM. Very well.-Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exit Player.] My good friends [To Ros. and GUIL.], I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore.

Ros. Good my lord!

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
HAM. Ay, so, God be wi' you: Now I am alone.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous, that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his whole conceit,
That from her working, all his visage wann'd;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!

What 's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion,

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;

Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,

Confound the ignorant; and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property, and most dear life,
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose?
As deep as to the lungs?
Ha!

gives me the lie i' the throat,
Who does me this?

Why, I should take it: for it cannot be,
But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter; or, ere this,
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O vengeance.

What an ass am I! ay, sure, this is most brave;
That I, the son of the dear murthered,

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a cursing, like a very drab,

A scullion!

Fye upon 't! foh! About, my brains! I have heard,
That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,

Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;

For murther, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players

Play something like the murther of my father,
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;

ACT III.

SCENE I-A Room in the Castle.

Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and
GUILDENSTERN.

KING. And can you, by no drift of circumstance, nkoruber See. P.. Get from him, why he puts on this confusion;

Grating so harshly all his days of quiet.

With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

Ros. He does confess he feels himself distracted;
But from what cause he will by no means speak.
GUIL. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded;
But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,

When we would bring him on to some confession
Of his true state.

QUEEN.

Did he receive you well?

Ros. Most like a gentleman.

GUIL. But with much forcing of his disposition. Ros. Niggard of question; but, of our demands, Most free in his reply.

QUEEN. Did you assay him to any pastime?

Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain players
We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him;
And there did seem in him a kind of joy
To hear of it: They are about the court;
And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.

POL.

"T is most true:

And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties,

That he, as 't were by accident, may here
Affront Ophelia.

Her father, and myself (lawful espials),

Will so bestow ourselves, that, seeing, unseen,
We may of their encounter frankly judge;
And gather by him, as he is behav'd,

If 't be the affliction of his love or no,
That thus he suffers for.

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish,

That your good beauties be the happy cause

Of Hamlet's wildness; so shall I hope your virtues

Will bring him to his wonted way again,

To both your honours.

Орн.

Madam, I wish it may. [Exit QUEEN. POL. Ophelia, walk you here:-Gracious, so please you, We will bestow ourselves:-Read on this book;

[TO OPHELIA

That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,-
"T is too much prov'd, that, with devotion's visage,
And pious action, we do sugar o'er

The devil himself.

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art,

Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it,

Than is my deed to my most painted word:
O heavy burden!

[Aside.

POL. I hear him coming; let 's withdraw, my lord. [Exeunt KING and POLONIUS.

Enter HAMLET.

HAM. To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether 't is nobler in the mind, to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them?-To die,—to sleep,—
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ach, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to,-'t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die,—to sleep ;-

To sleep! perchance to dream;-ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect,
That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time.
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will;

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ;
And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.-Soft you, now!
The fair Ophelia :-Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

ОРН.
Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?

HAM. I humbly thank you; well, well, well.
ОPн. My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver;

I pray you, now receive them.

HAM. No. no. I never gave you aught.