If with too credent ear you list his songs;
Or lose your heart; or your chaste treasure open
To his unmastered importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister;
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon.
Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes;
The canker galls the infants of the spring,
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed;
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth,
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary, then; best safety lies in fear;
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.
Oph. I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,
As watchman to my heart; but, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whilst, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own read.
I stay too long;-but here my father comes.
A double blessing is a double grace;
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.
Pol. Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame; The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are staid for. There, my blessing with you;
[Laying his hand on LAERTES' head.
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou charácter. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
Bear it that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France, of the best rank and station,
Are most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all,-to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!
Laer. Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
Pol. The time invites you; go, your servants tend.
Laer. Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well
What I have said to you.
Oph.
"Tis in my memory locked,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
Laer. Farewell.
Pol. What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?
Oph. So please you, something touching the lord Hamlet.
Pol. Marry, well bethought.
'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late
Given private time to you; and you yourself
Have of your audience been most free and bounteous.
If it be so, (as so 'tis put on me,
And that in way of caution,) I must tell you,
You do not understand yourself so clearly,
As it behoves my daughter, and your honor.
What is between you? Give me up the truth.
Oph. He hath, my lord, of late, made many tenders
Of his affection to me.
Pol. Affection? puh! you speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?
Oph. I do not know, my lord, what I should think. Pol. Marry, I'll teach you. Think yourself a baby; That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay, Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly; Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, Wronging it thus) you'll tender me a fool.
Oph. My lord, he hath impórtuned me with love,
In honorable fashion.
Pol. Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.
Oph. And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
Pol. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat,-extinct in both,
Even in their praise, as it is a making,-
You must not take for fire. From this time,
Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence;
Set your entreatments at a higher rate,
Than a command to parley. For lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him, that he is young;
And with a larger tether may he walk,
Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
Not of that die which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bonds,
The better to beguile. This is for all;-
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,
Have you so slander any moment's leisure,
As to give words or talk with the lord Hamlet.
Look to't, I charge you; come your ways.
Oph. I shall obey, my lord.
Enter HAMLET, HORATIO, and MARCELLUS. Ham. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold. Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air.
Ham. What hour now?
Hor.
Mar. No, it is struck.
I think it lacks of twelve.
Hor. Indeed? I heard it not; it then draws near the
Wherein this spirit held his wont to walk.
[A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off within.
What does this mean, my lord?
Ham. The king doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse, Keeps wassail, and the swaggering upspring reels; And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
But to my mind,- though I am native here,
And to the manner born,-it is a custom
More honored in the breach, than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel, east and west,
Makes us traduced, and taxed of other nations.
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
From our achievements, though performed at height, The pith and marrow of our attribute.
So, oft it chances in particular men,
That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As, in their birth, (wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin,)
By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason;
Or by some habit, that too much o'erleavens
The form of plausive manners;-that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect;
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,-
Their virtues else (be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo)
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault. The dram of bale
Doth all the noble substance often doubt
To his own scandal.
Enter Ghost.
Look, my lord, it comes!
Ham. Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned,
Bring with the airs from heaven, or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked, or charitable,
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape,
That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee, Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane. O, answer me.
Let me not burst in ignorance! but tell,
Why thy canónised bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements! why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurned,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again! What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in cómplete steel,
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature,
So horridly to shake our disposition,
With thoughts beyond the regions of our souls?
Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?
Hor. It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.
Mar. Look, with what courteous action
It waves you to a more removed ground!
But do not go with it.
Ham. It will not speak; then I will follow it.
Hor. Do not, my lord.
Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life at a pin's fee;
And, for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again; -I'll follow it.
Hor. What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff,
That beetles o'er his base into the sea?
And there assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,
And draw you into madness? Think of it.
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain,
That looks so many fathoms to the sea,
And hears it roar beneath.
Mar. You shall not go, my lord.
Ham.
Hor. Be ruled; you shall not go.
Ham.
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.-
Still am I called; - unhand me, gentlemen;
[Breaking from them. By Heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me: I say, away;-go on, I'll follow thee.
[Exeunt Ghost and HAMLET.
Hor. He waxes desperate with imagination.
Mar. Let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey him.
Hor. Have after.-To what issue will this come?
Mar. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Hor. Heaven will direct it.
Nay, let's follow him. [Exeunt.
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