To the unsatisfied.

HORATIO.

Never believe it;

I am more an antique Roman than a Dane:
Here's yet some liquor left.

HAMLET.'

As thou'rt a man,

Give me the cup: let go; by heaven, I'll have 't.
O God! Horatio, what a wounded name,

Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me.
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.

340

344

348

[March afar off, and shot within. What warlike noise is this?

OSRIC. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from

Poland,

To the ambassadors of England gives

This warlike volley.

HAMLET.

O! I die, Horatio;

The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit:
I cannot live to hear the news from England,
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited-The rest is silence.

352

356

[Dies.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night,

HORATIO.
sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! ·
Why does the drum come hither?

360

[March within.

Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambassadors, and Others. FORTINBRAS. Where is this sight?

HORATIO.

What is it ye would see ?

If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.

What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes at a shot
So bloodily hast struck?

FIRST AMBASSADOR.

The sight is dismal ;

And our affairs from England come too late :

364

L

368

The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
To tell him his commandment is fulfill'd,

That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Where should we have our thanks?

HORATIO.

Not from his mouth,

Had it the ability of life to thank you :

He never gave commandment for their death.

But since, so jump upon this bloody question,

373

You from the Polack wars, and you from England, 376
Are here arriv'd, give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placed to the view;

And let me speak to the yet unknowing world

How these things came about: so shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,

380

Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;

Of deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

384

Fall'n on the inventors' heads; all this can I
Truly deliver.

FORTINBRAS. Let us haste to hear it, And call the noblest to the audience.

388

For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune;
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.
HORATIO. Of that I shall have also cause to speak,
And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more:
But let this same be presently perform'd,

393

Even while men's minds are wild, lest more mischance On plots and errors happen.

FORTINBRAS.

Let four captains

Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;

-396

For he was likely, had he been put on,

The soldiers' music and the rites of war

To have prov'd most royally: and, for his passage,

Speak loudly for him.

Take up the bodies: such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.

Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

400

[A dead march. Exeunt, bearing off the bodies; after which a peal of ordnance is shot off.

KING LEAR

INTRODUCTION

THE earliest mention of King Lear known to us is the entry in the Stationers' Register, November 26, 1607, which states that 'Master William Shakespeare his historye of Kinge Lear' was' played before the Kinges maiestie at Whitehall vppon Sainct Stephens night at Christmas Last, by his maiesties servantes playinge vsually at the Globe on the Banksyde'. The first quarto appeared in 1608, 'printed for Nathaniel Butter,' and this is distinguished from the second quarto by the mention on the title-page of Butter's shop in Paul's Church-yard' and its sign the Pide [i. e. Pied] Bull'. It is an extremely ill-printed volume. While the edition was being printed,' writes Mr. A. W. Pollard, the proofs of several sheets seem to have been read with the manuscript, and numerous corrections introduced. The copies of these sheets which had been printed without correction were not, however, destroyed, but mixed promiscuously with corrected copies, so that there are different combinations of corrected and uncorrected sheets in the different extant copies of this edition.' It was at one time supposed that there were as many as three several editions of the year 1608. The Cambridge editors proved that there could not be more than two. Of these it was shown by Mr. P. A. Daniel that the Pide Bull' (as it is styled) was the earlier. And now the bibliographical investigations of Mr. W. W. Greg and Mr. Pollard make it probable that the second quarto'Printed for Nathaniel Butter. 1608'-was falsely dated, and that in fact it was printed in the year 1619. A copy of the first quarto containing three sheets in their uncorrected state, according to Mr. Pollard, who

follows Mr. Daniel, having previously been read with an independent manuscript, seems to have been taken for the Folio text." This last is certainly a better text than that of the quartos; but while the folio gives us many lines not found in the quartos, the latter give a far larger number undoubtedly Shakespeare'swhich the folio omits. We have no sufficient reasons for supposing that the omissions in either quartos or folio were made by the author of the tragedy. It has been suspected, but with little justification, that Edgar's rhymed soliloquy at the end of Act III, Scene vi, is not from Shakespeare's hand, and-perhaps with more probability that the last two lines of Act I, and the Fool's prophecy at the end of Act III, Scene ii, are additions by the players.

The entry in the Stationers' Register gives us a downward limit for the composition of King Lear; it was acted on St. Stephen's night, 1606; an upward limit is supplied by the fact that the names of certain evil spirits in the speeches of Edgar were unquestionably taken from Samuel Harsnet's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, a volume published in 1603. An old play, The Tragicall historie of Kinge Leir, was entered in the Stationers' Register, May 8, 1605, and was published or perhaps republished-in that year. It has been conjectured that the publication of this play was caused by the popularity of Shakespeare's tragedy. The suggestions that the use of the word British" instead of the traditional English in the quotation of Edgar I smell the blood of a British man implies a date subsequent to October 20, 1604, when, by a royal proclamation, England and Scotland were to be named Great Britain; that the eclipse of October 1605 is álluded to (Act 1, Scene ii); that Gloucester's words, 'machinations, hollowness, treachery,' &c., refer to the Gunpowder Plot of November 1605, must be received with caution. Yet they tend to confirm the date for the play which other evidence supports, and which is generally accepted, 1605 or 1605–6. '

The story of King Lear and his three daughters is