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 liquid of youth
Contagious bits art 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,

Laer.

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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 puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede,

O, fear me not.

I stay too long: but here my father comes.

Enter Polonius.

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,

50

And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee!

And these few precepts in thy memory

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Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel,
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,

Bear 't, that the opposeď may beware of thee.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;

And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a 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 husbanding 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

Oph.

What I have said to you.

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80

'Tis in my memory lock'd,

[Exit.

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 Ham

let.

Pol. Marry, well bethought:

'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late

Given private time to you, and you yourself

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Have of your audience been most free and boun

teous.

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 honour.
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! pooh! 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,

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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 me

Running it thus-you 'll tender me a fool.

Oph. My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honourable fashion.

ΓΙΟ

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 promise, as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time
Be something 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

I 20

Than may be given you: in few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
The better to beguile. This is for all:

I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,
Have you so slander any moment 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.

Scene IV.

The platform.

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.

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[Exeunt.

Hor. Indeed? I heard it not: it then draws near the

season

Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

[A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off within. What doth this mean, my lord?

Ham. The king doth wake to-night and takes his rouse, Keeps wǎssail, and the swaggering up-spring reels; And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, IO The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out

Hor.

The triumph of his pledge.

'Is it a custom?

Ham. Ay, marry, is 't:

But to my mind, though I am native here

because And to the manner born, it is a custom

he is

Reyed

га release

More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west

Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations:
They clepe/us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition; and indeed it takes

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From our achievements, though perform'd at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.

So, oft it chances in particular men,

serious That for some vicious mole of nature in them,

Mensur through

lath

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'er-leavens
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 eale
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.

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Hor.

Enter Ghost.

Look, my lord, it comes!

Ham. Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,

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