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Ham. Follow him, friends we'll hear a play to-morrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of Gonzago ?

1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. We'll have it to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down, and insert i'nt? 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!
[Exe. Ros. and GUIL.
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 own conceit,
That from her working, all his visage wann'd:
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspéct,'

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? gives me the lie i'the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha!

[1] The word aspect (as Mr. Farmer rightly observes) was in Shakespeare's [time accented on the second syllable. STEEVENS.

[2] The ear of all mankind. So before,---Cuviure to the general, that is, to the multitude.

JOHNSON.

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 !
Why, what an ass am I? This is most brave;
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
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! IIumph! 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 murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father,
Before mine uncle; I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick; if he do blench,
I know my course. The spirit, that I have seen,
May be a devil; and the devil hath

power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
(As he is very potent with such spirits,)
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this: The play's the thing,
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

[Exit.

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 conference

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;

[8] Kindless---unnatural.

JOHNSON.

[4] Wits, to your work. Brain, go about the present business.

* [5] Tent him---search his wounds. [6] Blench, i. e. shrink.

JOHNSON. JOHNSON.

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 ny 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. 'Tis most true:

And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties,

To hear and see the matter.

King. With all my heart; and it doth much content me To hear him so inclin'd.

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,

And drive his purpose on to these delights.
Ros. We shall, my lord.

[Exe. Ros. and GUIL.

King. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too:

For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither;
That he, as 'twere by accident, may here
Affront Ophelia :8

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 great affliction of his love, or no,
That thus he suffers for.

Queen. I shall obey you :

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.

Oph. Madam, I wish it may.

[Exit Queen

JOHNSON.

JOHNSON.

[7] O'er-raught---is over-reached, that is, over-took. [8] To affront---is only to meet directly.

Pol. Ophelia, walk you here :-Gracious, so please you, We will bestow ourselves :-Read on this book; [To ОPH That show of such an exercise may colour

Your loneliness.-We are oft to blame in this,-
'Tis too much prov'd,-that, with devotion's visage,
And pious action, we do sugar o'er

The devil himself.

King. O, 'tis too true! 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!

Pol. I hear him coming; lets withdraw, my lord.

[Aside

[Exeunt King and PoL.

Enter HAMLET.'

Ham. To be or not to be that is the question :----Whether 'tis 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-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,-'tis 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 despis'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 quietus3 make
With a bare bodkin ? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life ;3
But that the dread of something after death,-

[9] That is, compared with the thing that helps it.
[1] See Illustrations, Vol. X.

JOHNSON.

(2) Mortal coil---turmoil, bustle.
[3] Quietus---the term for a sheriff's acquittance.
[4] Bodkin---the ancient term for a small dagger.

WARBURTON.

STEEVENS.

STEEVENS.

[5] To grunt, is the true reading, but can scarcely be borne by modern ears.

JOHNSON.

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 huè of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprizes 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."

Oph. Good my lord,

How does your honour for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thank you; well.

Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver ;

I pray you, now receive them.

Ham. No, not I;

I never gave you aught.

Oph. My honour'd lord, you know right well, you did;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath compos`d
As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
Take these again; for to the noble mind,

Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind..
There, my lord.

Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest?

Oph. My lord?

Ham. Are you fair?

Oph. What means your lordship?

Ham. That if you be honest, and fair, you should admit no discourse to your beauty.7

Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness; this was some time a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.

Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

[6] This is a touch of nature. Hamlet, at the sight of Ophelia, does not immediately recollect, that he is to personate madness, but makes her an address grave and solemn, such as the foregoing meditation excited in his thoughts. JOHNSON..

[7] The true reading seems to be this, "If you be honest and fair, you should admit your honesty to no discourse with your beauty." This is the sense evidently required by the process of the conversation. JOHNSON.

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