But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
Oh, step between her and her fighting soul:
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
Speak to her, Hamlet.

Ham.

How is it with you, lady?

Queen. Alas, how is 't with you,

That you do bend your eye on vacancy

And with th' incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in th' alarm,
Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,
Start up, and stand an end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do
Whereon do you look?
Ham. On him, on him! Look you, how pale he
glares!

His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable. Do not look upon me;
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects: then what I have to do

Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.
Queen. To whom do you speak this?

Do

120

Ham.
you see nothing there?
Queen. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
Ham. Nor did you nothing hear?

Queen.

No, nothing but ourselves.

Ham. Why, look you there! look, how it steals

away!

My father, in his habit as he lived!

Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!

111. [conceit imagination.]

=

131

[Exit Ghost

125. convert my stern effects change my stern purpose, -another nascent excuse for flinching and procrastination. [Shakespeare may have written affects; see note on III., i., 166.]

Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain: This bodiless creation ecstasy

My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
That I have utter'd: bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue ;
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,

Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

140

150

Queen. O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

Ham. Oh, throw away the worser part of it,

And live the purer with the other half.
Good night but go not to mine uncle's bed;

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,

135. ecstasy madness. [See 1. 74.]

152. [curb bend; from French courber.]

159. Of habits evil: that is, that monster, custom, who by mere repetition destroys (eats) all consciousness of evil in what is habitual, is also an angel because he gives in like manner, by habit, the livery, or sign of service, to good, etc. [This passage is omitted in the folios. The quartos have Of habits devil. The present reading is Pope's.]

That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,

That aptly is put on.

Refrain to-night,

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either tame the devil or throw him out,
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night:
And when you are desirous to be bless'd,

I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,

[Pointing to Polonius.

I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,
To punish me with this and this with me,
That I must be their Scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So, again, good night.
I must be cruel, only to be kind :

Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.
One word more, good lady.

Queen.

What shall I do?

Ham. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed; Make you to ravel all this matter out,

That I essentially am not in madness,

But mad in craft. 'T were good you let him know; For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise, Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,

170

180

166. And either: after these words a monosyllable has been lost in the old copies. It might have been "tame," or (as Ma lone reads) "curb," if that word did not occur a few lines above 'intransitively], but I feel sure not "quell," as Singer reads: hat is too strong. To tame the devil is to change the stamp of nature.

184. paddock=toad. [gib male cat; a contraction of Gilbert.]

Such dear concernings hide? who would do so?

No, in despite of sense and secrecy,

Unpeg the basket on the house's top,

Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep,

And break your own neck down.

Queen. Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,

And breath of life, I have no life to breathe

What thou hast said to me.

Ham. I must to England; you know that?
Queen.

I had forgot: 't is so concluded on.

Alack,

Ham. There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows,

Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,

They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way,
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
For 't is the sport to have the enginer

Hoist with his own petar: and 't shall go

hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon: oh, 't is most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.

[This man shall set me packing:

201

187. Unpeg the basket: there is reference here to a manifestly well-known story in which an ape let birds out of a wicker cage on a housetop, got in himself, and, being too heavy, broke the basket away and fell. But no such story has been discov ered.

205. This man, etc. I am very sure that this speech according to Shakespeare ended thus:

O, 't is most sweet,

When in one line two crafts directly meet.

Mother, good night,

with a rhyming tag and a final good night, and that the words enclosed thus [ ] are either from the old play, or were added

I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.]
Mother, good night. [Indeed this counsellor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Good night, mother.]

21

[Exeunt severally: Hamlet dragging in Polonius.

ACT IV.

SCENE I. A room in the castle.

Enter KING, QUeen, Rosencrantz, and GuildENSTERN.

King. There's matter in these sighs; these profound heaves

You must translate: 't is fit we understand them.
Where is your son?

Queen. Bestow this place on us a little while.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night!

King. What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet ? Queen. Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend

Which is the mightier: in his lawless fit,

Behind the arras hearing something stir,

Whips out his rapier, cries, " A rat, a rat!"

16

by another and an inferior writer. But I cannot presume to omit them, because, while the previous lines of the speech are found only in the quarto of 1604, these lines (205 to the end) not only appear both in the folio and the quarto of 1604, but in a mutilated form in the quarto of 1603. They were retained. it should seem, from the old play, or supplied to the stage, for their application to Hamlet's ugly "job" of dragging out the body of his victim, made necessary by the lack of shifting scenery on our early stage.