Ham. In happy time.1

Lord. The queen desires you to use some gentle entertainment to Laertes before you fall to play.

Ham. She well instructs me. [Exit Lord.] Hor. You will lose this wager, my lord. Ham. I do not think so; since he went into France, I have been in continual practice; I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart: but it is no matter.

Hor. Nay, good my lord,—

Ham. It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a

Ham. Not a whit, we defy augury; there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 't is not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be.

Enter KING, QUEEN, LAERTES, Lords, OSRIC, and Attendants with foils, &c.

King. Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.

[The King puts Laertes' hand into

With sore distraction. What I have done,
That might your nature, honour, and exception3
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
Was 't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Ham-
let:

If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,
And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then? His madness: if 't be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd;
His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy.
Sir, in this audience,]

250

Let my disclaiming from a purpos'd evil
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts,
That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house,
And hurt my brother.

Laer.
I am satisfied in nature,
Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most
To my revenge: but in my terms of honour
I stand aloof; and will no reconcilement
Till by some elder masters, of known honour,
I have a voice and precedent of peace,
To keep my name ungor'd. But till that time
I do receive your offer'd love like love,
And will not wrong it.

260

You know the wager?
Ham.
Very well, my lord;
Your grace hath laid the odds o' the weaker
side.

King. I do not fear it; I have seen you both: But since he's better'd, we have therefore odds. Laer. This is too heavy, let me see another. Ham. This likes me well. These foils have all a length? [They prepare to play. Osr. Ay, my good lord.

3 Exception, objection, as in the phrase "to take exception."

Hath turn'd itself on me; lo, here I lie, 329
Never to rise again: thy mother's poison'd:
I can no more: the king, the king's to blame.
Ham. The point envenom'd too!
Then, venom, to thy work. [Stabs the King.

All. Treason! treason!

King. O, yet defend me, friends; I am but hurt.

Ham. Here, thou incestuous, murderous damned Dane,

Drink off this potion: is thy union here?
Follow my mother.

Laer.

[King dies.

339

He is justly serv'd; It is a poison temper'd by himself. Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet: Mine and my father's death come not upon

NOTES TO

PREFATORY NOTE.

In the notes to this play, which is considerably the longest of Shakespeare's plays,1 all the minute differences of reading will not be given, but only the more important ones; Q. 2 and F. 1 being taken as the two chief authorities for the text. Where the reading of any other text, or any emendation, is adopted, it will be stated in the notes. In quoting the Qq. we have adopted the same principle as the edd of the Cambridge Shakespeare, that is to say, the term Qq. does not include Q. 1 (1603) unless it is expressly 80 stated.

NOTE ON THE DIVISION INTO ACTS
AND SCENES.

This play is not divided into acts and scenes at all in the Quarto, and in the Folio only as far as the second

1 The longest plays of Shakespeare seem to be Hamlet, Richard III., Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Othello, and Antony and Cleopatra. According to the Globe edition the number of lines contained in each of these six plays respectively is as follows: 3928, 3506, 3407. 3342, 3303. 07. But it must be remembered that Richard III. has no prose in it while Coriolanus has a good deal; so that the latter play is probaly, as far as words go, the next longest play to Hamlet.

scene of act ii. The modern divisions are therefore perfectly arbitrary, except in as far as they are taken from the divisions in what are called the Players' Quartos, the earliest of which was printed in 1676; but these, judging from the Quarto of 1695, are divided only into acts and not into scenes. As to the manner in which the acts are divided, it is pretty clear that act ii. should terminate with the soliloquy of Hamlet; but commentators are not agreed as to where act iii. should end. As the play is acted, it always terminates with what is called the Closet Scene between the Queen and Hamlet; but it seems clear, according to both Q. 2 and F. 1, that the author did not intend the act to terminate there. The events which occur in the last scene of act iii. (as at present arranged), and in the first and second scenes of act iv., take place, evidently, on the same night. In F. 1, after the stagedirection Exit Hamlet tugging in Polonius, we have Enter King, which shows that the next scene is merely a continuation of the one before. It is only in Q. 2 that we have the stage-direction after Hamlet's exit Enter King and Queen with Rosencrantz and Gildenstern; but it will be noticed that there is no Exeunt marked, even in Q. 2. At the end of the scene between Hamlet and his mother in Q.1, the stage-direction, after Hamlet's exit with the dead body, is Enter King and Lords, when the King in