- to sleep

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them i to die,
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 wilh'd. To dieto 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,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pang of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The infolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes;
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardles bear,
To
groan

and sweat under a weary life?
But that the dread of something after death,
(That undiscover'd country, from whose bourne
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 hue of resolution
Is ficklied 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!

[Seeing Oph. The fair Ophelia Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remembred.

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, I never gave you aught.

Ople

Oph. My honour'd lord, you know right well, you

did;
And with them words of so fweet breath compos'd,
As made the things more rich : that perfume loft,
Take these again

; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.

Ham. Ha, ha! are you honeft ?
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.

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

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

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

Ham. You should not have believed me. For virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, but we shall relifh of it. I lov'd you not.

Oph. I was the more deceiv’d.

Ham. Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of finners? I am my self indifferent honeft ; but yet

I could accuse me of such Things, that it were better, my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck, than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should luch fellows, as I, do crawling between heav'n and earth ? we are arrant knaves, believe none of us ways to a nunnery Where's your father?

Oph. At home, my lord.

Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewel.

Oph. Oh help him, you sweet heav'ns !
Ham. If thou doft marry, I'll give thee this plague for

tby

- Go thy

thy dowry. Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. - Get thee to a nunnery,

farewel - Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool ; for wife men know well enough, what monsters you make of them - To a nunnery, go and quickly too : farewel.

Oph. Heav'nly powers, restore him!

Ham. I have heard of your painting too, well enough: God has given you one face, and you make your felves another. You jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick.. name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't, it hath made me mad. I fay, we will have no more marriages. Those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are.

To a nunnery, go.

[Exit Hamlet.
Oph. Oh, what a noble mind is here oferthrown !
The courtier's, foldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword !
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair Śtate,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
Th' observ'd of all observers, quite, quite down!
I am of ladies most deject and wretched,
That fuck'd the hony of his musick vows :
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled out of tune, and harsh ;
That unmatch'd form, and feature of blown youth,
Blasted with extafie. Oh, woe is me!
T' have seen what I have seen; see what I see.

Enter King and Polonius.
King. Love ! his affections do not that way tend,
Nor what he spake, tho' it lack'd form a little,
Was not like madness. Something's in his soul,
O'er which his melancholy fits on brood ;
And, I do doubt, the hatch and the disclose
Will be some danger, which, how to prevent,
I have in quick determination
Thus set it down. He shall with speed to England,
For the demand of our neglected Tribute :
Haply, the Seas and Countries different,

With variable objects, shall expel
This something-settled matter in his heart ;
Whereon his brains still beating, puts him thus
From fashion of himself. What think you on't ?

Pol. It shall do well. But yet do I believe,
The origin and commencement of this grief
Sprung from neglected love. How now, Opbelia?
You need not tell us what lord Hamlet said,
We heard it all. My lord, do as you please;

[Exit Ophelia. But if

you hold it fit, after the Play
Let his Queen-mother all alone intreat him
To fhew his griefs ; let her be round with him :
And I'll be plac'd, so please you, in the ear
Of all their conf'rence. If the find him not,
To England send him; or confine him, where
Your wisdom beft fhall think.

King. It shall be fo :
Madness in Great ones must not unwatch'd go.

[Exeunt. Enter Hamlet, and two or three of the Players. Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you; as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our Players do, I had as lieve, the towncrier had spoke my lines. And do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempes, and, as I may say, whirl-wind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the foul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a parfion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings: who (for the most part) are capable of nothing, but inexplicable dumb shews, and noise : I could have such a fellow whipt for o'er-doing Termagant; it out-herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.

Play. I warrant your Honour.

Ham. Be not too tame neither ; but let your own discretion be your tutor.

Sute the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that

you

you o'er-step not the modesty of Nature ; for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing ; whose end, both at the first and now; was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature; to shew virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now this over-done, or come tardy of, tho' it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve : the censure of which one must in your allowance o'er-weigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, there be Players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, (not to speak' it prophanely) that neither having the accent of chriftian, nor the gate of christian, pagan, nor man, have so ftrutted and bellow'd, that I have thought some of nature's journey-men had made men, and not made them well ; they imitated humanity fo abominably.

Play. I hope, we have reform'd that indifferently with us.

Ham. Oh, reform it altogether. And let those, that play your Clowns, speak no more than is set down for them : For there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too ; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the Play be then to be considered : That's villanous; and news a most pitiful ambition in the fool that oses it. Go make you ready. [Exeunt Players.

Enter Polonius, Rosincrantz, and Guildenstern. How now, my lord ; will the King hear this piece of

work ?
Pol. And the Queen too, and that presently.

Ham. Bid the Players make hafte. [Exit Polonius,
Will you two help to hasten them?
Both. We will, my lord.

[Exeunt. Ham. What, ho, Horatio !

Enter Horatio to Hamlet.
Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service,

Ham. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a Man,
As e'er my conversation coap'd withal,

Hor.