Enter four or five Players.

Y'are welcome, masters, welcome all.

[To Polonius. Good my Lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do ye hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chroniclers of the time. After your death, you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you lived. Pol. My Lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Ham. God's bodikins, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? use them after your own honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

Pol. Come, Sirs.

[Exit Polonius.

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

Play. Ay, my Lord.

Ham. We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down and insert in't? could you not?

Play, Ay, my Lord. Ham. Very well. you mock him not. you 'till night :

Follow that Lord, and look
My good friends, I'll leave

?

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

I know my course.

quick; if he but blench,
This spirit that I have seen,

power

May be the devil; and the devil hath
T'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-The Palace.

Enter King, Queen, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, Ro-
SENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and Lords.

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; ·
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 any pastime?

Ros. Madam, it so fell out that certain players We o'ertook 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 beseeched me to intreat your Majesties To hear and see the matter.

King. With all my heart, and it doth much con

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,

To hear him so inclined.

[tent me

And drive his purpose into these delights.
Ros. We shall, my Lord.

[Exeunt.

King. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too;
For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
That he, as 'twere by accident, may here

Affront Ophelia. Her father and myself

Will so bestow ourselves, that, seeing, unseen,
We may of their encounter frankly judge;

And gather by him, as he is behaved,
If't be th' affection of his love, or no,
That thus he suffers for.

Queen. I shall obey you:

And for my part, Ophelia, I do wish,

That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet's wildness! So shall I hope, your virtues
May bring him to his wonted way again,

To both your honours.

Oph. Madam, I wish it may.

Pol. Ophelia, walk you here.

please ye,

[Exit Queen.

(Gracious, so

We will bestow ourselves.) Read on this book; That shew of such an exercise may colour

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

The devil himself.

King. Oh, 'tis too true.

How smart a lash that speech doth give my con

science!

[Aside. The harlot's cheek, beautied with plaistring art, Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it, Than is my deed to my most painted word. Oh heavy burden!

Pol. I hear him coming; let's withdraw, my Lord. [Exeunt all but Ophelia.

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 wished. 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,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pang of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence 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 furdles bear,
To groan and sweat under a weary life?
But that the dread of something after death,
(That undiscovered country, from whose bourne
No traveller returns) puzzles the will;
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,