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Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly: these, indeed, seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within, which passeth show;
These, but the trappings and the suits of woe.

HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON HIS MOTHER'S MARRIAGE.

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve* itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature,
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead!-nay, not so much, not two.
So excellent a king; that was, to this,

Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem § the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,—
Let me not think on't; Frailty, thy name is woman!
A little month; or ere those shoes were old,
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears;-why she, even she,—

O heaven! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer,-married with my uncle,

* Dissolve.

† Entirely.

+ Apollo.

§ Suffer.

My father's brother; but no more like my father,
Than I to Hercules: within a month;
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married:-O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to, good.

THE EXTENT OF HUMAN PERFECTION.

He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.

HAMLET, ON THE APPEARANCE OF HIS FATHER'S GHOST.

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!

Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd;

Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou comest in such a questionable* shape,

That I will speak to thee; I'll call thee, Hamlet,

King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me:

Let me not burst in ignorance! but tell,
Why thy canonised bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements! why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urn'd,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again! What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature,
So horridly to shake our disposition+

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
† Frame.

* Conversable.

[graphic]

CAUTIONS TO YOUNG FEMALES.

For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour,
Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood;
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute:
No more.

Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain,
If with too credent ear you list his songs;
Or lose your heart: or your chaste treasure open
To his unmaster'd importunity.

Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister;
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon;
Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes ;
The canker galls the infants of the spring,
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed;
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.

SOLILOQUY ON LIFE AND DEATH.

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 a life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin ? § who would fardels || bear,

* Stir, bustle

+ Consideration.

§ The ancient term for a small dagger.

Acquittance.

Pack, burden.

To grunt and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after death,-
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 hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

CALUMNY.

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.

MIDNIGHT.

"Tis now the very witching time of night;

When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such business as the better day
Would quake to look on. Soft now to my mother-
O, heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom :

Let me be cruel, not unnatural :

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

THE KING'S DESPAIRING SOLILOQUY.

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,
A brother's murder!-Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will;

* Boundary, limits.

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