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Enter the King, the
ROSENCRANTZ,

Queen, POLONIUS, OPHELIA,

GUILDENSTERN, and Others.

King. How fares our cousin Hamlet ?

Ham. Excellent, i'faith; of the chameleon's dish. I eat the air, promise-cramm'd. You cannot feed

capons so.

King. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet, these words are not mine.

Ham. No, nor mine now.

-[To POLON.] My lord,

you play'd once i'the university, you say?

Pol. That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.

Ham. And what did you enact?

Pol. I did enact Julius Cæsar: I was kill'd i'the Capitol; Brutus kill'd me.'

12

Ham. It was a brute part of him, to kill so capital a calf there. Be the players ready?

Ros. Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.' Queen. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me. Ham. No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.

Pol. [To the King.] O ho! do you mark that? Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

[Lying down at OPHELIA'S Feet. Oph. No, my lord.

12 A Latin play on Cæsar's death was performed at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1582. Malone thinks that there was an Eng lish play on the same subject previous to Shakespeare's. Cæsar was killed in Pompey's portico, and not in the Capitol but the error is at least as old as Chaucer's time.

13 That is, they wait upon your sufferance or will. Johnson would have changed the word to pleasure; but Shakespeare has it in a similar sense in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act iii. sc. 1: And think my patience more than thy desert is privilege for thy departure hence."

Ham. I mean, my head upon your lap?"
Oph. Ay, my lord.

Ham. Do you think, I meant country matters ? Oph. I think nothing, my lord.

Ham. That's a fair thought to lie between maids'

legs.

Oph. What is, my lord?

Ham. Nothing.

Oph. You are merry, my lord.

Ham. Who, I?

Oph. Ay, my lord.

15

Ham. O God! your only jig-maker.' What should a man do, but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.

Oph. Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.

Ham. So long? Nay, then let the devil wear black, 'fore I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens ! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope, a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year: But, by'r-lady, he must build churches then, or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse; whose epitaph is, "For, ()! for, O! the hobby-horse is forgot.'

77 17

14 This question and the answer to it are only in the folio.

15 See Act ii. sc. 2, note 51.

H.

16 Hanmer would read ermine, on the ground that sable is itself mourning colour. But sables were among the most rich and costly articles of dress; and a statute of the reign of Henry VIII. made it unlawful for any one under the rank of an earl to wear them. The meaning is well explained by Knight, thus: "If Hamlet had said, Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of ermine,' he would merely have said, 'Let the devil be in mourning, for I'll be fine.' But, as it is, he says, Let the devil wear the real colours of grief, but I'll be magnificent in a garb that only has a facing of something like grief.""

H.

Alluding to the expulsion of the hobby-horse from the May

Trumpets sound. The Dumb Show enters.

Enter a King and a Queen, very lovingly; the Queen embracing him. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck; lays him down upon a bank of flowers: she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a Fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns, finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The Poisoner, with some two or three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner woos the Queen with gifts: she seems loth and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love.

[Exeunt.

Oph. What means this, my lord? Ham. Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.18

Oph. Belike, this show imports the argument of the play.

Enter Prologue.

Ham. We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel; they'll tell all.

Oph. Will he tell us what this show meant?

Ham. Ay, or any show that you'll show him: Be not you asham'd to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means.

Oph. You are naught, you are naught: I'll mark the play.

games, where he had long been a favourite. See Love's Labour's Lost, Act iii. sc. 1, note 6.

H.

18 Miching mallecho is lurking mischief, or evil doing. To mich for to skulk, to lurk, was an old English verb in common use in Shakespeare's time; and mallecho or malhecho, misdeed, he has Dorrowed from the Spanish.

Pro. For us, and for our tragedy,

Here stooping to your clemency,

We beg your hearing patiently.

Ham. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring? Oph. 'Tis brief, my lord,

Ham. As woman's love.

Enter a King and a Queen.

King. Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round'
Neptune's salt wash, and Tellus' orbed ground;
And thirty dozen moons, with borrow'd sheen,
About the world have times twelve thirties been;
Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands,
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

Queen. So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o'er, ere love be done!
But, woe is me! you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer, and from your former state,
That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must:
For women's fear and love hold quantity; 20
In neither aught, or in extremity.

Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
And as my love is siz'd, my fear is so.

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there."
King. 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
My operant powers their functions leave to do:

19 Cart, car, and chariot were used indiscriminately. -The stye," says Coleridge," of the interlude here is distinguished from the real dialogue by rhyme, as in the first interview with the players by epic verse."

H.

20 So the folio; the quartos have a different reading, giving two lines for one:

"For women fear too much, even as they love;
And women's fear and love hold quantity."

1 The last two lines of this speech are not in the folio.

H.

B

And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honour'd, belov'd; and, haply, one as kind
For husband shalt thou-

Queen.

O, confound the rest!

Such love must needs be treason in my breast:

In second husband let me be accurst!

None wed the second, but who kill'd the first.

Ham. [Aside.] That's wormwood.

Queen. The instances, that second marriage move, Are base respects of thrift, but none of love:

A second time I kill my husband dead,

When second husband kisses me in bed. .

King. I do believe you think what now you speak; But what we do determine oft we break.

Purpose is but the slave to memory,

Of violent birth, but poor validity;

Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,
But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.
Most necessary 'tis, that we forget

To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt:
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
The violence of either grief or joy

Their own enactures 22 with themselves destroy:
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;
Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
This world is not for aye; nor 'tis not strange,
That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
For 'tis a question left us yet to prove,

Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
The great man down, you mark, his favourite flies;
The poor advanc'd makes friends of enemies:

And hitherto doth love on fortune tend;

For who not needs, shall never lack a friend;
And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
Directly seasons him his enemy.23

22 That is, their own determinations, what they enact.

83 Season was very commonly used in the sense of to temper

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