Enter Four or Five Players.

You are welcome, masters; welcome, all :-I am glad to see thee well:-welcome, good friends.O, old friend! Why, thy face is valiant since I saw thee last; Com'st thou to beard me in Denmark?-What! my young lady and mistress! By-'r-lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven, than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a choppine.(42) Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring. (43)——— Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en to't

like French falconers, fly at any thing we see : We'll have a speech straight: Come, give us a taste of your quality; come, a passionate speech. 1 PLAY. What speech, my lord?

HAM. I heard thee speak me a speech once,but it was never acted; or, if it was, not above once for the play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas caviarie to the General:(45) but it was (as I received it, and others, whose judgments, in such matters, cried in the top of mine) an excellent play; well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said, there were no sallets in the lines, to make the matter savoury; nor no matter in the phrase, that might indite the author of affectation:(46) but called it, an honest method [as

d

⚫ quality] Qualifications, faculty. Haml. to Rosencr. supra. • cried in the top of mine] Proclaimed not merely in addition to my voice and censure, but with a tone of authority, that mine could not sound. See Rosencr. supra. "Cried out on the top of question."

⚫ as much modesty as cunning] As much propriety and decorum, as skill.

a

"For

no sallets in the lines] Licentious jocularity, ribaldry. junkets, joci, and for curious sallets, sales." A Banquet of Jests, 1669. STEEVENS.

wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine.] One chief speech in it I chiefly loved: 47 'twas Eneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of Priam's slaughter: If it live in your memory, begin at this line; let me see, let me see ;

The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,— 'tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus.

The rugged Pyrrhus,-he, whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
Now is he total gules;* horridly trick'd(48)
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons;
Bak'd and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and damned light

*

To their vile murders: Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles; the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks; [So proceed you.]
POL. 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken; with
good accent, and good discretion.

1 PLAY. Anon he finds him

Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command: Unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage, strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,

d

and by very much more handsome than fine] With more of elegant and just form and proportion, than of superfluous ornament and composed in the spirit and taste of the advice just given by Polonius to Laertes as to dress; "rich, not gaudy."

bo'er-sized] Covered as with glutinous matter.

с

e carbuncles] Jewels, resembling coals. See P. Lost. IX. 500. a Falls with the whiff and wind of his fell sword] Our author employs the same image in almost the same phrase:

"The Grecians fall

"Even in the fan and wind of your fair sword."

Tr. & Cress. V. 3. Tr.

Seeming to feel this* blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base; and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo! his sword
Which was declining (50) on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i the air to stick:
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood;
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.

But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death: anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region: So, after Pyrrhus' pause,
A roused vengeance sets him new a work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour, forg'd for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.-

(51)

Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod, take away her power;

• So, 4tos.

his 1623,32.

1623, 32.

Break all the spokes and fellies* from her wheel,(52) fallies,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!

POL. This is too long.

HAM. It shall to the barber's with your beard.Pr'ythee, say on:-He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, (53) or he sleeps:-say on: come to Hecuba. 1 PLAY. But who, O who queen (4)

had seen the mobled ah woe!

HAM. The mobled * queen?

POL. That's good; mobled* queen is good.

1 PLAY. Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning the flame*

4tos.

*inobled,

1623.

id.

#id.

* flames, 4tos.

With bisson rheum; (55) a clout about* that head, upon 4tos.

His sword seem'd i' the air to stick, &c.] As represented in tapestry hangings, the furniture of the age, in which, as Mr. Malone observes, their swords "stick in the air and do nothing."

the rack] The clouds or congregated vapour. See Temp. IV. 1. Prosp.

⚫ where, O. C.

* of this,

4tos.

much,

4tos.

Where late the diadem stood; and, for a robe,
About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,

A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst fortune's state would treason have pro-

nounc'd:

But if the gods themselves did see her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs;
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
(Unless things mortal move them not at all,)
Would have made milch the burning eyes of hea-

ven,

And passion in the gods.(56)

*

POL. Look, whether he has not turned his colour, and has tears in's eyes.-Pr'ythee, no more. (57)

*

HAM. 'Tis well; I'll have thee speak out the rest soon.-Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time: After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.

POL. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

HAM. God's bodikin, man,* bodikin, man,* 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 with some of the Players. HAM. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play tomorrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of Gonzago?

1 PLAY. Ay, my lord.

HAM. We'll have it to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech (58) of some dozen

or sixteen lines, which I would set down, and insert in't? could you not?

1 PLAY. Ay, my lord.

HAM. Very well.-Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exit Player.] My good friends, [To Ros. and GUIL.] I'll leave you till night you are welcome to Elsinore.

Ros. Good my lord!

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and Guildenstern.

HAM. Ay, so, God be wi' you:*-Now I am alone. buy'ye,
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Is it not monstrous,(59) that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit,
That, from her working, all his visage warm'd ; (60)
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting, (61)
With forms to his conceit ?(62) And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue (63) for passion,
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant; and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property, and most dear life,
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i'the
throat,

• defeat was made] Overthrow. See M. ado, &c. IV. 1. Leon.

1623, 52.

buy to, 4tos.