My stern effects: then what I have to do Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood. Do you see nothing there? Hamlet. Hamlet. Nor did you nothing hear? Hamlet. Why, look you there! 130 No, nothing but ourselves. look, how it steals away! Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal! [Exit Ghost. Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain; This bodiless creation ecstasy Is very cunning in. Hamlet. Ecstasy! My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, For in the fatness of these pursy times 140 To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue ; 150 Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good. Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, Queen. O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain. And live the purer with the other half. Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, That to the use of actions fair and good And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence: the next more easy; 160 170 [Pointing to Polonius. I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so, Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind. Queen. What shall I do? Hamlet. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do : Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers, That I essentially am not in madness, But mad in craft. 'T were good you let him know; 180 190 Unpeg the basket on the house's top, Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape, And break your own neck down. Queen. Be thou assur'd, if words be made of breath, And breath of life, I have no life to breathe What thou hast said to me. Hamlet. I must to England; you know that? I had forgot; 't is so concluded on. Alack, Hamlet. There 's letters seal'd, and my two schoolfellows Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd— They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way, 201 For 't is the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petar: and 't shall go hard O, 't is most sweet, When in one line two crafts directly meet! I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room. 210 [Exeunt severally; Hamlet dragging in Polonius. SCENE I. A Room in the Castle. Enter KING, QUEEN, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN. King. There's matter in these sighs: these profound heaves You must translate; 't is fit we understand them. Where is your son? Queen. Bestow this place on us a little while.— [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night! Queen. Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend And in this brainish apprehension kills. The unseen good old man. King. O heavy deed! It had been so with us, had we been there; His liberty is full of threats to all, To you yourself, to us, to every one. Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd? It will be laid to us, whose providence Should have kept short, restrain'd, and out of haunt, To keep it from divulging, let it feed Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone? Queen. To draw apart the body he hath kill'd; Shows itself pure. He weeps for what is done. The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch, Re-enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENStern. 22 30 [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Come, Gertrude, we 'll call up our wisest friends, And let them know both what we mean to do And what's untimely done; so, haply, slanderWhose whisper o'er the world's diameter, 40 |