HAMLET. William Shakespeare

well.—welcome, good friends.—O, my old friend! Thy face is valanc’d since I saw thee last; comest 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 chopine. Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.—Masters, you are all welcome. We’ll e’en to’t like French falconers, fly at anything we see: we’ll have a speech straight: come, give us a taste of your quality: come, a passionate speech.

       I 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 caviare to the general; 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; but called it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I chiefly loved: ‘twas AEneas’ 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 th’ Hyrcanian beast,—

       it is 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

       With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,

       Bak’d and impasted with the parching streets,

       That lend a tyrannous and a damned light

       To their vile murders: roasted in wrath and fire,

       And thus o’ersized 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.

       I 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,

       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 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.—

       Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,

       In general synod, take away her power;

       Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,

       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, or he sleeps:—say on; come

       to Hecuba.

       I Play.

       But who, O who, had seen the mobled queen,—

       Ham.

       ‘The mobled queen’?

       Pol.

       That’s good! ‘Mobled queen’ is good.

       I Play.

       Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames

       With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head

       Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,

       About her lank and all o’erteemed 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 pronounc’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 heaven,

       And passion in the gods.

       Pol. Look, whether he has not turn’d his colour, and has tears in’s eyes.—Pray you, no more!

       Ham. ‘Tis well. I’ll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.— Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear? Let them be well used; for they are the abstracts 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. Odd’s bodikin, man, better: use every man after his desert, and who should 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.

       Ham.

       Follow him, friends: we’ll hear a play tomorrow.

       [Exeunt Polonius with all the Players but the First.]

       Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play ‘The Murder of

       Gonzago’?

       I Play.

       Ay, my lord.

       Ham. We’ll ha’t tomorrow 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?

       I Play.

       Ay, my lord.

       Ham.

       Very well.—Follow that lord; and look you mock him not.

       [Exit First Player.]