HAMLET. William Shakespeare

Guild.], I’ll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore.

       Ros.

       Good my lord!

       [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

       Ham.

       Ay, so, God b’ wi’ ye!

       Now I am alone.

       O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

       Is it not monstrous 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 wan’d;

       Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,

       A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

       With forms to his conceit? 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 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

       As deep as to the lungs? who does me this, ha?

       ‘Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be

       But I am pigeon-liver’d, and lack gall

       To make oppression bitter; or ere this

       I should have fatted all the region kites

       With this slave’s offal: bloody, bawdy villain!

       Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

       O, vengeance!

       Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,

       That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,

       Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

       Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words

       And fall a-cursing like a very drab,

       A scullion!

       Fie upon’t! foh!—About, my brain! I have heard

       That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,

       Have by the very cunning of the scene

       Been struck so to the soul that presently

       They have proclaim’d their malefactions;

       For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

       With most miraculous organ, I’ll have these players

       Play something like the murder of my father

       Before mine uncle: I’ll observe his looks;

       I’ll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,

       I know my course. The spirit that I have seen

       May be the devil: and the devil hath power

       To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps

       Out of my weakness and my melancholy,—

       As he is very potent with such spirits,—

       Abuses me to damn me: I’ll have grounds

       More relative than this.—the play’s the thing

       Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

       [Exit.]

ACT III.

       Table of Contents

      SCENE I. A room in the Castle.

       [Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and

       Guildenstern.]

       King.

       And can you, by no drift of circumstance,

       Get from him why he puts on this confusion,

       Grating so harshly all his days of quiet

       With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

       Ros.

       He does confess he feels himself distracted,

       But from what cause he will by no means speak.

       Guil.

       Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,

       But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof

       When we would bring him on to some confession

       Of his true state.

       Queen.

       Did he receive you well?

       Ros.

       Most like a gentleman.

       Guil.

       But with much forcing of his disposition.

       Ros.

       Niggard of question; but, of our demands,

       Most free in his reply.

       Queen.

       Did you assay him

       To any pastime?

       Ros.

       Madam, it so fell out that certain players

       We o’er-raught on the way: of these we told him,

       And there did seem in him a kind of joy

       To hear of it: they are about the court,

       And, as I think, they have already order

       This night to play before him.

       Pol.

       ‘Tis most true;

       And he beseech’d me to entreat your majesties

       To hear and see the matter.

       King.

       With all my heart; and it doth much content me

       To hear him so inclin’d.—

       Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,

       And drive his purpose on to these delights.

       Ros.

       We shall, my lord.

       [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

       King.

       Sweet Gertrude, leave us too;

       For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,

       That he, as ‘twere by accident, may here

       Affront Ophelia:

       Her father and myself,—lawful espials,—

       Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen,

       We may of their encounter frankly judge;