322

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK.

1

For women fear too much, even as they love;
And women's fear and love hold quantity;
In neither aught, or in extremity.

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

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear,
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.
P. King. 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and
shortly too;

2

My operant powers their functions leave to do;
And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honored, beloved; and, happily, one as kind
For husband shalt thou-

P. Queen.
O, confound the rest!
Such love must needs be treason in my breast;
In second husband let me be accursed!

None wed the second, but who killed the first.
Ham. That's wormwood.

P. 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.

Purpose is but the slave to memory;
Of violent birth, but poor validity ;

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

3

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

[ACT III.

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 with themselves destroy;

4

1 This line is omitted in the folio. There appears to have been a line omitted in the quarto which should have rhymed to this.

2 i. e. active.

3 Instances are motives. See note on King Richard III. Act iii. Sc. 2.
4 i. e. their own determinations are revoked in their abatement.

SC. II.]

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK.

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 favorite flies;
The poor advanced 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.
But, orderly to end where I begun,
Our wills and fates do so contrary run,
That our devices still are overthrown ;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
So think thou wilt no second husband wed;

But die thy thoughts, when thy first lord is dead.

P. Queen. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven
light!

1

Sport and repose lock from me, day and night!
To desperation turn my trust and hope!
An anchor's 1 cheer in prison be my scope!
Each opposite, that blanks the face of joy,
Meet what I would have well, and it destroy!
Both here, and hence, pursue me lasting strife,
If, once a widow, ever I be wife!

Ham. If she should break it now, [To ОPH.
P. King. 'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me
here a while;

My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.

1 Anchor's for anchoret's.

323

[Sleeps.

P. Queen.
Sleep rock thy brain;
And never come mischance between us twain! [Exit.
Ham. Madam, how like you this play?

Queen. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Ham. O, but she'll keep her word.

King. Have you heard the argument? Is there no
offence in't?

324

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK.

[ACT II1.

Ham. No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i̇' the world.

King. What do you call the play?

Ham. The mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically.1 This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna; Gonzago is the duke's name; his wife, Baptista; you shall see anon; 'tis a knavish piece of work. But what of that? your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. Let the galled jade wince, our withers

are unwrung.

Enter LUCIANUS.

3

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.
Oph. You are as good as a chorus, my lord.
Ham. I could interpret between you and your love,
if I could see the puppets dallying.

Oph. You are keen, my lord, you are keen. Ham. It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.

-The croaking raven

Oph. Still better, and worse.

4

Ham. So you mistake 1 your husbands.—Begin, murderer ;—leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come ;

Doth bellow for revenge.

Luc. Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing; Confederate season, else no creature seeing;

79

1 First quarto-trapically. It is evident that a pun was intended. 2 "Gonzago is the duke's name; his wife, Baptista; all the old copies read thus. Yet in the dumb show we have " Enter a King and Queen; and at the end of this speech, "Lucianus, nephew to the King." This seeming inconsistency, however, may be reconciled. Though the interlude is the image of the murder of the duke of Vienna, or, in other words, founded upon that story, the Poet might make the principal person in his fable a king. Baptista is never used singly by the Italians, being uniformly compounded with Giam for Giovanni. It is needless to remark that it is always the name of a man.

3 The use to which Shakspeare put the chorus may be seen in King Henry V. Every motion or puppet-show was accompanied by an inter· preter or showman.

4 The first quarto-" So you must take your husband." Hamlet puns upon the word mistake; "So you mis-take or take your husbands amiss for better and worse."

SC. II.]

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK.

Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecat's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
Thy natural magic and dire property,
On wholesome life usurp immediately.

[Pours the poison into the sleeper's ears. Ham. He poisons him i' the garden for his estate. His name's Gonzago; the story is extant, and written in very choice Italian: you shall see, anon, how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife.

Oph. The king rises.

Ham. What! frighted with false fire!
Queen. How fares my lord?
Pol. Give o'er the play.
King. Give me some light; away!
Pol. Lights, lights, lights!

Exeunt all but HAMLET and HORATIO
Ham. Why, let the strucken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play;

For some must watch, while some must sleep;

Thus runs the world away.

Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, (if the rest
of my fortunes turn Turk1 with me,) with two Provin-
cial roses on my razed2 shoes, get me a fellowship in a
cry 3 of players, sir?

Hor. Half a share.1

Ham. A whole one, I.

For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was

Of Jove himself; and now reigns here

A very, very-peacock.5

1 To turn Turk was a familiar phrase for any violent change in condition or character.

2 “Provincial roses on my razed shoes." Provincial roses took tneir name from Provins, in Lower Brie, and not from Provence. Razed shoes are most probably embroidered shoes. The quarto reads raced. To race, or rase, was to stripe.

3 It was usual to call a pack of hounds a cry; it is here humorously applied to a troop or company of players.

4 The players were paid not by salaries, but by shares or portions of the profit, according to merit.

325

5 “A very, very-peacock." The old copies read paiock, and paiocke. The peacock was as proverbially used for a proud fool as the lapwing for a silly one.

Hor. You might have rhymed.

Ham. O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound. Didst perceive?

Hor. Very well, my lord.

Ham. Upon the talk of the poisoning,-
Hor. I did very well note him.

Ham. Ah, ha!-come, some music; come, the recorders,1-___

For if the king like not the comedy,
Why, then, belike,-he likes it not, perdy.

Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

Come, some music.

Guil. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with

[ACT IN

you.

Ham. Sir, a whole history.

Guil. The king, sir,

Ham. Ay, sir, what of him?

Guil. Is, in his retirement, marvellous distempered.
Ham. With drink, sir?

Guil. No, my lord, with choler.

Ham. Your wisdom should show itself more richer, to signify this to the doctor; for, for me to put him to his purgation, would, perhaps, plunge him into more choler.

Guil. Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair.

Ham. I am tame, sir;-pronounce.

Guil. The queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.

Ham. You are welcome.

2

Guil. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother's command

1 "The recorders." It is difficult to settle exactly the form of this instrument; old writers, in general, make no distinction between a flute, a pipe, and a recorder; but Hawkins has shown clearly, that the flute and the recorder were distinct instruments.

2 Perdy is a corruption of the French par Dieu.