but call'd it, an honest1 method; as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I chiefly lov'd: 'twas Eneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of Priam's slaughter; If 5 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, 1 Play. Anon he finds him, But, as we often see, against some storm, Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods, Pol. This is too long. Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard.Pr'ythee, say on:-) -He's for a jigg, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps:-say on; come to Hecuba. 1 Play. But who, ah woe! had seen the mobled queen Ham. The mobled queen? Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good. 10 With bisson rheum: a clout 25 Pol. Look, whe'er he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in 's eyes.-Pr'ythee, 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 bestow'd? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles of the time: After your death, you 30 were better have a bad epitath, than their ill report while you live. Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert. Ham. Odds bodikins, man, much better: Use 35 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. 40 Ham. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow.-Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of Gonzago? 1 Play. Ay, my lord. Ham. We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could, 45 for a need, study a speech 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 50 you mock him not.-My good friends, [to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern] I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinour. Ros. Good, my lord. [Exeunt Ros. and Guil. Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' you:-Now I am alone. 550, what a rogue and peasant slave am I ! Hamlet is telling how much his judgement differed from that of others. One said, there was no salt in the lines, &c., but called it an honest method. The author probably gave it, But I called it an honest method, &c. 2 Gules is a term in heraldry, and signifies red. According to Warburton, mobled, or mabled, signifies veiled; according to Dr. Johnson, it is huddled, grossly covered.-Mr. Steevens says, he was informed that mab-led in Warwickshire (where it is pronounced mob-led) signifies led astray by a will o' the whisp, or ignis fatuus.-Mr. Tollet adds, that in the latter end of the reign of king Charles II. the rabble that attended the earl of Shaftesbury's partisans was first called mobile vulgus, and afterwards, by contraction, the mob; and ever since, the word mob has become proper English. Bisson or beesen, i. e. blind; a word still in use in some parts of the North of England. 3T 4 Is Is it not monstrous, that this player here, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this? players Play something like the murder of my father, 25 1301 [Exit. ND can you by no drift of con- Get from him, why he puts on this confusion; Queen. Did you assay him 40 To any pastime? Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain players Ros. He does confess, he feels himself distracted;| Quicen. Did he receive you well? Ros. Most like a gentleman. Gail. But with much forcing of his disposition. Ros. Niggard of question; but, of our demands, Most free in his reply. i. e. the hint, the direction. 3 55 Pol. Tis most true: +i. e. unnatural. 2 i. e. not quickened with a new desire of vengeance; not teeming with vengeance. Defeat, for dispossession. The meaning is, Wits, to your work. Brain, go about the present business. i. e. search his wounds. ' i. e. if he shrink, Relative, for convictive, according to Warburton.-Relative is, nearly related, closely connected, according to Dr. Johnson. 2 Over-raught is over-reached, that is, over-took. To affront, is only to meet directly. or start, 8 10 Her Her father, and myself (lawful espials') If 't be the affliction of his love, or no, Queen. I shall obey you: And, for my part, Ophelia, I do wish, No traveller returns-puzzles the will; That your good beauties be the happy cause To both your honours. Oph. Madam, I wish it may. please you, [Exit Queen. We will bestow ourselves:-Read on this book ;| 15 [To Ophelia. That show of such an exercise may colour Your loneliness.-We are oft to blame in this,'Tis too much prov'd,—that, with devotion's vi-20I And pious action, we do sugar o'er [sage, The devil himself. King. O, 'tis too true! how smart A lash that speech doth give myconscience! Aside. Oph. Good my lord, How does your honour for this many a day? Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours, pray you, now receive them. never gave you aught. Oph. My honour'd lord, you know right well, you did; [pos'd, And, with them, words of so sweet breath comAs made the things more rich: their perfume lost, 25 Take these again; for to the noble mind Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind. There, my lord. Pol. I hear him coming; let's withdraw, my Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question:- For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest? Ham. Are you fair? Oph. What means your lordship? Ham. That, if you be honest, and fair, you should admit no discourse to your beauty. Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better com35 merce than with honesty? 40 Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can translate beauty into its likeness: this was some time a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once. Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. Ham. You should not have believ'd me: for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, but we 45 shall relish of it: I lov'd you not. Oph. I was the more deceiv'd. Ham. Get thee to a nunnery; Why would'st thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such 50 things, that it were better, my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck, than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in: What should 55 such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none 1i. e. spies. i. e. turmoil, bustle. › Dr. Warburton remarks, that "the evils here complained of are not the product of time or duration simply, but of a corrupted age or manners. We may be sure, then, that Shakspeare wrote, the whips and scorns of th' time.' And the description of the evils of a corrupt age, which follows, confirms this emendation." 4 This expression probably alluded to the writ of discharge, which was formerly granted to those barons and knights who personally attended the king on any foreign expedition.-This discharge was called a Quietus. It is at this time the term for the acquittance which every sheriff receives on settling his accounts at the exchequer. A bodkin was the ancient term for a small dagger. of of us: Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father? Oph. At home, my lord. Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him; that hel may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewell. Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens! Ham. If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry; Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery; farewell; Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough, what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell. Oph. Heavenly powers, restore him! 5 10 15 Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance': Go to; 20 I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. [Exit Hamlet. 25 Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword; The expectancy and rose of the fair state, King. Love! his affections do not that way Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little, O'er which his melancholy sits on brood; I have, in quick determination, Thus set it down; He shall with speed to England, 4 Pol. It shall do well: But yet do I believe Let his queen-mother all alone entreat him Enter Hamlet, and two or three of the Players. Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue : but lif you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious perriwig-pated' fellow tear a 30 passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows, and noise: I would have such a fellow whipp'd for o'er-doing Termagant'; it out-herods Herod': 35 Pray you, avoid it. 40 1 Play. I warrant your honour. Ham. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: For any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature; to shew virtue her own fea45ture, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this, over-done, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your 50 allowance, o'er-weigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players, that I have seen play,-and heard others praise, and that highly,—not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of christians, nor the gait of christian, pagan, nor [55]man, have so strutted, and below'd, that I have 1i. e. you mistake by wanton affectation, and pretend to mistake by ignorance. * The model by whom all endeavoured to form themselves. The word ecstacy was anciently used to signify some degree of alienation of mind. To be round with a person, is to reprimand him with freedom. This is a ridicule on the quantity of false hair worn in Shakspeare's time; for wigs were not in common use till the reign of Charles II. Players, however, seem to have worn them most generally. The meaner people then seem to have sat below, as they now sit in the upper gallery, who, not well understanding poetical language, were sometimes gratified by a mimical and mute representation of the drama, previous to the dialogue. Termagant was a Saracen deity, very clamorous and violent, in the old moralities. The character of Herod in the ancient mysteries was always a violent one. 10 ? i. e, resemblance, as in a print. 1o Any gross or indelicate language was called profane. 1 thought Ham. O, reform it altogether. And let those, Pol. And the queen too, and that presently. Will you two help to hasten them? 15 [Exit Pol. 20 Both. Ay, my lord. [Exeunt Ros. and Guil. Ham. What ho; Horatio! pomp; 30 40 No, let the candy'd tongue lick absurd As Vulcan's stithy': Give him heedful note: 45 For I mine eyes will rivet to his face; 50 Hor. Well, my lord: if he steal aught, the whilst this play is playing, Danish march. A flourish. Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and others. King. How fares our cousin Hamlet? Ham. Excellent, i' faith; of the camelion's dish: I eat the air, promise-cramm'd: You cannot feed capons so. King. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not mine. Ham. No, nor mine now.-My lord, you play'd once i' the university, you say? [To Polonius. Pol. That did I, my lord: and was accounted good actor. a Ham. And what did you enact? Pol. I did enact Julius Cæsar: I was kill'd i' the Capitol; Brutus kill'd me. Ham. It was a brute part of him, to kill so capital a calf there.-Be the players ready? Ros. Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience. attractive. Pol. O ho! do you mark that? [To the King. Ham. I mean, my head upon your lap? I Ham. Do you think I meant country matters"? [legs. Ham.That's a fair thought to lie between maids' Ham. Nothing. Oph. You are merry, my lord. Ham. Who, I? Oph. Ay, my lord. Ham. O! your only jig-maker. What should a man do, but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within these two hours. Oph. Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord. Ham. So long? Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens ! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope, a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year: But, by'r-lady, he must build 55 churches then: or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse'; whose epitaph is, For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot. 3 The sense of pregnant in this place is, quick, ready, prompt. 2 According to the doctrine of the four humours, desire and confidence were seated in the blood, and judgement in the phlegin; and the due mixture of the humours made a perfect character. Stithy is a smith's ancil. 4 Dr. Johnson thinks we must read, Do you think I meant country manners? Do you imagine that I meant to sit in your lap, with such rough gallantry as clowns use to their lasses? Amongst the country maygames there was an hobby-horse, which, when the puritanical humour of those times opposed and discredited these games, was brought by the poets and ballad-makers as an instance of the ridiculous zeal of the sectaries: from these ballads Hanilet quotes a line or two. 5 Trumpets |