Part them! they are incens'd.
[The Queen falls.

Look to the queen there, ho!
How is't, my

King.
Ham. Nay, come again.

Osr.

Hor. They bleed on both sides.

lord?

Osr. How is't, Laertes?

Laer. Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe,

Osrick;

I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery.
Ham. How does the queen?

King.

She swoons to see them bleed. Queen. No, no, the drink, the drink!-O, my dear Hamlet!

The drink, the drink!-I am poison'd!

[Dies. Ham. O villainy!-Ho! let the door be lock'd: Treachery! seek it out. [LAERTES falls. Laer. It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain; No medicine in the world can do thee good: In thee there is not half an hour of life; The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, Unbated, and envenom’d.* The foul practice

41

42

Hath turn'd itself on me: lo! here I lie,
Never to rise again. Thy mother's poison'd:
I can no more; the king, the king's to blame.
Ham. The point

Envenom'd too!-Then, venom, to thy work!
[Stabs the King.

All. Treason! treason!

King. O! yet defend me, friends; I am but hurt. Ham. Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,

Drink off this potion:—is thy union here?
Follow my mother.

[King dies.

41 So the folio; the quartos, "half an hour's life." 42 Unbated is unblunted, as in Act iv. sc. 7, note 18.

H.
H.

He is justly serv'd;

Laer.
It is a poison temper'd by himself. -
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet:
Mine and my father's death come not upon thee,
Nor thine on me!

[Dies. Ham. Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.

I am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu !—
You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time, (as this fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest,) O! I could tell you-
But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;
Thou liv'st report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.

Hor.

Never believe it :
I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.
Here's yet some liquor left.

Ham.

As thou 'rt a man,

Give me the cup: let go; by Heaven, I'll have't. — O God! - Horatio, what a wounded name,

Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story.

[March afar off, and Shot within. What warlike noise is this?

Osr. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from

Poland,

To the ambassadors of England gives

This warlike volley.

Ham.
O, I die, Horatio!
The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit: 43

43 To overcrow is to overcome, to subdue. "These noblemen

I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy th' election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;

So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited “ The rest is silence. [Dies.
Hor. Now cracks a noble heart! — Good night,
sweet prince;

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! -
Why does the drum come hither.

[March within.

Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambassadors, and
Others.

Fort. Where is this sight?
Hor.

45

―

What is it ye would see? If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search. Fort. This cries on havoc ! quarry - O, proud death! What feast is toward in thine eternal cell, That thou so many princes, at a shot, So bloodily hast struck?

1 Amb.

The sight is dismal,
And our affairs from England come too late:
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
To tell him his commandment is fulfill'd;

That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Where should we have our thanks?

laboured with tooth and naile to overcrow, and consequently to overthrow one another." - Holinshed's History of Ireland.

44 Occurrents was much used in the Poet's time for events or Occurrences. - Solicited is prompted or excited; as "this supernatural soliciting" in Macbeth. -"More and less" is greater and smaller; a common usage with the old writers.-The folio adds, after silence, “O, o, o, o."

н.

45 To cry on was to exclaim against. I suppose, when unfair sportsmen destroyed more game than was reasonable, the censure was to call it havoc.-JOHNSON.. Quarry was the term used for a heap of slaughtered game. See Macbeth, Act i. sc. 2,

note 3.

Not from his mouth,

Hor.

Had it th' ability of life to thank you
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question,46
You from the Polack wars, and you from England,

Are here arriv'd, give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placed to the view;
And let me speak to th' yet unknowing world,
How these things came about: so shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts;
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;
Of deaths put on by cunning, and forc'd cause ;
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I
Truly deliver.

47

Fort. Let us haste to hear it, And call the noblest to the audience. For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune : I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.

Hor. Of that I shall have also cause to speak, And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more: But let this same be presently perform'd,

Even while men's minds are wild; lest more mischance,

On plots and errors, happen.

Fort. Let four captains Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;

48

46 It has been already observed that jump and just, or exactly,

are synonymous. See Act i. sc. 1, note 10.

47 The quartos have "and for no cause." The phrase put on here means instigated or set on foot. Cunning refers, apparently, to Hamlet's action touching "the packet," and forc'd cause, to the "compelling occasion," which moved him to that piece of practice.

H.

48 That is, some rights which are remembered in this kingdom.

For he was likely, had he been put on,

To have prov'd most royally: and, for his passage, The soldier's music, and the rights of war,

Speak loudly for him.

Take the bodies.
up
Such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

[A dead March. [Exeunt, marching; after which, a Peal of Ordnance is shot off.