Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. Ham. You should not have believed me: for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it: I loved you not. Oph. I was the more deceived. Ham. Get thee to a nunnery; Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such 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 such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven! We are arrant knaves, all; believe none 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 he 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! Ham. I have heard of your painting 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; I'll no more of't; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more i. e. always ready to come to me. you mistake by wanton affectation, and pretend to mistake by ignorance. To marriages: those that are married already, all but one,' shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. a nunnery, go. [Exit HAMLET. Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword : Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, 2 Th' observ'd of all observers! quite, quite down! And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That suck'd the honey of his musick vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh; That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth, Blasted with ecstacy: O, woe is me! To have seen what I have seen, see what I see! Re-enter King and POLONIUS. King. Love! his affections do not that way tend; Thus set it down; He shall with speed to England, Meaning his stepfather. * the model by whom all endeavoured to form themselves. 3 aberration of mind. You need not tell us what lord Hamlet said; Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if 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 periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; 3 who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows, and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing Termagant; it outherods Herod: Pray you, avoid it. 1 Play. I warrant your honour. • Alluding to the quantity of false hair then so much worn, and particularly by the players. 3 the meaner people, who then sat in the pit. 4 Termagant was an uprorious Saracen deity, famous in the old Moralities. 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'er-step 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 mirrour up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, 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 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 man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. 1 Play. I hope, we have reformed that indifferently with us. Ham. O, reform it altogether. And let those, that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them, that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villainous; and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. [Exeunt Players. Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN. How now, my lord? will the king hear this piece of work? Pol. And the queen too, and that presently. beside, contrary to. your estimation. Ham. Bid the players make haste.- [Exit POL. Will you two help to hasten them? Both. Ay, my lord. [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Ham. What, ho; Horatio! Enter HORATIO. Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service. Ham. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man As e'er my conversation cop'd withal. Hor. O, my dear lord, Ham. Nay, do not think I flatter: For what advancement may I hope from thee, That no revenue hast, but thy good spirits, [flatter'd? To feed, and clothe thee? Why should the poor be No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp; And crook the pregnant' hinges of the knee, Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear? Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, And could of men distinguish her election, She hath seal'd thee for herself: for thou hast been As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing; A man, that fortune's buffets and rewards Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and bless'd are those, Whose blood and judgement are so well co-mingled, That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger To sound what stop she please: Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee. Something too much of this. There is a play to-night before the king; One scene of it comes near the circumstance, Which I have told thee of my father's death. I pr'ythee, when thou seest that act a-foot, Even with the very comment of thy soul Observe my uncle: if his occulted guilt pregnant, in the sense of ready, prompt. φιλον ἦτορ. |