Foredo1 its own life. "Twas of some estate

Couch we awhile, and mark.

· 2

[Retiring with HORATIO.

Laer. What ceremony else?
Ham.

A very noble youth. Mark.
Laer. What ceremony else?

3

That is Laertes,

1 Priest. Her obsequies have been as far enlarged
As we have warranty. Her death was doubtful;
And, but that great command o'ersways the order,
She should in ground unsanctified have lodged

Till the last trumpet; for charitable prayers,

4

Shards, flints, and pebbles, should be thrown on her;
Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants,5

Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home
Of bell and burial.

Laer. Must there no more be done?

1 Priest.

No more be done!

We should profane the service of the dead,
To sing a requiem, and such rest to her

As to peace-parted souls.

Laer.

Lay her i' the earth;

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh,

May violets spring!-I tell thee, churlish priest,
A ministering angel shall my sister be,
When thou liest howling.

Ham.

What, the fair Ophelia !

Queen. Sweets to the sweet. Farewell!

[Scattering flowers.
I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;
I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid,
And not have strewed thy grave.

Laer.

O, treble woe

Fall ten times treble on that cursed head,

1 To foredo is to undo, to destroy.

2 Estate for rank.

3 Quarto-Doctor.

4 Shards does not only mean fragments of pots and tiles, but rubbish of any kind. Our version of the Bible has preserved to us potsherds.

5 i. e. garlands. Still used in most northern languages. Warburton substituted chants.

Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense
Deprived thee of!-Hold off the earth a while,
Till I have caught her once more in mine arms.

[Leaps into the grave.

Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead;
Till of this flat a mountain you have made
To o'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus.

Ham. [Advancing.] What is he, whose grief Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,

I pry'thee, take thy fingers from my throat;
For, though I am not splenetive and rash,
Yet have I in me something dangerous,

Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand.
King. Pluck them asunder.

Queen.

All. Gentlemen,—

Hor.

Hamlet, Hamlet !

Good my lord, be quiet.

[The Attendants part them, and they come

out of the grave.

Ham. Why, I will fight with him upon this theme,

Until my eyelids will no longer wag.

Queen. O my son! what theme?

Ham. I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers

Could not, with all their quantity of love,

Make up my sum.-What wilt thou do for her?

King. O, he is mad, Laertes.

Queen. For love of God, forbear him.

Ham. Zounds, show me what thou'lt do.

Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself?

Woo't drink up eisel,' eat a crocodile ?

The quarto of 1603 reads:-"Wilt drink up vessels ?" and instead of Osra, Oosell. What river, lake, or firth, Shakspeare meant to designate

I'll do't.-Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her

grave?

Be buried quick with her, and so will I.
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us; till our ground,

Singeing his pate against the burning zone,

Make Ossa like a wart!

I'll rant as well as thou.

Queen.

Nay, an thou'lt mouth,

This is mere madness;

And thus awhile the fit will work on him;
Anon, as patient as the female dove,

When that her golden couplets are disclosed,1
His silence will sit drooping.

Ham.

Hear you, sir;

What is the reason that you use me thus?
I loved you ever. But it is no matter;
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, the dog will have his day. [Exit.
King. I pray thee, good Horatio, wait upon him.-

[Exit HORATIO.

Strengthen your patience in our last night's speech ;

[TO LAERTES.

We'll put the matter to the present push.

Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.-
This grave shall have a living monument.

An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;

Till then, in patience our proceeding be. [Exeunt.

SCENE II. A Hall in the Castle.

Enter HAMLET and HORATIO.

Ham. So much for this, sir; now shall you see the other ;

You do remember all the circumstance?

is uncertain, perhaps the Issel; but the firth of lyse is nearest to his scene of action, and near enough in name. Woo't or woot'o, in the northern counties, is the common contraction of wouldst thou; and this is the reading of the old copies.

The golden couplets alludes to the dove only laying two eggs.

VOL. VII.

48

Hor. Remember it, my lord!

1

2

Ham. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep; methought I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly, And praised be rashness for it,-Let us know, Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,

3

When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us,
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.

Hor.

Ham. Up from my cabin,

4

That is most certain.

My sea-gown scarfed about me, in the dark
Groped I to find out them; had my desire;
Fingered their packet; and, in fine, withdrew
To mine own room again; making so bold,
My fears forgetting manners, to unseal
Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio,
A royal knavery; an exact command,-
Larded with many several sorts of reasons,
Importing Denmark's health, and England's too,
With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life,-
That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,

5

6

No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,

My head should be struck off.

Hor.

Is't possible?

Ham. Here's the commission; read it at more

leisure.

But wilt thou hear now how I did proceed?

Hor. Ay, 'beseech you.

Ham. Being thus benetted round with villanies,

1 i. e. mutineers.

2 The bilboes were bars of iron with fetters annexed to them, by which mutinous or disorderly sailors were anciently linked together. The word is derived from Bilboa, in Spain, where implements of iron and steel were fabricated.

3 To pall was to fade or fall away.

4 "Esclavine (says Cotgrave), a sea-gowne, a coarse, high-collared and short-sleeved gowne, reaching to the mid-leg, and used mostly by seamen and sailors."

5 “With such causes of terror arising from my character and designs." Bugs were no less terrific than goblins. We now call them bugbears. 6 The supervise is the looking over; no leisure bated means without any abatement or intermission of time.

Or1 I could make a prologue to my brains,
They had begun the play.-I sat me down;
Devised a new commission; wrote it fair :
I once did hold it, as our statists do,

2

A baseness to write fair, and labored much
How to forget that learning; but, sir, now
It did me yeoman's service.3 Wilt thou know
The effect of what I wrote ?

Hor.

Ay, good my lord.
Ham. An earnest conjuration from the king,
As England was his faithful tributary;

As love between them like the palm might flourish;
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear,
And stand a comma 4 'tween their amities;
And many such like as's of great charge,-
That, on the view and knowing of these contents,
Without debatement further, more, or less,

He should the bearers put to sudden death,
Not shriving time allowed.5

Hor.

How was this sealed?

Ham. Why, even in that was Heaven ordinant; I had my father's signet in my purse,

Which was the model of that Danish seal;

Folded the writ up in form of the other;

Subscribed it; gave't the impression; placed it safely,
The changeling never known. Now, the next day
Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent
Thou know'st already.

Hor. So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to't. Ham. Why, man, they did make love to this employment;

1 66 Or," for ere, before. See Tempest, Act i. Sc. 2.

2 Statists are statesmen. Blackstone says, that "most of our great men of Shakspeare's time wrote very bad hands; their secretaries very neat ones."

3 Good, substantial service.

4 The comma is the note of connection and continuity of sentences; the period is the note of abruption and disjunction. Shakspeare had it perhaps in his mind to write, That unless England complied with the mandate, war should put a period to their amity; he altered his mode of diction, and thought that, in an opposite sense, he might put, that peace should stand a comma between their amities.

5 Without allowing time for the confession of their sins.