With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head

Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,

About her lank and all o‘er-teemèd loins,

A blanket in th’alarm of fear caught up—

Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped,

‘Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have pronounced.

But if the gods themselves did see her then,

When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport

In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs,

The instant burst of clamour that she made—

Unless things mortal move them not at all—

Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,

And passion in the gods.’

POLONIUS Look whe’er he has not turned his colour, and has tears in ’s eyes. (To First Player) Prithee, no more.

HAMLET (to First Player) ’Tis well. I’ll have thee speak out the rest soon. (To Polonius) Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do ye hear?—let them be well used, for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

POLONIUS My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

HAMLET God’s bodykins, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity—the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

POLONIUS (to Players) Come, sirs. Exit

HAMLET (to Players) Follow him, friends. We’ll hear a play tomorrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play the murder of Gonzago?

⌈PLAYERS⌉ Ay, my lord.

HAMLET We’ll ha’t tomorrow night. You could for a need study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and insert in’t, could ye not?

⌈PLAYERS⌉ Ay, my lord.

HAMLET Very well. Follow that lord, and look you mock him not. ⌈Exeunt Players⌉ My good friends, I’ll leave you till night. You are welcome to Elsinore.

ROSENCRANTZ Good my lord.

HAMLET

Ay, so. God b‘wi’ ye. Exeunt all but Hamlet

Now I am alone.

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am Il

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his whole conceit

That from her working all his visage wanned,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in ’s aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing.

For Hecuba!

What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,

Make mad the guilty and appal the free,

Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed

The very faculty of eyes and ears. Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,

And can say nothing—no, not for a king

Upon whose property and most dear life

A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across,

Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face,

Tweaks me by th’ nose, gives me the lie i’th’ throat

As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?

Ha? ‘Swounds, I should take it; for it cannot be

But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

I should ’a’ fatted all the region kites

With this slave’s offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

O, vengeance!—

Why, what an ass am I? Ay, sure, this is most brave,

That I, the son of the dear murdered,

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words

And fall a-cursing like a very drab,

A scullion! Fie upon‘t, foh!—About, my brain.

I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play

Have by the very cunning of the scene

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaimed their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ. I’ll have these players

Play something like the murder of my father

Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks,

I’ll tent him to the quick. If a but blench,

I know my course. The spirit that I have seen

May be the devil, and the devil hath power

T’assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps,

Out of my weakness and my melancholy—

As he is very potent with such spirits—

Abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds

More relative than this. The play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.

Exit

3.1 Enter King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and lords

KING CLAUDIUS (to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)

And can you by no drift of circumstance

Get from him why he puts on this confusion,

Grating so harshly all his days of quiet

With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

ROSENCRANTZ

He does confess he feels himself distracted,

But from what cause a will by no means speak.

GUILDENSTERN

Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,

But with a crafty madness keeps aloof

When we would bring him on to some confession