Of his true state.

QUEEN GERTRUDE Did he receive you well?

ROSENCRANTZ Most like a gentleman.

GUILDENSTERN

But with much forcing of his disposition.

ROSENCRANTZ

Niggard of question, but of our demands

Most free in his reply.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Did you assay him

To any pastime?

ROSENCRANTZ

Madam, it so fell out that certain players

We o’er-raught on the way. Of these we told him,

And there did seem in him a kind of joy

To hear of it. They are about the court,

And, as I think, they have already order

This night to play before him.

POLONIUS

’Tis most true, And he beseeched me to entreat your majesties

To hear and see the matter.

KING CLAUDIUS

With all my heart; and it doth much content me

To hear him so inclined.—Good gentlemen,

Give him a further edge, and drive his purpose on

To these delights.

ROSENCRANTZ We shall, my lord.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

KING CLAUDIUS Sweet Gertrude, leave us too,

For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,

That he, as ‘twere by accident, may here

Affront Ophelia.

Her father and myself, lawful espials,

Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,

We may of their encounter frankly judge,

And gather by him, as he is behaved,

If’t be th’affliction of his love or no

That thus he suffers for.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

I shall obey you.

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish

That your good beauties be the happy cause

Of Hamlet’s wildness; so shall I hope your virtues

Will bring him to his wonted way again,

To both your honours.

OPHELIA

Madam, I wish it may.

Exit Gertrude

POLONIUS

Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please you,

We will bestow ourselves.—Read on this book,

That show of such an exercise may colour

Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this:

‘Tis too much proved that with devotion’s visage

And pious action we do sugar o’er

The devil himself.

KING CLAUDIUS

O, ’tis too true.

(Aside) How smart a lash that speech doth give my

conscience.

The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plast’ring art,

Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it

Than is my deed to my most painted word.

O heavy burden!

POLONIUS

I hear him coming. Let’s withdraw, my lord.

Exeunt Claudius and Polonius

Enter Prince Hamlet

HAMLET

To be, or not to be; that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep—

No more, and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep.

To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life,

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th‘oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of disprized love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action. Soft you, now,

The fair Ophelia!—Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remembered.

OPHELIA

Good my lord,

How does your honour for this many a day?

HAMLET

I humbly thank you, well, well, well.

OPHELIA

My lord, I have remembrances of yours

That I have longed long to redeliver.

I pray you now receive them.

HAMLET

No, no, I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA

My honoured lord, you know right well you did,

And with them words of so sweet breath composed

As made the things more rich. Their perfume lost,

Take these again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

There, my lord.

HAMLET Ha, ha? Are you honest?

OPHELIA My lord.

HAMLET Are you fair?

OPHELIA What means your lordship?

HAMLET That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPHELIA Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

HAMLET 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 his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.