Help, help, ho!

POLONIUS (behind the arras) What ho! Help, help, help!

HAMLET

How now, a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead.

He thrusts his sword through the arras

POLONIUS

O, I am slain!

QUEEN GERTRUDE (to Hamlet) O me, what hast thou done?

HAMLET

Nay, I know not. Is it the King?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

HAMLET

A bloody deed—almost as bad, good-mother,

As kill a king and marry with his brother.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

As kill a king?

HAMLET Ay, lady, ’twas my word.

(To Polonius) Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool,

farewell.

I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune.

Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.—

Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down,

And let me wring your heart; for so I shall

If it be made of penetrable stuff,

If damned custom have not brassed it so

That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue

In noise so rude against me?

HAMLET Such an act

That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,

Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose

From the fair forehead of an innocent love

And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows

As false as dicers’ oaths—O, such a deed

As from the body of contraction plucks

The very soul, and sweet religion makes

A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face doth glow,

Yea, this solidity and compound mass

With tristful visage, as against the doom,

Is thought-sick at the act.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Ay me, what act,

That roars so loud and thunders in the index?

HAMLET

Look here upon this picture, and on this,

The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.

See what a grace was seated on this brow—

Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,

An eye like Mars, to threaten or command,

A station like the herald Mercury

New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;

A combination and a form indeed

Where every god did seem to set his seal

To give the world assurance of a man.

This was your husband. Look you now what follows.

Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear

Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?

Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,

And batten on this moor? Ha, have you eyes?

You cannot call it love, for at your age

The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble,

And waits upon the judgement; and what judgement

Would step from this to this? What devil was’t

That thus hath cozened you at hood-man blind?

O shame, where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,

If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,

To flaming youth let virtue be as wax

And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame

When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,

Since frost itself as actively doth burn,

And reason panders will.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O Hamlet, speak no more!

Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,

And there I see such black and grained spots

As will not leave their tinct.

HAMLET Nay, but to live

In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,

Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love

Over the nasty sty—

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O, speak to me no more!

These words like daggers enter in mine ears.

No more, sweet Hamlet.

HAMLET A murderer and a villain,

A slave that is not twenti’th part the tithe

Of your precedent lord, a vice of kings,

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,

That from a shelf the precious diadem stole

And put it in his pocket—

QUEEN GERTRUDE No more.

HAMLET A king of shreds and patches—

Enter the Ghost in his nightgown

Save me and hover o’er me with your wings,

You heavenly guards! (To the Ghost) What would

you, gracious figure? 95

QUEEN GERTRUDE Alas, he’s mad.

HAMLET (to the Ghost)

Do you not come your tardy son to chide,

That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by

Th’important acting of your dread command?

O, say!

GHOST Do not forget. This visitation

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

But look, amazement on thy mother sits.

O, step between her and her fighting soul.

Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.

Speak to her, Hamlet.

HAMLET How is it with you, lady?

QUEEN GERTRUDE Alas, how is’t with you,

That you do bend your eye on vacancy,

And with th‘incorporal air do hold discourse?

Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,

And, as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm,

Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,

Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper

Sprinkle cool patience! Whereon do you look?

HAMLET

On him, on him. Look you how pale he glares.

His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,

Would make them capable. (To the Ghost) Do not look

upon me,

Lest with this piteous action you convert

My stern effects. Then what I have to do