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