HAMLET Whose was it?

FIRST CLOWN A whoreson mad fellow’s it was. Whose do you think it was?

HAMLET Nay, I know not.

FIRST CLOWN A pestilence on him for a mad rogue—a poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once! This same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the King’s jester.

HAMLET This?

FIRST CLOWN E’en that.

HAMLET Let me see.

He takes the skull

Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio—a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred my imagination is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chop-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

HORATIO What’s that, my lord?

HAMLET Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’th’ earth?

HORATIO E’en so.

HAMLET And smelt so? Pah!

⌈He throws the skull down⌉

HORATIO E’en so, my lord.

HAMLET To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till a find it stopping a bung-hole?

HORATIO ’Twere to consider too curiously to consider so.

HAMLET No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it, as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel?

Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,

Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

O, that that earth which kept the world in awe

Should patch a wall t’expel the winter’s flaw!

But soft, but soft; aside.

Hamlet and Horatio stand aside. Enter King

Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Laertes, and a coffin,

with a Priest and lords attendant

Here comes the King,

The Queen, the courtiers—who is that they follow,

And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken

The corpse they follow did with desp‘rate hand

Fordo it own life. ’Twas of some estate.

Couch we a while, and mark.

LAERTES What ceremony else?

HAMLET (aside to Horatio)

That is Laertes, a very noble youth. Mark.

LAERTES What ceremony else?

PRIEST

Her obsequies have been as far enlarged

As we have warrantise. 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,

Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her,

Yet here she is allowed her virgin rites,

Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home

Of bell and burial.

LAERTES Must there no more be done?

PRIEST No more be done.

We should profane the service of the dead

To sing sage requiem and such rest to her

As to peace-parted souls.

LAERTES Lay her i’th’ earth,

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring. I tell thee, churlish priest,

A minist’ring angel shall my sister be

When thou liest howling.

HAMLET (aside) What, the fair Ophelia!

QUEEN GERTRUDE (scattering flowers)

Sweets to the sweet. Farewell.

I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife.

I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid,

And not t’have strewed thy grave.

LAERTES

O, treble woe

Fall ten times treble on that cursed head

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.

He 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.

HAMLET (coming forward) What is he whose grief

Bears such an emphasis, whose phrase of sorrow

Conjures the wand’ring stars and makes them stand

Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,

Hamlet the Dane.

⌈Hamlet leaps in after Laertes⌉

LAERTES The devil take thy soul.

HAMLET Thou pray’st not well.

I prithee take thy fingers from my throat,

For though I am not splenative and rash,

Yet have I something in me dangerous,

Which let thy wiseness fear. Away thy hand.

KING CLAUDIUS (to Lords)

Pluck them asunder.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Hamlet, Hamlet!

ALL ⌈THE LORDS⌉

Gentlemen!

HORATIO (to Hamlet) Good my lord, be quiet.

HAMLET

Why, I will fight with him upon this theme

Until my eyelids will no longer wag.

QUEEN GERTRUDE O my son, what theme?

HAMLET

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 CLAUDIUS O, he is mad, Laertes.

QUEEN GERTRUDE (to Laertes) For love of God, forbear him.

HAMLET (to Laertes) ‘Swounds, show me what thou’lt do.

Woot weep, woot fight, woot fast, woot tear thyself,

Woot drink up eisel, eat a crocodile?

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. Nay, an thou’lt mouth,

I’ll rant as well as thou.

KING CLAUDIUS ⌈to Laertes⌉ This is mere madness,

And thus a while the fit will work on him.

Anon, as patient as the female dove

When that her golden couplets are disclosed,

His silence will sit drooping.

HAMLET (to Laertes)