第 11 节

em 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 bodikin, 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. Come, sirs.

HAMLET. Follow him, friends. We’ll hear a play tomorrow.

[_Exeunt Polonius with all the Players but the First._]

Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play _The Murder of Gonzago_?

FIRST PLAYER. 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 you not?

FIRST PLAYER. Ay, my lord.

HAMLET. Very well. Follow that lord, and look you mock him not.

[_Exit First Player._]

[_To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern_] My good friends, I’ll leave you till night. You are welcome to Elsinore.

ROSENCRANTZ. Good my lord.

[_Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern._]

HAMLET. Ay, so, God b’ wi’ ye. Now I am alone. O what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wan’d; 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 faculties 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 damn’d 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 the 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-liver’d, and lack gall To make oppression bitter, or ere this I should have fatted all the region kites With this slave’s offal. Bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! Oh vengeance! Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, That I, the son of a dear father murder’d, 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 proclaim’d 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 he 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._]

ACT III

SCENE I. A room in the Castle.

Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING. 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 he 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 Of his true state.

QUEEN. 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. 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 beseech’d me to entreat your Majesties To hear and see the matter.

KING. With all my heart; and it doth much content me To hear him so inclin’d. 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. 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 behav’d, If’t be th’affliction of his love or no That thus he suffers for.

QUEEN. 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 Queen._]

POLONIUS. Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please you, We will bestow ourselves.—[_To Ophelia._] Read on this book, That show of such an exercise may colour Your loneliness.—We are oft to blame in this, ’Tis too much prov’d, that with devotion’s visage And pious action we do sugar o’er The devil himself.

KING. [_Aside._] O ’tis too true! How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience! The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering 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 King and Polonius._]

Enter 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 heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. 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, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,