Hamlet Page #15

but to confront the visage of offense?

And what's in prayer but this twofold force,

to be forestalled ere we come to fall...

...or pardoned being down?

Then Ill look up.

My fault is past.

But, O, what form of prayer

can serve my turn?

"Forgive me my foul murder"?

That cannot be...

...since I am still possessed

of those effects for which I did the murder:

My crown, mine own ambition...

...and my queen.

May one be pardoned

and retain the offense?

In the corrupted currents of this world...

...offense's gilded hand

may shove by justice...

...and oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself

buys out the law.

But 'tis not so above.

There is no shuffling...

...there the action lies

in his true nature...

...and we ourselves compelled...

...even to the teeth

and forehead of our faults...

...to give in evidence.

What then? What rests?

Try what repentance can.

What can it not?

Yet what can it when one cannot repent?

O wretched state,

O bosom black as death...

...O limed soul that, struggling to be free

art more engaged.

Help, angels.

Make assay.

Bow, stubborn knees.

And heart with strings of steel,

be soft as sinews of the newborn babe.

All may be well.

HAMLET:

Now might I do it pat...

...now he is a-praying.

And now I'll do it.

And so he goes to heaven...

...and so am I revenged.

[BLOOD SPLATTERS]

HAMLET:

That would be scanned.

A villain kills my father, and for that...

... I, his sole son, do this same villain send

to heaven.

O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.

He took my father grossly, full of bread...

...with all his crimes broad blown,

as flush as May.

And how his audit stands,

who knows save heaven?

But in our circumstance

and course of thought...

...'tis heavy with him.

And am I then revenged

to take him in the purging of his soul...

...when he is fit and seasoned

for his passage?

No.

Up, sword,

and know thou a more horrid hent.

When he is drunk asleep...

...or in his rage...

...or in the incestuous pleasure

of his bed...

...at game, a-swearing, or about some act

that has no relish of salvation in 't...

...then trip him,

that his heels may kick at heaven...

...and that his soul

may be as damned and black...

...as hell whereto it goes.

My mother stays.

This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

My words fly up,

my thoughts remain below.

Words without thoughts

never to heaven go.

He will come straight.

Look you lay home to him.

Tell him his pranks

have been too broad to bear with...

...and your grace screened

and stood between much heat and him.

Ill silence me here.

Pray you be round with him.

-Ill warrant you. Fear me not.

HAMLET:
Mother, Mother, Mother!

Withdraw, I hear him coming.

Now, Mother, what's the matter?

Hamlet,

thou hast thy father much offended.

Mother,

you have my father much offended.

-Come, you answer with an idle tongue.

-Go, you question with a wicked tongue.

-How now?

-What's the matter now?

-Have you forgot me?

-No, by the rood, not so.

You are the queen,

your husband's brother's wife.

And would it were not so,

you are my mother.

Nay, then,

Ill set those to you that can speak.

Come, come, and sit you down.

You shall not budge.

You go not till I set you up a glass

where you may see the inmost part of you.

What wilt thou do?

Thou wilt not murder me?

-Help, ho!

HAMLET:
What, ho! Help!

POLONIUS:
Help, help!

HAMLET:
How now, a rat?

-Dead, for a ducat, dead!

POLONIUS:
Ow! Ow!

[SHOUTING AND GRUNTING]

I am slain.

GERTRUDE:

O me, what hast thou done?

Nay, I know not. Is it the king?

O, what a rash and bloody deed is this.

Almost as bad, good mother,

as kill a king and marry with his brother.

-As kill a king?

-Ay, lady, 'twas my word.

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 brazed it so

that it be proof and bulwark against sense.

What have I done,

that thou darest wag thy tongue...

...in noise so rude against me?

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.

Ay me, what act, that roars so loud

and thunders in the index?

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 and 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?

Have you eyes?

You cannot call it love, for at your age

the heyday in the blood is tame...

...it's humble,

waits upon the judgment.

And what judgment

would step from this to this?

Sense you have,

else could you not have motion.

But sure that sense is apoplexed.

For madness would not err...

...nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thralled

but it reserved some quantity of choice...

...to serve in such a difference.

What devil was't that thus

hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?

Eyes without feeling,

feeling without sight...

...ears without hands or eyes,

smelling sans all...

...or but a sickly part of one true sense

could not so mope.

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 ardor

gives the charge...

...since frost itself as actively doth burn,

and reason panders will.

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.

Nay, but to live

in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed...

...stewed in corruption, honeying

and making love over the nasty sty!

O, speak to me no more!

These words like daggers enter in my ears.

No more, sweet Hamlet.

A murderer and a villain...

...a slave that is not twentieth 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

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