Hamlet Page #9

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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 in 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' the 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!

O, 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 a devil

and the devil hath power

to 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.

And can you,

by no drift of conference,

get from him

why he puts on this confusion?

He does confess

he feels himself distracted,

but from what cause

he will by no means speak.

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.

Did he receive you well?

Most like a gentleman. But with

much forcing of his disposition.

Niggard of question, but, of our

demands, most free in his reply.

Did you assay him? To any pastime?

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. 'Tis most true.

And he beseech'd me

to entreat your majesties

to hear and see the matter.

With all my heart,

and it doth much content me

to hear him thus inclined.

Good gentlemen,

give him a further edge, and drive

his purpose on to these delights.

We shall, my lord.

I have in quick determination

thus set it down.

He shall with speed to England.

Haply the seas

and countries different

with variable objects will expel

This something-settled matter

in his heart,

whereon his brains still beating

puts him thus

from fashion of himself.

What think you on't?

It shall do well,

but yet do I believe

The origin and commencement

of his grief

sprung from neglected love.

My lord, do as you please,

but, if you hold it fit,

after the play

let his queen mother all alone

entreat him

to show his grief.

Let her be round with him,

and I'll be placed, so please you,

in the ear

Of all their conference.

If she find him not,

to England send him,

or confine him where

your wisdom best shall think.

It shall be so.

Madness in great ones

must not unwatch'd go.

Speak the speech, I pray you,

as I pronounced it to you,

trippingly on the tongue,

but if you mouth it,

as many of your players do,

I had as lief the town-crier

spoke my lines.

Nor do not saw the air too much

with your hands, thus,

but use all gently,

for in the very torrent, tempest,

and, as I may say,

the whirlwind of passion,

you must acquire and beget

a temperance

that may give it smoothness.

O, it offends me to the soul to

hear a robustious periwig-pated

fellow tear a passion to tatters,

to very rags, to split the ears of

the groundlings,

who for the most part

are capable of nothing but

inexplicable dumbshows and noise.

I would have such a fellow whipped

for o'erdoing Termagant.

It out-Herods Herod.

Pray you, avoid it.

I warrant your honour.

Be not too tame neither,

but let your own discretion

be your tutor.

Suit the action to the word,

the word to the action.

With this special observance,

that you o'erstep not

the modesty of nature.

For any thing so overdone is from

the purpose of playing, whose end,

both at the first and last,

was and is, to hold, as 'twere,

the mirror up to nature,

to show virtue her own feature,

scorn her own image,

and the very age

and body of the time

is form and pressure.

Now this overdone,

or come tardy off,

though it make

the unskilful laugh,

cannot but make

the judicious grieve,

the censure of the which

one must in your allowance

o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.

I hope we have reformed that

indifferently with us, sir.

O, reform it altogether.

And let those that play your clowns

speak no more than

is set down for them,

for there be of them

that will themselves laugh,

to set on some quantity of barren

spectators to laugh too,

though, in the mean time,

some necessary question of

the play be then to be considered.

That's villanous,

and shows a most pitiful ambition

in the fool that uses it.

Go, make you ready.

How now, my lord!

Will the king

hear this piece of work?

And the queen too,

and that presently.

Bid the players make haste.

Da!

Will you two help to hasten them?

We will, my lord.

What ho! Horatio!

Here, sweet lord, at your service.

Horatio, thou art e'en as just

a man as e'er my conversation

coped withal. O, my dear lord.

Nay, do not think I flatter.

Dost thou hear?

Since my dear soul

was mistress of her choice

and could of men distinguish,

her election

hath seal'd thee for herself.

Give me that man

that is not passion's slave,

and I will wear him

in my heart's core,

ay, in my heart of heart,

as I do thee.

Something too much of this.

There is a play tonight

before the king.

One scene of it comes near the

circumstance which I have told

thee of my father's death.

I prithee,

when thou seest that act afoot,

even with the very comment

of thy soul,

observe mine uncle.

If his occulted guilt

do not itself unkennel

in one speech,

it is a damned ghost

that we have seen,

and my imaginations are as foul as

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