Whose blood and judgment are so well comingled,

That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please: 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 to-night 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 see'st that act a-foot,
Even with the very comment of my 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

a

Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and other Lords attendant, with his Guard, carrying torches. Danish March. Sound a flourish. King. How fares our cousin Hamlet ? Ham. Excellent, i'faith; of the cameleon's dish I eat the air, promise-crammed: You cannot feed capons so.

King, I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not mine.

Ham. No, nor mine now. My lord,-you played once in the university, you say?

[TO POLONIUS. Po!. That I did, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.

Ham. And what did you enact?

Pol. I did enact Julius Cæsar: I was killed i' the Capitol: Brutus killed me.

a Here, again, is a very important change found in the text of the folio, which has been rejected by the modern editors. The ordinary reading (that of the quartes) is

"Even with the very comment of thy soul." But Hamlet, having told Horatio the " circumstances" of his father's death, and imparted his suspicions of his uncle, entreats his friend to observe his uncle "with the very comment of my soul"-Hamlet's soul. To ask Horatio to observe him with the comment of his own soul (Horatio's), is a mere feeble expletive.

b Stithe a dissyllable-stithy.

Ham. O God! your only jig-maker. What should a man do, but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.

Oph. Nay, 't is twice two months, my lord. Ham. So long? Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables.1 O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year: But, by 'r-lady, he must build churches then: or else shall he suffer not thinking on," with the hobby-horse; whose epitaph is, For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot.

Hautboys play. The dumb show enters.2

Enter a King and a Queen, very lovingly; the Queen embracing him. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers; she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes of his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The poisoner, with some two or three mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The poisoner woos the Queen with gifts; she seems loth and unwilling awhile, but, in the end, accepts his love. [Exeunt.

P. King. Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
Neptune's salt wash, and Tellus' orbed ground;
And thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen,
About the world have times twelve thirties been;
Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands,
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

P. Queen. So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o'er, ere love be done!
But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,

So far from cheer, and from your former state,
That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must: b
For women's fear and love holds quantity;
In neither aught, or in extremity.

Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
And as my love is siz'd, my fear is so.

[Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.] c

P. King. 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too; My operant powers myd functions leave to do:

And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honour'd, belov'd; and haply, one as kind
For husband shalt thou-

"A paltry ring

That she did give me; whose poesy was
For all the world like cutler's poetry
Upon a knife--Love me and leave me not."

In Hall's Chronicle we have, "And the tent was replenished, and decked with this posie-After busy labor cometh victorious rest.”

In the quarto we find a line following this, which is emitted in the folio; it has no corresponding line in rhyme:"For women fear too much, even as they love."

There can be no doubt that the line ought to be struck out, it being superseded by

"For women's fear and love holds quantity."

These two lines are not in the folio.

d My, in folio; their, in quartos.

Ham. Wormwood, wormwood.

P. Queen. The instances" that second marriage move, Are base respects of thrift, but none of love;

A second time I kill my husband dead,
When second husband kisses me in bed.

P. King. I do believe, you think what now you speak,
But, what we do determine oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory;

Of violent birth, but poor validity:

Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree;
But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.
Most necessary 't is, that we forget

To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt:
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
The violence of either grief or joy
Their own enactures with themselves destroy:
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament,
Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
This world is not for aye; nor 't is not strange,
That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
For 't is a question left us yet to prove,

Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
The great man down, you mark, his favourite flies;
The poor advanc'd makes friends of enemies.
And hitherto doth love on fortune tend:
For who not needs shall never lack a friend;
And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
Directly seasons him his enemy.
But, orderly to end where I begun,-
Our wills and fates do so contrary run,

That our devices still are overthrown;

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own;

So think thou wilt no second husband wed;

But die thy thoughts, when thy first lord is dead.

P. Queen. Nor earth to give me food, nor heaven light! Sport and repose lock from me, day, and night! [b To desperation turn my trust and hope! An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope!] Each opposite, that blanks the face of joy, Meet what I would have well, and it destroy ! Both here, and hence, pursue me lasting strife, If, once a widow, ever I be wife!

Ham. Madam, how like you this play? Queen. The lady protests too much, methinks. Ham. O, but she 'll keep her word. King. Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in 't?

Ham. No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i' the world.

King. What do you call the play?

Ham. The mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder

d

Ham. He poisons him i' the garden for his estate. His name's Gonzago; the story is extant, and writ in choice Italian: You shall see anon, how the murtherer gets the love of Gonzago's wife.

Oph. The king rises.

Ham. What! frighted with false fire!
Queen. How fares my lord?

Pol. Give o'er the play.

King. Give me some light :-away!
All. Lights, lights, lights!

[Exeunt all but HAMLET and HORATIO. Ham. Why, let the strucken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play :

For some must watch, while some must sleep;

So runs the world away.

Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, (if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk* with me,)

So the folio; the quartos, "good as a chorus."

b In puppet-shows, which were called motions, an interpreter explained the action to the audience. See Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II. Sc. 1.

c Must take. This is the reading of the quarto of 1603. Johnson, who had not seen that edition, suggested must take as a correction of the common text, mistake. Mistake may, however, be used in the sense of to take wrongly.

d See the exquisite passage descriptive of the poor sequester'd stag," and "his velvet friends," in As You Like It, Act II. Sc. I.

• Turn Turk-if the rest of my fortunes deal with me cruelly. "To turn Turk, and throw stones at the poor," is

with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes,

get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir? Hor. Half a share.3

Ham. A whole one I

For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was

Of Jove himself; and now reigns here

A very, very-Paiocke.b

Hor. You might have rhymed.

Ham. O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound. Didst perceive?

Hor. Very well, my lord.

Ham. Upon the talk of the poisoning,-
Hor. I did very well note him.

Ham. Ah, ha!-Come, some music; come, the recorders.

For if the king like not the comedy,

Why then, belike, he likes it not, perdy.

Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Come, some music.

Guil. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

Ham. Sir, a whole history.

Guil. The king, sir,—

Ham. Ay, sir, what of him?

Guil. Is, in his retirement, marvellous distempered.

Ham. With drink, sir?

Guil. No, my lord, rather with choler.

Ham. Your wisdom should show itself more richer, to signify this to his doctor; for, for me to put him to his purgation, would, perhaps, plunge him into far more choler.

Guil. Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair.

Ham. I am tame, sir, pronounce.

Guil. The queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.

Ham. You are welcome.

Guil. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. If it shall please you to

a proverbial expression for the conduct of one who is tyrannical and hard-hearted.

Razed, slashed. The cut shoes were tied with a riband gathered in the form of a rose. The feathers and the fine shoes were the chief decorations of the players of Shakspere's day.

b Paiocke. All the old copies have paiocke, or paiock. Pope first read peacock, which Malone adopted. In a pamphlet entitled Explanations and Emendations of some Passages in the Text of Shakspeare,' &c. (1814), it is said that paiocke means the Italian baiocco, "a piece of money of about three farthings value." Malone, in advocating peacock, says, "Shakespeare, I suppose, means that the king struts about with a false pomp. This idea was perhaps received into the mind of King George the Third-who was a reader of Shakspere, although he undervalued him-when, in the early stage of one of his attacks of insanity, he began the royal speech with My lords and peacocks."

"

make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother's commandment: if not, your pardon, and my return, shall be the end of my business. Ham. Sir, I cannot.

Gail. What, my lord?

Ham. Make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseased: But, sir, such answers as I can make you shall command; or, rather, you say, my mother: therefore, no more, but to the matter; My mother, you say,—

Ros. Then thus she says: Your behaviour hath struck her into amazement and admiration. Ham. O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother!-But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's admiration?

Ros. She desires to speak with you in her closet, ere you go to bed.

Ham. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any further trade with us?

Ros. My lord, you once did love me. Ham. So I do still, by these pickers and stealers."

Ros. Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? you do freely bar the door of your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to your friend.b

Ham. Sir, I lack advancement.

Ros. How can that be, when you have the voice of the king himself for your succession in Denmark ?

Ham. Ay, but While the grass grows,-the proverb is something musty.

Enter one with a recorder.

O, the recorder: let me see.e.-To withdraw with you: Why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil? Guil. O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.

a "To keep my hands from picking and stealing," is an expression of the Church Catechism.

The ordinary reading, which is made up, is-" you do. surely, but bar the door upon," &c. Our text is that of the folio.

In the quarto we find, "enter the players, with reeorders." The recorder was (not "a kind of large flute," as Mr. Steevens says, but) a flageolet, or small English flute, the mouthpiece of which, at the upper extremity of the instrument, resembled the beak of a bird; hence the larger flutes so formed were called flutes à bec. The recorder was soft in tone, and an octave higher than the flute. Milton speaks ( Par. Lost,' i. 550) of

the Dorian mood

of flutes and soft recorders.

It would appear from Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum,' cent. iii. 221, that this instrument was larger in the lower than in the upper part; and a wood-cut of the flageolet, in Mersenne's Harmonie Universelle,' leads to the same conclusion. On the etymology of the word much ingenuity has been bestowed, but without any satisfactory result.

d Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have intimated, by some signal, that they wish to speak with Hamlet in private.

Ham. I do not well understand that. Will
you play upon this pipe?
Guil. My lord, I cannot.
Ham. I pray you.

Guil. Believe me, I cannot.
Ham. I do beseech you.

Guil. I know no touch of it, my lord. Ham. 'Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most excellent music. Look you, these are the stops.

Guil. But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony; I have not the skill. Ham. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass: and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. Why, do you think that I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me."

Enter POLONIUS.

God bless you, sir!

Pol. My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently.

Ham. Do you see that cloud, that's almost in shape like a camel?

Pol. By the mass, and 't is like a camel, indeed.

Ham. Methinks, it is like a weasel.

Pol. It is backed like a weasel.

Ham. Or, like a whale?

Pol. Very like a whale.

Ham. Then will I come to my mother by and by. They fool me to the top of my bent.-I will come by and by.

Pol. I will say so. [Exit POLONIUS. Ham. By and by is easily said.-Leave me, friends. [Exeunt Ros. GUIL. HOR., &c. 'Tis now the very witching time of night;

a The folio omits speak The poet may have meant to say, yet cannot you make this music, this excellent voice; for Guildenstern might have made the pipe speak, but he could not command it to any utterance of harmony. We now prefer to consider the folio erroneous.

b The musical allusion is continued. The frets of all instruments of the lute or guitar kind, are thick wires fixed at certain distances across the finger-board, on which the strings are stopped, or pressed by the fingers. Nares thinks that the word is derived from fretum; but the French verb frotter seems the more likely source.

Enter POLONIUS.

When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes

out

Contagion to this world: Now could I drink hot blood,

And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft; now to my
mother.-

O, heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom :
Let me be cruel, not unnatural:

I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites:
How in my words soever she be shent,"
To give them seals never, my soul, consent!

b

SCENE III-A Room in the same.

[Exit.

Guil. We will ourselves provide: Most holy and religious fear it is, To keep those many many bodies safe, That live and feed upon your majesty.

Ros. The single and peculiar life is bound, With all the strength and armour of the mind, To keep itself from 'noyance; but much more That spirit, upon whose spirit depend and rest The lives of many. The cease of majesty Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw What's near it with it: it is a massy wheel, Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount, To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things Are mortis'd and adjoin'd; which, when it falls, Each small annexment, petty consequence, Attends the boist'rous ruin. Never alone Did the king sigh, but with a general groan. King. Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy

Pol. My lord, he's going to his mother's closet:

Behind the arras I'll convey myself,

To hear the process; I'll warrant, she'll tax him home.

And, as you said, and wisely was it said,
'Tis meet, that some more audience than a
mother,

Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear
The speech of vantage. Fare you well, my liege:
I'll call upon yon ere you go to bed,
And tell you what I know.

King.

Thanks, dear my lord.
[Exit POLONIUS.
O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon 't,
A brother's murther!-Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will;
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood?
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens,
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves
mercy,

But to confront the visage of offence?
And what's in prayer, but this two-fold force,-
To be forestalled, ere we come to fall,

Or pardon'd, being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul

murther!

That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murther,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon'd, and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice;
And oft 't is seen, the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: But 't is not so above:
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
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 can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom, black as death!
O limed soul; that struggling to be free,
Art more engag'd! Help, angels, make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees! and, heart, with strings
of steel,

Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe:
All may be well!

[Retires, and kneels.