Enter four or five Players. I You are welcome, Masters! welcome, all: am glad to see thee well: welcome, good friends O, old friend! Why thy face is valanced since I saw thee last; Com'st thou to beard me in Denmark? What? my young Lady and Mistress ! By-'r-lady, your Ladyship is nearer to heaven, than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not crack'd within the ring. Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en to't like French falconers, fly at any thing we see: We'll have a speech straight; Come, give us a taste of your quality; come, a passionate speech. 1 Play. What speech, my Lord? Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once, — but it was never acted; or, if it was, not above once for the play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general: but it was (as I received it, and others, whose judgements, in such matters, cried in the top of mine,) an excellent play; well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said, there were no sallets in the lines, to make the matter savoury; nor no matter in the phrase, that might indite the author of affection: but call'd it, an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I chiefly loved: 'twas Aeneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of Priam's slaughter: If it live in your memory, begin at this line; let me see, let me see; The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast, -'tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus. The rugged Pyrrhus, he, whose sable arms, With heraldry more dismal; head to foot sons ; Bak'd and impasted with the parching streets, That lend a tyrannous and a damned light To their lord's murder: Roasted in wrath, and fire, And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore, With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus Old grandsire Priam seeks,- So proceed you. Pol. 'Fore God, my Lord, well spoken; with good accent, and good discretion. 1. Play. Anon he finds him Striking too short at Greeks; sword, his antique Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls, Repugnant to command: Unequal match'd, Pyrrhus at Priam drives: in rage, strikes wide; But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium, Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top Which was declining on the milky head But, as we often see, against some storm, Now falls on Priam. Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods, In general synod, take away her power; Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends! Pol. This is too long. He's for a jig, or a tale Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard. Pr'ythee, say on: — of bawdry, or he sleeps: cuba. say on: come to He 1. Play. But who, ah woe! had seen the mobled Queen Ham. The mobled Queen? مسامية Pol. That's good? mobled Queen is good. About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins, Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd, 'Gainst fortune's state would treason have But if the gods themselves did see her then, The instant burst of clamour that she made, (Unless things mortal move them not at all,) Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, And passion in the gods. Pol. Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in's eyes. Pr'ythee, no more. Ham. 'Tis well; I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.- Good my Lord, will you see the players well bestow'd? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time: After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live. Pol. My Lord, I will use them according to their desert. Ham. Odd's bodikin, man, much better: Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in. Pol. Come, Sirs. Ham. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play tomorrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of Gonzago? 1. Play. Ay, my Lord. Ham. We'll have it to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen 1 or sixteen lines, which I would set down, and insert in't? could you not? 1. Play. Ay, my Lord. - Ham. Very well. Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exeunt POLONIUS and Players.] My good friends, [To Ros. and GUIL.] I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore. Ros. Good, my Lord! [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' you: 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 wann'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, A dull and muddy - mettled rascal, peak, |