ACT III
SCENE I. A room in the castle.
Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN
KING CLAUDIUS
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 himlf distracted;
But from what cau 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 GERTRUDE
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 GERTRUDE
Did you assay him?
To any pastime?
ROSENCRANTZ
Madam, it so fell out, that certain players
We o'er-raught on the way: of the we told him;
And there did em 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.
LORD POLONIUS
'Tis most true:
And he beech'd me to entreat your majesties
To hear and e the matter.
KING CLAUDIUS
With all my heart; and it doth much content me
To hear him so inclined.
Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
And drive his purpo on to the delights. ROSENCRANTZ
We shall, my lord.
Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN KING CLAUDIUS
Sweet Gertrude, leave us too;
For we have cloly nt for Hamlet hither,
That he, as 'twere by accident, may here
Affront Ophelia:
Her father and mylf, lawful espials,
Will so bestow ourlves that, eing, unen,
We may of their encounter frankly judge,
And gather by him, as he is behaved,
If 't be the affliction of his love or no
That thus he suffers for.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
I shall obey you.
And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cau
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 GERTRUDE
LORD POLONIUS
Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious, so plea you,
We will bestow ourlves.
To OPHELIA
Read on this book;
That show of such an exerci may colour
Y our loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,--
'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himlf.
KING CLAUDIUS
[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 burthen!
LORD POLONIUS
I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord. Exeunt KING CLAUDIUS 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 a 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 pau: 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, The pangs of despid love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himlf might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from who bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear tho ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterpris of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lo the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
OPHELIA
Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day? HAMLET
I humbly thank you; well, well, well.
OPHELIA
My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver;
I pray you, now receive them.
HAMLET
No, not I;
I never gave you aught.
OPHELIA
My honour'd lord, you know right well you did; And, with them, words of so sweet breath compod As made the things more rich: their perfume lost, Take the again; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. There, my lord.
HAMLET
Ha, ha! are you honest?
OPHELIA
My lord?
HAMLET
Are you fair?
OPHELIA
What means your lordship?
HAMLET
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discour to your beauty.
OPHELIA
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
HAMLET
A y, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once. OPHELIA
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. HAMLET
Y ou should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of
it: I loved you not.
OPHELIA
I was the more deceived.
HAMLET
Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? I am mylf indifferent honest; but yet I could accu me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offence
s at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father?
OPHELIA
At home, my lord.
HAMLET
Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own hou. Farewell. OPHELIA
O, help him, you sweet heavens!
HAMLET
If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for
thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs
marry, marry a fool; for wi men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell.
OPHELIA
O heavenly powers, restore him!
HAMLET
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourlves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: tho that are married already, all but one, shall
live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a
nunnery, go.
Exit
OPHELIA
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword; The expectancy and ro of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The obrved of all obrvers, quite, quite down!
