15

20

To any pastime?

Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain players We o'er-raught on the way; of these we told

Pol.

him,

And there did

To hear of it.

seem in him a kind of joy

They are about the court,

And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.

'Tis most true.

And he beseeched me to entreat your

majesties

To hear and see the matter.

King. With all my heart; and it doth much content me

25 To hear him so inclined.

30

85

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, And drive his purpose on to these delights. Ros. We shall, my lord.

King.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Sweet Gertrude, leave us too,
For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
That he, as 't were by accident, may here
Affront Ophelia.

Her father and myself, [lawful espials,]
Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,
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.

I shall obey you.

Oph.

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish

That your good beauties be the happy cause Of Hamlet's wildness. So shall I hope your 40 virtues

Will bring him to his wonted way again,

To both your honours.

Madam, I wish it may. [Exit Queen.

Pol. Ophelia, walk you here.

please you,

Gracious, so

We will bestow ourselves. [To Ophelia.]

And pious action we do sugar o'er

The Devil himself.

King.

O, 'tis too true!

[Aside.] How smart a lash that speech doth 50 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!

Pol. I hear him coming. Let's withdraw, my 55 [Exeunt King and Polonius. Enter Hamlet.

lord.

Ham. To be, or not to be: that is the question.

60

65

70

'75

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea 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 wished. 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 pause. 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 despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself 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 undiscovered country from whose bourn

Oph.

No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those 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

80

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, 85
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.-Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

Good my lord, 90
How does your honour for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thank you, well, well, well.
Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours.
That I have longed long to re-deliver.

Ham.

I pray you, now receive them.

I never gave you aught.

No, not I. 95

Oph. My honoured lord, you know right well you did,

And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed

As made the things more rich. Their per

fume lost,

Take these again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

100

105 Ham. Are you fair?

Oph. What means your lordship?

Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better com110 merce than with honesty?

115

120

125

130

Ham. Ay, 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.

Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. Ham. You should not have believed me, for virtue can not so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not. Oph. I was the more deceived.

Ham. Get thee to a nunnery; why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences 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?