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45 Oph. I shall the effect of this good lesson keep, As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,

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Laer.

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whilst, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.

O, fear me not.
I stay too long: but here my father comes.
Enter Polonius.

A double blessing is a double grace;

Occasion smiles upon a second leave.

55 Pol. Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!

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65

The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,

And you are stayed for. There; my blessing

with thee!

And these few precepts in thy memory

Look thou character.

tongue,

Give thy thoughts no

Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption
tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.
Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,

Bear 't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy
judgement.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and
station

Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!
Laer. Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
Pol. The time invites you; go, your servants tend.
Laer. Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well
What I have said to you.

Oph.

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75

80

'Tis in my memory locked, 85 And you yourself shall keep the key of it. Laer. Farewell.

[Exit.

Pol. What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?
Oph. So please you, something touching the Lord

Hamlet.

Pol. Marry, well bethought.

'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late

Given private time to you, and you yourself

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100

Have of your audience been most free and bounteous.

If it be so-as so 'tis put on me,

And that in way of caution-I must tell you, You do not understand yourself so clearly As it behoves my daughter and your honour. What is between you? Give me up the truth. Oph. He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders

Of his affection to me.

Pol. Affection! pooh! You speak like a green

girl,

Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.

Do you believe his tenders, as you call them? Oph. I do not know, my lord, what I should

think.

105 Pol. Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a

baby

That you have ta'en these tenders for true

pay,

Which are not sterling. Tender yourself

more dearly,

Or-not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,

Running it thus-you'll tender me a fool.

110 Oph. My lord, he hath importuned me with love In honorable fashion.

Pol. Ay, fashion you may call it. Go to, go to. Oph. And hath given countenance to his speech,

my lord,

With almost all the holy vows of heaven.

Pol. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know, 115 When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul Lends the tongue vows.

daughter,

These blazes,

Giving more light than heat, extinct in both
Even in their promise, as it is a-making,

You must not take for fire. From this time 120
Be something scanter of your maiden pres-

ence.

125

Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him, that he is young,
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds, 130
The better to beguile. This is for all:

I would not, in plain terms, from this time
forth,

Have you so slander any moment leisure,

As to give words or talk with the Lord

Hamlet.

Look to 't, I charge you. Oph. I shall obey, my lord.

Come your ways. 135 [Exeunt.

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15

SCENE IV.

The platform.

Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.

Ham. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air.

Ham. What hour now?

Hor.

Mar. No, it is struck.

I think it lacks of twelve.

5 Hor. Indeed? I heard it not. It then draws near the season

Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
[A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot
off, within.

What does this mean, my lord?

Ham. The King doth wake to-night and takes his

Hor.

rouse,

Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring

reels;

And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish
down,

The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.

Ham. Ay, marry, is't,

Is it a custom?

But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom

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