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

Of Jove himself; and now reigns here

A very, very-Paiocke".

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 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.

Paicoke. This is generally read peacock. All the old copies have paiocke, or paiock. Caldecott thinks the paiocke and peacock are the same words; but in a very ingenious pamphlet entitled Explanations and Emendations of some Passages in the Text of Shakspeare,' &c. (Edinburgh, 1814), it is said that paiocke means the Italian baiocco, " a piece of money of about three farthings value." The writer then refers to the passage in King John

"In mine ear I durst not stick a rose,

Lest men should say, look where three farthings goes."

In Florio's New World of Words,' 1611, we find "Baiocco, a snap, a click, or flurt. Also a mite, or such like coin." This conjecture has great plausibility.

lord?

GUIL. What, my 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. Imparta.

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, surely, but bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to your friend c. 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 recorderd 18.

O, the recorder: let me see. 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. 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. T is 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

a Impart, is not in the folio.

"To keep my hands from picking and stealing," is an expression of the Church Catechism. The text of the folio is, "You do freely bar the door of your own liberty."

In the quarto we find, "enter the players, with recorders."

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

TRAGEDIES.-VOL. I.

M

organ; yet cannot you make it speak a. S'blood! 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".

God bless you, sir!

Enter POLONIUS.

Por. 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.

HAM. By and by is easily said.-Leave me, friends.

[Exit POLONIUS.

[Exeunt Ros., GUIL., HOR., &c.

"T is now the very witching time of night;
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 sealsd never, my soul, consent!

[Exit.

SCENE III.-A Room in the same.

Enter KING, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.

KING. I like him not; nor stands it safe with us,

To let his madness range. Therefore, prepare you;

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. 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.

• Shent, rebuked; or probably here, hurt.

To give them seals-to give my words seals; to make my sayings deeds.

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 weal 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.

Did the king sigh, but with

Never alone

general groan.

KING. Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage;

For we will fetters put upon this fear,

Which now goes too free-footed.

Ros., GUIL.

We will haste us.

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

Enter POLONIUS.

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,

'T is 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 you 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,

a Dangerous, in folio; in quartos, near us.

Lunacies, in folio; in quartos, brows, which Theobald changed to lunes.
Weal, in quartos; in folio, spirit.

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!

Enter HAMLET.

HAM. Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do 't;-and so he goes to heaven:
And so am I reveng'd? That would be scann'd:
A villain kills my father; and, for that,

I, his sole son, do this same villain send

To heaven.

O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.

He took my father grossly, full of bread a;

[Retires, and kneels.

a Full of bread. Shakspere found this remarkable expression in the Bible:-" Behold this was