Chapter XLII: Prologue

_For us, and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently._

HAMLET. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

OPHELIA. ’Tis brief, my lord.

HAMLET. As woman’s love.

Enter a King and a Queen.

PLAYER KING. Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground, And thirty dozen moons with borrow’d sheen About the world have times twelve thirties been, Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

PLAYER QUEEN. So many journeys may the sun and moon Make us again count o’er ere love be done. But, woe is me, you are so sick of late, So far from cheer and from your former state, That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust, Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must: For women’s fear and love holds quantity, In neither aught, or in extremity. Now what my love is, proof hath made you know, And as my love is siz’d, my fear is so. Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

PLAYER KING. Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too: My operant powers their functions leave to do: And thou shalt live in this fair world behind, Honour’d, belov’d, and haply one as kind For husband shalt thou—

PLAYER QUEEN. O confound the rest. Such love must needs be treason in my breast. In second husband let me be accurst! None wed the second but who kill’d the first.

HAMLET. [_Aside._] Wormwood, wormwood.

PLAYER QUEEN. The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love. A second time I kill my husband dead, When second husband kisses me in bed.

PLAYER KING. I do believe you think what now you speak; But what we do determine, oft we break. Purpose is but the slave to memory, Of violent birth, but poor validity: Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree, But fall unshaken when they mellow be. Most necessary ’tis that we forget To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt. What to ourselves in passion we propose, The passion ending, doth the purpose lose. The violence of either grief or joy Their own enactures with themselves destroy. Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament; Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident. This world is not for aye; nor ’tis not strange That even our loves should with our fortunes change, For ’tis a question left us yet to prove, Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love. The great man down, you mark his favourite flies, The poor advanc’d makes friends of enemies; And hitherto doth love on fortune tend: For who not needs shall never lack a friend, And who in want a hollow friend doth try, Directly seasons him his enemy. But orderly to end where I begun, Our wills and fates do so contrary run That our devices still are overthrown. Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. So think thou wilt no second husband wed, But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

PLAYER QUEEN. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light, Sport and repose lock from me day and night, To desperation turn my trust and hope, An anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope, Each opposite that blanks the face of joy, Meet what I would have well, and it destroy! Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife, If, once a widow, ever I be wife.

HAMLET. [_To Ophelia._] If she should break it now.

PLAYER KING. ’Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile. My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile The tedious day with sleep. [_Sleeps._]

PLAYER QUEEN. Sleep rock thy brain, And never come mischance between us twain.

[_Exit._]

HAMLET. Madam, how like you this play?

QUEEN. The lady protests too much, methinks.

HAMLET. O, but she’ll keep her word.

KING. Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in’t?

HAMLET. No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i’ th’ world.

KING. What do you call the play?

HAMLET. _The Mousetrap._ Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna. Gonzago is the Duke’s name, his wife Baptista: you shall see anon; ’tis a knavish piece of work: but what o’ that? Your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. Let the gall’d jade wince; our withers are unwrung.

Enter Lucianus.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.

OPHELIA. You are a good chorus, my lord.

HAMLET. I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets dallying.

OPHELIA. You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

HAMLET. It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.

OPHELIA. Still better, and worse.

HAMLET. So you mistake your husbands.—Begin, murderer. Pox, leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.

LUCIANUS. Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing, Confederate season, else no creature seeing; Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected, With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected, Thy natural magic and dire property On wholesome life usurp immediately.

[_Pours the poison into the sleeper’s ears._]

HAMLET. He poisons him i’ th’garden for’s estate. His name’s Gonzago. The story is extant, and written in very choice Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.

OPHELIA. The King rises.

HAMLET. What, frighted with false fire?

QUEEN. How fares my lord?

POLONIUS. Give o’er the play.

KING. Give me some light. Away.

All. Lights, lights, lights.

[_Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio._]

HAMLET.
Why, let the strucken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play;
For some must watch, while some must sleep,
So runs the world away.
Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, if the rest of my
fortunes turn Turk with me; with two Provincial roses on my razed
shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?

HORATIO. Half a share.

HAMLET.
A whole one, I.
For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself, and now reigns here
A very, very—pajock.

HORATIO. You might have rhymed.

HAMLET. O good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound. Didst perceive?

HORATIO. Very well, my lord.

HAMLET. Upon the talk of the poisoning?

HORATIO. I did very well note him.

HAMLET. Ah, ha! Come, some music. Come, the recorders. For if the king like not the comedy, Why then, belike he likes it not, perdie. Come, some music.

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

GUILDENSTERN. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

HAMLET. Sir, a whole history.

GUILDENSTERN. The King, sir—

HAMLET. Ay, sir, what of him?

GUILDENSTERN. Is in his retirement, marvellous distempered.

HAMLET. With drink, sir?

GUILDENSTERN. No, my lord; rather with choler.

HAMLET. Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to the doctor, for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far more choler.

GUILDENSTERN. Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair.

HAMLET. I am tame, sir, pronounce.

GUILDENSTERN. The Queen your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.

HAMLET. You are welcome.

GUILDENSTERN. 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.

HAMLET. Sir, I cannot.

GUILDENSTERN. What, my lord?

HAMLET. Make you a wholesome answer. My wit’s diseased. But, sir, such answer as I can make, you shall command; or rather, as you say, my mother. Therefore no more, but to the matter. My mother, you say,—

ROSENCRANTZ. Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into amazement and admiration.

HAMLET. O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother! But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother’s admiration?

ROSENCRANTZ. She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed.

HAMLET. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any further trade with us?

ROSENCRANTZ. My lord, you once did love me.

HAMLET. And so I do still, by these pickers and stealers.

ROSENCRANTZ. Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do surely bar the door upon your own liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend.

HAMLET. Sir, I lack advancement.

ROSENCRANTZ. How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself for your succession in Denmark?

HAMLET. Ay, sir, but while the grass grows—the proverb is something musty.

Re-enter the Players with recorders.

O, the recorders. Let me see one.—To withdraw with you, why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?

GUILDENSTERN. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.

HAMLET. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?

GUILDENSTERN. My lord, I cannot.

HAMLET. I pray you.

GUILDENSTERN. Believe me, I cannot.

HAMLET. I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN. I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET. ’Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN. But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony. I have not the skill.

HAMLET. 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 organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood, do you think 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.

Enter Polonius.

God bless you, sir.

POLONIUS. My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.

HAMLET. Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?

POLONIUS. By the mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.

HAMLET. Methinks it is like a weasel.

POLONIUS. It is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET. Or like a whale.

POLONIUS. Very like a whale.

HAMLET. 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.

POLONIUS. I will say so.

[_Exit._]

HAMLET. By and by is easily said. Leave me, friends.

[_Exeunt all but Hamlet._]

’Tis 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 somever she be shent, To give them seals never, my soul, consent.

[_Exit._]

SCENE III. A room in the Castle.

Enter King, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING. I like him not, nor stands it safe with us To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you, I your commission will forthwith dispatch, And he to England shall along with you. The terms of our estate may not endure Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow Out of his lunacies.

GUILDENSTERN. We will ourselves provide. Most holy and religious fear it is To keep those many many bodies safe That live and feed upon your Majesty.

ROSENCRANTZ. 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. Never alone Did the King sigh, but with a 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.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. We will haste us.

[_Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern._]

Enter Polonius.

POLONIUS. 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, ’Tis 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 murder! Pray can I not, 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 twofold 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 murder! That cannot be; since I am still possess’d Of those effects for which I did the murder,— My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen. May one be pardon’d and retain th’offence? In the corrupted currents of this world Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice, And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law. But ’tis 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 cannot 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.

[_Retires and kneels._]

Enter Hamlet.

HAMLET. 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, With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven? But in our circumstance and course of thought, ’Tis heavy with him. And am I then reveng’d, To take him in the purging of his soul, When he is fit and season’d for his passage? No. Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent: When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage, Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed, At gaming, swearing; or about some act That has no relish of salvation in’t, Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, And that his soul may be as damn’d and black As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays. This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

[_Exit._]

The King rises and advances.

KING. My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

[_Exit._]

SCENE IV. Another room in the Castle.

Enter Queen and Polonius.

POLONIUS. He will come straight. Look you lay home to him, Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with, And that your Grace hath screen’d and stood between Much heat and him. I’ll silence me e’en here. Pray you be round with him.

HAMLET. [_Within._] Mother, mother, mother.

QUEEN. I’ll warrant you, Fear me not. Withdraw, I hear him coming.

[_Polonius goes behind the arras._]

Enter Hamlet.

HAMLET. Now, mother, what’s the matter?

QUEEN. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

HAMLET. Mother, you have my father much offended.

QUEEN. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

HAMLET. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

QUEEN. Why, how now, Hamlet?

HAMLET. What’s the matter now?

QUEEN. Have you forgot me?

HAMLET. No, by the rood, not so. You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife, And, would it were not so. You are my mother.

QUEEN. Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.

HAMLET. Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge. You go not till I set you up a glass Where you may see the inmost part of you.

QUEEN. What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me? Help, help, ho!

POLONIUS. [_Behind._] What, ho! help, help, help!

HAMLET. How now? A rat? [_Draws._] Dead for a ducat, dead!

[_Makes a pass through the arras._]

POLONIUS. [_Behind._] O, I am slain!

[_Falls and dies._]

QUEEN. O me, what hast thou done?

HAMLET. Nay, I know not. Is it the King?

[_Draws forth Polonius._]

QUEEN. O what a rash and bloody deed is this!

HAMLET. A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king and marry with his brother.

QUEEN. As kill a king?

HAMLET. Ay, lady, ’twas my word.— [_To Polonius._] Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune, Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.— Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down, And let me wring your heart, for so I shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff; If damned custom have not braz’d it so, That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

QUEEN. What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me?

HAMLET. Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there. Makes marriage vows As false as dicers’ oaths. O such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face doth glow, Yea this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is thought-sick at the act.

QUEEN. Ay me, what act, That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

HAMLET. Look here upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See what a grace was seated on this brow, Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command, A station like the herald Mercury New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill: A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man. This was your husband. Look you now what follows. Here is your husband, like a mildew’d ear Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes? You cannot call it love; for at your age The hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble, And waits upon the judgement: and what judgement Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have, Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense Is apoplex’d, for madness would not err Nor sense to ecstacy was ne’er so thrall’d But it reserv’d some quantity of choice To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind? Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, Or but a sickly part of one true sense Could not so mope. O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones, To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame When the compulsive ardour gives the charge, Since frost itself as actively doth burn, And reason panders will.

QUEEN. O Hamlet, speak no more. Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul, And there I see such black and grained spots As will not leave their tinct.

HAMLET. Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty.

QUEEN. O speak to me no more; These words like daggers enter in mine ears; No more, sweet Hamlet.

HAMLET. A murderer and a villain; A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe Of your precedent lord. A vice of kings, A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diadem stole And put it in his pocket!

QUEEN. No more.

HAMLET. A king of shreds and patches!—

Enter Ghost.

Save me and hover o’er me with your wings, You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

QUEEN. Alas, he’s mad.

HAMLET. Do you not come your tardy son to chide, That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go by The important acting of your dread command? O say!

GHOST. Do not forget. This visitation Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. But look, amazement on thy mother sits. O step between her and her fighting soul. Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. Speak to her, Hamlet.

HAMLET. How is it with you, lady?

QUEEN. Alas, how is’t with you, That you do bend your eye on vacancy, And with the incorporal air do hold discourse? Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements, Start up and stand an end. O gentle son, Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

HAMLET. On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares, His form and cause conjoin’d, preaching to stones, Would make them capable.—Do not look upon me, Lest with this piteous action you convert My stern effects. Then what I have to do Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.

QUEEN. To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET. Do you see nothing there?

QUEEN. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

HAMLET. Nor did you nothing hear?

QUEEN. No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET. Why, look you there! look how it steals away! My father, in his habit as he liv’d! Look where he goes even now out at the portal.

[_Exit Ghost._]

QUEEN. This is the very coinage of your brain. This bodiless creation ecstasy Is very cunning in.

HAMLET. Ecstasy! My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time, And makes as healthful music. It is not madness That I have utter’d. Bring me to the test, And I the matter will re-word; which madness Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, Lay not that flattering unction to your soul That not your trespass, but my madness speaks. It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, Whilst rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven, Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come; And do not spread the compost on the weeds, To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue; For in the fatness of these pursy times Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

QUEEN. O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

HAMLET. O throw away the worser part of it, And live the purer with the other half. Good night. But go not to mine uncle’s bed. Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits evil, is angel yet in this, That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock or livery That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight, And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence. The next more easy; For use almost can change the stamp of nature, And either curb the devil, or throw him out With wondrous potency. Once more, good night, And when you are desirous to be bles’d, I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord [_Pointing to Polonius._] I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so, To punish me with this, and this with me, That I must be their scourge and minister. I will bestow him, and will answer well The death I gave him. So again, good night. I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind. One word more, good lady.

QUEEN. What shall I do?

HAMLET. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed, Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse, And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, Or paddling in your neck with his damn’d fingers, Make you to ravel all this matter out, That I essentially am not in madness, But mad in craft. ’Twere good you let him know, For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise, Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib, Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so? No, in despite of sense and secrecy, Unpeg the basket on the house’s top, Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape, To try conclusions, in the basket creep And break your own neck down.

QUEEN. Be thou assur’d, if words be made of breath, And breath of life, I have no life to breathe What thou hast said to me.

HAMLET. I must to England, you know that?

QUEEN. Alack, I had forgot. ’Tis so concluded on.

HAMLET. There’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows, Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,— They bear the mandate, they must sweep my way And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; For ’tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petard, and ’t shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet, When in one line two crafts directly meet. This man shall set me packing. I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room. Mother, good night. Indeed, this counsellor Is now most still, most secret, and most grave, Who was in life a foolish prating knave. Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. Good night, mother.

[_Exit Hamlet dragging out Polonius._]