1    And can you, by no drift of circumstance,
2    Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
3    Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
4    With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

5    He does confess he feels himself distracted;
6    But from what cause he will by no means speak.

7    Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
8    But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,
9    When we would bring him on to some confession
10   Of his true state.

11   Did he receive you well?

12   Most like a gentleman.

13   But with much forcing of his disposition.

14   Niggard of question; but, of our demands,
15   Most free in his reply.

16   Did you assay him?
17   To any pastime?

18   Madam, it so fell out, that certain players
19   We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him;
20   And there did seem in him a kind of joy
21   To hear of it: they are about the court,
22   And, as I think, they have already order
23   This night to play before him.

24   'Tis most true:
25   And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties
26   To hear and see the matter.

27   With all my heart; and it doth much content me
28   To hear him so inclined.
29   Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
30   And drive his purpose on to these delights.

31   We shall, my lord.

32   Sweet Gertrude, leave us too;
33   For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
34   That he, as 'twere by accident, may here
35   Affront Ophelia:
36   Her father and myself, lawful espials,
37   Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen,
38   We may of their encounter frankly judge,
39   And gather by him, as he is behaved,
40   If 't be the affliction of his love or no
41   That thus he suffers for.

42   I shall obey you.
43   And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
44   That your good beauties be the happy cause
45   Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
46   Will bring him to his wonted way again,
47   To both your honours.

48   Madam, I wish it may.

49   Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious, so please you,
50   We will bestow ourselves.
To OPHELIA
51   Read on this book;
52   That show of such an exercise may colour
53   Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,--
54   'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
55   And pious action we do sugar o'er
56   The devil himself.

Aside
57    O, 'tis too true!
58   How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
59   The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,
60   Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
61   Than is my deed to my most painted word:
62   O heavy burthen!

63   I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord.

64   To be, or not to be: that is the question:
65   Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
66   The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
67   Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
68   And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
69   No more; and by a sleep to say we end
70   The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
71   That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
72   Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
73   To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
74   For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
75   When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
76   Must give us pause: there's the respect
77   That makes calamity of so long life;
78   For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
79   The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
80   The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
81   The insolence of office and the spurns
82   That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
83   When he himself might his quietus make
84   With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
85   To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
86   But that the dread of something after death,
87   The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
88   No traveller returns, puzzles the will
89   And makes us rather bear those ills we have
90   Than fly to others that we know not of?
91   Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
92   And thus the native hue of resolution
93   Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
94   And enterprises of great pith and moment
95   With this regard their currents turn awry,
96   And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
97   The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
98   Be all my sins remember'd.

99   Good my lord,
100  How does your honour for this many a day?

101  I humbly thank you; well, well, well.

102  My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
103  That I have longed long to re-deliver;
104  I pray you, now receive them.

105  No, not I;
106  I never gave you aught.

107  My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
108  And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
109  As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
110  Take these again; for to the noble mind
111  Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
112  There, my lord.

113  Ha, ha! are you honest?

114  My lord?

115  Are you fair?

116  What means your lordship?

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

119  Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than
120  with honesty?

121  Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
122  transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
123  force of honesty can translate beauty into his
124  likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the
125  time gives it proof. I did love you once.

126  Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

127  You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
128  so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of
129  it: I loved you not.

130  I was the more deceived.

131  Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
132  breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
133  but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
134  were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
135  proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
136  my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
137  imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
138  in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
139  between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
140  all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
141  Where's your father?

142  At home, my lord.

143  Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
144  fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.

145  O, help him, you sweet heavens!

146  If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for
147  thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
148  snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a
149  nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs
150  marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough
151  what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go,
152  and quickly too. Farewell.

153  O heavenly powers, restore him!

154  I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God
155  has given you one face, and you make yourselves
156  another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
157  nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness
158  your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
159  made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages:
160  those that are married already, all but one, shall
161  live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a
162  nunnery, go.

163  O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
164  The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;
165  The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
166  The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
167  The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
168  And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
169  That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
170  Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
171  Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
172  That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth
173  Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,
174  To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

175  Love! his affections do not that way tend;
176  Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,
177  Was not like madness. There's something in his soul,
178  O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;
179  And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
180  Will be some danger: which for to prevent,
181  I have in quick determination
182  Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England,
183  For the demand of our neglected tribute
184  Haply the seas and countries different
185  With variable objects shall expel
186  This something-settled matter in his heart,
187  Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
188  From fashion of himself. What think you on't?

189  It shall do well: but yet do I believe
190  The origin and commencement of his grief
191  Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia!
192  You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said;
193  We heard it all. My lord, do as you please;
194  But, if you hold it fit, after the play
195  Let his queen mother all alone entreat him
196  To show his grief: let her be round with him;
197  And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear
198  Of all their conference. If she find him not,
199  To England send him, or confine him where
200  Your wisdom best shall think.

201  It shall be so:
202  Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.