1    He will come straight. Look you lay home to him:
2    Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
3    And that your grace hath screen'd and stood between
4    Much heat and him. I'll sconce me even here.
5    Pray you, be round with him.

Within
6     Mother, mother, mother!

7    I'll warrant you,
8    Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.

9    Now, mother, what's the matter?

10   Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

11   Mother, you have my father much offended.

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

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

14   Why, how now, Hamlet!

15   What's the matter now?

16   Have you forgot me?

17   No, by the rood, not so:
18   You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife;
19   And--would it were not so!--you are my mother.

20   Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.

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

24   What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
25   Help, help, ho!

Behind
26    What, ho! help, help, help!

Drawing
27    How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!

Behind
28    O, I am slain!

29   O me, what hast thou done?

30   Nay, I know not:
31   Is it the king?

32   O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

33   A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
34   As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

35   As kill a king!

36   Ay, lady, 'twas my word.
Lifts up the array and discovers POLONIUS
37   Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
38   I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;
39   Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger.
40   Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down,
41   And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,
42   If it be made of penetrable stuff,
43   If damned custom have not brass'd it so
44   That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

45   What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
46   In noise so rude against me?

47   Such an act
48   That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
49   Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
50   From the fair forehead of an innocent love
51   And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
52   As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed
53   As from the body of contraction plucks
54   The very soul, and sweet religion makes
55   A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow:
56   Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
57   With tristful visage, as against the doom,
58   Is thought-sick at the act.

59   Ay me, what act,
60   That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

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

97   O Hamlet, speak no more:
98   Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
99   And there I see such black and grained spots
100  As will not leave their tinct.

101  Nay, but to live
102  In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
103  Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
104  Over the nasty sty,--

105  O, speak to me no more;
106  These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
107  No more, sweet Hamlet!

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

114  No more!

115  A king of shreds and patches,--
Enter Ghost
116  Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
117  You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

118  Alas, he's mad!

119  Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
120  That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
121  The important acting of your dread command? O, say!

122  Do not forget: this visitation
123  Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
124  But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
125  O, step between her and her fighting soul:
126  Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
127  Speak to her, Hamlet.

128  How is it with you, lady?

129  Alas, how is't with you,
130  That you do bend your eye on vacancy
131  And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
132  Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
133  And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
134  Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
135  Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son,
136  Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
137  Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

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

144  To whom do you speak this?

145  Do you see nothing there?

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

147  Nor did you nothing hear?

148  No, nothing but ourselves.

149  Why, look you there! look, how it steals away!
150  My father, in his habit as he lived!
151  Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!

152  This the very coinage of your brain:
153  This bodiless creation ecstasy
154  Is very cunning in.

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

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

173  O, throw away the worser part of it,
174  And live the purer with the other half.
175  Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed;
176  Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
177  That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
178  Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
179  That to the use of actions fair and good
180  He likewise gives a frock or livery,
181  That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
182  And that shall lend a kind of easiness
183  To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
184  For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
185  And either ... the devil, or throw him out
186  With wondrous potency. Once more, good night:
187  And when you are desirous to be bless'd,
188  I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,
Pointing to POLONIUS
189  I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,
190  To punish me with this and this with me,
191  That I must be their scourge and minister.
192  I will bestow him, and will answer well
193  The death I gave him. So, again, good night.
194  I must be cruel, only to be kind:
195  Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.
196  One word more, good lady.

197  What shall I do?

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

214  Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,
215  And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
216  What thou hast said to me.

217  I must to England; you know that?

218  Alack,
219  I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on.

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