1    I will not speak with her.

2    She is importunate, indeed distract:
3    Her mood will needs be pitied.

4    What would she have?

5    She speaks much of her father; says she hears
6    There's tricks i' the world; and hems, and beats her heart;
7    Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,
8    That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing,
9    Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
10   The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
11   And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
12   Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures
13   yield them,
14   Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
15   Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.

16   'Twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew
17   Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.

18   Let her come in.
Exit HORATIO
19   To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is,
20   Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss:
21   So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
22   It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

23   Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?

24   How now, Ophelia!

Sings
25   How should I your true love know
26   From another one?
27   By his cockle hat and staff,
28   And his sandal shoon.

29   Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

30   Say you? nay, pray you, mark.
Sings
31   He is dead and gone, lady,
32   He is dead and gone;
33   At his head a grass-green turf,
34   At his heels a stone.

35   Nay, but, Ophelia,--

36   Pray you, mark.
Sings
37   White his shroud as the mountain snow,--

38   Alas, look here, my lord.

Sings
39   Larded with sweet flowers
40   Which bewept to the grave did go
41   With true-love showers.

42   How do you, pretty lady?

43   Well, God 'ild you! They say the owl was a baker's
44   daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not
45   what we may be. God be at your table!

46   Conceit upon her father.

47   Pray you, let's have no words of this; but when they
48   ask you what it means, say you this:
Sings
49   To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
50   All in the morning betime,
51   And I a maid at your window,
52   To be your Valentine.
53   Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
54   And dupp'd the chamber-door;
55   Let in the maid, that out a maid
56   Never departed more.

57   Pretty Ophelia!

58   Indeed, la, without an oath, I'll make an end on't:
Sings
59   By Gis and by Saint Charity,
60   Alack, and fie for shame!
61   Young men will do't, if they come to't;
62   By cock, they are to blame.
63   Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
64   You promised me to wed.
65   So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
66   An thou hadst not come to my bed.

67   How long hath she been thus?

68   I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I
69   cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him
70   i' the cold ground. My brother shall know of it:
71   and so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my
72   coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies;
73   good night, good night.

74   Follow her close; give her good watch,
75   I pray you.
Exit HORATIO
76   O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
77   All from her father's death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
78   When sorrows come, they come not single spies
79   But in battalions. First, her father slain:
80   Next, your son gone; and he most violent author
81   Of his own just remove: the people muddied,
82   Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers,
83   For good Polonius' death; and we have done but greenly,
84   In hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Ophelia
85   Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
86   Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts:
87   Last, and as much containing as all these,
88   Her brother is in secret come from France;
89   Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
90   And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
91   With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
92   Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
93   Will nothing stick our person to arraign
94   In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
95   Like to a murdering-piece, in many places
96   Gives me superfluous death.

97   Alack, what noise is this?

98   Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.
Enter another Gentleman
99   What is the matter?

100  Save yourself, my lord:
101  The ocean, overpeering of his list,
102  Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
103  Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
104  O'erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord;
105  And, as the world were now but to begin,
106  Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
107  The ratifiers and props of every word,
108  They cry 'Choose we: Laertes shall be king:'
109  Caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds:
110  'Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!'

111  How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
112  O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!

113  The doors are broke.

114  Where is this king? Sirs, stand you all without.

115  No, let's come in.

116  I pray you, give me leave.

117  We will, we will.

118  I thank you: keep the door. O thou vile king,
119  Give me my father!

120  Calmly, good Laertes.

121  That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,
122  Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
123  Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow
124  Of my true mother.

125  What is the cause, Laertes,
126  That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?
127  Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person:
128  There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
129  That treason can but peep to what it would,
130  Acts little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,
131  Why thou art thus incensed. Let him go, Gertrude.
132  Speak, man.

133  Where is my father?

134  Dead.

135  But not by him.

136  Let him demand his fill.

137  How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
138  To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
139  Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
140  I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
141  That both the worlds I give to negligence,
142  Let come what comes; only I'll be revenged
143  Most thoroughly for my father.

144  Who shall stay you?

145  My will, not all the world:
146  And for my means, I'll husband them so well,
147  They shall go far with little.

148  Good Laertes,
149  If you desire to know the certainty
150  Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge,
151  That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
152  Winner and loser?

153  None but his enemies.

154  Will you know them then?

155  To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
156  And like the kind life-rendering pelican,
157  Repast them with my blood.

158  Why, now you speak
159  Like a good child and a true gentleman.
160  That I am guiltless of your father's death,
161  And am most sensible in grief for it,
162  It shall as level to your judgment pierce
163  As day does to your eye.

Within
164   Let her come in.

165  How now! what noise is that?
Re-enter OPHELIA
166  O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
167  Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
168  By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
169  Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
170  Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
171  O heavens! is't possible, a young maid's wits
172  Should be as moral as an old man's life?
173  Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine,
174  It sends some precious instance of itself
175  After the thing it loves.

Sings
176  They bore him barefaced on the bier;
177  Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
178  And in his grave rain'd many a tear:--
179  Fare you well, my dove!

180  Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
181  It could not move thus.

Sings
182  You must sing a-down a-down,
183  An you call him a-down-a.
184  O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false
185  steward, that stole his master's daughter.

186  This nothing's more than matter.

187  There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray,
188  love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts.

189  A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.

190  There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue
191  for you; and here's some for me: we may call it
192  herb-grace o' Sundays: O you must wear your rue with
193  a difference. There's a daisy: I would give you
194  some violets, but they withered all when my father
195  died: they say he made a good end,--
Sings
196  For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.

197  Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
198  She turns to favour and to prettiness.

Sings
199  And will he not come again?
200  And will he not come again?
201  No, no, he is dead:
202  Go to thy death-bed:
203  He never will come again.
204  His beard was as white as snow,
205  All flaxen was his poll:
206  He is gone, he is gone,
207  And we cast away moan:
208  God ha' mercy on his soul!
209  And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be wi' ye.

210  Do you see this, O God?

211  Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
212  Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
213  Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will.
214  And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me:
215  If by direct or by collateral hand
216  They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give,
217  Our crown, our life, and all that we can ours,
218  To you in satisfaction; but if not,
219  Be you content to lend your patience to us,
220  And we shall jointly labour with your soul
221  To give it due content.

222  Let this be so;
223  His means of death, his obscure funeral--
224  No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
225  No noble rite nor formal ostentation--
226  Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
227  That I must call't in question.

228  So you shall;
229  And where the offence is let the great axe fall.
230  I pray you, go with me.