Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4, 18-78
Arden 3 | Second Quarto | Neil Taylor & Anne Thompson | London: Bloomsbury, 2006 | 333-354
“Now, mother, what’s the matter?”
Scene
Words + Pronunciation
Translation
Assonance
Alliteration
Consonance
Thoughts
Thought Count
Rhythm
Pacing
Beats
Full Scene
Rhetoric
Scene
Arden 3 | Second Quarto | 2006
[ 3.4 ]
Enter Queen and Polonius.
POLONIUS
’A 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 screened and stood between
Much heat and him. I’ll silence me even here.
Pray you be round . 5
QUEEN
——————–I’ll warrant you, fear me not.
Withdraw, I hear him coming.
[Polonius hides 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. 10
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. 15
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 – 20
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [behind the arras]
———-What ho! Help!
HAMLET
How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius.]
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
QUEEN
————–O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
QUEEN
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! 25
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, it was my word.
[Uncovers the body of Polonius.]
– Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell:
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune; 30
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 brazed it so 35
That it be 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 40
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 45
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated 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? 50
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, 55
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; 60
This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
Here is your husband like a mildewed 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? 65
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday 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 70
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? 75
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, 80
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 85
And reason pardons will.
QUEEN
————————-O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul
And there I see such black and grieved spots
As will leave there their tinct.
HAMLET
——————————Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed 90
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty –
QUEEN
———————-O speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
HAMLET
————————-A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe [kith] 95
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, 100
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN
Alas, he’s mad!
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command? 105
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. 110
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 th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, 115
And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm
Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? 120
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
His form and cause conjoined preaching to stones
Would make them capable. [to Ghost] Do not look upon me
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects! Then what I have to do 125
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? 130
QUEEN
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! Look how it steals away –
My father in his habit as he lived.
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
(Exit Ghost.)
QUEEN
This is the very coinage of your brain. 135
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test 140
And I the matter will reword, 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 145
Whiles 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, 150
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 155
And live the purer with the other half.
Goodnight, but go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil , is angel yet in this, 160
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. 165
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either shame the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blessed
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord 170
I do repent, but heaven hath pleased 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 goodnight. 175
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This 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, 180
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 damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness 185
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 190
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 assured, if words be made of breath 195
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 sealed and my two schoolfellows – 200
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged –
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 205
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. 210
Mother, goodnight indeed. This councillor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a most foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Goodnight, mother. 215
(Exit [Hamlet tugging in Polonius].)
Words and Pronunciation +
Arden 3 | Second Quarto | 2006
Words
O God: one of several apostrophes to the Deity by Juliet. (Weis)
honey: sweet, used here adjectivally; honey was the standard sweetener in Shakespeare’s day, and Juliet is humouring Nurse. (Weis)
aweary: tired (Leung); weary, tired (SW)
jaunt: fatiguing journey (cited in OED) (Weis)
have I: have I had (Weis)
would: 3. a. Denoting expression (usually authoritative) of a wish or intention: Determine, decree, ordain, enjoin, give order (that something be done). Obs. (OED)
Jesu: not yet banned at this date and, outside RJ, used exclusively in the history plays, particularly in the Henry IVs (Weis)
stay the circumstance: wait for the detail (see without circumstance, 5.3.181) (Weis)
circumstance: special argument, detailed explanation (SW); circumlocution, verbiage, unnecessary detail (SW): pageantry, ceremony, spectacle (SW)
simple: foolish; Nurse picks up Juliet’s formal dichotomy of good and bad while ignoring the substance of her question. (Weis); foolish, silly, stupid (SW)
flower of courtesy: effectively a non sequitur after flower of courtesy since gentleness could be thought to be part of courtesy; ‘as gentle as a lamb’ is proverbial (Dent, L34). (Weis)
go thy ways: ‘Lucky you!’ ways: well done (SW), carry on, go ahead (SW); get along, be off (SW)
wench: a term of endearment for a young woman (OED sb. c) (Weis)
serve God: ‘Be good.’ (Weis)
dined: had your midday meal (Weis)
as: as if (Weis, re: line 49)
beshrew your heart: a mild and humorous imprecation on Juliet’s romantic heart for sending Nurse on this ‘back-breaking’ trip (cf. MA 5.1.55) (Weis)
beshrew: blame, censure, take to task, wish mischief on (SW); curse, devil take, evil befall (SW)
jauncing: prancing about (cited under OED jaunce v.)(Weis); jaunce: jaunt, trudge about, run around (SW); jaunt, fatiguing journey (SW)
honest: honourable (Weis); honourable, respectable, upright (SW); genuine, real, true (SW); innocent, well-intentioned, innocuous (SW)
warrant: assure, promise, guarantee, confirm (SW)
oddly: unequally, unevenly; or unusually, in a peculiar way (SW)
O God’s Lady: ‘by the Virgin Mary’ (Weis)
hot: eager, with a teasing intimation of unbecoming sexual passion (Weis); active, vigourous (SW); hot-tempered, angry, passionate (SW); fast, hasty (SW); lecherous, lustful, hot-blooded (SW); amorous, sexually eager, ardent, appetent (Partridge)
marry come up: a proverbial expression of indignant or amused surprise (Dent, M699.2) (Weis); expression of (real or playful) impatience (SW)
marry: [exclamation] by Mary (SW)
I trow: here meaning ‘surely’ (OED v. 4b glosses ‘I suppose’) (Weis); trow: (I) wonder, (I) ask you (SW); think, expect, believe (SW); believe, give credence to, accept as true (SW); hope, trust, suppose (SW); think, be sure (SW); know, guess, imagine (SW)
poultice: soothing dressing (Shakespeare’s only usage of the word) (Weis);1. A moist, usually heated mass of a substance with a soft, pasty consistency, applied to the skin, usually by means of a bandage or dressing, in order to promote healing, reduce swelling, relieve pain, etc.; a fomentation, a cataplasm. Also figurative. (OED)
coil: ado, fuss; cf. ‘I am not worth this coil that’s made for me’ (KJ 2.1.165).(Weis); turmoil, disturbance, fuss (SW); 1. Noisy disturbance, ‘row’; ‘tumult, turmoil, bustle, stir, hurry, confusion’ (Johnson).2. Confused noise of inanimate things; clutter, rattle, confused din. 3. Fuss, ado; a ‘business’. 4.a. to keep a coil: to keep up a disturbance; make a fuss, bustle, much ado.
shrift: confession (Leung, SW); absolution (SW); confessional, place for hearing confession (SW)
hie: hasten, go quickly (also at 72, 77, 78) (Weis); hasten, hurry, speed (SW)
cell: small, humble dwelling (SW)
stays: waits (Leung); stay: stay in hiding, remain hidden (SW); staying, remaining, continued presence (SW); remain, continue, endure (SW); wait (for), await (SW)
wanton blood: Juliet is starting to blush (Weis)
blood: spirit, vigour, mettle (SW); anger, temper, passion (SW); colouring, healthy complexion, blushing (SW); hot blood, the blood as affected by sexual passion (Partridge, 67)
wanton: feminine; or: childlike (SW); lascivious, lewd, obscene (SW); carefree, lighthearted, frolicsome, playful (SW)
climb: to climb a woman’s legs (as though they were the limb of a tree) and then enjoy her (Partridge, 80)
bird’s nest: i.e. Juliet’s bedroom; the idiom ‘to climb a bird’s nest’ may have been proverbial (Dent, N124.1). (Weis) pudend and pubic hair (Partridge, 66)
at any: hasten, go quickly (also at 72, 77, 78) (Weis)
drudge and toil in your delight: ‘I am a mean labourer and hack, and I labour for your pleasure.’ (Weis)
drudge: slave, serf, lackey (SW)
bear the burden: assume responsibility for what will ensue; but also suggesting that Juliet will experience the weight of Romeo’s body during love-making (cf. AC 1.5.22).(Weis); bear: to bear children; to bear, support, a superincumbent man (Partridge, 63)
soon at night: tonight (proverbial; Dent, S639.1) (Weis); quickly, in a short time (SW)
hie to high fortune: Wish me luck. (No Fear Shakespeare Translation)
Pronunciation +
lookest: possibly “look’st” (Leung, also: Arden CWRE, 1998)
shamest: (line 23) Q2–3; sham’st Q4, F; not in Q1 (Weis)
Jesu: (line 29) jeez-yoo or jee-zoo; jayz-yoo or jay-zoo
you: (line 29) The more formal pronoun is used consistently by Nurse when addressing Juliet, while the 13-year-old uses the familiar thou, thee, thy to her servant, in conformity with the etiquette of the day in which social class overrides age. (Weis)
marry: (line 62) mah-ree (UK); meh-ree (US) (OED)
trow: (line 62) tr-ah-oo (UK); tr-oh (US) (OED)
hie: (line 68) hah-ee
wanton: (line 70) want-en or want-in
+prose: (lines 38-45) The nurse switches to prose for this speech.
Translation
No Fear Shakespeare
[Polonius hides 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. 10
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. 15
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 – 20
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [behind the arras]
———-What ho! Help!
HAMLET
How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius.]
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
QUEEN
————–O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
QUEEN
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! 25
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, it was my word.
[Uncovers the body of Polonius.]
– Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell:
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune; 30
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 brazed it so 35
That it be 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 40
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 45
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated 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? 50
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, 55
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; 60
This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
Here is your husband like a mildewed 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? 65
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday 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 70
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? 75
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, 80
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 85
And reason pardons will.
QUEEN
————————-O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul
And there I see such black and grieved spots
As will leave there their tinct.
HAMLET
——————————Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed 90
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty –
QUEEN
———————-O speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
HAMLET
————————-A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe [kith] 95
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, 100
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN
Alas, he’s mad!
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command? 105
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. 110
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 th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, 115
And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm
Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? 120
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
His form and cause conjoined preaching to stones
Would make them capable. [to Ghost Do not look upon me
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects! Then what I have to do 125
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? 130
QUEEN
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! Look how it steals away –
My father in his habit as he lived.
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
(Exit Ghost.)
QUEEN
This is the very coinage of your brain. 135
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test 140
And I the matter will reword, 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 145
Whiles 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, 150
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 155
And live the purer with the other half.
Goodnight, but go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil , is angel yet in this, 160
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. 165
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either shame the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blessed
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord 170
I do repent, but heaven hath pleased 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 goodnight. 175
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This 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, 180
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 damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness 185
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 190
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 assured, if words be made of breath 195
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 sealed and my two schoolfellows – 200
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged –
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 205
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. 210
Mother, goodnight indeed. This councillor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a most foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Goodnight, mother. 215
(Exit [Hamlet tugging in Polonius].)
Assonance
Arden 3 | 2006
[Polonius hides 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. 10
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. 15
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 – 20
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [behind the arras]
———-What ho! Help!
HAMLET
How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius.]
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
QUEEN
————–O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
QUEEN
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! 25
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, it was my word.
[Uncovers the body of Polonius.]
– Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell:
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune; 30
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 brazed it so 35
That it be 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 40
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 45
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated 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? 50
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, 55
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; 60
This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
Here is your husband like a mildewed 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? 65
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday 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 70
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? 75
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, 80
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 85
And reason pardons will.
QUEEN
————————-O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul
And there I see such black and grieved spots
As will leave there their tinct.
HAMLET
——————————Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed 90
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty –
QUEEN
———————-O speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
HAMLET
————————-A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe [kith] 95
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, 100
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN
Alas, he’s mad!
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command? 105
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. 110
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 th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, 115
And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm
Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? 120
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
His form and cause conjoined preaching to stones
Would make them capable. [to Ghost Do not look upon me
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects! Then what I have to do 125
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? 130
QUEEN
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! Look how it steals away –
My father in his habit as he lived.
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
(Exit Ghost.)
QUEEN
This is the very coinage of your brain. 135
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test 140
And I the matter will reword, 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 145
Whiles 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, 150
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 155
And live the purer with the other half.
Goodnight, but go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil , is angel yet in this, 160
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. 165
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either shame the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blessed
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord 170
I do repent, but heaven hath pleased 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 goodnight. 175
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This 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, 180
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 damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness 185
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 190
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 assured, if words be made of breath 195
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 sealed and my two schoolfellows – 200
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged –
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 205
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. 210
Mother, goodnight indeed. This councillor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a most foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Goodnight, mother. 215
(Exit [Hamlet tugging in Polonius].)
Pronunciation +
shamest: (line 23) Q2–3; sham’st Q4, F; not in Q1 (Weis)
Jesu: (line 29) jeez-yoo or jee-zoo; jayz-yoo or jay-zoo
you: (line 29) The more formal pronoun is used consistently by Nurse when addressing Juliet, while the 13-year-old uses the familiar thou, thee, thy to her servant, in conformity with the etiquette of the day in which social class overrides age. (Weis)
marry: (line 62) mah-ree (UK); meh-ree (US) (OED)
trow: (line 62) tr-ah-oo (UK); tr-oh (US) (OED)
hie: (line 68) hah-ee
wanton: (line 70) want-en or want-in
Alliteration
Arden 3 | 2006
[Polonius hides 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. 10
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. 15
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 – 20
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [behind the arras]
———-What ho! Help!
HAMLET
How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius.]
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
QUEEN
————–O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
QUEEN
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! 25
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, it was my word.
[Uncovers the body of Polonius.]
– Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell:
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune; 30
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 brazed it so 35
That it be 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 40
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 45
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated 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? 50
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, 55
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; 60
This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
Here is your husband like a mildewed 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? 65
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday 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 70
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? 75
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, 80
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 85
And reason pardons will.
QUEEN
————————-O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul
And there I see such black and grieved spots
As will leave there their tinct.
HAMLET
——————————Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed 90
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty –
QUEEN
———————-O speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
HAMLET
————————-A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe [kith] 95
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, 100
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN
Alas, he’s mad!
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command? 105
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. 110
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 th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, 115
And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm
Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? 120
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
His form and cause conjoined preaching to stones
Would make them capable. [to Ghost Do not look upon me
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects! Then what I have to do 125
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? 130
QUEEN
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! Look how it steals away –
My father in his habit as he lived.
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
(Exit Ghost.)
QUEEN
This is the very coinage of your brain. 135
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test 140
And I the matter will reword, 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 145
Whiles 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, 150
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 155
And live the purer with the other half.
Goodnight, but go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil , is angel yet in this, 160
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. 165
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either shame the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blessed
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord 170
I do repent, but heaven hath pleased 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 goodnight. 175
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This 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, 180
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 damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness 185
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 190
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 assured, if words be made of breath 195
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 sealed and my two schoolfellows – 200
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged –
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 205
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. 210
Mother, goodnight indeed. This councillor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a most foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Goodnight, mother. 215
(Exit [Hamlet tugging in Polonius].)
Consonance
Arden 3 | 2006
[Polonius hides 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. 10
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. 15
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 – 20
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [behind the arras]
———-What ho! Help!
HAMLET
How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius.]
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
QUEEN
————–O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
QUEEN
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! 25
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, it was my word.
[Uncovers the body of Polonius.]
– Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell:
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune; 30
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 brazed it so 35
That it be 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 40
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 45
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated 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? 50
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, 55
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; 60
This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
Here is your husband like a mildewed 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? 65
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday 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 70
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? 75
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, 80
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 85
And reason pardons will.
QUEEN
————————-O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul
And there I see such black and grieved spots
As will leave there their tinct.
HAMLET
——————————Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed 90
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty –
QUEEN
———————-O speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
HAMLET
————————-A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe [kith] 95
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, 100
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN
Alas, he’s mad!
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command? 105
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. 110
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 th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, 115
And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm
Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? 120
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
His form and cause conjoined preaching to stones
Would make them capable. [to Ghost Do not look upon me
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects! Then what I have to do 125
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? 130
QUEEN
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! Look how it steals away –
My father in his habit as he lived.
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
(Exit Ghost.)
QUEEN
This is the very coinage of your brain. 135
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test 140
And I the matter will reword, 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 145
Whiles 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, 150
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 155
And live the purer with the other half.
Goodnight, but go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil , is angel yet in this, 160
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. 165
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either shame the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blessed
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord 170
I do repent, but heaven hath pleased 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 goodnight. 175
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This 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, 180
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 damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness 185
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 190
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 assured, if words be made of breath 195
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 sealed and my two schoolfellows – 200
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged –
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 205
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. 210
Mother, goodnight indeed. This councillor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a most foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Goodnight, mother. 215
(Exit [Hamlet tugging in Polonius].)
Thoughts
Arden 3 | 2006
[Polonius hides 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. 10
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. 15
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 – 20
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [behind the arras]
———-What ho! Help!
HAMLET
How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius.]
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
QUEEN
————–O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
QUEEN
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! 25
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, it was my word.
[Uncovers the body of Polonius.]
– Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell:
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune; 30
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 brazed it so 35
That it be 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 40
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 45
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated 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? 50
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, 55
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; 60
This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
Here is your husband like a mildewed 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? 65
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday 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 70
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? 75
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, 80
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 85
And reason pardons will.
QUEEN
————————-O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul
And there I see such black and grieved spots
As will leave there their tinct.
HAMLET
——————————Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed 90
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty –
QUEEN
———————-O speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
HAMLET
————————-A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe [kith] 95
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, 100
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN
Alas, he’s mad!
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command? 105
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. 110
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 th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, 115
And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm
Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? 120
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
His form and cause conjoined preaching to stones
Would make them capable. [to Ghost Do not look upon me
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects! Then what I have to do 125
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? 130
QUEEN
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! Look how it steals away –
My father in his habit as he lived.
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
(Exit Ghost.)
QUEEN
This is the very coinage of your brain. 135
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test 140
And I the matter will reword, 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 145
Whiles 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, 150
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 155
And live the purer with the other half.
Goodnight, but go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil , is angel yet in this, 160
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. 165
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either shame the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blessed
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord 170
I do repent, but heaven hath pleased 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 goodnight. 175
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This 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, 180
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 damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness 185
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 190
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 assured, if words be made of breath 195
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 sealed and my two schoolfellows – 200
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged –
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 205
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. 210
Mother, goodnight indeed. This councillor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a most foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Goodnight, mother. 215
(Exit [Hamlet tugging in Polonius].)
HAMLET
Long:
Medium:
Short:
Complex:
End stopped:
Midline:
Period:
Exclamation:
Question:
Dash:
Total:
GERTRUDE
Long:
Medium:
Short:
Complex:
End stopped:
Midline:
Period:
Exclamation:
Question:
Dash:
Total:
Rhythm
Arden 3 | 2006
[Polonius hides 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. 10
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. 15
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 – 20
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [behind the arras]
———-What ho! Help!
HAMLET
How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius.]
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
QUEEN
————–O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
QUEEN
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! 25
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, it was my word.
[Uncovers the body of Polonius.]
– Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell:
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune; 30
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 brazed it so 35
That it be 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 40
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 45
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated 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? 50
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, 55
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; 60
This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
Here is your husband like a mildewed 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? 65
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday 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 70
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? 75
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, 80
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 85
And reason pardons will.
QUEEN
————————-O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul
And there I see such black and grieved spots
As will leave there their tinct.
HAMLET
——————————Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed 90
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty –
QUEEN
———————-O speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
HAMLET
————————-A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe [kith] 95
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, 100
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN
Alas, he’s mad!
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command? 105
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. 110
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 th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, 115
And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm
Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? 120
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
His form and cause conjoined preaching to stones
Would make them capable. [to Ghost Do not look upon me
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects! Then what I have to do 125
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? 130
QUEEN
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! Look how it steals away –
My father in his habit as he lived.
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
(Exit Ghost.)
QUEEN
This is the very coinage of your brain. 135
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test 140
And I the matter will reword, 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 145
Whiles 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, 150
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 155
And live the purer with the other half.
Goodnight, but go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil , is angel yet in this, 160
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. 165
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either shame the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blessed
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord 170
I do repent, but heaven hath pleased 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 goodnight. 175
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This 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, 180
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 damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness 185
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 190
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 assured, if words be made of breath 195
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 sealed and my two schoolfellows – 200
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged –
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 205
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. 210
Mother, goodnight indeed. This councillor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a most foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Goodnight, mother. 215
(Exit [Hamlet tugging in Polonius].)
Pacing
Arden 3 | 2006
[Polonius hides 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. 10
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. 15
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 – 20
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [behind the arras]
———-What ho! Help!
HAMLET
How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius.]
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
QUEEN
————–O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
QUEEN
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! 25
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, it was my word.
[Uncovers the body of Polonius.]
– Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell:
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune; 30
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 brazed it so 35
That it be 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 40
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 45
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated 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? 50
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, 55
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; 60
This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
Here is your husband like a mildewed 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? 65
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday 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 70
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? 75
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, 80
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 85
And reason pardons will.
QUEEN
————————-O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul
And there I see such black and grieved spots
As will leave there their tinct.
HAMLET
——————————Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed 90
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty –
QUEEN
———————-O speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
HAMLET
————————-A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe [kith] 95
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, 100
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN
Alas, he’s mad!
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command? 105
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. 110
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 th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, 115
And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm
Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? 120
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
His form and cause conjoined preaching to stones
Would make them capable. [to Ghost Do not look upon me
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects! Then what I have to do 125
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? 130
QUEEN
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! Look how it steals away –
My father in his habit as he lived.
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
(Exit Ghost.)
QUEEN
This is the very coinage of your brain. 135
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test 140
And I the matter will reword, 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 145
Whiles 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, 150
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 155
And live the purer with the other half.
Goodnight, but go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil , is angel yet in this, 160
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. 165
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either shame the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blessed
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord 170
I do repent, but heaven hath pleased 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 goodnight. 175
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This 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, 180
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 damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness 185
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 190
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 assured, if words be made of breath 195
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 sealed and my two schoolfellows – 200
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged –
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 205
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. 210
Mother, goodnight indeed. This councillor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a most foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Goodnight, mother. 215
(Exit [Hamlet tugging in Polonius].)
Beats
Arden 3 | 2006
[Polonius hides behind the arras.]
Enter Hamlet.
Beat 1
DISCOVERIES: Hamlet discovers Gertrude, alone, it appears, in her bedroom. | Gertrude discovers Hamlet has entered her bedroom.
ACTIONS: Hamlet gets his mother to tell him why she wanted to talk to him about. | Gertrude makes Hamlet know that he has offended Claudius.
OBSTACLES: Gertrude is stern and wants to talk about how his play upset Claudius.
HAMLET
Now, mother, what’s the matter?
QUEEN
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Beat 2
DISCOVERIES: Hamlet discovers his mother wants to talk about how the play offended Claudius. | Gertrude discovers Hamlet has accused her petulantly of offending either Claudius or old Hamlet.
ACTIONS: Hamlet makes Gertrude understand that she has offended Old Hamlet. | Gertrude gets Hamlet to submit to her maternal authority.
OBSTACLES: Hamlet is being extremely difficult.
HAMLET
Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. 10
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. 15
Beat 3
DISCOVERIES: Hamlet discovers Gertrude is going to leave to bring some other people to talk to him | Gertrude discovers Hamlet rejects her as a mother and likely will not listen to her.
ACTIONS: Gertrude makes Hamlet know she will get some people whom he will listen to and leaves. | Hamlet makes Gertrude sit down and listen to him.
OBSTACLES: Gertrude is about to leave to bring in others. | Hamlet won’t let her leave.
QUEEN
Nay then, I’ll set those to you that can speak.
HAMLET
Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge.
Beat 4
DISCOVERIES: Gertrude discovers Hamlet is making her forcefully sit down and listen to him. | Hamlet discovers Gertrude wants to leave again (or that she is sitting down and still wanting to leave).
ACTIONS: Hamlet makes Gertrude understand she is to stay and listen to Hamlet talk about her. | Gertrude makes Hamlet think she is talking to him when she is really appealing to Polonius for help.
OBSTACLES: Hamlet appears to be on the verge of violence.
HAMLET
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 – 20
Beat 5
DISCOVERIES – Hamlet discovers Gertrude is calling for help. | Gertrude discovers Hamlet is dangerous enough that she needs to call to Polonius for help.
ACTIONS: Gertrude gets Polonius to come out of hiding to help | Hamlet gets Gertrude to be calm.
GERTRUDE
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [behind the arras]
———-What ho! Help!
Beat 6
DISCOVERIES: Hamlet discovers a man is hiding behind the arras. | Gertrude discovers Hamlet is moving to stab Polonius.
ACTIONS: Hamlet kills the man. | Gertrude tries to warm Polonius
OBSTACLES: Hamlet cannot see who is behind the arras. | Hamlet is too strong for Gertrude to stop.
HAMLET
How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius.]
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
Beat 7
DISCOVERIES Hamlet discovers he has killed the man behind the arras. | Gertrude discovers Hamlet has stabbed Polonius
ACTIONS: Gertrude makes Hamlet understand his action has grave results | Hamlet gets Gertrude to tell him if it was Claudius behind the curtain.
OBSTACLES: Gertrude can’t see behind the arras | Hamlet can’t see behind the arras.
QUEEN
————–O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
QUEEN
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! 25
Beat 9
DISCOVERIES: Hamlet discovers Gertrude has told him what he has done is rash and bloody. | Gertrude discovers Hamlet accuses her of killing Old Hamlet.
ACTIONS: Hamlet makes Gertrude understand the crime in which she has been complicit. | Gertrude gets Hamlet to explain why he things she killed her old husband.
OBSTACLES: Hamlet now accuses Gertrude of a pretty serious crime. | Gertrude doesn’t seem to know what Hamlet is talking about.
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, it was my word.
[Uncovers the body of Polonius.]
Beat 10
DISCOVERIES: Hamlet discovers he has slain Polonius. | Gertrude discovers Polonius is dead.
ACTIONS: Hamlet makes Polonius understand this kind of death is the result of his habitual meddling. | Gertrude….
– Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell:
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune; 30
Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.
Beat 11
DISCOVERIES: Hamlet discovers Gertrude is wringing her hands | Gertrude discovers Hamlet meant to kill Claudius.
ACTIONS: Hamlet makes Gertrude sit down and listen to him. | Gertrude makes Hamlet know she is not happy with this situation.
– 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 brazed it so 35
That it be proof and bulwark against sense.
Beat 12 DISCOVERIES: Gertrude discovers Hamlet thinks she has done something hateful | Hamlet discovers Gertrude is challenging him to say what she has done so wrong.
ACTIONS: Gertrude gets Hamlet to be clear with her about what she’s done | Hamlet makes Gertrude understand it is a grave act indeed.
OBSTACLE: Gertrude does not appear to know what she has done that’s so wrong.
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 40
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 45
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated 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? 50
Beat 13
DISCOVERIES: Gertrude discovers Hamlet has convicted her of deeply betraying her former husband. | Hamlet discovers Gertrude still wants to know what it is that she has done that’s so bad.
ACTIONS: Hamlet makes Gertrude understand what a mistake she made in betraying Old Hamlet. | Gertrude gets Hamlet to stop his accusations
OBSTACLES: Hamlet keeps going on.
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, 55
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; 60
This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
Here is your husband like a mildewed 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? 65
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday 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 70
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? 75
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, 80
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 85
And reason pardons will.
QUEEN
————————-O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul
And there I see such black and grieved spots
As will leave there their tinct.
HAMLET
——————————Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed 90
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty –
QUEEN
———————-O speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
HAMLET
————————-A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe [kith] 95
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 –
Beat 14
DISCOVERIES: Hamlet discovers the Ghost of his father has appear to him. Gertrude notices Hamlet is speaking to someone else who is not there.
ACTIONS: Hamlet gets the Ghost to chide him for taking so long to revenge him | Gertrude makes the audience understand Hamlet must be mad indeed.
Enter Ghost.
HAMLET
Save me and hover o’er me with your wings, 100
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN
Alas, he’s mad!
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command? 105
O say!
GHOST
Do not forget! This visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
Beat 14b
But look, amazement on thy mother sits!
O step between her and her fighting soul.
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. 110
Speak to her, Hamlet.
Beat 15
DISCOVERIES: Hamlet discovers the the Ghost wants him to keep bringing his mother on side again; he discovers his mother is distraught | Gertrude discovers Hamlet wants to know how she is doing.
ACTIONS: Hamlet gets Gertrude to tell him how she is. | Gertrude gets Hamlet to bring himself back to his senses.
OBSTACLES: Hamlet keeps looking at something that isn’t there.
HAMLET
How is it with you, lady?
QUEEN
————————-Alas, how is’t with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy
And with th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, 115
And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm
Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience.
Beat 16
DISCOVERIES: Gertrude discovers Hamlet will not take his eyes off whatever he thinks is there with them | Hamlet discovers Gertrude wants to know what he’s looking at.
ACTIONS: Gertrude gets Hamlet to tell her what he thinks he sees. | Hamlet gets Gertrude to see the Ghost.
OBSTACLES: Gertrude can’t see what Hamlet sees.
GERTRUDE
————————Whereon do you look? 120
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
His form and cause conjoined preaching to stones
Would make them capable.
Beat 17
DISCOVERIES: Hamlet discovers the Ghost is glaring at him in pity. | Gertrude discovers Hamlet is speaking to the air again.
ACTIONS: Hamlet gets the ghost to stop looking so piteously on him because it’s discouraging him.
HAMLET
[to Ghost] Do not look upon me
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects! Then what I have to do 125
Will want true colour, tears perchance for blood.
Beat 18
DISCOVERIES: Hamlet discovers Gertrude wants to know who it is he sees. | Gertrude discovers the person Hamlet thinks is there is making him weak.
ACTIONS: Gertrude gets Hamlet to tell him whom he’s talking to | Hamlet gets Gertrude to understand it’s his father.
OBSTACLES: Gertrude can’t see what he sees. The ghost is leaving.
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? 130
QUEEN
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! Look how it steals away –
My father in his habit as he lived.
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
(Exit Ghost.)
Beat 19
DISCOVERIES: Hamlet discovers the Ghost is gone; that his mother thinks he is seeing things. | Gertrude discovers Hamlet thinks he sees his father, who has just left.
ACTION: Gertrude gets Hamlet to understand he is seeing things due to his madness | Hamlet makes Gertrude understand that she can’t see the ghost because she is guilty of offending it and needs to repent.
QUEEN
This is the very coinage of your brain. 135
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test 140
And I the matter will reword, 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 145
Whiles 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, 150
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.
Beat 20
DISCOVERIES: Gertrude discovers she is convicted by Hamlet’ words. | Hamlet discovers Gertrude is convicted by his words.
ACTIONS: Hamlet gets Gertrude to live purely now that she has recognized her evil | Gertrude makes Hamlet understand she has been deeply struck by what he has said.
QUEEN
O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
HAMLET
O throw away the worser part of it 155
And live the purer with the other half.
Beat 21 DISCOVERIES:
Goodnight, but go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil , is angel yet in this, 160
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. 165
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either shame the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blessed
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord 170
I do repent, but heaven hath pleased 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 goodnight. 175
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This 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, 180
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 damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness 185
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 190
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 assured, if words be made of breath 195
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 sealed and my two schoolfellows – 200
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged –
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 205
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. 210
Mother, goodnight indeed. This councillor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a most foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Goodnight, mother. 215
(Exit [Hamlet tugging in Polonius].)
Beats +
shamest: (line 23) Q2–3; sham’st Q4, F; not in Q1 (Weis)
Jesu: (line 29) jeez-yoo or jee-zoo; jayz-yoo or jay-zoo
you: (line 29) The more formal pronoun is used consistently by Nurse when addressing Juliet, while the 13-year-old uses the familiar thou, thee, thy to her servant, in conformity with the etiquette of the day in which social class overrides age. (Weis)
marry: (line 62) mah-ree (UK); meh-ree (US) (OED)
trow: (line 62) tr-ah-oo (UK); tr-oh (US) (OED)
hie: (line 68) hah-ee
wanton: (line 70) want-en or want-in
Scene
Arden 3 | Second Quarto | 2006
Second Quarto [ 3.4 ] (333-354)
Enter Queen and Polonius.
POLONIUS
’A 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 screened and stood between
Much heat and him. I’ll silence me even here.
Pray you be round . 5
QUEEN
——————–I’ll warrant you, fear me not.
Withdraw, I hear him coming.
[Polonius hides 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. 10
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. 15
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 – 20
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [behind the arras]
———-What ho! Help!
HAMLET
How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius.]
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
QUEEN
————–O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
QUEEN
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! 25
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, it was my word.
[Uncovers the body of Polonius.]
– Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell:
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune; 30
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 brazed it so 35
That it be 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 40
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 45
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated 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? 50
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, 55
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; 60
This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
Here is your husband like a mildewed 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? 65
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday 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 70
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? 75
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, 80
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 85
And reason pardons will.
QUEEN
————————-O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul
And there I see such black and grieved spots
As will leave there their tinct.
HAMLET
——————————Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed 90
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty –
QUEEN
———————-O speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
HAMLET
————————-A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe [kith] 95
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, 100
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN
Alas, he’s mad!
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command? 105
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. 110
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 th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, 115
And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm
Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? 120
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
His form and cause conjoined preaching to stones
Would make them capable. [to Ghost Do not look upon me
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects! Then what I have to do 125
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? 130
QUEEN
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! Look how it steals away –
My father in his habit as he lived.
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
(Exit Ghost.)
QUEEN
This is the very coinage of your brain. 135
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test 140
And I the matter will reword, 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 145
Whiles 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, 150
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 155
And live the purer with the other half.
Goodnight, but go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil , is angel yet in this, 160
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. 165
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either shame the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blessed
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord 170
I do repent, but heaven hath pleased 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 goodnight. 175
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This 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, 180
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 damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness 185
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 190
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 assured, if words be made of breath 195
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 sealed and my two schoolfellows – 200
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged –
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 205
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. 210
Mother, goodnight indeed. This councillor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a most foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Goodnight, mother. 215
(Exit [Hamlet tugging in Polonius].)
Rhetoric
Arden 3 | Second Quarto | 2006
[Polonius hides 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. 10
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. 15
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 – 20
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [behind the arras]
———-What ho! Help!
HAMLET
How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius.]
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
QUEEN
————–O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
QUEEN
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! 25
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, it was my word.
[Uncovers the body of Polonius.]
– Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell:
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune; 30
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 brazed it so 35
That it be 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 40
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 45
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated 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? 50
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, 55
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; 60
This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
Here is your husband like a mildewed 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? 65
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday 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 70
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? 75
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, 80
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 85
And reason pardons will.
QUEEN
————————-O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul
And there I see such black and grieved spots
As will leave there their tinct.
HAMLET
——————————Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed 90
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty –
QUEEN
———————-O speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
HAMLET
————————-A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe [kith] 95
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, 100
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN
Alas, he’s mad!
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command? 105
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. 110
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 th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, 115
And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm
Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? 120
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
His form and cause conjoined preaching to stones
Would make them capable. [to Ghost Do not look upon me
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects! Then what I have to do 125
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? 130
QUEEN
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! Look how it steals away –
My father in his habit as he lived.
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
(Exit Ghost.)
QUEEN
This is the very coinage of your brain. 135
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test 140
And I the matter will reword, 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 145
Whiles 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, 150
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 155
And live the purer with the other half.
Goodnight, but go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil , is angel yet in this, 160
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. 165
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either shame the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blessed
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord 170
I do repent, but heaven hath pleased 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 goodnight. 175
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This 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, 180
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 damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness 185
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 190
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 assured, if words be made of breath 195
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 sealed and my two schoolfellows – 200
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged –
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 205
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. 210
Mother, goodnight indeed. This councillor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a most foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Goodnight, mother. 215
(Exit [Hamlet tugging in Polonius].)
Full Scene
Arden 3 | Second Quarto | 2006
Top
Second Quarto [ 3.4 ] (333-354)
Enter Queen and Polonius.
POLONIUS
’A 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 screened and stood between
Much heat and him. I’ll silence me even here.
Pray you be round . 5
QUEEN
——————–I’ll warrant you, fear me not.
Withdraw, I hear him coming.
[Polonius hides 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. 10
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. 15
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 – 20
Help, ho!
POLONIUS [behind the arras]
———-What ho! Help!
HAMLET
How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius.]
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
QUEEN
————–O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
QUEEN
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! 25
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, it was my word.
[Uncovers the body of Polonius.]
– Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell:
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune; 30
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 brazed it so 35
That it be 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 40
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 45
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow
O’er this solidity and compound mass
With heated 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? 50
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, 55
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; 60
This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
Here is your husband like a mildewed 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? 65
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday 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 70
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? 75
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, 80
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 85
And reason pardons will.
QUEEN
————————-O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul
And there I see such black and grieved spots
As will leave there their tinct.
HAMLET
——————————Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed 90
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty –
QUEEN
———————-O speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
HAMLET
————————-A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe [kith] 95
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, 100
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN
Alas, he’s mad!
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command? 105
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. 110
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 th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, 115
And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm
Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? 120
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
His form and cause conjoined preaching to stones
Would make them capable. [to Ghost Do not look upon me
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects! Then what I have to do 125
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? 130
QUEEN
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! Look how it steals away –
My father in his habit as he lived.
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
(Exit Ghost.)
QUEEN
This is the very coinage of your brain. 135
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test 140
And I the matter will reword, 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 145
Whiles 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, 150
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 155
And live the purer with the other half.
Goodnight, but go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil , is angel yet in this, 160
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. 165
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either shame the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blessed
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord 170
I do repent, but heaven hath pleased 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 goodnight. 175
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This 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, 180
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 damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness 185
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 190
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 assured, if words be made of breath 195
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 sealed and my two schoolfellows – 200
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged –
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 205
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. 210
Mother, goodnight indeed. This councillor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a most foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Goodnight, mother. 215
(Exit [Hamlet tugging in Polonius].)
Rhetoric
Arden 3 | First Folio | 2007
HAMLET
SHARED ANTITHESIS
QUEEN
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. 10
HAMLET
Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
HAMLET
Go, go, you question with an idle 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,
But would you 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.
20You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
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
30As kill a king?
HAMLET
Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down
35And let me wring your heart. For so I shall
If it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damned custom have not brazed it so
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
QUEEN
What have I done that thou dar’st wag thy tongue
40In noise so rude against me?
HAMLET
40Such 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 makes a blister there, makes marriage vows
45As 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:
55See what a grace was seated on his brow,
Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,
An eye like Mars to threaten or command,
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
60A 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 mildewed ear
65Blasting 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 heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble
70And waits upon the judgement, and what judgement
Would step from this to this? What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?
O shame, where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
75To 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
As reason panders will.
QUEEN
O Hamlet, speak no more.
80Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.
Not antithesis per se, but Gertrude needs to feel the difference between her point of view and her soul.
HAMLET
A murderer and a villain,
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord, a vice of kings,
90A cutpurse of the empire and the rule
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
And put it in his pocket, –
GHOST
O, step between her and her fighting soul.
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.
HAMLET
105How is it with you, lady?
QUEEN
105Alas, how is’t with you, (shared)
That you bend your eye on vacancy
And with th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep
And, as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm,
110Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on 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;
115His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones
Would make them capable. [to Ghost ] 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.
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
130Ecstasy?
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test
And I the matter will reword, which madness
135Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not a 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
140Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven,
Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come,
And do not spread the compost o’er the weeds
To make them rank . Forgive me this my virtue,
For in the fatness of these pursy times
145Virtue 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.
METAPHOR
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 screened and stood between
Much heat and him. I’ll silence me e’en here.
5Pray you be round with him.
HAMLET ((within))
Mother, mother, mother.
QUEEN
I’ll warrant you, fear me not.
Withdraw, I hear him coming.
[ Polonius hides behind the arras.]
Enter Hamlet.
HAMLET
Now, mother, what’s the matter?
QUEEN
10Hamlet, 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 an idle tongue.
QUEEN
Why, how now, Hamlet!
HAMLET
What’s the matter now?
QUEEN
15Have you forgot me?
HAMLET
15No, by the rood, not so.
You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,
But would you 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.
20You 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 the arras]
What ho! Help, help, help!
HAMLET
How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!
Kills Polonius.
POLONIUS
25O, I am slain!
QUEEN
25O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
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
30As kill a king?
HAMLET
30Ay, lady, ’twas my word.
[Uncovers the body of Polonius.]
– Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell:
I took thee for thy betters . Take thy fortune;
Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger. –
Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down
35And let me wring your heart. For so I shall
If it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damned custom have not brazed it so
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
QUEEN
What have I done that thou dar’st wag thy tongue
40In noise so rude against me?
HAMLET
40Such 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 makes a blister there, makes marriage vows
45As 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,
50With 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:
55See what a grace was seated on his brow,
Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,
An eye like Mars to threaten or command,
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
60A 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 mildewed ear
65Blasting 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 heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble
70And waits upon the judgement, and what judgement
Would step from this to this? What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?
O shame, where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
75To 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
As reason panders will.
QUEEN
O Hamlet, speak no more.
80Thou 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
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
85Over the nasty sty –
QUEEN
85O 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,
90A 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 you, gracious figure?
QUEEN
95Alas, he’s mad!
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
Th’ important acting of your dread command?
O say!
GHOST
Do not forget! This visitation
100Is 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
105How is it with you, lady?
QUEEN
105Alas, how is’t with you,
That you bend your eye on vacancy
And with th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep
And, as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm,
110Your bedded hair like life in excrements
Start up and stand on 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;
115His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones
Would make them capable. [to Ghost ] 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
120To who 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
125Why, look you, there! Look how it steals away –
My father in his habit as he lived.
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
130Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
130Ecstasy?
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test
And I the matter will reword, which madness
135Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not a 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
140Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven,
Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come,
And do not spread the compost o’er the weeds
To make them rank . Forgive me this my virtue,
For in the fatness of these pursy times
145Virtue 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.
150Goodnight, but go not to mine uncle’s bed,
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence. Once more goodnight,
155And when you are desirous to be blessed
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord
I do repent, but heaven hath pleased it so
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
160I will bestow him and will answer well
The death I gave him. So again, goodnight.
I must be cruel only to be kind.
Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.
QUEEN
What shall I do?
HAMLET
165Not this, by no means, that I bid you do –
Let the blunt 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 damned fingers,
170Make 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,
175Such 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
180And break your own neck down.
QUEEN
Be thou assured, 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
185Alack, I had forgot; ’tis so concluded on.
HAMLET
This man shall set me packing;
I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.
Mother, goodnight. Indeed this councillor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave
190Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Goodnight, mother.
( Exit Hamlet tugging in Polonius. )