| ACT IIISCENE IV | The Queen's closet. | |
| | Enter QUEEN MARGARET and POLONIUS | |
| LORD POLONIUS | He will come straight. Look you lay home to him: | |
| | Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with, | |
| | And that your grace hath screen'd and stood between | |
| | Much heat and him. I'll sconce me even here. | 5 |
| | Pray you, be round with him. | |
| HAMLET | Within | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | 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 GERTRUDE | Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. | 10 |
| HAMLET | Mother, you have my father much offended. | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. | |
| HAMLET | Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue. | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | Why, how now, Hamlet! | |
| HAMLET | What's the matter now? | 15 |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | Have you forgot me? | |
| HAMLET | No, by the rood, not so: | |
| | You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife; | |
| | And--would it were not so!--you are my mother. | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak. | 20 |
| 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 GERTRUDE | What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me? | |
| | Help, help, ho! | 25 |
| LORD POLONIUS | Behind | |
| HAMLET | Drawing | |
| | Makes a pass through the arras | |
| LORD POLONIUS | Behind | |
| | Falls and dies | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | O me, what hast thou done? | |
| HAMLET | Nay, I know not: | |
| | Is it the king? | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! | |
| HAMLET | A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother, | 30 |
| | As kill a king, and marry with his brother. | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | As kill a king! | |
| HAMLET | Ay, lady, 'twas my word. | |
| | Lifts up the array and discovers POLONIUS | |
| | Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! | |
| | I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune; | 35 |
| | 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 brass'd it so | 40 |
| | That it is proof and bulwark against sense. | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue | |
| | In noise so rude against me? | |
| HAMLET | Such an act | |
| | That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, | 45 |
| | Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose | |
| | From the fair forehead of an innocent love | |
| | And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows | |
| | As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed | |
| | As from the body of contraction plucks | 50 |
| | 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. | 55 |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | Ay me, what act, | |
| | That roars so loud, and thunders in the index? | |
| HAMLET | Look here, upon this picture, and on this, | |
| | The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. | |
| | See, what a grace was seated on this brow; | 60 |
| | Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; | |
| | An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; | |
| | A station like the herald Mercury | |
| | New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; | |
| | A combination and a form indeed, | 65 |
| | Where every god did seem to set his seal, | |
| | To give the world assurance of a man: | |
| | This was your husband. Look you now, what follows: | |
| | Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear, | |
| | Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? | 70 |
| | Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, | |
| | And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes? | |
| | You cannot call it love; for at your age | |
| | The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, | |
| | And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment | 75 |
| | Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have, | |
| | Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense | |
| | Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err, | |
| | Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd | |
| | But it reserved some quantity of choice, | 80 |
| | To serve in such a difference. What devil was't | |
| | That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind? | |
| | Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, | |
| | Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, | |
| | Or but a sickly part of one true sense | 85 |
| | Could not so mope. | |
| | O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, | |
| | If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones, | |
| | To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, | |
| | And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame | 90 |
| | When the compulsive ardour gives the charge, | |
| | Since frost itself as actively doth burn | |
| | And reason panders will. | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | O Hamlet, speak no more: | |
| | Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul; | 95 |
| | And there I see such black and grained spots | |
| | As will not leave their tinct. | |
| HAMLET | Nay, but to live | |
| | In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, | |
| | Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love | 100 |
| | Over the nasty sty,-- | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | O, speak to me no more; | |
| | These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears; | |
| | No more, sweet Hamlet! | |
| HAMLET | A murderer and a villain; | 105 |
| | A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe | |
| | Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings; | |
| | A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, | |
| | That from a shelf the precious diadem stole, | |
| | And put it in his pocket! | 110 |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | No more! | |
| HAMLET | A king of shreds and patches,-- | |
| | Enter Ghost | |
| | Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings, | |
| | You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure? | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | Alas, he's mad! | 115 |
| HAMLET | Do you not come your tardy son to chide, | |
| | That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by | |
| | The important acting of your dread command? O, say! | |
| Ghost | Do not forget: this visitation | |
| | Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. | 120 |
| | But, look, amazement on thy mother sits: | |
| | O, step between her and her fighting soul: | |
| | Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works: | |
| | Speak to her, Hamlet. | |
| HAMLET | How is it with you, lady? | 125 |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | Alas, how is't with you, | |
| | That you do bend your eye on vacancy | |
| | And with the incorporal air do hold discourse? | |
| | Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep; | |
| | And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, | 130 |
| | Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, | |
| | Starts up, and stands 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! | 135 |
| | His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, | |
| | Would make them capable. Do not look upon me; | |
| | Lest with this piteous action you convert | |
| | My stern effects: then what I have to do | |
| | Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood. | 140 |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | To whom do you speak this? | |
| HAMLET | Do you see nothing there? | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | Nothing at all; yet all that is I see. | |
| HAMLET | Nor did you nothing hear? | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | No, nothing but ourselves. | 145 |
| 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 GERTRUDE | This the very coinage of your brain: | |
| | This bodiless creation ecstasy | 150 |
| | Is very cunning in. | |
| HAMLET | Ecstasy! | |
| | My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, | |
| | And makes as healthful music: it is not madness | |
| | That I have utter'd: bring me to the test, | 155 |
| | And I the matter will re-word; which madness | |
| | Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, | |
| | Lay not that mattering unction to your soul, | |
| | That not your trespass, but my madness speaks: | |
| | It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, | 160 |
| | Whilst rank corruption, mining all within, | |
| | Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven; | |
| | Repent what's past; avoid what is to come; | |
| | And do not spread the compost on the weeds, | |
| | To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue; | 165 |
| | 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 GERTRUDE | O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain. | |
| HAMLET | O, throw away the worser part of it, | 170 |
| | And live the purer with the other half. | |
| | Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed; | |
| | Assume a virtue, if you have it not. | |
| | That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, | |
| | Of habits devil, is angel yet in this, | 175 |
| | That to the use of actions fair and good | |
| | He likewise gives a frock or livery, | |
| | That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night, | |
| | And that shall lend a kind of easiness | |
| | To the next abstinence: the next more easy; | 180 |
| | For use almost can change the stamp of nature, | |
| | And either [ ] the devil, or throw him out | |
| | With wondrous potency. Once more, good night: | |
| | And when you are desirous to be bless'd, | |
| | I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord, | 185 |
| | Pointing to POLONIUS | |
| | 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, good night. | 190 |
| | I must be cruel, only to be kind: | |
| | Thus bad begins and worse remains behind. | |
| | One word more, good lady. | |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | What shall I do? | |
| HAMLET | Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: | 195 |
| | Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed; | |
| | Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse; | |
| | And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, | |
| | Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers, | |
| | Make you to ravel all this matter out, | 200 |
| | That I essentially am not in madness, | |
| | But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know; | |
| | For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise, | |
| | Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib, | |
| | Such dear concernings hide? who would do so? | 205 |
| | No, in despite of sense and secrecy, | |
| | Unpeg the basket on the house's top. | |
| | Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape, | |
| | To try conclusions, in the basket creep, | |
| | And break your own neck down. | 210 |
| QUEEN GERTRUDE | 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 GERTRUDE | Alack, | 215 |
| | I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on. | |
| HAMLET | There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows, | |
| | Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd, | |
| | They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way, | |
| | And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; | 220 |
| | For 'tis the sport to have the engineer | |
| | Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard | |
| | But I will delve one yard below their mines, | |
| | And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet, | |
| | When in one line two crafts directly meet. | 225 |
| | This man shall set me packing: | |
| | I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room. | |
| | Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor | |
| | Is now most still, most secret and most grave, | |
| | Who was in life a foolish prating knave. | 230 |
| | Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. | |
| | Good night, mother. | |
| | Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in POLONIUS | |
