hamlet

by Tom Stoppard

Act One

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

The Play Two ELIZABETHANS passing time in a place without any visible character. They are well-dressed - hats, cloaks, sticks and all. Each of them has a large leather money bag. Guildenstern's bag is nearly empty. Rosencrantz's bag is nearly full. The reason being: they are betting on the toss of a coin, in the following manner: Guildenstern (hereafter 'GUIL') takes a coin out of his bag, spins it, letting it fall. Rosencrantz (hereafter 'ROS') studies it, announces it as "heads" (as it happens) and puts it into his own bag. Then they repeat the process. They have apparently been doing it for some time. The run of "heads" is impossible, yet ROS betrays no surprise at all - he feels none. However he is nice enough to feel a little embarrassed attaking so much money off his friend. Let that be his character note. GUIL(A traveling actor with his fair share of wits. He speaks of theatre being only about Love, Blood, and Rhetoric. Stating that everything must contain blood, that it is compulsory and that most things end in death. He is often keeping tabs on the young boy Alfred (one of his tragedians).) is well alive to the oddity of it. He is not worried about the money, but he is worried by the implications ; aware but not going to panic about it - his character note.

GUIL(A traveling actor with his fair share of wits. He speaks of theatre being only about Love, Blood, and Rhetoric. Stating that everything must contain blood, that it is compulsory and that most things end in death. He is often keeping tabs on the young boy Alfred (one of his tragedians).) sits.

ROS stands (he does the moving, retrieving coins).

GUIL spins.

ROS studies coin.

ROS: Heads. (He picks it up and puts it in his money bag. The process is repeated.) Heads. (Again.)

ROS: Heads. (Again.) Heads. (Again.) Heads.

GUIL (flipping a coin): There is an art to the building up of suspense.

ROS: Heads.

GUIL (flipping another): Though it can be done by luck alone.

ROS: Heads.

GUIL: If that's the word I'm after.

ROS (raises his head at GUIL): Seventy-six love. (GUIL gets up but has nowhere to go. He spins another coin over his shoulder without looking at it, his attention being directed at his environment or lack of it.) Heads.

GUIL: A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his faith, if in nothing else at least in the law of probability. (He slips a coin over his shoulder as he goes to look upstage.)

ROS: Heads. (GUIL, examining the confines of the stage, flips over two more coins, as he does so, one by one of course. ROS announces each of them as "heads".)

GUIL (musing): The law of probability, as it has been oddly asserted, is something to do with the proposition that if six monkeys (he has surprised himself)... if six monkeys were...

ROS: Game?

GUIL: Were they?

ROS: Are you?

GUIL (understanding): Games. (Flips a coin.) The law of averages, if I have got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air for long enough they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their -

ROS: Heads. (He picks up the coin.)

GUIL: Which at first glance does not strike one as a particularly rewarding speculation, in either sense, even without the monkeys. I mean you wouldn't bet on it. I mean I would, but you wouldn't... (As he flips a coin.)

ROS: Heads.

GUIL: Would you? (Flips a coin.)

ROS: Heads. (Repeat.) Heads. (He looks up at GUIL - embarrassed laugh.) Getting a bit of a bore, isn't it?

GUIL (coldly): A bore?

ROS: Well...

GUIL: What about suspense?

ROS (innocently): What suspense? (Small pause.)

GUIL: It must be the law of diminishing returns... I feel the spell about to be broken. (Energising himself somewhat.) (He takes out a coin, spins it high, catches it, turns it over on to the back of his other hand, studies the coin – and tosses it to ROS. His energy deflates and he sits.) Well, it was a even chance... if my calculations are correct.

ROS: Eighty-five in a row - beaten the record!

GUIL: Don't be absurd.

ROS: Easily!

GUIL (angry): Is the it, then? Is that all?

ROS: What?

GUIL: A new record? Is that as far as you prepared to go?

ROS: Well...

GUIL: No questions? Not even a pause?

ROS: You spun it yourself.

GUIL: Not a flicker of doubt?

ROS (aggrieved, aggressive): Well, I won - didn't I?

GUIL (approaches him - quieter): And if you'd lost? If they'd come down against you, eighty -five times, one after another, just like that?

ROS (dumbly): Eighty-five in a row? Tails?

GUIL: Yes! What would you think?

ROS (doubtfully): Well... (Jocularly.) Well, I'd have a good look at your coins for a start!

GUIL (retiring): I'm relieved. At least we can still count on self-interest as a predictable factor... I suppose it's the last to go. Your capacity for trust made me wonder if perhaps... you, alone... (He turns on him suddenly, reaches out a hand.) Touch. (ROS claps his hand.

GUIL pulls him up to him.) (More intensely): We have been spinning coins together since - (He releases him almost as violently.) This is not the first time we spun coins!

ROS: Oh no - we've been spinning coins for as long as I remember.

GUIL: How long is that?

ROS: I forget. Mind you - eighty-five times!

GUIL: Yes?

ROS: It'll take some time beating, I imagine.

GUIL: Is that what you imagine? Is that it? No fear?

ROS: Fear?

GUIL (in fury - flings a coin on the ground): Fear! The crack that might flood your brain with light!

ROS: Heads... (He puts it in his bag.) (GUIL sits despondently. He takes a coin, spins it, lets it fall between his feet. He looks at it, picks it up; throws it to ROS, who puts it in his bag.) (GUIL takes another coin, spins it, catches it, turns it over on to his other hand, looks at it, and throws it to ROS who puts it in his bag.) (GUIL tales a third coin, spins it, catches it in his right hand, turns it over on to his loft wrist, lobs it in the air, catches it with his left hand, raises his left leg, throws the coin up under it, catches it and turns it over on to the top of his head, where it sits.

ROS comes, looks at it, puts it in his bag.)

ROS: I'm afraid -

GUIL: So am I.

ROS: I'm afraid it isn't your day.

GUIL: I'm afraid it is. (Small pause.)

ROS: Eighty-nine.

GUIL: It must be indicative of something, besides the redistribution of wealth. (He muses.) List of possible explanations. One: I'm willing it. Inside where nothing shows, I'm the essence of a man spinning double-headed coins, and betting against himself in private atonement for an unremembered past. (He spins a coin at ROS.)

ROS: Heads.

GUIL: Two: time has stopped dead, and a single experience of one coin being spun once has been repeated ninety times... (He flips a coin, looks at it, tosses it to ROS.) On the whole, doubtful. Three: divine intervention, that is to say, a good turn from above concerning him, cf. children of Israel, or retribution from above concerning me, cf. Lot's wife. Four: a spectacular vindication of the principle that each individual coin spun individually (he spins one) is as likely to come down heads as tails and therefore should cause no surprise that each individual time it does. (It does. He tosses it to ROS.)

ROS: I've never known anything like it!

GUIL: And syllogism: One, he has never known anything like it. Two: he has never known anything to write home about. Three, it's nothing to write home about... Home... What's the first thing you remember?

ROS: Oh, let's see...The first thing that comes into my head, you mean?

GUIL: No - the first thing you remember.

ROS: Ah. (Pause.) No, it's no good, it's gone. It was a long time ago.

GUIL (patient but edged): You don't get my meaning. What is the first thing after all the things you've forgotten?

ROS: Oh. I see. (Pause.) I've forgotten the question.

GUIL: How long have you suffered from a bad memory?

ROS: I can't remember. (GUIL paces.)

GUIL: Are you happy?

ROS: What?

GUIL: Content? At ease?

ROS: I suppose so.

GUIL: What are you going to do now?

ROS: I don't know. What do you want to do?

GUIL: I have no desires. None. (He stops pacing dead.) There was a messenger... that's right. We were sent for. (He wheels at ROS and raps out.) Syllogism the second: one: probability is a factor which operates within natural forces. Two, probability is not operating as a factor. Three, we are now within un-, sub- or supernatural forces. Discuss. (ROS is suitably startled - Acidly.) Not too heatedly.

ROS: I'm sorry, I - What's the matter with you?

GUIL: A scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defence against the pure emotion of fear. Keep tight hold and continue while there's time. Now - counter to the previous syllogism: tricky one, follow me carefully, it may prove a comfort. If we postulate, and we just have, that within un-, sub- or supernatural forces the probability is that the law of probability will not operate as a factor, then we must accept that the probability of the first part will not operate as a factor, in which case the law of probability will operate as a factor within un-, sub- or supernatural forces. And since it obviously hasn't been doing so, we can take it that we are not held within un-, sub- or supernatural forces after all; in all probability, that is. Which is a great relief to me personally. (Small pause.) Which is all very well, except that - (He continues with tight hysteria, under control.) We have been spinning coins together since I don't know when, and in all that time (if it is all that time) I don't suppose either of us was more than a couple of gold pieces up or down. I hope that doesn't sound surprising because it's very unsurprisingness is something I am trying to keep hold of. The equanimity of your average pitcher and tosser of coins depends upon a law, or rather a tendency, or let us say a probability, or at any rate a mathematically calculable chance, which ensures that he will not upset himself by losing too much nor upset his opponent by winning too often. This made for a kind of harmony and a kind of confidence. It related the fortuitous and ordained into a reassuring union which we recognised as nature. The sun came up about as often as it went down, in the long run, and a coin showed heads about as often as it showed tails. Then a messenger arrived. We had been sent for. Nothing else happened. Ninety-two coins sun consecutively have come down heads ninety-two consecutive times... and for the last three minutes on the wind of a windless day I have heard the sound of drums and flute...

ROS (cutting his fingernails): Another curious scientific phenomenon is the fact that the fingernails grow after death, as does the beard.

GUIL: What?

ROS (loud): Beard!

GUIL: But you're not dead.

ROS (irritated): I didn't say they started to grow after death! (Pause, calmer.) The fingernails also grow before birth, though not the beard.

GUIL: What?

ROS (shouts): Beard! What's the matter with you? (Reflectively.) The toenails, on the other hand, never grow at all.

GUIL (bemused): The toenails never grow at all?

ROS: Do they? It's a funny thing - I cut my fingernails all the time, and every time I think to cut them, they need cutting. Now, for instance. And yet, I never, to the best of my knowledge, cut my toenails. They ought to be curled under my feet by now, but it doesn't happen. I never think about them. Perhaps I cut them absent-mindedly, when I'm thinking of something else.

GUIL (tensed up by this rambling): Do you remember the first thing that happen today?

ROS (promptly): I woke up, I suppose. (Triggered.) Oh - I've got it now - that man, a foreigner, he woke us up - GUIL: A messenger. (He relaxes, sits.)

ROS: That's it - pale sky before dawn, a man standing on his saddle to bang on the shutters - shouts - What's all the row about?! Clear off! – but then he called our names. You remember that - this man woke us up.

GUIL: Yes.

ROS: We were sent for.

GUIL: Yes.

ROS: That's why we're here. (He looks round, seems doubtful, then the explanation.) Travelling.

GUIL: Yes.

ROS (dramatically): It was urgent - a matter of extreme urgency, a royal summons, his very words: official business and no questions asked - lights in the stable-yard; saddle up and off headlong and hotfoot across the land, our guides outstripped in breakneck pursuit of our duty! Fearful lest we come too late. (Small pause.)

GUIL: Too late for what?

ROS: How do I know? We haven't got there yet.

GUIL: Then what are we doing here, I ask myself.

ROS: You might well ask.

GUIL: We better get on.

ROS: You might well think.

GUIL: Without much conviction; we better get on.

ROS (actively): Right! (Pause.) On where?

GUIL: Forward.

ROS (forward to footlights): Ah. (Hesitates.) Which way do we - (He turns round.) Which way did we - ?

GUIL: Practically starting from scratch... An awakening, a man standing on his saddle to bang on the shutters, our names shouted in a certain dawn, a message, a summons... A new record for pitch and toss. We have not been.. picked out... simply to be abandoned... set loose to find our own way... We are entitled to some direction... I would have thought.

ROS (alert, listening): I say - ! I say - (GUIL rises himself.)

GUIL: Yes?

ROS: Like a band. (He looks around, laughs embarrassedly, expiating himself.) It sounded like - a band. Drums.

GUIL: Yes.

ROS (relaxes): It couldn't have been real.

GUIL: "The colours red, blue and green are real. The colour yellow is a mystical experience shared by everybody" - demolish.

ROS (at edge of stage): It must have been thunder. Like drums... (By the end of the next speech, the band is faintly audible.)

GUIL: A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until - "My God," says the second man, "I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn." At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are, the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience... "Look, look" recites the crowd. "A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer."

ROS (eagerly): I knew all along it was a band.

GUIL (tiredly): He knew all along it was a band.

ROS: Here they come!

GUIL (at the last moment before they enter - wistfully): I'm sorry it wasn't the unicorn. It would have been nice to have unicorns.

i turn red

(The TRAGEDIANS are six in number, including a small BOY(ALFRED). Two pull a cart piled up with props and belongings. There is also a DRUMMER, a HORN-PLAYER and a FLAUTIST. The SPOKESMAN ("the PLAYER") has no instrument. He brings up the rear and is the first to notice them.)

PLAYER: Halt! (The GROUP turns and halts.) (Joyously.) An audience! (ROS and GUIL half rise.) Don't move! (They sink back. He regards them fondly.) Perfect! A lucky thing we came along.

ROS: For us?

PLAYER: Let us hope so. But to meet two gentlemen on the road – we would not hope to meet them off it.

ROS: No?

PLAYER: Well met, in fact, and just in time.

ROS: Why's that?

PLAYER: Why, we grow rusty and you catch us at the very point of decadence - by this time tomorrow we might have forgotten everything we ever knew. That's a thought, isn't it? (He laughs generously.) We'd be back where we started - improvising.

ROS: Tumblers, are you?

PLAYER: We can give you a tumble if that's your taste and times being what they are... Otherwise, for a jingle of coin we can do you a selection of gory romances, full of fine cadence and corpses, pirated from Italian; and it doesn't take much to make a jingle - even a single coin has music in it. (They ALL flourish and bow, raggedly.) Tragedians, at your command. (ROS and GUIL have got to their feet.)

ROS: My name is Guildenstern, and this is Rosencrantz. (GUIL confers briefly with him.) (Without embarrassment.) I'm sorry - his name's Guildenstern, and I'm Rosencrantz.

PLAYER: A pleasure. We've played to bigger, of course, but quality counts for something. I recognised you at once -

ROS: And who are we?

PLAYER: - as fellow artists.

ROS: I thought we were gentlemen.

PLAYER: For some of us it is performance, for others, patronage. They are two sides of the same coin, or, let us say, being as there are so many of us, the same side of two coins. (Bows again.) Don't clap too loudly - it's a very old world.

ROS: What is your line?

PLAYER: Tragedy, sir. Deaths and disclosures, universal and particular, denouements both unexpected and inexorable, transvestite melodrama on all levels including the suggestive. We transport you into the world of intrigue and illusion... clowns, if you like, murderers - we can do you ghosts and battles, on the skirmish levels, heroes, villains, tormented lovers - set pieces in the poetic vein; we can do you rapiers or rape or both, by all means, faithless wives and ravished virgins - flagrante delicto at a price, but that comes under realism for which there are special terms. Getting warm, am I?

ROS (doubtfully): Well, I don't know...

PLAYER: It costs little to watch, and little more if you happen to get caught up in the action, if that's you taste and times being what they are.

ROS: What are they?

PLAYER: Indifferent.

ROS: Bad?

PLAYER: Wicked. Now what precisely is your pleasure? (He turns to the TRAGEDIANS.) Gentlemen, disport yourselves. (The TRAGEDIANS shuffle into some kind of a line.) There! See anything you like?

ROS (doubtful, innocent): What do they do?

PLAYER: Let your imagination run riot. They are beyond surprise.

ROS: And how much?

PLAYER: To take part?

ROS: To watch.

PLAYER: Watch what?

ROS: A private performance.

PLAYER: How private?

ROS: Well, there are only two of us. Is that enough?

PLAYER: For an audience, disappointing. For voyeurs, about average.

ROS: What's the difference?

PLAYER: Ten guilders.

ROS (horrified): Ten guilders!

PLAYER: I mean eight.

ROS: Together?

PLAYER: Each. I don't think you understand -

ROS: What are you saying?

PLAYER: What am I saying - seven.

ROS: Where have you been?

PLAYER: Roundabout. A nest of children carries the custom of the town. Juvenile companies, they are the fashion. But they cannot match our repertoire... we'll stoop to anything if that's your bent... (He regards ROS meaningfully but ROS returns the stare blankly.)

ROS: They'll row up.

PLAYER (giving up): There's one being born every minute. (To TRAGEDIANS.) On-ward! (The TRAGEDIANS start to resume their burdens and their journey. GUIL stirs himself at last.)

GUIL: Where are you going?

PLAYER: Ha-alt! (They halt and turn.) Home, sir.

GUIL: Where from?

PLAYER: Home. We're travelling people. We take our chances where we find them.

GUIL: It was the chance, then?

PLAYER: Chance?

GUIL: You found us.

PLAYER: Oh yes.

GUIL: You were looking?

PLAYER: Oh no.

GUIL: Chance, then.

PLAYER: Or fate.

GUIL: Yours or ours?

PLAYER: It could hardly be one without the other.

GUIL: Fate, then.

PLAYER: Oh, yes. We have no control. Tonight we play to the court. Or the night after. Or to the tavern. Or not.

GUIL: Perhaps I can use my influence.

PLAYER: At the tavern?

GUIL: At the court. I would say I have some influence.

PLAYER: Would you say so?

GUIL: I have influence yet.

PLAYER: Yet what? (GUIL seizes the PLAYER violently.)

GUIL: I have influence! (The PLAYER does not resist. GUIL loosens his hold.) (More calmly.) You said something - about getting caught up in the action -

PLAYER (gaily freeing himself): I did! - I did! - You're quicker than your friend... (Confidingly.) Now for a handful of guilders I happen to have a private and uncut performance of the Rape of the Sabine Women - or rather woman, or rather Alfred - (Over his shoulder.) Get your skirt on, Alfred - (The BOY starts struggling into a female robe.) ... and for eight you can participate. (GUIL backs, PLAYER follows.) ... taking either part. (GUIL backs.) ... or both for ten. (GUIL tries to turn away, PLAYER holds his sleeve.) ... with encores - (GUIL smashes the PLAYER across the face. The PLAYER recoils. GUIL stands trembling.) (Resigned and quiet.) Get your skirt off, Alfred... (ALFRED struggles out of his half-on robe.)

GUIL (shaking with rage and fright): It could have been - it didn't have to be obscene... It could have been - a bird out of season, dropping bright-feathered on my shoulder... It could have been a tongueless dwarf standing by the road to point the way... I was prepared. But it's this, isn't it? No enigma, no dignity, nothing classical, portentous, only this - a comic pornographer and a rabble of prostitutes...

PLAYER (acknowledging the description with a sweep of his hat, bowing: sadly): You should have caught us in better times. We were purists then. (Straightens up.) On-ward. (The PLAYERS make to leave.)

ROS (his voice has changed: he has caught on): Excuse me!

PLAYER: Ha-alt! (They halt.) A-al-l-fred! (ALFRED resumes the struggle. The PLAYER comes forward.)

ROS: You're not - ah - exclusively players, then?

PLAYER: We're inclusively players, sir.

ROS: So you give - exhibitions?

PLAYER: Performances, sir.

ROS: Yes, of course. There's more money in that, is there?

PLAYER: There's more trade, sir.

ROS: Times being what they are.

PLAYER: Yes.

ROS: Indifferent.

PLAYER: Completely.

ROS: You know I'd no idea -

PLAYER: No -

ROS: I mean, I've heard of - but I've never actually -

PLAYER: No.

ROS: I mean, what exactly do you do?

PLAYER: We keep to our usual stuff, more or less, only inside out. We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.

ROS (nervy, loud): Well, I'm not really the type of man who - no, but don't hurry off - sit down and tell us about some of the things people ask you to do - (The PLAYER turns away.)

PLAYER: On-ward!

ROS: Just a minute! (They turn and look at him without expression.) Well, all right - I wouldn't mind seeing - just an idea of the kind of - (bravely). What will you do for that? (And tosses a single coin on the ground between them.) (The PLAYER spits at the coin from where he stands.)

PLAYER (to ROS, coldly): Leave it lying there. Perhaps when we come back this way we'll be that muck cheaper. (The TRAGEDIANS demur, trying to get the coin. He kicks and cuffs them back.) On! (ALFRED is still half in and half out of his robe. The PLAYER cuffs him.) (To ALFRED) What are you playing at? (ROS is shamed into fury.)

ROS: Filth! Disgusting - oh, I know the kind of filth you trade in - I'll report you to the authorities - perverts! I know your game all right, it's all filth! (The PLAYERS are about to leave. GUIL remained detached.)

GUIL (casually): Do you like a bet?

PLAYER: Ha-alt! (The TRAGEDIANS look interested. The PLAYER comes forward.)

PLAYER: What kind of bet do you have in mind? (GUIL walks half the distance towards the PLAYER, stops with his foot over the coin.)

GUIL: Double or quits.

PLAYER: Well... heads. (GUIL raises his foot. The PLAYER bends. The TRAGEDIANS crowd round. Relief and congratulations. The PLAYER picks up the coin. GUIL throws him a second coin.)

GUIL: Again? (Some of the TRAGEDIANS are for it, others against. The PLAYER nods and tosses the coin.)

GUIL: Heads. (It is. H picks it up.) Again. (GUIL spins the coin.)

PLAYER: Heads. (It is. PLAYER picks up coin. He has two coins again. He spins one.)

GUIL: Heads. (It is. GUIL picks it up. Then tosses immediately.)

PLAYER (fractional hesitation): Tails. (But it's heads. GUIL picks it up. PLAYER tosses down his last coin by the way of paying it up, and turns away. GUIL doesn't pick it up; he puts his foot on it.)

GUIL: Heads.

PLAYER: No! (Pause. The TRAGEDIANS are against this.) (Apologetically.) They don't like the odds.

GUIL: After six in a row? I'd say they were in your favor.

PLAYER: No.

GUIL (lifts his foot; squats; picks up the coin still squatting; looks up): You were right - heads. (Spins it, slaps his hand on it, on the floor.) Heads I win.

PLAYER: No.

GUIL (uncovers coin): Right again. (Repeat.) Heads I win.

PLAYER: No.

GUIL (uncovers coin): And right again. (Repeat.) Heads I win.

PLAYER: No! (He turns away, the TRAGEDIANS with him. GUIL stands up, comes close.)

GUIL: Would you believe it? (Stands back, relaxes, smiles.) Bet me the year of my birth doubled is an odd number.

PLAYER: Your birth - !

GUIL: If you don't trust me don't bet with me.

PLAYER: Would you trust me?

GUIL: Bet me then.

PLAYER: My birth?

GUIL: Odd numbers you win.

PLAYER: You're on - (The TRAGEDIANS have come forward, wide awake.)

GUIL: Good. Year of your birth. Double it. Even numbers I win, odd numbers I lose. (Silence. An awful sigh as the TRAGEDIANS realise that any number doubled is even. Then a terrible row as they object. Then a terrible silence.)

PLAYER: We have no money. (GUIL turns to him.)

GUIL: Ah. Then what have you got? (The PLAYER silently brings ALFRED forward. GUIL regards ALFRED sadly.) Was it for this?

PLAYER: It's the best we've got.

GUIL (looking up and around): Then the times are bad indeed. (The PLAYER starts to speak, protestation, but GUIL turns on him viciously.) The very air stinks. (The PLAYER moves back. GUIL moves down to the footlight and turns.) Come here, Alfred. (ALFRED moves down and stands, frightened and small.) (Gently): Do you lose often?

ALFRED: Yes, sir.

GUIL: Then what could you have to lose?

ALFRED: Nothing, sir. (Pause. GUIL regards him.)

GUIL: Do you like being... an actor?

ALFRED: No, sir. (GUIL looks around him, at the audience.)

GUIL: You and I, Alfred - we could create a dramatic precedent here. (And ALFRED, who has been near tears, starts to sniffle.) Come, come, Alfred, this is no way to fill the theatres of Europe. (The PLAYER has moved down, to remonstrate with ALFRED. GUIL cuts him off again.) (Viciously) Do you know any good plays?

PLAYER: Plays?

ROS (coming forward, flattering shyly): Exhibitions...

GUIL: I thought you were actors.

PLAYER (dawning): Oh. Oh, well, we are. We are. But there been much call -

GUIL: You lost. Well, then - one of the Greeks, perhaps? You're familiar with the tragedies of antiquity, are you? The great homicidal classics? Matri, patri, fratri, sorrori, uxori and it goes without saying - ROS: Saucy -

GUIL: - Suicidal - hm? Maidens aspiring to godheads -

ROS: And vice versa -

GUIL: Your kind of thing, is it?

PLAYER: Well, no, I can't say it is, really. We're more of the blood, love and rhetoric school.

GUIL: Well, I'll leave the choice to you, if there is anything to choose between them.

PLAYER: They're hardly divisible, sir - well, I can do you blood and love without rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can't do you love and rhetoric without blood. Blood is compulsory - they're all blood, you see.

GUIL: Is this what people want?

PLAYER: It's what we do. (Small pause. He turns away.) (GUIL touches Alfred on the shoulder.)

GUIL (wry, gentle): Thank you, we'll let you know. (The PLAYER has moved upstage. Alfred follows.)

PLAYER (to TRAGEDIANS): Thirty-eight!

ROS (moving across, fascinated and hopeful): Position?

PLAYER: Sir?

ROS: One of your - tableaux?

PLAYER: No, sir.

ROS: Oh.

PLAYER (to TRAGEDIANS, now departing with their cart, already taking various props off it.) Entrances there and there (indicating upstage). (The PLAYER has not moved his position for his last four lines. He does not move now. GUIL waits.)

GUIL: Well... aren't you going to change into costume?

PLAYER: I never change out, sir.

GUIL: Always in character.

PLAYER: That's it. (Pause.)

GUIL: Aren't you going to - come on?

PLAYER: I am on.

GUIL: But if you are on, you can't come on. Can you?

PLAYER: I start on.

GUIL: But it hasn't started. Go on. We'll look out for you.

PLAYER: I'll give you a wave. (He doesn't move. His immobility is now pointed and getting awkward. Pause. ROS walks up to him till they are face to face.)

ROS: Excuse me. (Pause. The PLAYER lifts his downstage foot. It was covering GUIL's coin. ROS puts his foot on the coin. Smiles.) Thank you. (The PLAYER turns and goes. ROS has bent for the coin.)

GUIL (moving out): Come on.

ROS: I say - that was lucky.

GUIL (turning): What?

ROS: It was tails. (He tosses the coin to GUIL who catches it. Simultaneously - a lighting change sufficient to alter the exterior mood into interior, but nothing violent.) And OPHELIA runs on in some alarm, holding up her skirts - followed by HAMLET. Note: The resemblance between HAMLET and The PLAYER is superficial but noticeable. (OPHELIA has been sewing and she holds the garment. They are both mute. HAMLET, with his doublet all unbraced, no hat upon his head, his stockings fouled, ungartered and double-gyved to his ankle, pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other... and with a look so piteous, he takes her by the wrist and holds her hard, then he goes to the length of his arm and with his other hand over his brow, falls to such perusal of her face as he would draw it... At last, with a little shaking of his arm, and thrice his head waving up and down, he raises a sigh so piteous and profound that it does seem to shatter all his bulk and end his being. That done he lets her go, and with his head over his shoulder turned, he goes backwards without taking his eyes off her... she runs off in the opposite direction.) (ROS and GUIL have frozen.

GUIL unfreezes first. He jumps at ROS.)

GUIL: Come on! (But a flourish - enter CLAUDIUS and GERTRUDE, attended.)

CLAUDIUS: Welcome, dear Rosencrantz... (he raises a hand at GUIL while ROS bows - GUIL bows late and hurriedly.)... and Guildenstern. (He raises a hand at ROS while GUIL bows to him - ROS is still straightening up from his previous bow and half way up he bows down again. With his head down, he twists to look at GUIL, who is on the way up.) Moreover that we did much long to see you, The need we have to use you did provoke Our hasty sanding. (ROS and GUIL still adjusting their clothing for CLAUDIUS's presence.) Something have you heard Of Hamlet's transformation, so call it, Sith nor th'exterior nor inward man Resembles that it was. What it should be, More than his father's death, that thus hath put him, So much from th'understanding of himself, I cannot dream of. I entreat you both That, being of so young days brought up with him And sith so neighbored to his youth and haviour That you ... safe your rest here on our court Some little time, so by your companies To draw him on to pleasures and to gather So much as from occasion you may glean, Whether ought to us unknown afflicts him thus, That opened lies within our remedy.

GERTRUDE: Good (fractional suspense) gentlemen... (They both bow.) He hath much talked of you, And sure I am, two men there is not living To whom he more adheres. If it will please you To show us so much gentry and good will As to expand your time with us awhile For the supply and profit of our hope, Your visitation shall receive such thanks As fits the king's remembrance.

ROS: Both your majesties Might, by the sovereign power you have on us, Put your dread pleasure more into command Than to entreaty.

GUIL: But we both obey, And here give up ourselves in the full bent To lay our service freely at your feet, To be commanded.

CLAUDIUS: Thanks, Rosencrantz (turning to ROS who is caught unprepared, while GUIL bows) and gentle Guildenstern (turning to GUIL who is bent double).

GERTRUDE (correcting): Thanks, Guildenstern (turning to ROS, who bows as GUIL checks upward movement to bow too - both bent double, squinting at each other)... and gentle Rosencrantz. (Turning to GUIL, both straightening up - GUIL checks again and bows again.) And I beseech you instantly to visit My too much changed son. Go, some of you, And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is. (To ATTENDANTS exit backwards, indicating that ROS and GUIL should follow.)

GUIL: Heaven make our presence and our practices Pleasant and helpful to him.

GERTRUDE: Ay, amen! (ROS and GUIL move towards and downstage wing. Before they get there,

POLONIUS enters. They stop and bow to him. He nods and hurries upstage to CLAUDIUS. They turn to look at him but lose interest and come down to footlights. POLINIUS meanwhile calling to CLAUDIUS.)

POLONIUS: The ambassadors from Norway, my good lord, are joyfully returned.

CLAUDIUS: Thou still hast been the father of good news.

POLONIUS: Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege, I hold my duty as I hold my soul, Both to my God and to my gracious King; And I do think or else this brain of mine Hunts not the trail of policy for sure As it hath used to do, that I have found The very cause of Hamlet's lunacy... (Exeunt - leaving ROS and GUIL)

ROS: I want to go home.

GUIL: Don't let them confuse you.

ROS: I'm out of my step here -

GUIL: We'll soon be home and high - dry and home - I'll -

ROS: It's all over my depth -

GUIL: I'll hie you home and -

ROS: - out of my head -

GUIL: - dry you high and -

ROS (cracking, high): - over my step over my head body! - I tell you it's all stopping to a death, it's boding to a depth, stepping to a head, it's all heading to a dead stop –

GUIL (the nursemaid): There!... and we'll soon be home and dry... and high and dry... (Rapidly.) Has it ever happened to you that all of a sudden and for no reason at all you haven't the faintest idea how to spell the word - "wife" - or "house" - because when you write it down you just can't remember ever having seen those letters in that order before...?

ROS: I remember...

GUIL: Yes?

ROS: I remember there were no questions.

GUIL: There were always questions. To exchange one set for another is no great matter.

ROS: Answers, yes. There were answers to everything.

GUIL: You've forgotten.

ROS (flaring): I haven't forgotten - how I used to remember my own name - and yours, oh yes! There were answers everywhere you looked. There was no question about it - people knew who I was and if they didn't they asked and I told them.

GUIL: You did, the trouble is each of them is... plausible, without being instinctive. All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque. A man standing in his saddle in the half-lit half-alive dawn banged on the shutters and called two names. He was just a hat and the cloak levitating in the grey plume of his own breath, but when he called we came. That much is certain - we came.

ROS: Well I can tell you I'm sick to death of it. I don't care one way or another, so why don't you make up your mind.

GUIL: We can't afford anything quite so arbitrary. Nor did we come all this way for a christening. All that - preceded us. But we are comparatively fortunate; we might have been left to sift the whole field of human nomenclature, like two blind men looting a bazaar for their own portraits... At least we are presented with alternatives.

ROS: Well as from now -

GUIL: - But not choice.

ROS: You made me look ridiculous in there.

GUIL: I looked as ridiculous as you did.

ROS (an anguished cry): Consistency is all I ask!

GUIL (low, wry rhetoric): Give us this day our daily mask.

ROS (a dying fall): I want to go home. (Moves.) Which way did we come in? I've lost my sense of direction.

GUIL: The only beginning is birth and the only end is death - if you can't count on that, what can you count on? (They connect again.)

ROS: We don't owe anything to anyone.

GUIL: We've been caught up. Your smallest action sets off another somewhere else, and is set off by it. Keep an eye open, an ear cocked. Tread warily, follow instructions. We'll be all right.

ROS: For how long?

GUIL: Till events have played themselves out. There's a logic at work - it's all done for you, don't worry. Enjoy it. Relax. To be taken in hand and led, like being a child again, even without the innocence, a child - It's like being given a prize, an extra slice of childhood when you least expect it, as a prize for being good, or a compensation for never having had one... Do I contradict myself?

ROS: I don't remember. What have we got to go on?

GUIL: We have been briefed. Hamlet's transformation. What do you recollect?

ROS: Well, he's changed, hasn't he? The exterior and inward man fails to resemble -

GUIL: Draw him on to pleasures - glean what afflicts him.

ROS: Something more than his father's death -

GUIL: He's always talking about us - there aren't two people living whom he dotes on more than us.

ROS: We cheer him up - find out what's the matter -

GUIL: Exactly, it's the matter of asking the right questions and giving away as little as we can. It's a game.

ROS: And then we can go?

GUIL: And receive such thanks as fits a king's remembrance.

ROS: I like the sound of that. What do you think he means by remembrance?

GUIL: He doesn't forget his friends.

ROS: Wouldn't you care to estimate?

GUIL: Difficult to say, really - come kings tend to be amnesiac, others I suppose - the opposite, whatever that is...

ROS: Yes - but -

GUIL: Elephantine...?

ROS: Hot how long - how much?

GUIL: Retentive - he's a very retentive king, a royal retainer...

ROS: What are you playing at?

GUIL: Words, words. They're all we have to go on. (Pause.)

ROS: Shouldn't we be doing something - constructive?

GUIL: What did you have in mind?... A short, blunt human pyramid...?

ROS: We could go.

GUIL: Where?

ROS: After him.

GUIL: Why? They've got us placed now - if we start moving around, we'll all be chasing each other all night. (Hiatus.)

ROS (at footlights): How very intriguing! (Turns.) I feel like a spectator - an appalling business. The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute...

GUIL: See anyone?

ROS: No. You?

GUIL: No. (At footlights.) What a fine persecution - to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened... (Pause.) We've had no practice.

ROS: We could play at questions.

GUIL: What good would that do?

ROS: Practice!

GUIL: Statement! One-love.

ROS: Cheating!

GUIL: How?

ROS: I hadn't started yet.

GUIL: Statement. Two-love.

ROS: Are you counting that?

GUIL: What?

ROS: Are you counting that?

GUIL: Foul! No repetitions. Three-love. First game to...

ROS: I'm not going to play if you're going to be like that.

GUIL: Whose serve?

ROS: Hah?

GUIL: Foul! No grunts. Love-one.

ROS: Whose go?

GUIL: Why?

ROS: Why not?

GUIL: What for?

ROS: Foul! No synonyms! One-all.

GUIL: What in God's name is going all?

ROS: Foul! No rhetoric. Two-one.

GUIL: What does it all add up to?

ROS: Can't you guess?

GUIL: Were you addressing me?

ROS: Is there anyone else?

GUIL: Who?

ROS: How would I know?

GUIL: Why do you ask?

ROS: Are you serious?

GUIL: Was that rhetoric?

ROS: No.

GUIL: Statement! Two-all. Game point.

ROS: What's the matter with you today?

GUIL: When?

ROS: What?

GUIL: Are you deaf?

ROS: Am I dead?

GUIL: Yes or no?

ROS: Is there a choice?

GUIL: Is there a God?

ROS: Foul! No non sequiturs, three-two, one game all.

GUIL (seriously): What's your name?

ROS: What's yours?

GUIL: I asked you first.

ROS: Statement. One-love.

GUIL: What's your name when you're at home?

ROS: What's yours?

GUIL: When I'm at home?

ROS: Is it different at home?

GUIL: What home?

ROS: Haven't you got one?

GUIL: Why do you ask?

ROS: What are you driving at?

GUIL (with emphasis): What's your name?!

ROS: Repetition. Two-love. Match point to me.

GUIL (seizing him violently): WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

ROS: Rhetoric! Game and match! (Pause.) Where's it going to end?

GUIL: That's the question.

ROS: It's all questions.

GUIL: Do you think it matters?

ROS: Doesn't it matter to you?

GUIL: Why should it matter?

ROS: What does it matter why?

GUIL (teasing gently): Doesn't it matter why it matters?

ROS (rounding on him): What's the matter with you? (Pause.)

GUIL: It doesn't matter.

ROS (voice in the wilderness): ... What's the game?

GUIL: What are the rules? (Enter HAMLET behind, crossing the stage, reading a book - as he is about to disappear GUIL notices him.)

GUIL (sharply): Rosencrantz!

ROS (jumps): What? (HAMLET goes. Triumph dawns on them, they smile.)

GUIL: There! How was that?

ROS: Clever!

GUIL: Natural?

ROS: Instinctive.

GUIL: Got it in your head?

ROS: I take my hat off you.

GUIL: Shake hands. (They do.)

ROS: Now I'll try you - Guil - !

GUIL: - Not yet - catch me unawares.

ROS: Right. (They separate. Pause. Aside to GUIL.) Ready?

GUIL (explodes): Don't be stupid.

ROS: Sorry. (Pause.)

GUIL (snaps): Guildenstern!

ROS (jumps): What? (He is immediately crestfallen, GUIL is disgusted.)

GUIL: Consistency is all I ask!

ROS (guilty): Give us this day our daily week... (Beat.)

ROS: Who was that?

GUIL: Didn't you know him?

ROS: He didn't know me.

GUIL: He didn't see you.

ROS: I didn't see him.

GUIL: We shall see. I hardly knew him, he's changed.

ROS: You could see that?

GUIL: Transformed.

ROS: How do you know?

GUIL: Inside and out.

ROS: I see.

GUIL: He's not himself.

ROS: He's changed.

GUIL: I could see that. (Beat.) Glean what afflicts him.

ROS: Me?

GUIL: Him.

ROS: How?

GUIL: Question and answer. Old ways are the best ways.

ROS: He's afflicted.

GUIL: You question, I'll answer.

ROS: He's not himself, you know.

GUIL: I'm him, you see. (Beat.)

ROS: Who am I then?

GUIL: You're yourself.

ROS: And he's you?

GUIL: Not a bit of it.

ROS: Are you afflicted?

GUIL: That's the idea. Are you ready?

ROS: Let's go back a bit.

GUIL: I'm afflicted.

ROS: I see.

GUIL: Glean what afflicts me.

ROS: Right.

GUIL: Question and answer.

ROS: How should I begin?

GUIL: Address me.

ROS: My dear Guildenstern!

GUIL (quietly): You've forgotten - haven't you?

ROS: My dear Rosencrantz!

GUIL (great control): I don't think you quite understand. What we are attempting is a hypothesis in which I answer for him, while you ask me questions.

ROS: Ah! Ready?

GUIL: You know what to do?

ROS: What?

GUIL: Are you stupid?

ROS: Pardon?

GUIL: Are you deaf?

ROS: Did you speak?

GUIL (admonishing): Not now - ROS: Statement.

GUIL (shouts): Not now! (Pause.) If I had my doubts, or rather hopes, they are dispelled. What could we possibly have in common except our situation? (They separate and sit.) Perhaps he'll come back this way.

ROS: Should we go?

GUIL: Why? (Pause.)

ROS (starts up. Snaps fingers.): Oh! You mean - you pretend to be him, and I ask you questions!

GUIL (dry): Very good.

ROS: You had me confused.

GUIL: I could see I had.

ROS: How should I begin?

GUIL: Address me. (They stand and face each other, posing.)

ROS: My honoured Lord!

GUIL: My dear Rosencrantz! (Pause.)

ROS: Am I pretending to be you, then?

GUIL: Certainly not. If you like. Shall we continue?

ROS: Question and answer.

GUIL: Right.

ROS: Right. My honoured Lord!

GUIL: My dear fellow!

ROS: How are you?

GUIL: Afflicted!

ROS: Really? In what way?

GUIL: Transformed.

ROS: Inside or out?

GUIL: Both.

ROS: I see. (Pause.) No much new there.

GUIL: Go into details. Delve. Probe the background, establish the situation.

ROS: So - so your uncle is the king of Denmark?

GUIL: And my father before him.

ROS: But surely -

GUIL: You might well ask.

ROS: Let me get it straight. Your father was king. You were his only son. Your father dies. You are of age. Your uncle becomes king.

GUIL: Yes.

ROS: Unorthodox.

GUIL: Undid me.

ROS: Undeniable. Where were you?

GUIL: In Germany.

ROS: Usurpation, then.

GUIL: He slipped in.

ROS: Which reminds me.

GUIL: Well, it would.

ROS: I don't want to be personal.

GUIL: It's common knowledge.

ROS: Your mother's marriage.

GUIL: He slipped in. (Beat.)

ROS (lugubriously): His body was still warm.

GUIL: So was hers.

ROS: Extraordinary.

GUIL: Indecent.

ROS: Hasty.

GUIL: Suspicious.

ROS: It makes you think.

GUIL: Don't think I haven't though of it.

ROS: And with her husband's brother.

GUIL: They were close.

ROS: She went to him -

GUIL: - Too close -

ROS: - for comfort.

GUIL: It looks bad.

ROS: It adds up.

GUIL: Incest and adultery.

ROS: Would you go so far?

GUIL: Never.

ROS: To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies, you are his heir, you come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother popped on to his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal and natural practice. Now, why exactly you behaving in this extraordinary manner?

GUIL: I can't imagine. (Pause.) But all that is well known, common property. Yet he sent for us. And we did come.

ROS (alert, ear cocked): I say! I heard music - GUIL: We're here.

ROS: - Like a band - I thought I heard a band.

GUIL: Rosencrantz...

ROS (absently, still listening): What? (Pause, short.)

GUIL (gently wry): Guildenstern...

ROS (irritated by the repetition): What?

GUIL: Don't you discriminate at all?

ROS (turning dumbly): What? (Pause.)

GUIL: Go and see if he's there.

ROS: Who?

GUIL: There. (ROS goes to an upstage wing, looks, returns, formally making his report.)

ROS: Yes.

GUIL: What is he doing? (ROS repeats movement.)

ROS: Talking.

GUIL: To himself? (ROS starts to move. GUIL cuts him impatiently.) Is he alone?

ROS: No.

GUIL: Then he's not talking to himself, is he?

ROS: Not by himself... Coming this way, I think. (Shiftily.) Should we go?

GUIL: Why? We're marked now. (HAMLET enters, backwards, talking, followed by POLONIUS, upstage. ROS and GUIL occupy the two downstage corners looking upstage.)

HAMLET: ... for you yourself, sir, should be as old as I am if like a crab you could go backwards.

POLONIUS (aside): Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. Will you walk out of air, my Lord?

HAMLET: Into my grave.

POLONIUS: Indeed, that's out of air. (HAMLET crosses to upstage exit, POLONIUS asiding unintelligibly until -) My lord, I will take my leave of you.

HAMLET: You cannot take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal - except my life, except my life, except my life...

POLONIUS (crossing downstage): Fare you well, my lord. (To ROS.) You go to seek Lord HAMLET? There he is.

ROS (to POLONIUS) God save you, sir. (POLONIUS goes.)

GUIL (calls upstage to HAMLET): My honoured Lord!

ROS: My most dear Lord! (HAMLET centred upstage, turns to them.)

HAMLET: My excellent good friends! How dost thou Guildenstern? (Coming downstage with am arm raised to ROS, GUIL meanwhile bowing to no greeting. HAMLET corrects himself. Still to ROS.) Ah Rosencrantz! (They laugh good naturedly at the mistake. They all meet midstage, turn upside to walk, HAMLET in the middle, arm over each shoulder.)

HAMLET: Good lads, how do you both? (A fade out. That is to say, the conversation - see Shakespeare, Act II, Scene ii - runs down quickly; it is still animated and interspersed with laughter, but it is overtaken by rising music and fading light.)la

Act Two.

HAMLET, ROS and GUIL talking, the continuation of the previous scene. Their conversation, on the move, is indecipherable at first. The first illegible line is HAMLET's, coming at the end of a short speech ? see Shakespeare Act II, scene ii.

HAMLET: S'blood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could take it out. (A flourish from the TRAGEDIANS' band.)

GUIL: There are the players.

HAMLET: Gentlemen, you are welcome in Elsinore. Your hands, come then. (He takes their hands.) The appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply with you in this garb, lest my extent to the players (which I tell you must show fairly outwards) should more appear like entertainment than yours. You are welcome. (About to leave.) But my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.

GUIL: In what, my dear lord?

HAMLET: I am but mad north north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw. (POLUNIUS enters, as GUIL turns away.)

POLONIUS: Well be you gentlemen.

HAMLET (to ROS): Mark you, Guildenstern (uncertainly to GUIL) and you too; at each ear a hearer. That great baby you see there is not yet out of swaddling clouts... (He takes ROS upstage with him, talking together.)

POLONIUS: My Lord! I have news to tell you.

HAMLET (releasing ROS and mimicking): My lord, I have news to tell you... When Rocius was an actor in Rome... (ROS comes down to re-join GUIL.)

POLONIUS (as he follows HAMLET out): The actors are come hither my lord.

HAMLET: Buzz, buzz. (Exeunt HAMLET and POLONIUS.) (ROS and GUIL ponder. Each reluctant to speak first.)

GUIL: Hm?

ROS: Yes?

GUIL: What?

ROS: I thought you...

GUIL: No.

ROS: Ah. (Pause.)

GUIL: I think we can say we made some headway.

ROS: You think so?

GUIL: I think we can say that.

ROS: I think we can say he made us look ridiculous.

GUIL: We played it close to the chest of course.

ROS (derisively): "Question and answer. Old ways are the best ways"! He was scoring off us all down the line.

GUIL: He caught us on the wrong foot once or twice, perhaps, but I thought we gained some ground.

ROS (simply): He murdered us.

GUIL: He might have had the edge.

ROS (roused): Twenty-seven - three, and you think he might have had the edge?! He murdered us.

GUIL: What about our evasions?

ROS: Oh, our evasions were lovely. "Were you sent for?" he says. "My lord, we were sent for..." I didn't where to put myself.

GUIL: He had six rhetoricals -

ROS: It was question and answer, all right. Twenty-seven questions he got out in ten minutes, and answered three. I was waiting for you to delve. "When is he going to start delving?" I asked myself.

GUIL: - And two repetitions.

ROS: Hardly a leading question between us.

GUIL: We got his symptoms, didn't we?

ROS: Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all.

GUIL: Thwarted ambition - a sense of grievance, that's my diagnosis.

ROS: Six rhetorical and two repetitions, leaving nineteen of which we answered fifteen. And what did we get in return? He's depressed!... Denmark's a prison and he'd rather live in a nutshell; some shadow-play about the nature of ambition, which never got down to cases, and finally one direct question which might have led somewhere, and led in fact to his illuminating claim to tell a hawk from a handsaw. (Pause.)

GUIL: When the wind is southerly.

ROS: And when the weather is clear.

GUIL: And when it isn't he can't.

ROS: He's at the mercy of the elements. (Licks his finger and holds it up - facing audience.) Is that southerly? (They stare at the audience.)

GUIL: It doesn't look southerly. What made you think so?

ROS: I didn't say I think so. It could be northerly for all I know.

GUIL: I wouldn't have thought so.

ROS: Well, if you're going to be dogmatic.

GUIL: Wait a minute - we came from roughly south according to a rough map.

ROS: I see. Well, which way did we come in? (GUIL looks around vaguely.) Roughly.

GUIL (clears his throat): In the morning the sun would be easterly. I think we can assume that.

ROS: That it's morning?

GUIL: If it is, and the sun is over there (his right as he faces the audience) for instance, that (front) would be northerly. On the other hand, if it's not morning and the sun is over there (his left)... that... (lamely) would still be northerly. (Picking up.) To put it another way, if we came from down there (front) and it is morning, the sun would be up there (his left), and if it is actually over there (his right) and it's still morning, we must have come from up there (behind him), and if that is southerly (his left) and the sun is really over there (front), then it's afternoon. However, if none of these is the case –

ROS: Why don't you go and have a look?

GUIL: Pragmatism?! - is that all you have to offer? You seem to have no conception of where we stand! You won't find the answer written down for you in the bowl of a compass - I can tell you that. (Pause.) Besides, you can never tell this far north - it's probably dark out there.

ROS: I merely suggest that the position of the sun, if it is out, would give you a rough idea of the time; alternatively, the clock, if it is going, would give you a rough idea of the position of the sun. I forget which you're trying to establish.

GUIL: I'm trying to establish the direction of the wind.

ROS: There isn't any wind. Draught, yes.

GUIL: In that case, the origin. Trace it to the source and it might give us a rough idea of the way we came in - which might give us a rough idea of south, for further reference.

ROS: It's coming up through the floor. (He studies the floor.) That can't be south, can it?

GUIL: That's not direction. Lick your toe and wave it around a bit. (ROS considers the distance to his foot.)

ROS: No, I think you'd have to lick it for me. (Pause.)

GUIL: I'm prepared to let the whole matter drop.

ROS: Or I could lick yours, of course.

GUIL: No thank you.

ROS: I'll even wave it around for you.

GUIL (down ROS's throat): What in God's name is the matter with you?

ROS: Just being friendly.

GUIL (retiring): Somebody might come in. It's what we're counting on, after all. Ultimately. (Good pause.)

ROS: Perhaps they've all trampled each other to death in the rush. Give them a shout. Something provocative. Intrigue them.

GUIL: Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are... condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. (He sits.) A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him, in his two-fold security. (A good pause. ROS leaps up and bellows at the audience.)

ROS: Fire! (GUIL jumps up.)

GUIL: Where?

ROS: It's all right - I'm demonstrating the misuse of free speech. To prove that it exists. (He regards the audience, that is the direction, with contempt - and other directions, then front again.) Not a move. They should burn to death in their shoes. (ROS takes out one of his coins. Spins it. Catches it. Looks at it. Replaces it.)

GUIL: What was it?

ROS: What?

GUIL: Heads or tails?

ROS: Oh. I didn't look.

GUIL: Yes you did.

ROS: Oh, did I? (He takes a coin, studies it.) Quite right - it rings a bell.

GUIL: What's the last thing you remember?

ROS: I don't wish to be reminded of it.

GUIL: We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. (ROS approaches him brightly, holding a coin between finger and thumb. He covers it with the other hand, draws his fist apart and holds them for GUIL. GUIL considers them. Indicates the left hand, ROS opens it to show it empty.)

ROS: No. (Repeat process. GUIL indicates left hand again.

ROS shows it empty.) Double bluff! (Repeat process - GUIL taps one hand, then the other hand, quickly. ROS inadvertently shows that both are empty. ROS laughs as GUIL turns upstage. ROS stops laughing, looks around his left, pats his clothes, puzzled.) (POLONIUS breaks that up by entering upstage followed by the TRAGEDIANS and HAMLET.)

POLONIUS (entering): Come, sirs.

HAMLET: Follow him, friends. We'll hear a play tomorrow. (Aside to the PLAYER, who is the last of the TRAGEDIANS.) Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play "The Murder of Gonzago"?

PLAYER: Ay, my lord.

HAMLET: We'll ha't tomorrow night. You could for a need study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and insert in't, could you not?

PLAYER: Ay, my lord.

HAMLET: Very well. Follow that lord, and look you mock him not. (The PLAYER crossing downstage, notes ROS and GUIL. Stops. HAMLET crossing downstage addresses them without a pause.)

HAMLET: My good friends, I'll leave you till tonight. You are welcome to Elsinore.

ROS: Good, my lord. (HAMLET goes.)

GUIL: So you've caught up.

PLAYER (coldly): Not yet, sir.

GUIL: Now mind your tongue, or we'll have it out and throw the rest of you away, like a nightingale at a Roman feast.

PLAYER: Took the very words out of my mouth.

GUIL: You'd be lost for words.

ROS: You'd be tongue-tied.

GUIL: Like a mute in a monologue.

ROS: Like a nightingale at a Roman feast.

GUIL: Your diction will go to pieces.

ROS: Your lines will be cut.

GUIL: To dumbshows.

ROS: And dramatic pauses.

GUIL: You'll never find your tongue.

ROS: Lick your lips.

GUIL: Taste your tears.

ROS: Your breakfast.

GUIL: You won't know the difference.

ROS: There won't be any.

GUIL: We'll take the very words out of your mouth.

ROS: So you've caught up.

GUIL: So you've caught up.

PLAYER (tops): Not yet! (Bitterly.) You left us.

GUIL: Ah! I'd forgotten - you performed a dramatic spectacle by the wayside - a thing much thought of in the New Testament. How did yours compare as an impromptu?

PLAYER: Badly - neither witnessed nor reported.

GUIL: Yes, I'm sorry we had to miss it. I hope you didn't leave anything out - I'd be furious to think I didn't miss all of it. (The PLAYER, progressively aggrieved, now burst out.)

PLAYER: We can't look each other in the face! (Pause, more in control.) You don't understand the humiliation of it - to be tricked out of a single assumption, which makes our existence viable - that somebody is watching... The plot was two corpses gone before we caught sight of ourselves, stripped naked in the middle of nowhere and pouring ourselves down a bottomless well.

ROS: Is that thirty eight?

PLAYER (lost): There we are - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance - and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. (He rounds on them.) Don't you see?! We're actors - we're the opposite of people! (They recoil nonplussed, his voice calms.) Think, in your head, now, think of the most... private... secret... intimate... thing you have ever done secure in the knowledge of its privacy... (He gives them - and the audience - a good pause. ROS takes a shifty look.) Are you thinking of it? (He strikes with his voice and his head.) Well, I saw you do it! (ROS leaps up, dissembling madly.)

ROS: You never! It's a lie! (He catches himself with a giggle in a vacuum and sits down again.)

PLAYER: We're actors... We pledged our identities, secure in the conventions of our trade; that someone would be watching. And than, gradually, no one was. We were caught, high and dry. It was not until the murder's long soliloquy that we were able to look around; frozen we were in the profil, our eyes searched you out, first confidently, then hesitantly, then desperately as each patch of turf, each log, each exposed corned in every direction proved uninhabited, and all the while the murderous King addressed the horizon with his dreary interminable guilt... Our heads began to move, wary as lizards, the corpse of unsullied Rosalinda peeped through his fingers, and the King faltered. Even then, habit and a stubborn trust that our audience spied upon us from behind the nearest bush, forced our bodies to blunder on long after they had emptied of meaning, until like runaway carts they dragged to a halt. No one came forward. No one shouted at us. The silence was unbreakable, it imposed itself upon us; it was obscene. We took off our crowns and swords and cloth of gold and moved silent on the road to Elsinore. (Silence. Then GUIL claps solo with slow measured irony.)

GUIL: Brilliantly re-created - if these eyes could weep!... Rather strong on metaphor, mind you. No criticism - only a matter of taste. And so here you are - with a vengeance. That's a figure of speech... isn't it? Well let's say we've made up for it, for you may have no doubt whom to thank for your performance at the court.

ROS: We are counting on you to take him out of himself. You are the pleasures which we draw him on to - (he escapes a fractional giggle but recovers immediately) and by that I don't mean your usual filth; you can't . treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires. They know nothing of that and you know nothing of them, to your mutual survival. So give him a good clean show suitable for all the family, or you can rest assured you'll be playing the tavern tonight.

GUIL: Or the night, after.

ROS: Or not.

PLAYER: We already have an entry here. And always have had.

GUIL: You've played for him before?

PLAYER: Yes, sir.

ROS: And what's his bent?

PLAYER: Classical.

ROS: Saucy!

GUIL: What will you play?

PLAYER: "The Murder of Gonzago".

GUIL: Full of fine cadence and corpses.

PLAYER: Pirated from the Italian....

ROS: What is it about?

PLAYER: It's about a King and Queen....

GUIL: Escapism! What else?

PLAYER: Blood - -

GUIL: - Love and rhetoric.

PLAYER: Yes. (Going.)

GUIL: Where are you going?

PLAYER: I can come and go as I please.

GUIL: You're evidently a man who knows his way around.

PLAYER: I've been here before.

GUIL: We're still finding our feet.

PLAYER: I should concentrate on not losing your heads.

GUIL: Do you speak from knowledge?

PLAYER: Precedent.

GUIL: You've been here before.

PLAYER: And I know which way the wind is blowing.

GUIL: Operating on two levels, are we?! How clever! I expect it comes naturally to you, being in the business so to speak. (The PLAYER's grave face does not change. He makes to move off again. GUIL for the second time cuts him off.) The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devices - after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's.

PLAYER: Uncertainty is the normal state. You're nobody special. (He makes to leave again. GUIL loses his cool.)

GUIL: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUIL: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUIL: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions. What do you assume?

ROS: Hamlet is not himself, outside or in. We have to glean what afflicts him.

GUIL: He doesn't give much away.

PLAYER: Who does, nowadays?

GUIL: He's - melancholy.

PLAYER: Melancholy?

ROS: Mad.

PLAYER: How is he mad?

ROS: Ah. (To GUIL.) How is he mad?

GUIL: More morose than mad, perhaps.

PLAYER: Melancholy.

GUIL: Moody.

ROS: He has moods.

PLAYER: Of moroseness?

GUIL: Madness. And yet.

ROS: Quite.

GUIL: For instance.

ROS: He talks to himself, which might be madness.

GUIL: If he didn't talk sense, which he does.

ROS: Which suggests the opposite.

PLAYER: Of what? (Small pause.)

GUIL: I think I have it. A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.

ROS: Or just as mad.

GUIL: Or just as mad.

ROS: And he does both.

GUIL: So there you are.

ROS: Stark raving sane. (Pause.)

PLAYER: Why?

GUIL: Ah. (To ROS.) Why?

ROS: Exactly.

GUIL: Exactly what? .

ROS: Exactly why.

GUIL: Exactly why what?

ROS: What?

GUIL: Why?

ROS: Why what, exactly?

GUIL: Why is he mad?!

ROS: I don't know! (Beat.)

PLAYER: The old man thinks he's in love with his daughter.

ROS (appalled): Good God! We're out of our depth here.

PLAYER: No, no, no - he hasn't got a daughter - the old man thinks he's in love with his daughter.

ROS: The old man is?

PLAYER: Hamlet, in love with the old man's daughter, the old man thinks.

ROS: Ha! It's beginning to make sense! Unrequited passion! (The PLAYER moves.)

GUIL (Fascist): Nobody leaves this room! (Pause, lamely.) Without a very good reason.

PLAYER: Why not?

GUIL: All this strolling about is getting too arbitrary by half - I'm rapidly losing my grip. From now on reason will prevail.

PLAYER: I have lines to learn.

GUIL: Pass! (The PLAYER passes into one of the wings. ROS cups his hands and shouts into the opposite one.)

ROS: Next! (But no one comes.)

GUIL: What did you expect?

ROS: Something ... someone ... nothing. (They sit facing front.) Are you hungry?

GUIL: No, are you?

ROS (thinks): No. You remember that coin?

GUIL: No.

ROS: I think I lost it.

GUIL: What coin?

ROS: I don't remember exactly. (Pause.)

GUIL: Oh, that coin ... clever.

ROS: I can't remember how I did it.

GUIL: It probably comes natural to you.

ROS: Yes, I've got a show-stopper there.

GUIL: Do it again. (Slight pause.)

ROS: We can't afford it.

GUIL: Yes, one must think of the future.

ROS: It's the normal thing.

GUIL: To have one. One is, after all, having it all the time... now... and now... and now....

ROS: It could go on for ever. Well, not for ever, I suppose. (Pause.) Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?

GUIL: No.

ROS: Nor do I, really.... It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean one thinks of it like being alive in a box, one keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead ... which should make a difference ... shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never know you were in a box, would you? It would be just like being asleep in a box. Not that I'd like to sleep in a box, mind you, not without any air - you'd wake up dead, for a start and then where would you be? Apart from inside a box. That's the bit I don't like, frankly. That's why I don't think of it.... (GUIL stirs restlessly, pulling his cloak round him.) Because you'd be helpless, wouldn't you? Stuffed in a box like that, I mean you'd be in there for ever. Even taking into account the fact that you're dead, really ... ask yourself, if I asked you straight off - I'm going to stuff you in this box now, would you rather be alive or dead? Naturally, you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all. I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking - well, at least I'm not dead! In a minute someone's going to bang on the lid and tell me to come out. (Banging on the floor with his fists.) "Hey you, whatsyername! Come out of there!"

GUIL (jumps up savagely): You don't have to flog it to death! (Pause.)

ROS: I wouldn't think about it, if I were you. You'd only get depressed. (Pause.) Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end? (Pause, then brightly.) Two early Christians chanced to meet in Heaven. "Saul of Tarsus yet!" cried one. "What are you doing here?!" ... "Tarsus-Schmarsus", replied the other, "I'm Paul already." (ROS stands up restlessly and flaps his arms.) They don't care. We count for nothing. We could remain silent till we're green in the face, they wouldn't come.

GUIL: Blue, red.

ROS: A Christian, a Moslem and a Jew chanced to meet in a closed carriage.... "Silverstein!" cried the Jew, "Who's your friend?" ... "His name's Abdullah", replied the Moslem, "but he's no friend of mine since he became a convert." (He leaps up again, stamps his foot and shouts into the wings.) All right, we know you're in there! Come out talking! (Pause.) We have no control. None at all.... (He paces.) Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood when it first occurred to you that you don't go on for ever. It must have been shattering - stamped into one's memory. And yet I can't remember it. It never occurred to me at all. What does one make of that? We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the words for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and squalling with the knowledge that for all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure. (He reflects, getting more desperate and rapid.) A Hindu, a Buddhist and a lion-tamer chanced to meet, in a circus on the Indo-Chinese border. (He breaks out.) They're taking us for granted! Well, I won't stand for it! In future, notice will be taken. (He wheels again to face into the wings.) Keep out, then! I forbid anyone to enter! (No one comes - Breathing heavily.) That's better.... (Immediately, behind him a grand procession enters, principally CLAUDIUS, GERTRUDE, POLONIUS and OPHELIA. CLAUDIUS takes ROS's elbow as he passes and is immediately deep in conversation: the context is Shakespeare Act III, Scene i.

GUIL still faces front as CLAUDIUS, ROS, etc., pass upstage and turn.)

GUIL: Death followed by eternity ... the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought. (He turns upstage in time to take over the conversation with CLAUDIUS. GERTRUDE and ROS head downstage.)

GERTRUDE: Did he receive you well?

ROS: Most like a gentleman.

GUIL (returning in time to take it up): But with much forcing of his disposition.

ROS (a flat lie and he knows it and shows it, perhaps catching GUIL's eye): Niggard of question, but of our demands most free in his reply.

GERTRUDE: Did you assay him to any pastime?

ROS: Madam, it so fell out that certain players We o'erraught on the way: of these we told him And there did seem in him a kind of joy To hear of it. They are here about the court, And, as I think, they have already order This night to play before him.

POLONIUS: 'Tis most true And he beseeched me to entreat your Majesties To hear and see the matter.

CLAUDIUS: With all my heart, and it doth content me To hear him so inclined. Good gentlemen, give him a further edge And drive his purpose into these delights.

ROS: We shall, my lord.

CLAUDIUS (leading out procession): Sweet Gertrude, leave us, too, For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither, That he, as t'were by accident, may here Affront Ophelia.... (Exeunt CLAUDIUS and GERTRUDE.)

ROS (peevish): Never a moment's peace! In and out, on and off, they're coming at us from all sides.

GUIL: You're never satisfied.

ROS: Catching us on the trot.... Why can't we go by them!

GUIL: What's the difference?

ROS: I'm going. (ROS pulls his cloak round him. GUIL ignores him. Without confidence ROS heads upstage. He looks out and comes back quickly.) He's coming.

GUIL: What's he doing?

ROS: Nothing.

GUIL: He must be doing something.

ROS: Walking.

GUIL: On his hands?

ROS: No, on his feet.

GUIL: Stark naked?

ROS: Fully dressed.

GUIL: Selling toffee apples?

ROS: Not that I noticed.

GUIL: You could be wrong?

ROS: I don't think so. (Pause.)

GUIL: I can't for the life of me see how we're going to get into conversation. (HAMLET enters upstage, and pauses, weighing up the pros and cons of making his quietus.) (ROS and GUIL watch him.)

ROS: Nevertheless, I suppose one might say that this was a chance.... One might well ... accost him.... Yes, it definitely looks like a chance to me.... Something on the lines of a direct informal approach ... man to man ... straight from the shoulder.... Now look here, what's it all about ... sort of thing. Yes. Yes, this looks like one to be grabbed with both hands, I should say ... if I were asked.... No point in looking at a gift horse till you see the whites of its eyes, etcetera. (He has moved towards HAMLET but his nerve fails. He returns.) We're overawed, that's our trouble. When it comes to the point we succumb to their personality.... (OPHELIA enters, with prayerbook, a religious procession of one.)

HAMLET: Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered. (At his voice she has stopped for him, he catches her up.)

OPHELIA: Good my lord, how does your honour for this many a day?

HAMLET: I humbly thank you - well, well, well. (They disappear talking into the wing.)

ROS: It's like living in a public park!

GUIL: Very impressive. Yes, I thought your direct informal approach was going to stop this thing dead in its tracks there. If I might make a suggestion - shut up and sit down. Stop being perverse.

ROS (near tears): I'm not going to stand for it! (A FEMALE FIGURE, ostensibly the QUEEN, enters. ROS marches up behind her, puts his hands over her eyes and says with a desperate frivolity.)

ROS: Guess who?!

PLAYER (having appeared in a downstage corner): Alfred! (ROS lets go, spins around. He had been holding ALFRED, in his robe and blonde wig. PLAYER is in the downstage corner still. ROS comes down to that exit. The PLAYER does not budge. He and ROS stand toe to toe.)

ROS: Excuse me. (The PLAYER lifts his downstage foot. ROS bends to put his hand on the floor. The PLAYER lowers his foot. ROS screams and leaps away.)

PLAYER (gravely): I beg your pardon.

GUIL (to ROS): What did he do?

PLAYER: I put my foot down.

ROS: My hand was on the floor!

GUIL: You put your hand under his foot?

ROS: I - -

GUIL: What for?

ROS: I thought - - (Grabs GUIL.) Don't leave me! (He makes a break for an exit. A TRAGEDIAN dressed as a king enters, ROS recoils, breaks for the opposite wing. Two cloaked tragedians enter. ROS tries again but another tragedian enters, and ROS retires to midstage. The PLAYER claps his hands matter-of-factly.)

PLAYER: Right! We haven't got much time.

GUIL: What are you doing?

PLAYER: Dress rehearsal. Now if you two wouldn't mind just moving back... there ... good.... (To TRAGEDIANS.) Everyone ready? And for goodness sake, remember what we're doing. (To ROS and GUIL.) We always use the same costumes more or less, and they forget what they are supposed to be in you see.... Stop picking your nose, Alfred. When Queens have to they do it by a cerebral process passed down in the blood.... Good. Silence! Off we go!

PLAYER-KING: Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart - - (PLAYER jumps up angrily.)

PLAYER: No, no, no! Dumbshow first, your confounded majesty! (To ROS and GUIL.) They're a bit out of practice, but they always pick up wonderfully for the deaths - it brings out the poetry in them.

GUIL: How nice.

PLAYER: There's nothing more unconvincing than an, unconvincing death.

GUIL: I'm sure. (PLAYER claps his hands.)

PLAYER: Act One - moves now. (The mime. Soft music from a recorder. PLAYER-KING and PLAYER-QUEEN embrace. She kneels and makes a show of protestation to him. He takes her up, declining his head upon her neck. He lies down. She, seeing him asleep, leaves him.)

GUIL: What is the dumbshow for?

PLAYER: Well, it's a device, really - it makes the action that follows more or less comprehensible; you understand, we are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style. (The mime (continued) - enter another. He takes off the SLEEPER's crown, kisses it. He had brought in a small bottle of liquid. He pours the poison in the SLEEPER's ear, and leaves him. The sleeper convulses heroically, dying.)

ROS: Who was that?

PLAYER: The King's brother and uncle to the Prince.

GUIL: Not exactly fraternal.

PLAYER: Not exactly avuncular, as time goes on. (The QUEEN returns, makes passionate action, finding the KING dead. The POISONER comes in again, attended by two others (the two in cloaks). The POISONER seems to console with her. The dead body is carried away. The POISONER woos the QUEEN with gifts. She seems harsh awhile but in the end accepts his love. End of mime, at which point, the wail of a woman in torment and OPHELIA appears, wailing, closely followed by HAMLET in a hysterical state, shouting at her, circling her, both midstage.)

HAMLET: Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad! (She falls on her knees weeping.) I say we will have no more marriage! (His voice drops to include the TRAGEDIANS, who have frozen.) Those that are married already (he leans close to the PLAYER-QUEEN and POISONER, speaking with quiet edge) all but one shall live. (He smiles briefly at them without mirth, and starts to back out, his parting shot rising again.) The rest shall keep as they are. (As he leaves, OPHELIA tottering upstage, he speaks into her ear a quick clipped sentence.) To a nunnery, go. (He goes out. OPHELIA falls on her knees upstage, her sobs barely audible. A slight silence.)

PLAYER-KING: Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart - - (CLAUDIUS enters with POLONIUS and goes over to OPHELIA and lifts her to her feet. The TRAGEDIANS jump back with heads inclined.)

CLAUDIUS: Love? His affections do not that way tend, Or what he spake, though it lacked form a little, Was not like madness. There's something in his soul o'er which his melancholy sits on brood, and I do doubt the hatch and the disclose will be some danger; which for to prevent I have in quick determination thus set it down: he shall with speed to England.... (Which carries the three of them - CLAUDIUS, POLONIUS, OPHELIA - out of sight. The PLAYER moves, clapping his hands for attention.)

PLAYER: Gentlemen! (They look at him.) It doesn't seem to be coming. We are not getting it at all. (To GUIL.) What did you think?

GUIL: What was I supposed to think?

PLAYER (to TRAGEDIANS): You're not getting across! (ROS had gone halfway up to OPHELIA; he returns.)

ROS: That didn't look like love to me.

GUIL: Starting from scratch again....

PLAYER (to TRAGEDIANS): It was a mess.

ROS (to GUIL): It's going to be chaos on the night.

GUIL: Keep back - we're spectators.

PLAYER: Act two! Positions!

GUIL: Wasn't that the end?

PLAYER: Do you call that an ending? - with practically everyone on his feet? My goodness no - over your dead body.

GUIL: How am I supposed to take that?

PLAYER: Lying down. (He laughs briefly and in a second has never laughed in his life.) There's a design at work in all art - surely you know that? Events must play themselves out to aesthetic, moral and logical conclusion.

GUIL: And what's that, in this case?

PLAYER: It never varies - we aim at the point where everyone who is marked for death dies.

GUIL: Marked?

PLAYER: Between "just desserts" and "tragic irony" we are given quite a lot of scope for our particular talent. Generally speaking, things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when things have got about as bad as they reasonably get. (He switches on a smile.)

GUIL: Who decides?

PLAYER (switching off his smile): Decides? It is written. (He turns away. GUIL grabs him and spins him back violently.) (Unflustered.) Now if you're going to be subtle, we'll miss each other in the dark. I'm referring to oral tradition. So to speak. (GUIL releases him.) We're tragedians, you see. We follow directions-there is no choice involved. The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means. (Calling.) Positions! (The TRAGEDIANS have taken up positions for the continuation of the mime: which in this case means a love scene, sexual and passionate, between the QUEEN and the POISONER/KING.)

PLAYER: Go! (The lovers begin. The PLAYER contributes a breathless commentary for ROS and GUIL.) Having murdered his brother and wooed the widow-the poisoner mounts the throne! Here we see him and his queen give rein to their unbridled passion! She little knowing that the man she holds in her arms--!

ROS: Oh, I say-here-really! You can't do that!

PLAYER: Why not?

ROS: Well, really-I mean, people want to be entertained-they don't come expecting sordid and gratuitous filth.

PLAYER: You're wrong - they do! Murder, seduction and incest - what do you want -jokes?

ROS: I want a good story, with a beginning, middle and end.

PLAYER (to GUIL): And you?

GUIL: I'd prefer art to mirror life, if it's all the same to you.

PLAYER: It's all the same to me, sir. (To the grappling LOVERS.) All right, no need to indulge yourselves. (They get up-To GUIL.) I come on in a minute. Lucianus, nephew to the king! (Turns his attention to the TRAGEDIANS.) Next! (They disport themselves to accommodate the next piece of mime, which consists of the PLAYER himself exhibiting an excitable anguish (choreographed, stylized) leading to an impassioned scene with the QUEEN (cf. "The Closet Scene", Shakespeare Act III, Scene iv) and a very stylized reconstruction of a POLONIUS figure being stabbed behind the arras (the murdered KING to stand in for POLONIUS) while the PLAYER himself continues his breathless commentary for the benefit of ROS and GUIL.)

PLAYER: Lucianus, nephew to the king ... usurped by his uncle and shattered by his mother's incestuous marriage ... loses his reason ... throwing the court into turmoil and disarray as he alternates between bitter melancholy and unrestricted lunacy ... staggering from the suicidal (a pose) to the homicidal (here he kills "POLONIUS"). ... he at last confronts his mother and in a scene of provocative ambiguity-(a somewhat oedipal embrace) begs her to repent and recant-- (He springs up, still talking.) The King-(he pushes forward the POISONER/KING) tormented by guilt-haunted by fear-decides to despatch his nephew to England-and entrusts this undertaking to two smiling accomplices-friends-courtiers-to two spies- (He has swung round to bring together the POISONER/KING and the two cloaked TRAGEDIANS; the latter kneel and accept a scroll from the KING.) -giving them a letter to present to the English court--! And so they depart-on board ship-- (The two SPIES position themselves on either side of the PLAYER, and the three of them sway gently in unison, the motion of a boat; and then the PLAYER detaches himself.) -and they arrive- (One SPY shades his eyes at the horizon.) -and disembark-and present themselves before the English king-(He wheels round.) The English king-- (An exchange of headgear creates the ENGLISH KING from the remaining player-that is, the PLAYER who played the original murdered king.) But where is the Prince? Where indeed? The plot has thickened-a twist of fate and cunning has put into their hands a letter that seals their deaths! (The two SPIES present their letter; the ENGLISH KING reads it and orders their deaths. They stand up as the PLAYER whips off their cloaks preparatory to execution.) Traitors hoist by their own petard?-or victims of the gods?-we shall never know! (The whole mime has been fluid and continuous but now ROS moves forward and brings it to a pause. What brings ROS forward is the fact that under their cloaks the two SPIES are wearing coats identical to those worn by ROS and GUIL, whose coats are now covered by their cloaks. ROS approaches "his'' SPY doubtfully. He does not quite understand why the coats are familiar. ROS stands close, touches the coat, thoughtfully....)

ROS: Well, if it isn't--! No, wait a minute, don't tell me-it's a long time since-where was it? Ah, this is taking me back to-when was it? I know you, don't I? I never forget a face-(he looks into the SPY'S face). not that I know yours that is. For a moment I thought- no, I don't know you, do I? Yes, I'm afraid you're quite wrong. You must have mistaken me for someone else. (GUIL meanwhile has approached the other SPY, brow creased in thought.)

PLAYER (to GUIL): Are you familiar with this play?

GUIL: No.

PLAYER: A slaughterhouse-eight corpses all told. It brings out the best in us.

GUIL (tense, progressively rattled during the whole mime and commentary): You!-What do you know about death?

PLAYER: It's what the actors do best. They have to exploit whatever talent is given to them, and their talent is dying. They can die heroically, comically, ironically, slowly, suddenly, disgustingly, charmingly, or from a great height. My own talent is more general. I extract significance from melodrama, a significance which it does not in fact contain; but occasionally, from out of this matter, there escapes a thin beam of light that, seen at the right angle, can crack the shell of mortality.

ROS: Is that all they can do-die?

PLAYER: No, no-they kill beautifully. In fact some of them kill even better than they die. The rest die better than they kill. They're a team.

ROS: Which ones are which?

PLAYER: There's not much in it.

GUIL (fear, derision): Actors! The mechanics of cheap melodrama! That isn't death! (More quietly.) You scream and choke and sink to your knees, but it doesn't bring death home to anyone-it doesn't catch them unawares and start the whisper in their skulls that says-"One day you are going to die." (He straightens up.) You die so many times; how can you expect them to believe in your death?

PLAYER: On the contrary, it's the only kind they do believe. They're conditioned to it. I had an actor once who was condemned to hang for stealing a sheep-or a lamb, I forget which-so I got permission to have him hanged in the middle of a play-had to change the plot a bit but I thought it would be effective, you know-and you wouldn't believe it, he just wasn't convincing! It was impossible to suspend one's, disbelief-and what with the audience jeering and throwing peanuts, the whole thing was a disaster!-he did nothing but cry all the time-right out of character-just stood there and cried... Never again. (In good humour he has already turned back to the mime: the two SPIES awaiting execution at the hands of the PLAYER.) Audiences know what to expect, and that is all that they are prepared to believe in. (To the SPIES.) Show! (The SPIES die at some length, rather well.) (The light has begun to go, and it fades as they die, and as GUIL speaks.)

GUIL: No, no, no... you've got it all wrong... you can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen - it's not gasps and blood and falling about - that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all - now you see him, now you don't that's the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back - an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death. (The two SPIES lie still, barely visible. The PLAYER comes forward and throws the SPIES' cloaks over their bodies.

ROS starts to clap, slowly.) BLACKOUT. (A second of silence, then much noise. Shouts ... "The King rises!" ... "Give o'er the play!"... and cries for "Lights, lights, lights!") (When the light comes, after a few seconds, it comes as a sunrise.) (The stage is empty save for two cloaked FIGURES sprawled on the ground in the approximate positions last held by the dead SPIES. As the light grows, they are seen to be ROS and GUIL, and to be resting quite comfortably. ROS raises himself on his elbows and shades his eyes as he stares into the auditorium. Finally:)

ROS: That must be east, then. I think we can assume that.

GUIL: I'm assuming nothing.

ROS: No, it's all right. That's the sun. East.

GUIL (looks up): Where?

ROS: I watched it come up.

GUIL: No... it was light all the time, you see, and you opened your eyes very, very slowly. If you'd been facing back there you'd be swearing that was east.

ROS (standing up): You're a mass of prejudice.

GUIL: I've been taken in before.

ROS (looks out over the audience): Rings a bell.

GUIL: They're waiting to see what we're going to do.

ROS: Good old east.

GUIL: As soon as we make a move they'll come pouring in from every side, shouting obscure instructions, confusing us with ridiculous remarks, messing us about from here to breakfast and getting our names wrong. (ROS starts to protest but he has hardly opened his mouth before:)

CLAUDIUS (off-stage - with urgency): Ho, Guildenstern! (GUIL is still prone. Small pause.)

ROS AND GUIL: You're wanted... (GUIL furiously leaps to his feet as CLAUDIUS and GERTRUDE enter. They are in some desperation.)

CLAUDIUS: Friends both, go join you with some further aid: Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain, and from his mother's closet hath he dragged him. Go seek him out; speak fair and bring the body into the chapel. I pray you haste in this. (As he and GERTRUDE are hurrying out.) Come Gertrude, we'll call up our wisest friends and let them know both what we mean to do... (They've gone.) (ROS and GUIL remain quite still.)

GUIL: Well....

ROS: Quite....

GUIL: Well, well.

ROS: Quite; quite. (Nods with spurious confidence.) Seek him out. (Pause.) Etcetera.

GUIL: Quite.

ROS: Well. (Small pause.) Well, that's a step in the right direction.

GUIL: You didn't like him?

ROS: Who?

GUIL: Good God, I hope more tears are shed for us! ...

ROS: Well, it's progress, isn't it? Something positive. Seek him out. (Looks round without moving his feet) Where does one begin... ? (Takes one step towards the wings and halts.)

GUIL: Well, that's a step in the right direction.

ROS: You think so? He could be anywhere.

GUIL: All right-you go that way, I'll go this way.

ROS: Right. (They walk towards opposite wings. ROS halts.) No. (GUIL halts.) You go this way-I'll go that way.

GUIL: All right. (They march towards each other, cross. ROS halts.)

ROS: Wait a minute. (GUIL halts.) I think we should stick together. He might be violent.

GUIL: Good point. I'll come with you. (GUIL marches across to ROS. They turn to leave. ROS halts.)

ROS: No, I'll come with you...

GUIL: Right. (They turn, march across to the opposite wing. ROS halts. GUIL halts.)

ROS: I'll come with you, my way.

GUIL: All right. (They turn again and march across. ROS halts. GUIL halts.)

ROS: I've just thought. If we both go, he could come here. That would be stupid, wouldn't it?

GUIL: All right-I'll stay, you go.

ROS: Right. (GUIL marches to midstage.) I say. (GUIL wheels and carries on marching back towards ROS who starts marching downstage. They cross. ROS halts.) I've just thought. (GUIL halts.) We ought to stick together; he might be violent.

GUIL: Good point. (GUIL marches down to join ROS. They stand still for a moment in their original positions.) Well, at last we're getting somewhere. (Pause.)

GUIL: Of course, he might not come.

ROS (airily): Oh, he'll come.

GUIL: We'd have some explaining to do.

ROS: He'll come. (Airily wanders upstage.) Don't worry-take my word for it-(looks out-is appalled.) He's coming!

GUIL: What's he doing?

ROS: Walking.

GUIL: Alone?

ROS: No.

GUIL: Who's with him?

ROS: The old man.

GUIL: Walking?

ROS: No.

GUIL: Not walking?

ROS: No.

GUIL: Ah. That's an opening if ever there was one. (And is suddenly galvanized into action.) Let him walk into the trap!

ROS: What trap?

GUIL: You stand there! Don't let him pass! (He positions ROS with his back to one wing, facing HAMLET's entrance.) (GUIL positions himself next to ROS, a few feet away, so that they are covering one side of the stage, facing the opposite side. GUIL unfastens his belt. ROS does the same. They join the two belts, and hold them taut between them. ROS's trousers slide slowly down.) (HAMLET enters opposite, slowly, dragging POLONIUS's BODY. He enters upstage, makes a small arc and leaves by the same side, a few feet downstage.) (ROS and GUIL, holding the belts taut, stare at him in some bewilderment.) (HAMLET leaves, dragging the BODY. They relax the strain on the belts.)

ROS: That was close.

GUIL: There's a limit to what two people can do. (They undo the belts: ROS pulls up his trousers.)

ROS (worriedly-he walks a few paces towards HAMLET's exit): He was dead.

GUIL: Of course he's dead!

ROS (turns to GUIL): Properly.

GUIL (angrily): Death's death, isn't it? (ROS falls silent. Pause.) Perhaps he'll come back this way. (ROS starts to take off his belt.) No, no, no!-if we can't learn by experience, what else have we got? (ROS desists.) (Pause.)

ROS: Give him a shout.

GUIL: I thought we'd been into all that.

ROS (shouts): Hamlet!

GUIL: Don't be absurd.

ROS (shouts): Lord Hamlet! (HAMLET enters. ROS is a little dismayed.) What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?

HAMLET: Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.

ROS: Tell us where 'tis, that we may take it thence and bear it to the chapel.

HAMLET: Do not believe it.

ROS: Believe what?

HAMLET: That I can keep your counsel and not mine own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge, what replication should be made by the son of a king?

ROS: Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

HAMLET: Ay, sir, that soaks up the king's countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the King best service in the end. He keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw, first mouthed, to be last swallowed. When he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you and, sponge, you shall be dry again.

ROS: I understand you not, my lord.

HAMLET: I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

ROS: My lord, you must tell us where the body is and go with us to the King.

HAMLET: The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body. The King is a thing-

GUIL: A thing, my lord -?

HAMLET: Of nothing. Bring me to him. (HAMLET moves resolutely towards one wing. They move with him, shepherding. Just before they reach the exit, HAMLET, apparently seeing CLAUDIUS approaching from off stage, bends low in a sweeping bow. ROS and GUIL, cued by HAMLET, also bow deeply-a sweeping ceremonial bow with their cloaks swept round them. HAMLET, however, continues the movement into an about-turn and walks off in the opposite direction. ROS and GUIL, with their heads low, do not notice. No one comes on. ROS and GUIL squint upwards and find that they are bowing to nothing. CLAUDIUS enters behind them. At his first words they leap up and do a double-take.)

CLAUDIUS: How now? What hath befallen?

ROS: Where the body is bestowed, my lord, we cannot get from him.

CLAUDIUS: But where is he?

ROS (fractional hesitation): Without, my lord; guarded to know your pleasure.

CLAUDIUS (moves): Bring him before us. (This hits ROS between the eyes but only his eyes show it. Again his hesitation is fractional. And then with great deliberation he turns to GUIL.)

ROS: Ho! Bring in the lord. (Again there is a fractional moment in which ROS is smug, CUIL is trapped and betrayed.

GUIL opens his mouth and closes it.) (The situation is saved;) (HAMLET, escorted, is marched in just as CLAUDIUS leaves. HAMLET and his ESCORT cross the stage and go out, following CLAUDIUS.) (Lighting changes to Exterior.)

ROS (moves to go): All right, then?

GUIL (does not move: thoughtfully): And yet it doesn't seem enough; to have breathed such significance. Can that be ail? And why us?-anybody would have done. And we have contributed nothing.

ROS: It was a trying episode while it lasted, but they've done with us now.

GUIL: Done what?

ROS: I don't pretend to have understood. Frankly, I'm not very interested. If they won't tell us, that's their affair. (He wanders upstage towards the exit.) For my part, I'm only glad that that's the last we've seen of him- (And he glances offstage and turns front, his face betraying the fact that HAMLET is there.)

GUIL: I knew it wasn't the end....

ROS (high): What else?!

GUIL: We're taking him to England. What's he doing? (ROS goes upstage and returns.)

ROS: Talking.

GUIL: To himself? (ROS makes to go, GUIL cuts him off.) Is he alone?

ROS: No, he's with a soldier,

GUIL: Then he's not talking to himself, is he?

ROS: Not by himself... Should we go?

GUIL: Where?

ROS: Anywhere.

GUIL: Why? (ROS puts up his head listening.)

ROS: There it is again. (In anguish.) All I ask is a change of ground!

GUIL (coda): Give us this day our daily round... (HAMLET enters behind them, talking with a soldier in arms. ROS and GUIL don't look round.)

ROS: They'll have us hanging about till we're dead. At least. And the weather will change. (Looks up.) The spring can't last for ever.

HAMLET: Good sir, whose powers are these?

SOLDIER: They are of Norway, sir.

HAMLET: How purposed, sir, I pray you?

SOLDIER: Against some part of Poland.

HAMLET: Who commands them, sir?

SOLDIER: The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.

ROS: We'll be cold. The summer won't last.

GUIL: It's autumnal.

ROS (examining the ground): No leaves.

GUIL: Autumnal-nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day... Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it... Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flushing the very outside edge of the senses... deep shining ochres, burnt umber and parchments of baked earth-reflecting on itself and through itself, filtering the light. At such times, perhaps, coincidentally, the leaves might fall, somewhere, by repute. Yesterday was blue, like smoke.

ROS (head up, listening): I got it again then. (They listen-faintest sound of TRAGEDIANS' band.)

HAMLET: I humbly thank you, sir.

SOLDIER: God by you, sir. (Exit.) (ROS gets up quickly and goes to HAMLET.)

ROS: Will it please you go, my lord?

HAMLET: I'll be with you straight. Go you a little before. (HAMLET turns to face upstage. ROS returns down. GUIL faces front, doesn't turn.)

GUIL: Is he there?

ROS: Yes.

GUIL: What's he doing? (ROS looks over his shoulder.)

ROS: Talking.

GUIL: To himself?

ROS: Yes. (Pause. ROS makes to leave.)

ROS:

GUIL: knowing.

ROS: GUIL: He said we can go. Cross my heart. I like to know where I am. Even if I don't know where I am, I like to know that. If we go there's no No knowing what? If we'll ever come back. We don't want to come back. That may very well be true, but do we want to go?

ROS:

GUIL:

ROS:

GUIL:

ROS: (He moves towards exit. GUIL follows him.) And besides, anything could happen yet. We'll be free. I don't know. It's the same sky. We've come this far. (They go.) BLACKOUT Act three Opens in pitch darkness. Soft sea sounds. After several seconds of nothing, a voice from the dark .

GUIL: Are you there?

ROS: Where?

GUIL (bitterly): A flying start.... (Pause.)

ROS: Is that you?

GUIL: Yes.

ROS: How do you know?

GUIL (explosion): Oh-for-God's-sake!

ROS: We're not finished, then?

GUIL: Well, we're here, aren't we?

ROS: Are we? I can't see a thing.

GUIL: You can still think, can't you?

ROS: I think so.

GUIL: You can still talk.

ROS: What should I say?

GUIL: Don't bother. You can feel, can't you?

ROS: Ah! There's life in me yet!

GUIL: What are you feeling?

ROS: A leg. Yes, it feels like my leg.

GUIL: How does it feel?

ROS: Dead.

GUIL: Dead?

ROS (panic): I can't feel a thing!

GUIL: Give it a pinch! (Immediately he yelps.)

ROS: Sorry.

GUIL: Well, that's cleared that up. (Longer pause: the sound builds a little and identifies itself-the sea. Ship timbers, wind in the rigging, and then shouts of sailors calling obscure but inescapably nautical instructions from all directions, far and near: A short list: Hard a larboard! Let go the stays! Reef down me hearties! Is that you, cox'n? Hel-llo! Is that you? Hard a port! Easy as she goes! Keep her steady on the lee! Haul away, lads! SNATCHES OF SEA SHANTY MAYBE Fly the jib! Tops'I up, me maties!) (When the point has been well made and more so.)

ROS: We're on a boat. (Pause.) Dark, isn't it?

GUIL: Not for night.

ROS: No, not for night.

GUIL: Dark for day. (Pause.)

ROS: Oh yes, it's dark for day.

GUIL: We must have gone north, of course.

ROS: Off course?

GUIL: Land of the midnight sun, that is.

ROS: Of course. (Some sailor sounds.) (A lantern is lit upstage-in fact by HAMLET.) (The stage lightens disproportionately.) (Enough to see: ROS and GUIL sitting downstage.) (Vague shapes of rigging, etc., behind.) I think it's getting light.

GUIL: Not for night.

ROS: This far north.

GUIL: Unless we're off course.

ROS (small pause): Of course. (A better light-Lantern? Moon? ... Light.) (Revealing, among other things, three large man-sized casks on deck, upended, with lids. Spaced but in line. Behind and above-a gaudy striped umbrella, on a pole stuck into the deck, tilted so that we do not see behind it-one of those huge six-foot diameter jobs. Still dim upstage.) (ROS and GUIL still facing front.)

ROS: Yes, it's lighter than it was. It'll be night soon. This far north. (Dolefully.) I suppose we'll have to go to sleep. (He yawns and stretches.)

GUIL: Tired?

ROS: No.... I don't think I'd take to it. Sleep all night, can't see a thing all day.... Those eskimos must have a quiet life.

GUIL: Where?

ROS: What?

GUIL: I thought you - (Relapses.) I've lost all capacity for disbelief. I'm not sure that I could even rise to a little gentle scepticism. (Pause.)

ROS: Well, shall we stretch our legs?

GUIL: I don't feel like stretching my legs.

ROS: I'll stretch them for you, if you like.

GUIL: No.

ROS: We could stretch each other's. That way we wouldn't have to go anywhere.

GUIL (pause): No, somebody might come in.

ROS: In where?

GUIL: Out here.

ROS: In out here?

GUIL: On deck. (ROS considers the floor: slaps it.)

ROS: Nice bit of planking, that.

GUIL: Yes, I'm very fond of boats myself. I like the way they're-contained. You don't have to worry about which way to go, or whether to go at all-the question doesn't arise, because you're on a boat, aren't you? Boats are safe areas in the game of tag ... the players will hold their positions until the music starts.... I think I'll spend most of my life on boats.

ROS: Very healthy. (ROS inhales with expectation, exhales with boredom. GUIL stands up and looks over the audience.)

GUIL: One is free on a boat. For a time. Relatively.

ROS: What's it like?

GUIL: Rough. (ROS joins him. They look out over the audience.)

ROS: I think I'm going to be sick. (GUIL licks a finger, holds it up experimentally.)

GUIL: Other side, I think. (ROS goes upstage: Ideally a sort of upper deck joined to the downstage lower deck by short steps. The umbrella being on the upper deck. ROS pauses by the umbrella and looks behind it.) (GUIL meanwhile has been resuming his own theme - looking out over the audience - ) Free to move, speak, extemporise, and yet. We have not been cut loose. Our truancy is defined by one fixed star, and our drift represents merely a slight chance of angle to it: we may seize the moment, toss it around while the moment pass, a short dash here, an exploration there, but we are brought round full circle to face again the single immutable fact - that we, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are taking Hamlet to England. (By which time, ROS has returned, tiptoeing with great import, teeth clenched for secrecy, get to GUIL, points surreptitiously behind him - and a tight whisper:)

ROS: I say - he's here!

GUIL (unsurprised): What's he doing?

ROS: Sleeping.

GUIL: It's all right for him.

ROS: What is?

GUIL: He can sleep.

ROS: It's all right for him.

GUIL: He's got us now.

ROS: He can sleep.

GUIL: It's all done for him.

ROS: He's got us.

GUIL: And we've got nothing. (A cry.) All I ask is our common due!

ROS: For those in peril of the sea...

GUIL: Give us this day our daily cue. (Beat, pause. Sit. Long pause.)

ROS (after shifting, looking around): What now?

GUIL: What do you mean?

ROS: Well, nothing is happening.

GUIL: We're on a boat.

ROS: I'm aware of that.

GUIL (angrily): Then what do you expect? (Unhappily.) We act on scraps of information... sifting half- remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct. (ROS puts a hand into his purse, then both hands behind his back, then holds his fists out.) (GUIL taps one fist.) (ROS opens it to show a coin.) (He gives it to GUIL.) (He puts his hand back into his purse. Then both hands behind his back, then holds his fists out.) (GUIL taps one fist.) (ROS opens it to show a coin. He gives it to GUIL.) (Repeat.) (Repeat.) (GUIL getting tense. Desperate to lose.) (Repeat.) (GUIL taps a hand, changes his mind, taps the other, and ROS inadvertently reveals that he has a coin in both fists.)

GUIL: You had money in both hands.

ROS (embarrassed): Yes.

GUIL: Every time?

ROS: Yes.

GUIL: What's the point of that?

ROS (pathetic): I wanted to make you happy. (Beat.)

GUIL: How much did he give you?

ROS: Who?

GUIL: The king. He gave us some money.

ROS: How much did he give you?

GUIL: I asked you first.

ROS: I got the same as you.

GUIL: He wouldn't discriminate between us.

ROS: How much did you get?

GUIL: The same.

ROS: How do you know?

GUIL: You just told me - how do you know?

ROS: He wouldn't discriminate between us.

GUIL: Even if he could.

ROS: Which he never could.

GUIL: He couldn't even be sure of mixing us up.

ROS: Without mixing us up.

GUIL (turning on him furiously): Why don't you say something original! No wonder the whole thing is so stagnant! You don't take me up on anything-you just repeat it in a different order.

ROS: I can't think of anything original. I'm only good in support.

GUIL: I'm sick of making the running.

ROS (humbly): It must be your dominant personality. (Almost in tears.) Oh, what's going to become of us! (And GUIL comforts him, all harshness gone.)

GUIL: Don't cry... it's all right... there... there, I'll see we're all right.

ROS: But we've got nothing to go on, we're out on our own.

GUIL: We're on our way to England - we're taking Hamlet there.

ROS: What for?

GUIL: What for? Where have you been?

ROS: When? (Pause.) We won't know what to do when we get there.

GUIL: We take him to the king.

ROS: Will he be there?

GUIL: No - the king of England.

ROS: He's expecting us?

GUIL: No.

ROS: He won't know what we're playing at. What are we going to say?

GUIL: We've got a letter. You remember the letter.

ROS: Do I?

GUIL: Everything is explained in the letter. We count on that.

ROS: Is that it, then?

GUIL: What?

ROS: We take Hamlet to the English king, we hand over the letter – what then?

GUIL: There may be something in the letter to keep us going a bit.

ROS: And if not?

GUIL: Then that's it-we're finished.

ROS: At a loose end?

GUIL: Yes. (Pause.)

ROS: Are there likely to be loose ends? (Pause.) Who is the English King?

GUIL: That depends on when we get there.

ROS: What do you think it says?

GUIL: Oh... greetings. Expressions of loyalty. Asking of favours, calling in of debts. Obscure promises balanced by vague threats.... Diplomacy. Regards to the family.

ROS: And about Hamlet?

GUIL: Oh yes.

ROS: And us-the full background?

GUIL: I should say so. (Pause.)

ROS: So we've got a letter which explains everything.

GUIL: You've got it. (ROS takes that literally. He starts to pat his pockets, etc.) What's the matter?

ROS: The letter.

GUIL: Have you got it?

ROS (rising fear): Have I? (Searches frantically.) Where would I have put it?

GUIL: You can't have lost it.

ROS: I must have!

GUIL: That's odd-I thought he gave it to me. (ROS looks at him hopefully.)

ROS: Perhaps he did.

GUIL: But you seemed so sure it was you who hadn't got it.

ROS (high): It was me who hadn't got it!

GUIL: But if he gave it to me there's no reason why you should have had it in the first place, in which case I don't see what all the fuss is about you not having it.

ROS (pause): I admit it's confusing.

GUIL: This is all getting rather undisciplined... The boat, the night, the sense of isolation and uncertainty... all these induce a loosening of the concentration. We must not lose control. Tighten up. Now. Either you have lost the letter or you didn't have it to lose in the first place, in which case the king never gave it to you, in which case he gave it to me, in which case I would have put it into my inside top pocket in which case (calmly producing the letter)... it will be... here. (They smile at each other.) We mustn't drop off like that again. (Pause. ROS takes the letter gently from him.)

ROS: Now that we have found it, why were we looking for it?

GUIL (thinks): We thought it was lost.

ROS: Something else?

GUIL: No. (Deflation.)

ROS: Now we've lost the tension.

GUIL: What tension?

ROS: What was the last thing I said before we wandered off?

GUIL: When was that?

ROS (helplessly): I can't remember.

GUIL (leaping up): What a shambles! We're just not getting anywhere.

ROS (mournfully): Not even England. I don't believe in it anyway.

GUIL: What?

ROS: England.

GUIL: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, you mean?

ROS: I mean I don't believe it! (Calmer.) I have no image. I try to picture us arriving, a little harbour perhaps... roads... inhabitants to point the way... horses on the road... riding for a day or a fortnight and then a palace and the English king,... That would be the logical kind of thing... But my mind remains a blank. No. We're slipping off the map.

GUIL: Yes... yes... (Rallying.) But you don't believe anything till it happens. And it has all happened. Hasn't it?

ROS: We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?

GUIL: Don't give up, we can't be long now.

ROS: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?

GUIL: No, no, no... Death is... not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat.

ROS: I've frequently not been on boats.

GUIL: No, no, no - what you've been is not on boats.

ROS: I wish I was dead. (Considers the drop.) I could jump over the side. That would put a spoke in their wheel.

GUIL: Unless they're counting on it.

ROS: I shall remain on board. That'll put a spoke in their wheel. (The futility of it, fury.) All right! We don't question, we don't doubt. We perform. But a line must be drawn somewhere, and I would like to put it on record that I have no confidence in England. Thank you. (Thinks about this.) And even if it's true, it'll just be another shambles.

GUIL: I don't see why.

ROS (furious): He won't know what we're talking about - What are we going to say?

GUIL: We say - Your majesty, we have arrived.

ROS (kingly): And who are you?

GUIL: We are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

ROS (barks): Never heard of you!

GUIL: Well, we're nobody special -

ROS (regal and nasty): What's your game?

GUIL: We've got our instructions -

ROS: First I've heard of it -

GUIL (angrily): Let me finish - (Humble.) We've come from Denmark, ROS: What do you want?

GUIL: Nothing-we're delivering Hamlet -

ROS: Who's he?

GUIL (irritated): You've heard of him--

ROS: Oh, I've heard of him all right and I want nothing to do with it.

GUIL: But -

ROS: You march in here without so much as a by your leave and expect me to take every lunatic you try to pass off with a lot of unsubstantiated -

GUIL: We've got a letter - (ROS snatches it and tears it open.)

ROS (efficiently): I see... I see... well, this seems to support your story such as it is - it is an exact command from the king of Denmark, for several different reasons, importing Denmark's health and England's too, that on the reading of this letter, without delay, I should have Hamlet's head cut off -! (GUIL snatches the letter. ROS, doubletaking, snatches it back, GUIL snatches it halfback. They read it together, and separate.) (Pause.) (They are well downstage looking front.)

ROS: The sun's going down. It will be dark soon.

GUIL: Do you think so?

ROS: I was just making conversation. (Pause.) We're his friends.

GUIL: How do you know?

ROS: From our young days brought up with him.

GUIL: You've only got their word for it.

ROS: But that's what we depend on.

GUIL: Well, yes, and then again no. (Airily.) Let us keep things in proportion. Assume, if you like, that they're going to kill him. Well, he is a man, he is mortal, death comes to us all, etcetera, and consequently he would have died anyway, sooner or later. Or to look at it from the social point of view-he's just one man among many, the loss would be well within reason and convenience. And then again, what is so terrible about death? As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don't know what death is, it is illogical to fear it. It might be... very nice. Certainly it is a release from the burden of life, and, for the godly, a haven and a reward. Or to look at it another way - we are little men, we don't know the ins and outs of the matter, there are wheels within wheels, etcetera - it would be presumptuous of us to interfere with the designs of fate or even of kings. All in all, I think we'd be well advised to leave well alone. Tie up the letter - there - neatly - like that - They won't notice the broken seal, assuming you were in character.

ROS: But what's the point?

GUIL: Don't apply logic.

ROS: He's done nothing to us.

GUIL: Or justice.

ROS: It's awful.

GUIL: But it could have been worse. I was beginning to think it was. (And his relief comes out in a laugh.) (Behind them HAMLET appears from behind the umbrella. The light has been going. Slightly.

HAMLET is going to the lantern.)

ROS: The position as I see it, then. We, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, from our young days brought up with him, awakened by a man standing on his saddle, are summoned, and arrive, and are instructed to glean what afflicts him and draw him on to pleasures, such as a play, which unfortunately, as it turns out, is abandoned in some confusion owing to certain nuances outside our appreciation - which, among other causes, results in, among other effects, a high, not to say, homicidal, excitement in Hamlet, whom we, in consequence, are escorting, for his own good, to England. Good. We're on top of it now. (HAMLET blows out the lantern. The stage goes pitch black.) (The Black resolves itself to moonlight, by which HAMLET approaches the sleeping ROS and GUIL. He extracts the letter and takes it behind his umbrella; the tight of his lantern shines through the fabric, HAMLET emerges again with a letter, and replaces it, and retires, blowing out his lantern.) (Morning comes.) (ROS watches it coming-from the auditorium. Behind him is a gay sight. Beneath the re-tilted umbrella, reclining in a deckchair, wrapped in a rug, reading a book, possibly smoking, sits Hamlet.) (ROS watches the morning come, and brighten to high noon.)

ROS: I'm assuming nothing. (He stands up.

GUIL wakes.) The position as I see it, then. That's west unless we're off course, in which case it's night; the king gave me the same as you, the king gave you the same as me: the king never gave me the letter, the king gave you the letter, we don't know what's in the letter; we take Hamlet to the English king, it depending on when we get there who he is, and we hand over the letter, which may or may not have something in it to keep us going, and if not, we are finished and at a loose end, if they have loose ends. We could have done worse. I don't think we missed any chance... Not that we're getting much help. (He sits down again. They lie down - prone.) If we stopped breathing we'd vanish. (The muffled sound of a recorder. They sit up with disproportionate interest.) Here we go. Yes, but what? (They listen to the music.)

GUIL (excitedly): Out of the void, finally, a sound; while on a boat (admittedly) outside the action (admittedly) the perfect and absolute silence of the wet lazy slap of water against water and the rolling creak of timber-breaks; giving rise at once to the speculation or the assumption or the hope that something is about to happen; a pipe is heard. One of the sailors has pursed his lips against a woodwind, his fingers and thumb governing, shall we say, the ventages, whereupon, giving it breath, let us say, with his mouth, it, the pipe, discourses, as the saying goes, most eloquent music. A thing like that, it could change the course of events. (Pause.) Go and see what it is.

ROS: It's someone playing on a pipe.

GUIL: Go and find him.

ROS: And then what?

GUIL: I don't know - request a tune.

ROS: What for?

GUIL: Quick-before we lose our momentum.

ROS: Why!-something is happening. It had quite escaped my attention! (He listens: Makes a stab at an exit. Listens more carefully: Changes direction:) (GUIL takes no notice.) (ROS wanders about trying to decide where the music comes from. Finally he tracks it down - unwillingly - to the middle barrel. There is no getting away from it. He turns to GUIL who takes no notice.

ROS, during this whole business, never quite breaks into articulate speech. His face and his hands indicate his incredulity. He stands gazing at the middle barrel. The pipe plays on within. He kicks the barrel. The pipe stops. He leaps back towards GUIL. The pipe starts up again. He approaches the barrel cautiously. He lifts the lid. The music is louder. He slams down the lid. The music is softer. He goes back towards GUIL. But a drum starts, muffled. He freezes. He turns. Considers the left-hand barrel. The drumming goes on within, in time to the flute. He walks back to GUIL. He opens his mouth to speak. Doesn't make it. A lute is heard. He spins round at the third barrel. More instruments join in. Until it is quite inescapable that inside the three barrels, distributed, playing together a familiar tune which has been heard three times before, are the TRAGEDIANS.) (They play on.) (ROS sits beside GUIL. They stare ahead.) (The tune comes to an end.) (Pause.)

ROS: I thought I heard a band. (In anguish.) Plausibility is all I presume!

GUIL (coda): Call us this day our daily tune.... (The lid of the middle barrel flies open and the PLAYER's head pops out.)

PLAYER: Aha! All in the same boat, then! (He climbs out. He goes round banging on the barrels.) Everybody out! (Impossibly, the TRAGEDIANS climb out of the barrels. With their instruments, but not their cart. A few bundles. Except ALFRED. The PLAYER is cheerful.) (To ROS.) Where are we?

ROS: Travelling.

PLAYER: Of course, we haven't got there yet.

ROS: Are we all right for England?

PLAYER: You look all right to me. I don't think they're very particular in England. Al-I-fred! (ALFRED emerges from the PLAYER's barrel.)

GUIL: What are you doing here?

PLAYER: Travelling. (To TRAGEDIANS.) Right-blend into the background! (The TRAGEDIANS are in costume (from the mime): A King with crown, ALFRED as Queen, Poisoner and the two Cloaked figures.) (They blend.) (To GUIL.) Pleased to see us? (Pause.) You've come out of it very well, so far.

GUIL: And you?

PLAYER: In disfavour. Our play offended the king.

GUIL: Yes.

PLAYER: Well, he's a second husband himself. Tactless, really.

ROS: It was quite a good play nevertheless.

PLAYER: We never really got going-it was getting quite interesting when they stopped it. (Looks up at HAMLET.) That's the way to travel...

GUIL: What were you doing in there?

PLAYER: Hiding. (Indicating costumes.) We had to run for it just as we were.

ROS: Stowaways.

PLAYER: Naturally-we didn't get paid, owing to circumstances ever so slightly beyond our control, and all the money we had we lost betting on certainties. Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it. Did you know that any number doubled is even?

ROS: Is it?

PLAYER: We learn something every day, to our cost. But we troupers just go on and on. Do you know what happens to old actors?

ROS: What?

PLAYER: Nothing. They're still acting. Surprised, then?

GUIL: What?

PLAYER: Surprised to see us?

GUIL: I knew it wasn't the end.

PLAYER: With practically everyone on his feet. What do you make of it, so far?

GUIL: We haven't got much to go on.

PLAYER: You speak to him?

ROS: It's possible.

GUIL: But it wouldn't make any difference.

ROS: But it's possible.

GUIL: Pointless.

ROS: It's allowed.

GUIL: Allowed, yes. We are not restricted. No boundaries have been defined, no inhibitions imposed. We have, for the while, secured, or blundered into, our release, for the while. Spontaneity and whim are the order of the day. Other wheels are turning but they are not our concern. We can breathe. We can relax. We can do what we like and say what we like to whomever we like, without restriction.

ROS: Within limits, of course.

GUIL: Certainly within limits. (HAMLET comes down to footlights and regards the audience. The others watch but don't speak. HAMLET clears his throat noisily and spits into the audience. A split second later he claps his hand to his eye and wipes himself. He goes back upstage.)

ROS: A compulsion towards philosophical introspection is his chief characteristic, if I may put it like that. It does not mean he is mad. It does mean he isn't. Very often, it does not mean anything at all. Which may or may not be a kind of madness.

GUIL: It really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; intimations of suicide, forgoing of exercise, loss of mirth, hints of claustrophobia not to say delusions of imprisonment; invocations of camels, chameleons, capons, whales, weasels, hawks, handsaws - riddles, quibbles and evasions; amnesia, paranoia, myopia; day-dreaming, hallucinations; stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public - knock-kneed, droop-stockinged and sighing like a love-sick schoolboy, which at his age is coming on a bit strong.

ROS: And talking to himself.

GUIL: And talking to himself. (ROS and GUIL move apart together.) Well, where has that got us?

ROS: He's the Player.

GUIL: His play offended the king-

ROS: -offended the king-

GUIL: -who orders his arrest-

ROS: -orders his arrest-

GUIL: -so he escapes to England-

ROS: On the boat to which he meets-

GUIL: Guildenstern and Rosencrantz taking Hamlet-

ROS: -who also offended the king-

GUIL: -and killed Polonius-

ROS: -offended the king in a variety of ways-

GUIL: -to England. (Pause.) That seems to be it. (ROS jumps up.)

ROS: Incidents! All we get is incidents! Dear God, is it too much to expect a little sustained action?! (And on the word, the PIRATES attack. That is to say: Noise and shouts and rushing about. "Pirates".) (Everyone visible goes frantic.

HAMLET draws his sword and rushes downstage. GUIL, ROS and PLAYER draw swords and rush upstage, collision. HAMLET turns his back up. They turn back down. Collision. By which time there is general panic right upstage. All four charge upstage with ROS, GUIL and PLAYER shouting: At last! To arms! Pirates! Up there! Down there! To my sword's length! Action! (All four reach the top, see something they don't like, waver, run for their lives downstage:) (HAMLET, in the lead, leaps into the left barrel. PLAYER leaps into the right barrel. ROS and GUIL leap into the middle barrel. All closing the lids after them.) (The lights dim to nothing while the sound of fighting continues. The sound fades to nothing. The lights come up.) (The middle barrel (ROS's and GUIL's) is missing.) (The lid of the right-hand barrel is raised cautiously, the heads of ROS and GUIL appear.) (The lid of the other barrel (HAMLET's) is raised. The head of the PLAYER appears.) (All catch sight of each other and slam down lids.) (Pause.) (Lids raised cautiously.)

ROS (relief): They've gone. (He starts to climb out.) That was close. I've never thought quicker. (They are all three out of barrels. GUIL is wary and nervous. ROS is light-headed. The PLAYER is phlegmatic. They note the missing barrel.) (ROS look round.)

ROS: Where's -? (The PLAYER takes off his hat in mourning.)

PLAYER: Once more, alone-on our own resources.

GUIL (worried): What do you mean? Where is he?

PLAYER: Gone.

GUIL: Gone where?

PLAYER: Yes, we were dead lucky there. If that's the word I'm after.

ROS (not a pick up): Dead?

PLAYER: Lucky.

ROS (he means): Is he dead?

PLAYER: Who knows?

GUIL (rattled): He's not coming back?

PLAYER: Hardly.

ROS: He's dead then. He's dead as far as we're concerned.

PLAYER: Or we are as far as he is. (He goes and sits on the floor to one side.) Not too bad, is it?

GUIL (rattled): But he can't - We're supposed to be - We've got a letter-We're going to England with a letter for the king -

PLAYER: Yes, that much seems certain. I congratulate you on the unambiguity of your situation.

GUIL: But you don't understand - it contains - we've had our instructions - The whole thing's pointless without him.

PLAYER: Pirates could happen to anyone. Just deliver the letter. They'll send ambassadors from England to explain...

GUIL (worked up): Can't see - the pirates left us home and high – dry and home -drome- (furiously). The pirates left us high and dry!

PLAYER (comforting): There...

GUIL (near tears): Nothing will be resolved without him...

PLAYER: There... !

GUIL: We need Hamlet for our release!

PLAYER: There!

GUIL: What are we supposed to do?

PLAYER: This. (He turns away, lies down if he likes. ROS and GUIL apart.)

ROS: Saved again.

GUIL: Saved for what? (ROS sighs.)

ROS: The sun's going down. (Pause.) It'll be night soon. (Pause.) If that's west. (Pause.) Unless we've - GUIL (shouts): Shut up! I'm sick of it! Do you think conversation is going to help us now?

ROS (hurt, desperately ingratiating): I - I bet you all the money I've got the year of my birth doubled is an odd number.

GUIL (moan): No-o.

ROS: Your birth! (GUIL smashes him down.)

GUIL (broken): We've travelled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.

ROS: Be happy-If you're not even happy what's so good about surviving? (He picks himself up.) We'll be all right. I suppose we just go on.

GUIL: Go where?

ROS: To England.

GUIL: England! That's a dead end. I never believed in it anyway.

ROS: All we've got to do is make our report and that'll be that. Surely.

GUIL: I don't believe it - A shore, a harbour, say - and we get off and we stop someone and say - Where's the king?- And he says, oh, you follow that road there and take the first left and -( furiously). I don't believe any of it!

ROS: It doesn't sound very plausible.

GUIL: And even if we came face to face, what do we say?

ROS: We say - We've arrived!

GUIL (kingly): And who are you?

ROS: We are Guildenstern and Rosencrantz.

GUIL: Which is which?

ROS: Well, I'm - You're -

GUIL: What's it all about? -

ROS: Well, we were bringing Hamlet - but then some pirates -

GUIL: I don't begin to understand. Who are all these people, what's it got to do with me? You turn up out of the blue with some cock and bull story -

ROS (with letter): We have a letter -

GUIL (snatches it, opens it): A letter - yes - that's true. That's something... a letter... (reads). "As England is Denmark's faithful tributary... as love between them like the palm might flourish, etcetera... that on the knowing of this contents, without delay of any kind, should those bearers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, put to sudden death-" (He double takes. ROS snatches the letter. GUIL snatches it back. ROS snatches it halfback. They read it again and look up.) (The PLAYER gets to his feet and walks over to his barrel and kicks it and shouts into it.)

PLAYER: They've gone-It's all over! (One by one the players emerge, impossibly, from the barrel, and form a casually menacing circle round ROS and GUIL who are still appalled and mesmerised.)

GUIL (quietly): Where we went wrong was getting on a boat. We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current...

ROS: They had it in for us, didn't they? Right from the beginning. Who'd have thought that we were so important?

GUIL: But why? Was it all for this? Who are we that so much should converge on our little deaths? (In anguish to the PLAYER.) Who are we?

PLAYER: You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That's enough.

GUIL: No - it is not enough. To be told so little - to such an end - and still, finally, to be denied an explanation...

PLAYER: In our experience, most things end in death.

GUIL (fear, vengeance, scorn): Your experience?-Actors! (He snatches a dagger from the PLAYER's belt and holds the point at the PLAYER's throat: the PLAYER backs and GUIL advances, speaking more quietly.) I'm talking about death-and you've never experienced that. And you cannot act it. You die a thousand casual deaths-with none of that intensity which squeezes out life... and no blood runs cold anywhere. Because even as you die you know that you will come back in a different hat. But no one gets up after death-there is no applause- there is only silence and some second-hand clothes, and that's - death - (And he pushes the blade in up to the hilt. The PLAYER stands with huge, terrible eyes, clutches at the wound as the blade withdraws: he makes small weeping sounds and falls to his knees, and then right down:) (While he is dying, GUIL, nervous, high, almost hysterical, wheels on the TRAGEDIANS-) If we have a destiny, then so had he - and if this is ours, then that was his - and if there are no explanations for us, then let there be none for him - (The TRAGEDIANS watch the PLAYER die: they watch with some interest. The PLAYER finally lies still. A short moment of silence. Then the tragedians start to applaud with genuine admiration. The PLAYER stands up, brushing himself down.)

PLAYER (modestly): Oh, come, come, gentlemen - no flattery - it was merely competent- (The tragedians are stilt congratulating him. The PLAYER approaches GUIL, who stands rooted, holding the dagger.) What did you think? (Pause.) You see, it is the kind they do believe in - it's what is expected. (He holds his hand out for the dagger. GUIL slowly puts the point of the dagger on to the PLAYER's hand, and pushes ... the blade slides back into the handle. The PLAYER smiles, reclaims the dagger.) For a moment you thought I'd - cheated. (ROS relieves his own tension with loud nervy laughter.)

ROS: Oh, very good! Very good! Took me in completely - didn't he take you in completely-(claps his hands.) Encore! Encore!

PLAYER (activated, arms spread, the professional): Deaths for all ages and occasions! Deaths by suspension, convulsion, consumption, incision, execution, asphyxiation and malnutrition-! Climatic carnage, by poison and by steel-! Double deaths by duel-! Show! (ALFRED, still in his queen's costume, dies by poison: the PLAYER, with rapier, kills the "KING" and duels with a fourth TRAGEDIAN, inflicting and receiving a wound: the two remaining tragedians, the two "SPIES" dressed in the same coats as ROS and GUIL, are stabbed, as before.) (And the light is fading over the deaths which take place right upstage.) (Dying amid the dying-tragically; romantically.) So there's an end to that-it's commonplace: light goes with life, and in the winter of your years the dark comes early...

GUIL (tired, drained, but stilt an edge of impatience; over the mime): No... no... not for us, not like that. Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not anything ... death is not... It's the absence of presence, nothing more ... the endless time of never coming back ... a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound... (The light has gone upstage. Only GUIL and ROS are visible as ROS's; clapping falters to silence.) (Small pause.)

ROS: That's it, then, is it? (No answer, he looks out front.) The sun's going down. Or the earth's coming up, as the fashionable theory has it. (Small pause.) Not that it makes any difference. (Pause.) What was it all about? When did it begin? (Pause, no answer.) Couldn't we just stay put? I mean no one is going to come on and drag us off.... They Ml just have to wait. We're still young ... fit... we've got years... (Pause. No answer.) (A cry.) We've nothing wrong! We didn't harm anyone. Did we?

GUIL: I can't remember. (ROS pulls himself together.)

ROS: All right, then. I don't care. I've had enough. To tell you the truth, I'm relieved. (And he disappears from view.) (GUIL does not notice.)

GUIL: Our names shouted in a certain dawn ... a message ... a summons... there must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said-no. But somehow we missed it. (He looks round and sees he is alone.) Rosen--? Guil--? (He gathers himself.) Well, we'll know better next time. Now you see me, now you - (And disappears.) (Immediately the whole stage is lit up, revealing, upstage, arranged in the approximate positions last held by the dead TRAGEDIANS, the tableau of court and corpses which is the last scene of "Hamlet".) (That is: The KING, QUEEN, LAERTES and HAMLET all dead. HORATIO holds HAMLET. all dead. FORTINBRAS is there.) (So are two AMBASSADORS from England.)

AMBASSADORS: The signal is dismal; and our affairs from England come too late. The ears are senseless that should give us hearing to tell him his commandment is fulfilled, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Where should we have our thanks?

HORATIO: Not from his mouth, had it the ability of life to thank you: He never gave commandment for their death. But since, so jump upon this bloody question, you from the Polack wars, and you from England, are here arrived, give order that these bodies high on a stage be placed to the view; and let me speak to the yet unknowing world how these things came about: so shall you hear of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, and, in this upshot, purposes mistook fallen on the inventors' heads: all this can I truly deliver. (But during the above speech the play fades, overtaken by dark and music.) THE END

by William Shakespeare

ACT I SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle.

FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO.

BERNARDO: Who's there?

FRANCISCO: Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

BERNARDO: Long live the king!

FRANCISCO: Bernardo?

BERNARDO: He.

FRANCISCO: You come most carefully upon your hour.

BERNARDO: 'Tis now struck twelve;
get thee to bed, Francisco.

FRANCISCO: For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.

BERNARDO: Have you had quiet guard?

FRANCISCO: Not a mouse stirring.

BERNARDO: Well, good night.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

FRANCISCO: I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who's there?

Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.

HORATIO: Friends to this ground.

MARCELLUS: And liegemen to the Dane.

FRANCISCO: Give you good night.

MARCELLUS: O, farewell, honest soldier:
Who hath relieved you?

FRANCISCO: Bernardo has my place.
Give you good night.

Exit.

MARCELLUS: Holla! Bernardo!

BERNARDO: Say,
What, is Horatio there?

HORATIO: A piece of him.

BERNARDO: Welcome, Horatio: welcome, good Marcellus.

MARCELLUS: What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?

BERNARDO: I have seen nothing.

MARCELLUS: Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,
And will not let belief take hold of him
Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us:
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us to watch the minutes of this night;
That if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

HORATIO: Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.

BERNARDO: Sit down awhile;
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story
What we have two nights seen.

HORATIO: Well, sit we down,
And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.

BERNARDO: Last night of all,
When yond same star that's westward from the pole
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one,–

Enter Ghost

MARCELLUS: Peace, break thee off;
look, where it comes again!

BERNARDO: In the same figure, like the king that's dead.

MARCELLUS: Thou art a scholar;
speak to it, Horatio.

BERNARDO: Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.

HORATIO: Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.

BERNARDO: It would be spoke to.

MARCELLUS: Question it, Horatio.

HORATIO: What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!

MARCELLUS: It is offended.

BERNARDO: See, it stalks away!

HORATIO: Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!
Exit Ghost

MARCELLUS: 'Tis gone, and will not answer.

BERNARDO: How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on't?

HORATIO: Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.

MARCELLUS: Is it not like the king?

HORATIO: As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armour he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
'Tis strange.

MARCELLUS: Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

HORATIO: In what particular thought to work I know not;
But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

MARCELLUS: Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
Who is't that can inform me?

HORATIO: That can I;
At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat;
in which our valiant Hamlet--
For so this side of our known world esteem'd him--
Did slay this Fortinbras;
who by a seal'd compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
And carriage of the article design'd,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in't; which is no other--
As it doth well appear unto our state--
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost: and this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

BERNARDO: I think it be no other but e'en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
That was and is the question of these wars.

HORATIO: A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun;
and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.--
But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
Re-enter Ghost
I'll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me:
If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me:
Cock crows
If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it, Marcellus.

MARCELLUS: Shall I strike at it with my partisan?

HORATIO: Do, if it will not stand.

BERNARDO: 'Tis here!

HORATIO: 'Tis here!

MARCELLUS: 'Tis gone!

Exit. Ghost

We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.

BERNARDO: It was about to speak, when the cock crew.

HORATIO: And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day;
and, at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine: and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.

MARCELLUS: It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome;
then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

HORATIO: So have I heard and do in part believe it.
But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill:
Break we our watch up;
and by my advice,
Let us impart what we have seen to-night
Unto young Hamlet;
for, upon my life,
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

MARCELLUS: Let's do't, I pray;
and I this morning know
Where we shall find him most conveniently.

Exeunt

SCENE II. A room of state in the castle.

Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants.

KING CLAUDIUS: Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
The imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,--
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,--
Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along. For all, our thanks.
Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
Or thinking by our late dear brother's death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleagued with the dream of his advantage,
He hath not fail'd to pester us with message,
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother. So much for him.
Now for ourself and for this time of meeting:
Thus much the business is: we have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,--
Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears
Of this his nephew's purpose,--to suppress
His further gait herein;
in that the levies,
The lists and full proportions, are all made
Out of his subject: and we here dispatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand,
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway;
Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the king, more than the scope
Of these delated articles allow.
Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.

CORNELIUS, VOLTIMAND: In that and all things will we show our duty.

KING CLAUDIUS: We doubt it nothing: heartily farewell.

Exeunt VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS. And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?
You told us of some suit;
what is't, Laertes?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane,
And loose your voice: what wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

LAERTES: My dread lord,
Your leave and favour to return to France;
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark,
To show my duty in your coronation,
Yet now, I must confess, that duty done,
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

KING CLAUDIUS: Have you your father's leave? What says Polonius?

LORD POLONIUS: He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
By laboursome petition, and at last
Upon his will I seal'd my hard consent:
I do beseech you, give him leave to go.

KING CLAUDIUS: Take thy fair hour, Laertes;
time be thine,
And thy best graces spend it at thy will!
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,--

HAMLET: [Aside] A little more than kin, and less than kind.

KING CLAUDIUS: How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET: Not so, my lord;
I am too much i' the sun.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
Thou know'st 'tis common;
all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

HAMLET: Ay, madam, it is common.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?

HAMLET: Seems, madam! nay it is;
I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

KING CLAUDIUS: 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness;
'tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool'd:
For what we know must be and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd: whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died to-day,
'This must be so.' We pray you, throw to earth
This unprevailing woe, and think of us As of a father: for let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our throne;
And with no less nobility of love
Than that which dearest father bears his son,
Do I impart toward you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire:
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet:
I pray thee, stay with us;
go not to Wittenberg.

HAMLET: I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

KING CLAUDIUS: Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply:
Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come;
This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart: in grace whereof,
No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the king's rouse the heavens all bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.

Exeunt all but HAMLET.

HAMLET: O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed;
things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king;
that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr;
so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month
Let me not think on't Frailty, thy name is woman!
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:why she, even she
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart;
for I must hold my tongue.
Enter HORATIO, MARCELLUS, and BERNARDO.

HORATIO: Hail to your lordship!

HAMLET: I am glad to see you well:
Horatio,--or I do forget myself.

HORATIO: The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.

HAMLET: Sir, my good friend;
I'll change that name with you:
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? Marcellus?

MARCELLUS: My good lord--

HAMLET: I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir.
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

HORATIO: A truant disposition, good my lord.

HAMLET: I would not hear your enemy say so,
Nor shall you do mine ear that violence,
To make it truster of your own report
Against yourself: I know you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.

HORATIO: My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.

HAMLET: I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student;
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.

HORATIO: Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon.

HAMLET: Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
My father!--methinks I see my father.

HORATIO: Where, my lord?

HAMLET: In my mind's eye, Horatio.

HORATIO: I saw him once;
he was a goodly king.

HAMLET: He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.

HORATIO: My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

HAMLET: Saw? who?

HORATIO: My lord, the king your father.

HAMLET: The king my father!

HORATIO: Season your admiration for awhile
With an attent ear, till I may deliver,
Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
This marvel to you.

HAMLET: For God's love, let me hear.

HORATIO: Two nights together had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,In the dead vast and middle of the night,
Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father,
Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,
Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd
By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes,
Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distilled
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did;
And I with them the third night kept the watch;
Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes: I knew your father;
These hands are not more like.

HAMLET: But where was this?

MARCELLUS: My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd.

HAMLET: Did you not speak to it?

HORATIO: My lord, I did;
But answer made it none: yet once methought
It lifted up its head and did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak;
But even then the morning cock crew loud,
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
And vanish'd from our sight.

HAMLET: 'Tis very strange.

HORATIO: As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true;
And we did think it writ down in our duty
To let you know of it.

HAMLET: Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
Hold you the watch to-night?

MARCELLUS,BERNARDO: We do, my lord.

HAMLET: Arm'd, say you?

MARCELLUS,BERNARDO: Arm'd, my lord.

HAMLET: From top to toe?

MARCELLUS,BERNARDO: My lord, from head to foot.

HAMLET: Then saw you not his face?

HORATIO: O, yes, my lord;
he wore his beaver up.

HAMLET: What, look'd he frowningly?

HORATIO: A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

HAMLET: Pale or red?

HORATIO: Nay, very pale.

HAMLET: And fix'd his eyes upon you?

HORATIO: Most constantly.

HAMLET: I would I had been there.

HORATIO: It would have much amazed you.

HAMLET: Very like, very like. Stay'd it long?

HORATIO: While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.

MARCELLUS,BERNARDO: Longer, longer.

HORATIO: Not when I saw't.

HAMLET: His beard was grizzled--no?

HORATIO: It was, as I have seen it in his life, A sable silver'd.

HAMLET: I will watch to-night;
Perchance 'twill walk again.

HORATIO: I warrant it will.

HAMLET: If it assume my noble father's person,
I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight,
Let it be tenable in your silence still;
And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,
Give it an understanding, but no tongue:
I will requite your loves. So, fare you well:
Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve,
I'll visit you.
All
Our duty to your honour.

HAMLET: Your loves, as mine to you: farewell. Exeunt all but HAMLET.
My father's spirit in arms! all is not well;
I doubt some foul play: would the night were come!
Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.

Exit. SCENE III. A room in Polonius' house. Enter LAERTES and OPHELIA

LAERTES: My necessaries are embark'd: farewell:
And, sister, as the winds give benefit
And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,
But let me hear from you.

OPHELIA: Do you doubt that?

LAERTES: For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour,
Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more.

OPHELIA: No more but so?

LAERTES: Think it no more;
For nature, crescent, does not grow alone
In thews and bulk, but, as this temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
The virtue of his will: but you must fear,
His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own;
For he himself is subject to his birth:
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself; for on his choice depends
The safety and health of this whole state;
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed; which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain,
If with too credent ear you list his songs,
Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
To his unmaster'd importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes:
The canker galls the infants of the spring,
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed,
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary then;
best safety lies in fear:
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.

OPHELIA: I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.

LAERTES: O, fear me not.
I stay too long: but here my father comes. Enter POLONIUS: A double blessing is a double grace,
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.

LORD POLONIUS: Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

LAERTES: Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS: The time invites you; go; your servants tend.

LAERTES: Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well
What I have said to you.

OPHELIA: 'Tis in my memory lock'd,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

LAERTES: Farewell.
Exit.

LORD POLONIUS: What is't, Ophelia, be hath said to you?

OPHELIA: So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.

LORD POLONIUS: Marry, well bethought:
'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late
Given private time to you; and you yourself
Have of your audience been most free and bounteous:
If it be so, as so 'tis put on me,
And that in way of caution, I must tell you,
You do not understand yourself so clearly
As it behoves my daughter and your honour.
What is between you? give me up the truth.

OPHELIA: He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.

LORD POLONIUS: Affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?

OPHELIA: I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

LORD POLONIUS: Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby;
That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly;
Or--not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus--you'll tender me a fool.

OPHELIA: My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honourable fashion.

LORD POLONIUS: Ay, fashion you may call it;
go to, go to.

OPHELIA: And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.

LORD POLONIUS: Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both,
Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time
Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence;
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him, that he is young
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you: in few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
The better to beguile. This is for all:
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,
Have you so slander any moment leisure,
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to't, I charge you: come your ways.

OPHELIA: I shall obey, my lord.
Exeunt SCENE IV. The platform.
Enter HAMLET, HORATIO, and MARCELLUS.

HAMLET: The air bites shrewdly;
it is very cold.

HORATIO: It is a nipping and an eager air.

HAMLET: What hour now?

HORATIO: I think it lacks of twelve.

HAMLET: No, it is struck.

HORATIO: Indeed? I heard it not: then it draws near the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off, within

What does this mean, my lord?

HAMLET: The king doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.

HORATIO: Is it a custom?

HAMLET: Ay, marry, is't:
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations:
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
From our achievements, though perform'd at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.
So, oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As, in their birth wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin
By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens
The form of plausive manners, that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,
Their virtues else be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault: the dram of eale
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.

HORATIO: Look, my lord, it comes!
Enter Ghost

HAMLET: Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do? Ghost beckons

HAMLET:

HORATIO: It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.

MARCELLUS: Look, with what courteous action
It waves you to a more removed ground:
But do not go with it.

HORATIO: No, by no means.

HAMLET: It will not speak;
then I will follow it.

HORATIO: Do not, my lord.

HAMLET: Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life in a pin's fee;
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again: I'll follow it.

HORATIO: What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? think of it:
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.

HAMLET: It waves me still.
Go on;
I'll follow thee.

MARCELLUS: You shall not go, my lord.

HAMLET: Hold off your hands.

HORATIO: Be ruled;
you shall not go.

HAMLET: My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.
Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen.
By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me!
I say, away! Go on;
I'll follow thee.
Exeunt Ghost and HAMLET.

HORATIO: He waxes desperate with imagination.

MARCELLUS: Let's follow;
'tis not fit thus to obey him.

HORATIO: Have after. To what issue will this come?

MARCELLUS: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

HORATIO: Heaven will direct it.

MARCELLUS: Nay, let's follow him.
Exeunt. SCENE V. Another part of the platform.
Enter GHOST and HAMLET

HAMLET: Where wilt thou lead me? speak; I'll go no further.
Ghost
Mark me.

HAMLET: I will.
Ghost
My hour is almost come,
When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.

HAMLET: Alas, poor ghost!
Ghost
Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.

HAMLET: Speak;
I am bound to hear.
Ghost
So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

HAMLET: What?
Ghost
I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love

HAMLET: O God!
Ghost
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET: Murder!
Ghost
Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

HAMLET: Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.
Ghost
I find thee apt;
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear:
'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown.

HAMLET: O my prophetic soul! My uncle!
Ghost
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce! won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen:
O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!
From me, whose love was of that dignity
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage, and to decline
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine!
But virtue, as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage.
But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine;
And a most instant tetter bark'd about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand
Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd:
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head:
O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest.
But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire:
Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.
Exit.

HAMLET: O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?
And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven!
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:
Writing
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me.'
I have sworn 't.

MARCELLUS,HORATIO: [Within] My lord, my lord,

MARCELLUS: [Within] Lord Hamlet,

HORATIO: [Within] Heaven secure him!

HAMLET: So be it!

HORATIO: [Within] Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!

HAMLET: Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come, bird, come.
Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.

MARCELLUS: How is't, my noble lord?

HORATIO: What news, my lord?

HAMLET: O, wonderful!

HORATIO: Good my lord, tell it.

HAMLET: No;
you'll reveal it.

HORATIO: Not I, my lord, by heaven.

MARCELLUS: Nor I, my lord.

HAMLET: How say you, then; would heart of man once think it?
But you'll be secret?

HORATIO,MARCELLUS: Ay, by heaven, my lord.

HAMLET: There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he's an arrant knave.

HORATIO: There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this.

HAMLET: Why, right;
you are i' the right;
And so, without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part:
You, as your business and desire shall point you;
For every man has business and desire,
Such as it is; and for mine own poor part,
Look you, I'll go pray.

HORATIO: These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.

HAMLET: I'm sorry they offend you, heartily;
Yes, 'faith heartily.

HORATIO: There's no offence, my lord.

HAMLET: Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
And much offence too. Touching this vision here,
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you:
For your desire to know what is between us,
O'ermaster 't as you may. And now, good friends,
As you are friends, scholars and soldiers,
Give me one poor request.

HORATIO: What is't, my lord? we will.

HAMLET: Never make known what you have seen tonight.

HORATIO,MARCELLUS: My lord, we will not.

HAMLET: Nay, but swear't.

HORATIO: In faith,
My lord, not I.

MARCELLUS: Nor I, my lord, in faith.

HAMLET: Upon my sword.

MARCELLUS: We have sworn, my lord, already.

HAMLET: Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.
Ghost [Beneath] Swear.

HAMLET: Ah, ha, boy! say'st thou so? art thou there,
truepenny?
Come on you hear this fellow in the cellarage
Consent to swear.

HORATIO: Propose the oath, my lord.

HAMLET: Never to speak of this that you have seen,
Swear by my sword.
Ghost [Beneath] Swear.

HAMLET: Hic et ubique? then we'll shift our ground.
Come hither, gentlemen,
And lay your hands again upon my sword:
Never to speak of this that you have heard,
Swear by my sword.
Ghost [Beneath] Swear.

HAMLET: Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast?
A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends.

HORATIO: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

HAMLET: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come;
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on,
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,'
Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,'
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me: this not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.
Ghost [Beneath] Swear.

HAMLET: Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!
They swear
So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you:
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do, to express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let's go together.
Exeunt. ACT II SCENE I.
A room in POLONIUS' house. Enter POLONIUS and REYNALDO.

LORD POLONIUS: Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.

REYNALDO: I will, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS: You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo, Before you visit him, to make inquire Of his behavior.

REYNALDO: My lord, I did intend it.

LORD POLONIUS: Marry, well said; very well said. Look you, sir,
Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris;
And how, and who, what means, and where they keep,
What company, at what expense; and finding
By this encompassment and drift of question
That they do know my son, come you more nearer
Than your particular demands will touch it:
Take you, as 'twere, some distant knowledge of him;
As thus, 'I know his father and his friends,
And in part him: ' do you mark this, Reynaldo?

REYNALDO: Ay, very well, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS: 'And in part him; but' you may say 'not well:
But, if't be he I mean, he's very wild;
Addicted so and so:' and there put on him
What forgeries you please; marry, none so rank
As may dishonour him; take heed of that;
But, sir, such wanton, wild and usual slips
As are companions noted and most known
To youth and liberty.

REYNALDO: As gaming, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS: Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling,
Drabbing: you may go so far.

REYNALDO: My lord, that would dishonour him.

LORD POLONIUS: 'Faith, no;
as you may season it in the charge
You must not put another scandal on him,
That he is open to incontinency;
That's not my meaning: but breathe his faults so quaintly
That they may seem the taints of liberty,
The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,
A savageness in unreclaimed blood,
Of general assault.

REYNALDO: But, my good lord,

LORD POLONIUS: Wherefore should you do this?

REYNALDO: Ay, my lord, I would know that.

LORD POLONIUS: Marry, sir, here's my drift;
And I believe, it is a fetch of wit:
You laying these slight sullies on my son,
As 'twere a thing a little soil'd i' the working, Mark you,
Your party in converse, him you would sound,
Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes
The youth you breathe of guilty, be assured
He closes with you in this consequence;
'Good sir,' or so, or 'friend,' or 'gentleman,'
According to the phrase or the addition
Of man and country.

REYNALDO: Very good, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS: And then, sir, does he this he does what was I
about to say? By the mass, I was about to say
something: where did I leave?

REYNALDO: At 'closes in the consequence,' at 'friend or so,'
and 'gentleman.'

LORD POLONIUS: At 'closes in the consequence,' ay, marry;
He closes thus: 'I know the gentleman;
I saw him yesterday, or t' other day,
Or then, or then; with such, or such; and, as you say,
There was a' gaming; there o'ertook in's rouse;
There falling out at tennis:' or perchance,
'I saw him enter such a house of sale,'
Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth.
See you now;
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out:
So by my former lecture and advice,
Shall you my son. You have me, have you not?

REYNALDO: My lord, I have.

LORD POLONIUS: God be wi' you;
fare you well.

REYNALDO: Good my lord!

LORD POLONIUS: Observe his inclination in yourself.

REYNALDO: I shall, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS: And let him ply his music.

REYNALDO: Well, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS: Farewell!
Exit.

REYNALDO:
Enter OPHELIA.
How now, Ophelia! what's the matter?

OPHELIA: O, my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted!

LORD POLONIUS: With what, i' the name of God?

OPHELIA: My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
No hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd,
Ungarter'd, and down-gyved to his ancle;
Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors,he comes before me.

LORD POLONIUS: Mad for thy love?

OPHELIA: My lord, I do not know;
But truly, I do fear it.

LORD POLONIUS: What said he?

OPHELIA: He took me by the wrist and held me hard;
Then goes he to the length of all his arm;
And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face
As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so;
At last, a little shaking of mine arm
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk
And end his being: that done, he lets me go:
And, with his head over his shoulder turn'd,
He seem'd to find his way without his eyes;
For out o' doors he went without their helps,
And, to the last, bended their light on me.

LORD POLONIUS: Come, go with me: I will go seek the king.
This is the very ecstasy of love,
Whose violent property fordoes itself
And leads the will to desperate undertakings
As oft as any passion under heaven
That does afflict our natures. I am sorry.
What, have you given him any hard words of late?

OPHELIA: No, my good lord, but, as you did command,
I did repel his fetters and denied
His access to me.

LORD POLONIUS: That hath made him mad.
I am sorry that with better heed and judgment
I had not quoted him: I fear'd he did but trifle,
And meant to wreck thee; but, beshrew my jealousy!
By heaven, it is as proper to our age
To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
As it is common for the younger sort
To lack discretion. Come, go we to the king:
This must be known; which, being kept close, might
move More grief to hide than hate to utter love.
Exeunt. SCENE II.
A room in the castle. la Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and Attendants.

KING CLAUDIUS: Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!
Moreover that we much did long to see you,
The need we have to use you did provoke
Our hasty sending. Something have you heard
Of Hamlet's transformation; so call it,
Sith nor the exterior nor the inward man
Resembles that it was. What it should be,
More than his father's death, that thus hath put him
So much from the understanding of himself,
I cannot dream of: I entreat you both,
That, being of so young days brought up with him,
And sith so neighbour'd to his youth and havior,
That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court
Some little time: so by your companies
To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather,
So much as from occasion you may glean,
Whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus,
That, open'd, lies within our remedy.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Good gentlemen, he hath much talk'd of you;
And sure I am two men there are not living
To whom he more adheres. If it will please you
To show us so much gentry and good will
As to expend your time with us awhile,
For the supply and profit of our hope,
Your visitation shall receive such thanks
As fits a king's remembrance.

ROSENCRANTZ: Both your majesties
Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,
Put your dread pleasures more into command
Than to entreaty.

GUILDENSTERN: But we both obey,
And here give up ourselves, in the full bent
To lay our service freely at your feet,
To be commanded.

KING CLAUDIUS: Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz:
And I beseech you instantly to visit
My too much changed son. Go, some of you,
And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.

GUILDENSTERN: Heavens make our presence and our practises
Pleasant and helpful to him!

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Ay, amen!
Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and some Attendants.
Enter POLONIUS.

LORD POLONIUS: The ambassadors from Norway, my good lord,
Are joyfully return'd.

KING CLAUDIUS: Thou still hast been the father of good news.

LORD POLONIUS: Have I, my lord? I assure my good liege,
I hold my duty, as I hold my soul,
Both to my God and to my gracious king:
And I do think, or else this brain of mine
Hunts not the trail of policy so sure
As it hath used to do, that I have found
The very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.

KING CLAUDIUS: O, speak of that;
that do I long to hear.

LORD POLONIUS: Give first admittance to the ambassadors;
My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.

KING CLAUDIUS: Thyself do grace to them, and bring them in.
Exit POLONIUS.
He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found
The head and source of all your son's distemper.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: I doubt it is no other but the main;
His father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage.

KING CLAUDIUS: Well, we shall sift him.
Re-enter POLONIUS, with VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS.
Welcome, my good friends!
Say, Voltimand, what from our brother Norway?

VOLTIMAND: Most fair return of greetings and desires.
Upon our first, he sent out to suppress
His nephew's levies; which to him appear'd
To be a preparation 'gainst the Polack;
But, better look'd into, he truly found
It was against your highness: whereat grieved,
That so his sickness, age and impotence
Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests
On Fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys;
Receives rebuke from Norway, and in fine
Makes vow before his uncle never more
To give the assay of arms against your majesty.
Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,
Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee,
And his commission to employ those soldiers,
So levied as before, against the Polack:
With an entreaty, herein further shown,
Giving a paper

That it might please you to give quiet pass
Through your dominions for this enterprise,
On such regards of safety and allowance
As therein are set down.

KING CLAUDIUS: It likes us well;
And at our more consider'd time well read,
Answer, and think upon this business.
Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour:
Go to your rest; at night we'll feast together:
Most welcome home!
Exeunt VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS.

LORD POLONIUS: This business is well ended.
My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief: your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: More matter, with less art.

LORD POLONIUS: Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
That he is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity;
And pity 'tis 'tis true: a foolish figure;
But farewell it, for I will use no art.
Mad let us grant him, then: and now remains
That we find out the cause of this effect,
Or rather say, the cause of this defect,
For this effect defective comes by cause:
Thus it remains, and the remainder thus. Perpend.
I have a daughter have while she is mine
Who, in her duty and obedience, mark,
Hath given me this: now gather, and surmise.
Reads: 'To the celestial and my soul's idol, the most
beautified Ophelia,'
That's an ill phrase, a vile phrase; 'beautified' is
a vile phrase: but you shall hear. Thus: Reads: 'In her excellent white bosom, these, & c.'

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Came this from Hamlet to her?

LORD POLONIUS: Good madam, stay awhile;
I will be faithful. Reads: 'Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
'O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers;
I have not art to reckon my groans: but that
I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu.
'Thine evermore most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him, HAMLET:.' This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me,
And more above, hath his solicitings,
As they fell out by time, by means and place,
All given to mine ear.

KING CLAUDIUS: But how hath she
Received his love?

LORD POLONIUS: What do you think of me?

KING CLAUDIUS: As of a man faithful and honourable.

LORD POLONIUS: I would fain prove so. But what might you think,
When I had seen this hot love on the wing
As I perceived it, I must tell you that,
Before my daughter told me what might you,
Or my dear majesty your queen here, think,
If I had play'd the desk or table-book,
Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb,
Or look'd upon this love with idle sight;
What might you think? No, I went round to work,
And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:
'Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star;
This must not be:' and then I precepts gave her,
That she should lock herself from his resort,
Admit no messengers, receive no tokens.
Which done, she took the fruits of my advice;
And he, repulsed a short tale to make
Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,
Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,
Into the madness wherein now he raves,
And all we mourn for.

KING CLAUDIUS: Do you think 'tis this?

QUEEN GERTRUDE: It may be, very likely.

LORD POLONIUS: Hath there been such a time I'd fain know that
That I have positively said 'Tis so,'
When it proved otherwise?

KING CLAUDIUS: Not that I know.

LORD POLONIUS: [Pointing to his head and shoulder]
Take this from this, if this be otherwise:
If circumstances lead me, I will find
Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
Within the centre.

KING CLAUDIUS: How may we try it further?

LORD POLONIUS: You know, sometimes he walks four hours together
Here in the lobby.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: So he does indeed.

LORD POLONIUS: At such a time I'll loose my daughter to him:
Be you and I behind an arras then;
Mark the encounter: if he love her not
And be not from his reason fall'n thereon,
Let me be no assistant for a state,
But keep a farm and carters.

KING CLAUDIUS: We will try it.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: But, look, where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.

LORD POLONIUS: Away, I do beseech you, both away:
I'll board him presently.
Exeunt

KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, and Attendants.
Enter HAMLET, reading. O, give me leave:
How does my good Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET: Well, God-a-mercy.

LORD POLONIUS: Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET: Excellent well;
you are a fishmonger.

LORD POLONIUS: Not I, my lord.

HAMLET: Then I would you were so honest a man.

LORD POLONIUS: Honest, my lord!

HAMLET: Ay, sir;
to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

LORD POLONIUS: That's very true, my lord.

HAMLET: For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a
god kissing carrion,
Have you a daughter?

LORD POLONIUS: I have, my lord.

HAMLET: Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive.
Friend, look to 't.

LORD POLONIUS: [Aside] How say you by that?
Still harping on my daughter: yet he knew me not at first;
he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again. What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET: Words, words, words.

LORD POLONIUS: What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET: Between who?

LORD POLONIUS: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

HAMLET: Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.

LORD POLONIUS: [Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET: Into my grave.

LORD POLONIUS: Indeed, that is out o' the air. [Aside] How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter. My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

HAMLET: You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.

LORD POLONIUS: Fare you well, my lord.

HAMLET: These tedious old fools!
Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN

LORD POLONIUS: You go to seek the Lord Hamlet;
there he is.

ROSENCRANTZ: [To POLONIUS:] God save you, sir!
Exit.

POLONIUS:

GUILDENSTERN: My honoured lord!

ROSENCRANTZ: My most dear lord!

HAMLET: My excellent good friends! How dost thou,
Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?

ROSENCRANTZ: As the indifferent children of the earth.

GUILDENSTERN: Happy, in that we are not over-happy;
On fortune's cap we are not the very button.

HAMLET: Nor the soles of her shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ: Neither, my lord.

HAMLET: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?

GUILDENSTERN: 'Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET: In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true;
she is a strumpet. What's the news?

ROSENCRANTZ: None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.

HAMLET: Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true.
Let me question more in particular: what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN: Prison, my lord!

HAMLET: Denmark's a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ: Then is the world one.

HAMLET: A goodly one;
in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.

ROSENCRANTZ: We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET: Why, then, 'tis none to you;
for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ: Why then, your ambition makes it one;
'tis too narrow for your mind.

HAMLET: O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN: Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET: A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ: Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.

HAMLET: Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.

ROSENCRANTZ,GUILDENSTERN: We'll wait upon you.

HAMLET: No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest of my servants, for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?

ROSENCRANTZ: To visit you, my lord;
no other occasion.

HAMLET: Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks;
but I thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, deal justly with me: come, come;
nay, speak.

GUILDENSTERN: What should we say, my lord?

HAMLET: Why, any thing, but to the purpose. You were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks which your modesties have not craft enough to colour: I know the good king and queen have sent for you.

ROSENCRANTZ: To what end, my lord?

HAMLET: That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for, or no?

ROSENCRANTZ: [Aside to

GUILDENSTERN:] What say you?

HAMLET: [Aside] Nay, then, I have an eye of you.--If you love me, hold not off.

GUILDENSTERN: My lord, we were sent for.

HAMLET: I will tell you why;
so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no feather. I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises;
and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

ROSENCRANTZ: My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.

HAMLET: Why did you laugh then, when I said 'man delights not me'?

ROSENCRANTZ: To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you: we coted them on the way;
and hither are they coming, to offer you service.

HAMLET: He that plays the king shall be welcome;
his majesty shall have tribute of me;
the adventurous knight shall use his foil and target;
the lover shall not sigh gratis;
the humourous man shall end his part in peace;
the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickled o' the sere;
and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for't. What players are they?

ROSENCRANTZ: Even those you were wont to take delight in, the tragedians of the city.

HAMLET: How chances it they travel? their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.

ROSENCRANTZ: I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late innovation.

HAMLET: Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? are they so followed?

ROSENCRANTZ: No, indeed, are they not.

HAMLET: How comes it? do they grow rusty?

ROSENCRANTZ: Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace: but there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for't: these are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages so they call them that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and dare scarce come thither.

HAMLET: What, are they children? who maintains 'em? how are they escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing? will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players as it is most like, if their means are no better their writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their own succession?

ROSENCRANTZ: 'Faith, there has been much to do on both sides;
and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy: there was, for a while, no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.

HAMLET: Is't possible?

GUILDENSTERN: O, there has been much throwing about of brains.

HAMLET: Do the boys carry it away?

ROSENCRANTZ: Ay, that they do, my lord;
Hercules and his load too.

HAMLET: It is not very strange; for mine uncle is king of Denmark, and those that would make mows at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, an hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in little. 'Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.
Flourish of trumpets within

GUILDENSTERN: There are the players.

HAMLET: Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come then: the appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony: let me comply with you in this garb, lest my extent to the players, which, I tell you, must show fairly outward, should more appear like entertainment than yours. You are welcome: but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.

GUILDENSTERN: In what, my dear lord?

HAMLET: I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw. Enter POLONIUS:

LORD POLONIUS: Well be with you, gentlemen!

HAMLET: Hark you, Guildenstern;
and you too: at each ear a hearer: that great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts.

ROSENCRANTZ: Happily he's the second time come to them;
for they say an old man is twice a child.

HAMLET: I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players;
mark it. You say right, sir: o' Monday morning;
'twas so indeed.

LORD POLONIUS: My lord, I have news to tell you.

HAMLET: My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in Rome,--

LORD POLONIUS: The actors are come hither, my lord.

HAMLET: Buz, buz!

LORD POLONIUS: Upon mine honour,--

HAMLET: Then came each actor on his ass,--

LORD POLONIUS: The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical- comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.

HAMLET: O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!

LORD POLONIUS: What a treasure had he, my lord?

HAMLET: Why, 'One fair daughter and no more, The which he loved passing well.'

LORD POLONIUS: [Aside] Still on my daughter.

HAMLET: Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah?

LORD POLONIUS: If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I love passing well.

HAMLET: Nay, that follows not.

LORD POLONIUS: What follows, then, my lord?

HAMLET: Why, 'As by lot, God wot,' and then, you know, 'It came to pass, as most like it was,' the first row of the pious chanson will show you more;
for look, where my abridgement comes. Enter four or five

PLAYERS: You are welcome, masters;
welcome, all. I am glad to see thee well. Welcome, good friends. O, my old friend! thy face is valenced since I saw thee last: comest thou to beard me in Denmark? What, my young lady and mistress! By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. Pray God, your voice, like apiece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring. Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en to't like French falconers, fly at any thing we see: we'll have a speech straight: come, give us a taste of your quality;
come, a passionate speech.

First Player: What speech, my lord?

HAMLET: I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted;
or, if it was, not above once;
for the play, I remember, pleased not the million;
'twas caviare to the general: but it was as I received it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of mine an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of affectation;
but called it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I chiefly loved: 'twas Aeneas' tale to Dido;
and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of Priam's slaughter: if it live in your memory, begin at this line: let me see, let me see
'The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,' it is not so: it begins with Pyrrhus: 'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
Now is he total gules; horridly trick'd
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Baked and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and damned light
To their lord's murder: roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.'
So, proceed you.

LORD POLONIUS: 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good discretion.

First Player: 'Anon he finds him Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command: unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick:
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
And like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region, so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour forged for proof eterne
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.
Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod 'take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!'

LORD POLONIUS: This is too long.

HAMLET: It shall to the barber's, with your beard. Prithee, say on: he's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps: say on: come to Hecuba.

First Player: 'But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen'

HAMLET: 'The mobled queen?'

LORD POLONIUS: That's good;
'mobled queen' is good.

First Player: 'Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounced:
But if the gods themselves did see her then
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
Unless things mortal move them not at all,
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods.'

LORD POLONIUS: Look, whether he has not turned his colour and has
tears in's eyes. Pray you, no more.

HAMLET: 'Tis well: I'll have thee speak out the rest soon.
Good my lord, will you see the players well
bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for
they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the
time: after your death you were better have a bad
epitaph than their ill report while you live.

LORD POLONIUS: My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

HAMLET: God's bodykins, man, much better: use every man
after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?
Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less
they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
Take them in.

LORD POLONIUS: Come, sirs.

HAMLET: Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow.
Exit.

POLONIUS: with all the

PLAYERS: but the First Dost thou hear me, old friend;
can you play the Murder of Gonzago?

First Player: Ay, my lord.

HAMLET: We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could, for a need,
study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which
I would set down and insert in't, could you not?

First Player: Ay, my lord.

HAMLET: Very well. Follow that lord; and look you mock him not.
Exit.

First Player: My good friends, I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore.

ROSENCRANTZ: Good my lord!

HAMLET: Ay, so, God be wi' ye;
Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN: Now I am alone.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!
'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this: the play 's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
Exit. ACT III SCENE I. A room in the castle. Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN:

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

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

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

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Did he receive you well?

ROSENCRANTZ: Most like a gentleman.

GUILDENSTERN: But with much forcing of his disposition.

ROSENCRANTZ: Niggard of question; but, of our demands,
Most free in his reply.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Did you assay him?
To any pastime?

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

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

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

ROSENCRANTZ: We shall, my lord. Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN:

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

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

OPHELIA: Madam, I wish it may.
Exit.

QUEEN GERTRUDE:

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

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

LORD POLONIUS: I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord. Exeunt

KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS: Enter HAMLET:

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

OPHELIA: Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?

HAMLET: I humbly thank you;
well, well, well.

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

HAMLET: No, not I;
I never gave you aught.

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

HAMLET: Ha, ha! are you honest?

OPHELIA: My lord?

HAMLET: Are you fair?

OPHELIA: What means your lordship?

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

OPHELIA: Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than
with honesty?

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

OPHELIA: Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

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

OPHELIA: I was the more deceived.

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

OPHELIA: At home, my lord.

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

OPHELIA: O, help him, you sweet heavens!

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

OPHELIA: O heavenly powers, restore him!

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

OPHELIA: O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
Re-enter KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS.

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

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

KING CLAUDIUS: It shall be so:
Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.
Exeunt. SCENE II. A hall in the castle.
Enter HAMLET and PLAYERS.

HAMLET: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;
for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant;
it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

First Player: I warrant your honour.

HAMLET: Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action;
with this special o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature;
to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve;
the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

First Player: I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir.

HAMLET: O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them;
for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too;
though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. Exeunt PLAYERS:
Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.
How now, my lord! I will the king hear this piece of work?

LORD POLONIUS: And the queen too, and that presently.

HAMLET: Bid the players make haste.
Exit POLONIUS.
Will you two help to hasten them?

ROSENCRANTZ,GUILDENSTERN: We will, my lord.
Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

HAMLET: What ho! Horatio!
Enter HORATIO

HORATIO: Here, sweet lord, at your service.

HAMLET: Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man As e'er my conversation coped withal.

HORATIO: O, my dear lord,--

HAMLET: Nay, do not think I flatter;
For what advancement may I hope from thee
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee. Something too much of this.
There is a play to-night before the king;
One scene of it comes near the circumstance
Which I have told thee of my father's death:
I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe mine uncle: if his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note;
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
And after we will both our judgments join
In censure of his seeming.

HORATIO: Well, my lord:
If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,
And 'scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

HAMLET: They are coming to the play; I must be idle:
Get you a place.
Danish march. A flourish. Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and others

KING CLAUDIUS: How fares our cousin Hamlet?

HAMLET: Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.

KING CLAUDIUS: I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not mine.

HAMLET: No, nor mine now. To POLONIUS: My lord, you played once i' the university, you say?

LORD POLONIUS: That did I, my lord;
and was accounted a good actor.

HAMLET: What did you enact?

LORD POLONIUS: I did enact Julius Caesar: I was killed i' the Capitol;
Brutus killed me.

HAMLET: It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there. Be the players ready?

ROSENCRANTZ: Ay, my lord;
they stay upon your patience.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

HAMLET: No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.

LORD POLONIUS: [To

KING CLAUDIUS:] O, ho! do you mark that?

HAMLET: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Lying down at OPHELIA:'s feet

OPHELIA: No, my lord.

HAMLET: I mean, my head upon your lap?

OPHELIA: Ay, my lord.

HAMLET: Do you think I meant country matters?

OPHELIA: I think nothing, my lord.

HAMLET: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.

OPHELIA: What is, my lord?

HAMLET: Nothing.

OPHELIA: You are merry, my lord.

HAMLET: Who, I?

OPHELIA: Ay, my lord.

HAMLET: O God, your only jig-maker. What should a man do
but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my
mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.

OPHELIA: Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.

HAMLET: So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year: but, by'r lady, he must build churches, then;
or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is 'For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot.' Hautboys play. The dumb-show enters
Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly;
the Queen embracing him, and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers: she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns;
finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The Poisoner, with some two or three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts: she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love. Exeunt.

OPHELIA: What means this, my lord?

HAMLET: Marry, this is miching mallecho;
it means mischief.

OPHELIA: Belike this show imports the argument of the play.
Enter Prologue .

HAMLET: We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel;
they'll tell all.

OPHELIA: Will he tell us what this show meant?

HAMLET: Ay, or any show that you'll show him: be not you ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means.

OPHELIA: You are naught, you are naught: I'll mark the play.

Prologue For us, and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently.
Exit.

HAMLET: Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

OPHELIA: 'Tis brief, my lord.

HAMLET: As woman's love.
Enter two PLAYERS, King and Queen.

Player King: Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been,
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

Player Queen: So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o'er ere love be done!
But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer and from your former state,
That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must:
For women's fear and love holds quantity;
In neither aught, or in extremity.
Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
And as my love is sized, my fear is so:
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

Player King: 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
My operant powers their functions leave to do:
And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honour'd, beloved; and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou

Player Queen: O, confound the rest!
Such love must needs be treason in my breast:
In second husband let me be accurst!
None wed the second but who kill'd the first.

HAMLET: [Aside] Wormwood, wormwood.

Player Queen: The instances that second marriage move
Are base respects of thrift, but none of love:
A second time I kill my husband dead,
When second husband kisses me in bed.

Player King: I do believe you think what now you speak;
But what we do determine oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory,
Of violent birth, but poor validity;
Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree;
But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.
Most necessary 'tis that we forget
To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt:
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
The violence of either grief or joy
Their own enactures with themselves destroy:
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;
Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange
That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
For 'tis a question left us yet to prove,
Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
The great man down, you mark his favourite flies;
The poor advanced makes friends of enemies.
And hitherto doth love on fortune tend;
For who not needs shall never lack a friend,
And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
Directly seasons him his enemy.
But, orderly to end where I begun,
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own:
So think thou wilt no second husband wed;
But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

Player Queen: Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light!
Sport and repose lock from me day and night!
To desperation turn my trust and hope!
An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope!
Each opposite that blanks the face of joy
Meet what I would have well and it destroy!
Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
If, once a widow, ever I be wife!

HAMLET: If she should break it now!

Player King: 'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile;
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep. Sleeps.

Player Queen: Sleep rock thy brain,
And never come mischance between us twain!
Exit.

HAMLET: Madam, how like you this play?

QUEEN GERTRUDE: The lady protests too much, methinks.

HAMLET: O, but she'll keep her word.

KING CLAUDIUS: Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in 't?

HAMLET: No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest;
no offence i' the world.

KING CLAUDIUS: What do you call the play?

HAMLET: The Mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is the duke's name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see anon; 'tis a knavish piece of work: but what o' that? your majesty and we that have free souls, it touches us not: let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.
Enter LUCIANUS.
This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.

OPHELIA: You are as good as a chorus, my lord.

HAMLET: I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets dallying.

OPHELIA: You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

HAMLET: It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.

OPHELIA: Still better, and worse.

HAMLET: So you must take your husbands. Begin, murderer;
pox, leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come: 'the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.'

LUCIANUS: Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;
Confederate season, else no creature seeing;
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
Thy natural magic and dire property,
On wholesome life usurp immediately.
Pours the poison into the sleeper's ears

HAMLET: He poisons him i' the garden for's estate. His name's Gonzago: the story is extant, and writ in choice Italian: you shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife.

OPHELIA: The king rises.

HAMLET: What, frighted with false fire!

QUEEN GERTRUDE: How fares my lord?

LORD POLONIUS: Give o'er the play.

KING CLAUDIUS: Give me some light: away!

All: Lights, lights, lights! Exeunt all but HAMLET and HORATIO.

HAMLET: Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play;
For some must watch, while some must sleep:
So runs the world away.
Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers if
the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me with two
Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?

HORATIO: Half a share.

HAMLET: A whole one, I.
For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself; and now reigns here
A very, very pajock.

HORATIO: You might have rhymed.

HAMLET: O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound. Didst perceive?

HORATIO: Very well, my lord.

HAMLET: Upon the talk of the poisoning?

HORATIO: I did very well note him.

HAMLET: Ah, ha! Come, some music! come, the recorders!
For if the king like not the comedy,
Why then, belike, he likes it not, perdy.
Come, some music! Re-enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

GUILDENSTERN: Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

HAMLET: Sir, a whole history.

GUILDENSTERN: The king, sir,--

HAMLET: Ay, sir, what of him?

GUILDENSTERN: Is in his retirement marvellous distempered.

HAMLET: With drink, sir?

GUILDENSTERN: No, my lord, rather with choler.

HAMLET: Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to his doctor; for, for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far more choler.

GUILDENSTERN: Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame and start not so wildly from my affair.

HAMLET: I am tame, sir: pronounce.

GUILDENSTERN: The queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.

HAMLET: You are welcome.

GUILDENSTERN: Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother's commandment: if not, your pardon and my return shall be the end of my business.

HAMLET: Sir, I cannot.

GUILDENSTERN: What, my lord?

HAMLET: Make you a wholesome answer;
my wit's diseased: but, sir, such answer as I can make, you shall command;
or, rather, as you say, my mother: therefore no more, but to the matter: my mother, you say,--

ROSENCRANTZ: Then thus she says;
your behavior hath struck her into amazement and admiration.

HAMLET: O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother! But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's admiration? Impart.

ROSENCRANTZ: She desires to speak with you in her closet, ere you go to bed.

HAMLET: We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any further trade with us?

ROSENCRANTZ: My lord, you once did love me.

HAMLET: So I do still, by these pickers and stealers.

ROSENCRANTZ: Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? you do, surely, bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to your friend.

HAMLET: Sir, I lack advancement.

ROSENCRANTZ: How can that be, when you have the voice of the king himself for your succession in Denmark?

HAMLET: Ay, but sir, 'While the grass grows,'--the proverb is something musty. Re-enter PLAYERS with recorders. O, the recorders! let me see one. To withdraw with you: why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?

GUILDENSTERN: O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.

HAMLET: I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?

GUILDENSTERN: My lord, I cannot.

HAMLET: I pray you.

GUILDENSTERN: Believe me, I cannot.

HAMLET: I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN: I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET: 'Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your lingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN: But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony;
I have not the skill.

HAMLET: Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me;
you would seem to know my stops;
you would pluck out the heart of my mystery;
you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass: and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ;
yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me. Enter POLONIUS.
God bless you, sir!

LORD POLONIUS: My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently.

HAMLET: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?

LORD POLONIUS: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.

HAMLET: Methinks it is like a weasel.

LORD POLONIUS: It is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET: Or like a whale?

LORD POLONIUS: Very like a whale.

HAMLET: Then I will come to my mother by and by. They fool me to the top of my bent. I will come by and by.

LORD POLONIUS: I will say so.

HAMLET: By and by is easily said.
Exit.

POLONIUS.
Leave me, friends. Exeunt all but HAMLET.
Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother.
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:
Let me be cruel, not unnatural:
I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites;
How in my words soever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my soul, consent!
Exit. SCENE III.
A room in the castle. Enter KING CLAUDIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.

KING CLAUDIUS: I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you;
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you:
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow
Out of his lunacies.

GUILDENSTERN: We will ourselves provide:
Most holy and religious fear it is
To keep those many many bodies safe
That live and feed upon your majesty.

ROSENCRANTZ: The single and peculiar life is bound,
With all the strength and armour of the mind,
To keep itself from noyance; but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest
The lives of many. The cease of majesty
Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
What's near it with it: it is a massy wheel,
Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoin'd; which, when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.

KING CLAUDIUS: Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage;
For we will fetters put upon this fear,
Which now goes too free-footed.

ROSENCRANTZ,GUILDENSTERN: We will haste us. Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN: Enter POLONIUS.

LORD POLONIUS: My lord, he's going to his mother's closet:
Behind the arras I'll convey myself,
To hear the process; and warrant she'll tax him home:
And, as you said, and wisely was it said,
'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear
The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege:
I'll call upon you ere you go to bed,
And tell you what I know.

KING CLAUDIUS: Thanks, dear my lord.
Exit.

POLONIUS: O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,
A brother's murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what's in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon'd being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'?
That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well.
Retires and kneels
Enter HAMLET.

HAMLET: Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season'd for his passage?
No!
Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in't;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
Exit.

KING CLAUDIUS: [Rising] My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
Exit. SCENE IV.
The Queen's closet. Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE 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.
Pray you, be round with him.

HAMLET: [Within] Mother, mother, mother!

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.

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?

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.

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!

LORD POLONIUS: [Behind] What, ho! help, help, help!

HAMLET: [Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
Makes a pass through the arras.

LORD POLONIUS: [Behind] O, I am slain!
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,
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;
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
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,
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
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 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;
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,
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?
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
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,
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
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
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;
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
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;
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!

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!

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.
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?

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,
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!
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.

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.

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 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,
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,
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;
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,
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,
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;
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, 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.
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:
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,
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?
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.

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, 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;
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.
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.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Good night, mother.
Exeunt severally;HAMLET: dragging in POLONIUS.
ACT IV SCENE I.
A room in the castle. Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.

KING CLAUDIUS: There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves: You must translate: 'tis fit we understand them. Where is your son?

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Bestow this place on us a little while.
Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night!

KING CLAUDIUS: What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend
Which is the mightier: in his lawless fit,
Behind the arras hearing something stir,
Whips out his rapier, cries, 'A rat, a rat!'
And, in this brainish apprehension, kills
The unseen good old man.

KING CLAUDIUS: O heavy deed!
It had been so with us, had we been there:
His liberty is full of threats to all;
To you yourself, to us, to every one.
Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd?
It will be laid to us, whose providence
Should have kept short, restrain'd and out of haunt,
This mad young man: but so much was our love,
We would not understand what was most fit;
But, like the owner of a foul disease,
To keep it from divulging, let it feed
Even on the pith of Life. Where is he gone?

QUEEN GERTRUDE: To draw apart the body he hath kill'd:
O'er whom his very madness, like some ore
Among a mineral of metals base,
Shows itself pure;
he weeps for what is done.

KING CLAUDIUS: O Gertrude, come away! The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch,
But we will ship him hence: and this vile deed
We must, with all our majesty and skill,
Both countenance and excuse. Ho, Guildenstern!
Re-enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN Friends both, go join you with some further aid:
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
And from his mother's closet hath he dragg'd him:
Go seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body
Into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this.
Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
Come, Gertrude, we'll call up our wisest friends;
And let them know, both what we mean to do,
And what's untimely done. O, come away!
My soul is full of discord and dismay.
Exeunt. SCENE II.
Another room in the castle. Enter HAMLET.

HAMLET: Safely stowed.

ROSENCRANTZ:,GUILDENSTERN:: [Within] Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!

HAMLET: What noise? who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come.
Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

ROSENCRANTZ: What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?

HAMLET: Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.

ROSENCRANTZ: Tell us where 'tis, that we may take it thence And bear it to the chapel.

HAMLET: Do not believe it.

ROSENCRANTZ: Believe what?

HAMLET: That I can keep your counsel and not mine own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge! what replication should be made by the son of a king?

ROSENCRANTZ: Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

HAMLET: Ay, sir, that soaks up the king's countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the king best service in the end: he keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw;
first mouthed, to be last swallowed: when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.

ROSENCRANTZ: I understand you not, my lord.

HAMLET: I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

ROSENCRANTZ: My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king.

HAMLET: The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing--

GUILDENSTERN: A thing, my lord!

HAMLET: Of nothing: bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.
Exeunt. SCENE III.
Another room in the castle. Enter KING CLAUDIUS, attended.

KING CLAUDIUS: I have sent to seek him, and to find the body.
How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!
Yet must not we put the strong law on him:
He's loved of the distracted multitude,
Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes;
And where tis so, the offender's scourge is weigh'd,
But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,
This sudden sending him away must seem
Deliberate pause: diseases desperate grown
By desperate appliance are relieved,
Or not at all.
Enter ROSENCRANTZ.
How now! what hath befall'n?

ROSENCRANTZ: Where the dead body is bestow'd, my lord, We cannot get from him.

KING CLAUDIUS: But where is he?

ROSENCRANTZ: Without, my lord;
guarded, to know your pleasure.

KING CLAUDIUS: Bring him before us.

ROSENCRANTZ: Ho, Guildenstern! bring in my lord. Enter HAMLET and GUILDENSTERN:

KING CLAUDIUS: Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?

HAMLET: At supper.

KING CLAUDIUS: At supper! where?

HAMLET: Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.

KING CLAUDIUS: Alas, alas!

HAMLET: A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and cat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

KING CLAUDIUS: What dost you mean by this?

HAMLET: Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

KING CLAUDIUS: Where is Polonius?

HAMLET: In heaven;
send hither to see: if your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

KING CLAUDIUS: Go seek him there. To some Attendants

HAMLET: He will stay till ye come.
Exeunt Attendants.

KING CLAUDIUS: Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,
Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve
For that which thou hast done, must send thee hence
With fiery quickness: therefore prepare thyself;
The bark is ready, and the wind at help,
The associates tend, and every thing is bent
For England.

HAMLET: For England!

KING CLAUDIUS: Ay, Hamlet.

HAMLET: Good.

KING CLAUDIUS: So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.

HAMLET: I see a cherub that sees them. But, come;
for England! Farewell, dear mother.

KING CLAUDIUS: Thy loving father, Hamlet.

HAMLET: My mother: father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh;
and so, my mother. Come, for England!
Exit.

KING CLAUDIUS: Follow him at foot;
tempt him with speed aboard;
Delay it not;
I'll have him hence to-night:
Away! for every thing is seal'd and done
That else leans on the affair: pray you, make haste.
Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
And, England, if my love thou hold'st at aught
As my great power thereof may give thee sense,
Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red
After the Danish sword, and thy free awe
Pays homage to us--thou mayst not coldly set
Our sovereign process; which imports at full,
By letters congruing to that effect,
The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England;
For like the hectic in my blood he rages,
And thou must cure me: till I know 'tis done,
Howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun.
Exit. SCENE IV.
A plain in Denmark. Enter FORTINBRAS, a Captain, and Soldiers, marching.

PRINCE FORTINBRAS: Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king;
Tell him that, by his licence, Fortinbras
Craves the conveyance of a promised march
Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.
If that his majesty would aught with us,
We shall express our duty in his eye;
And let him know so.

Captain: I will do't, my lord.

PRINCE FORTINBRAS: Go softly on.
Exeunt FORTINBRAS and Soldiers.
Enter HAMLET, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and others.

HAMLET: Good sir, whose powers are these?

Captain: They are of Norway, sir.

HAMLET: How purposed, sir, I pray you?

Captain: Against some part of Poland.

HAMLET: Who commands them, sir?

Captain: The nephews to old Norway, Fortinbras.

HAMLET: Goes it against the main of Poland, sir, Or for some frontier?

Captain: Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

HAMLET: Why, then the Polack never will defend it.

Captain: Yes, it is already garrison'd.

HAMLET: Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw:
This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.

Captain: God be wi' you, sir.
Exit.

ROSENCRANTZ: Wilt please you go, my lord?

HAMLET: I'll be with you straight go a little before.
Exeunt all except HAMLET.
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
Exit. SCENE V.
Elsinore. A room in the castle. Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE, HORATIO, and a Gentleman.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: I will not speak with her.

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

QUEEN GERTRUDE: What would she have?

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

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

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Let her come in.
Exit.

HORATIO: To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is,
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss:
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
Re-enter HORATIO, with OPHELIA.

OPHELIA: Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?

QUEEN GERTRUDE: How now, Ophelia!

OPHELIA: [Sings]
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

OPHELIA: Say you? nay, pray you, mark. Sings: He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Nay, but, Ophelia,--

OPHELIA: Pray you, mark. Sings: White his shroud as the mountain snow,--
Enter KING CLAUDIUS.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Alas, look here, my lord.

OPHELIA: Sings: Larded with sweet flowers
Which bewept to the grave did go
With true-love showers.

KING CLAUDIUS: How do you, pretty lady?

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

KING CLAUDIUS: Conceit upon her father.

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

KING CLAUDIUS: Pretty Ophelia!

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

KING CLAUDIUS: How long hath she been thus?

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

KING CLAUDIUS: Follow her close;
give her good watch, I pray you.
Exit.

HORATIO: O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
All from her father's death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows come, they come not single spies
But in battalions. First, her father slain:
Next, your son gone; and he most violent author
Of his own just remove: the people muddied,
Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers,
For good Polonius' death; and we have done but greenly,
In hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts:
Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France;
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murdering-piece, in many places
Gives me superfluous death.
A noise within

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Alack, what noise is this?

KING CLAUDIUS: Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.
Enter another

Gentleman.
What is the matter?

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

QUEEN GERTRUDE: How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!

KING CLAUDIUS: The doors are broke.
Noise within
Enter LAERTES, armed;
Danes following.

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

Danes: No, let's come in.

LAERTES: I pray you, give me leave.

Danes: We will, we will.
They retire without the door

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

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Calmly, good Laertes.

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

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

LAERTES: Where is my father?

KING CLAUDIUS: Dead.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: But not by him.

KING CLAUDIUS: Let him demand his fill.

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

KING CLAUDIUS: Who shall stay you?

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

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

LAERTES: None but his enemies.

KING CLAUDIUS: Will you know them then?

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

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

Danes: [Within] Let her come in.

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

OPHELIA: [Sings]
They bore him barefaced on the bier;
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
And in his grave rain'd many a tear:
Fare you well, my dove!

LAERTES: Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move thus.

OPHELIA: [Sings]
You must sing a-down a-down,
An you call him a-down-a.
O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false
steward, that stole his master's daughter.

LAERTES: This nothing's more than matter.

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

LAERTES: A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.

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

LAERTES: Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
She turns to favour and to prettiness.

OPHELIA: [Sings]
And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
No, no, he is dead:
Go to thy death-bed:
He never will come again.
His beard was as white as snow,
All flaxen was his poll:
He is gone, he is gone,
And we cast away moan:
God ha' mercy on his soul!
And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be wi' ye.
Exit.

LAERTES: Do you see this, O God?

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

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

KING CLAUDIUS: So you shall;
And where the offence is let the great axe fall.
I pray you, go with me.
Exeunt SCENE VI. Another room in the castle. Enter HORATIO and a Servant

HORATIO: What are they that would speak with me? Servant Sailors, sir: they say they have letters for you.

HORATIO: Let them come in.
Exit. Servant I do not know from what part of the world
I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.
Enter Sailors First Sailor God bless you, sir.

HORATIO: Let him bless thee too. First Sailor He shall, sir, an't please him. There's a letter for you, sir; it comes from the ambassador that was bound for England; if your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is.

HORATIO: [Reads] 'Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked this, give these fellows some means to the king: they have letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour, and in the grapple I boarded them: on the instant they got clear of our ship; so I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy: but they knew what they did; I am to do a good turn for them. Let the king have the letters I have sent; and repair thou to me with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death. I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows will bring thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England: of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell. 'He that thou knowest thine, HAMLET:.' Come, I will make you way for these your letters;
And do't the speedier, that you may direct me
To him from whom you brought them.
Exeunt. SCENE VII.
Another room in the castle. Enter KING CLAUDIUS and LAERTES.

KING CLAUDIUS: Now must your conscience my acquaintance seal,
And you must put me in your heart for friend,
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
That he which hath your noble father slain
Pursued my life.

LAERTES: It well appears: but tell me
Why you proceeded not against these feats,
So crimeful and so capital in nature,
As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
You mainly were stirr'd up.

KING CLAUDIUS: O, for two special reasons;
Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew'd,
But yet to me they are strong. The queen his mother
Lives almost by his looks;
and for myself
My virtue or my plague, be it either which
She's so conjunctive to my life and soul,
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her. The other motive,
Why to a public count I might not go,
Is the great love the general gender bear him;
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows,
Too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aim'd them.

LAERTES: And so have I a noble father lost;
A sister driven into desperate terms,
Whose worth, if praises may go back again,
Stood challenger on mount of all the age
For her perfections: but my revenge will come.

KING CLAUDIUS: Break not your sleeps for that: you must not think
That we are made of stuff so flat and dull
That we can let our beard be shook with danger
And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more:
I loved your father, and we love ourself;
And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine
Enter a Messenger How now! what news?
Messenger
Letters, my lord, from Hamlet:
This to your majesty;
this to the queen.

KING CLAUDIUS: From Hamlet! who brought them? Messenger Sailors, my lord, they say;
I saw them not:
They were given me by Claudio; he received them
Of him that brought them.

KING CLAUDIUS: Laertes, you shall hear them. Leave us.
Exit. Messenger Reads 'High and mighty, You shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes: when I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasion of my sudden and more strange return. '

HAMLET:.' What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?

LAERTES: Know you the hand?

KING CLAUDIUS: 'Tis Hamlets character. 'Naked!
And in a postscript here, he says 'alone.'
Can you advise me?

LAERTES: I'm lost in it, my lord. But let him come;
It warms the very sickness in my heart,
That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,
'Thus didest thou.'

KING CLAUDIUS: If it be so, Laertes
As how should it be so? how otherwise?
Will you be ruled by me?

LAERTES: Ay, my lord;
So you will not o'errule me to a peace.

KING CLAUDIUS: To thine own peace. If he be now return'd,
As checking at his voyage, and that he means
No more to undertake it, I will work him
To an exploit, now ripe in my device,
Under the which he shall not choose but fall:
And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe,
But even his mother shall uncharge the practise
And call it accident.

LAERTES: My lord, I will be ruled;
The rather, if you could devise it so
That I might be the organ.

KING CLAUDIUS: It falls right.
You have been talk'd of since your travel much,
And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality
Wherein, they say, you shine: your sum of parts
Did not together pluck such envy from him
As did that one, and that, in my regard,
Of the unworthiest siege.

LAERTES: What part is that, my lord?

KING CLAUDIUS: A very riband in the cap of youth,
Yet needful too; for youth no less becomes
The light and careless livery that it wears
Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
Importing health and graveness. Two months since,
Here was a gentleman of Normandy:
I've seen myself, and served against, the French,
And they can well on horseback: but this gallant
Had witchcraft in't; he grew unto his seat;
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
As he had been incorpsed and demi-natured
With the brave beast: so far he topp'd my thought,
That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,
Come short of what he did.

LAERTES: A Norman was't?

KING CLAUDIUS: A Norman.

LAERTES: Upon my life, Lamond.

KING CLAUDIUS: The very same.

LAERTES: I know him well: he is the brooch indeed And gem of all the nation.

KING CLAUDIUS: He made confession of you,
And gave you such a masterly report
For art and exercise in your defence
And for your rapier most especially,
That he cried out, 'twould be a sight indeed,
If one could match you: the scrimers of their nation,
He swore, had had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
If you opposed them. Sir, this report of his
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy
That he could nothing do but wish and beg
Your sudden coming o'er, to play with him.
Now, out of this,

LAERTES: What out of this, my lord?

KING CLAUDIUS: Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?

LAERTES: Why ask you this?

KING CLAUDIUS: Not that I think you did not love your father;
But that I know love is begun by time;
And that I see, in passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a plurisy,
Dies in his own too much: that we would do
We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o' the ulcer:
Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake,
To show yourself your father's son in deed
More than in words?

LAERTES: To cut his throat i' the church.

KING CLAUDIUS: No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize;
Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,
Will you do this, keep close within your chamber.
Hamlet return'd shall know you are come home:
We'll put on those shall praise your excellence
And set a double varnish on the fame
The Frenchman gave you, bring you in fine together
And wager on your heads: he, being remiss,
Most generous and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils;
so that, with ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
A sword unbated, and in a pass of practise
Requite him for your father.

LAERTES: I will do't:
And, for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank,
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death
That is but scratch'd withal: I'll touch my point
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
It may be death.

KING CLAUDIUS: Let's further think of this;
Weigh what convenience both of time and means
May fit us to our shape: if this should fail,
And that our drift look through our bad performance,
'Twere better not assay'd: therefore this project
Should have a back or second, that might hold,
If this should blast in proof. Soft! let me see:
We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings: I ha't.
When in your motion you are hot and dry
As make your bouts more violent to that end
And that he calls for drink, I'll have prepared him
A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venom'd stuck,
Our purpose may hold there. Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE: How now, sweet queen!

QUEEN GERTRUDE: One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
So fast they follow;
your sister's drown'd, Laertes.

LAERTES: Drown'd! O, where?

QUEEN GERTRUDE: There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

LAERTES: Alas, then, she is drown'd?

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Drown'd, drown'd.

LAERTES: Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears: but yet
It is our trick;
nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will: when these are gone,
The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord:
I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
But that this folly douts it.
Exit.

KING CLAUDIUS: Let's follow, Gertrude:
How much I had to do to calm his rage!
Now fear I this will give it start again;
Therefore let's follow.
Exeunt ACT V
SCENE I. A churchyard.
Enter two Clowns, with spades, First Clown Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation? Second Clown I tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave straight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial. First Clown How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence? Second Clown Why, 'tis found so. First Clown It must be 'se offendendo;
' it cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act: and an act hath three branches: it is, to act, to do, to perform: argal, she drowned herself wittingly. Second Clown Nay, but hear you, goodman delver,-- First Clown Give me leave. Here lies the water;
good: here stands the man;
good;
if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,--mark you that;
but if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life. Second Clown But is this law? First Clown Ay, marry, is't;
crowner's quest law. Second Clown Will you ha' the truth on't? If this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o' Christian burial. First Clown Why, there thou say'st: and the more pity that great folk should have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves, more than their even Christian. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentleman but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers: they hold up Adam's profession. Second Clown Was he a gentleman? First Clown He was the first that ever bore arms. Second Clown Why, he had none. First Clown What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture? The Scripture says 'Adam digged:' could he dig without arms? I'll put another question to thee: if thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself-- Second Clown Go to. First Clown What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter? Second Clown The gallows-maker;
for that frame outlives a thousand tenants. First Clown I like thy wit well, in good faith: the gallows does well;
but how does it well? it does well to those that do in: now thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the church: argal, the gallows may do well to thee. To't again, come. Second Clown 'Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?' First Clown Ay, tell me that, and unyoke. Second Clown Marry, now I can tell. First Clown To't. Second Clown Mass, I cannot tell. Enter HAMLET and HORATIO, at a distance First Clown Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating;
and, when you are asked this question next, say 'a grave-maker: 'the houses that he makes last till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan: fetch me a stoup of liquor.
Exit. Second Clown He digs and sings In youth, when I did love, did love, Methought it was very sweet, To contract, O, the time, for, ah, my behove, O, methought, there was nothing meet.

HAMLET: Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making?

HORATIO: Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

HAMLET: 'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense. First Clown [Sings] But age, with his stealing steps, Hath claw'd me in his clutch, And hath shipped me intil the land, As if I had never been such. Throws up a skull

HAMLET: That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murder! It might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'er-reaches;
one that would circumvent God, might it not?

HORATIO: It might, my lord.

HAMLET: Or of a courtier;
which could say 'Good morrow, sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?' This might be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord such-a-one's horse, when he meant to beg it;
might it not?

HORATIO: Ay, my lord.

HAMLET: Why, e'en so: and now my Lady Worm's;
chapless, and knocked about the mazzard with a sexton's spade: here's fine revolution, an we had the trick to see't. Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with 'em? mine ache to think on't. First Clown [Sings] A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet: O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet. Throws up another skull

HAMLET: There's another: why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box;
and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

HORATIO: Not a jot more, my lord.

HAMLET: Is not parchment made of sheepskins?

HORATIO: Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too.

HAMLET: They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow. Whose grave's this, sirrah? First Clown Mine, sir. Sings O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet.

HAMLET: I think it be thine, indeed;
for thou liest in't. First Clown You lie out on't, sir, and therefore it is not yours: for my part, I do not lie in't, and yet it is mine.

HAMLET: 'Thou dost lie in't, to be in't and say it is thine: 'tis for the dead, not for the quick;
therefore thou liest. First Clown 'Tis a quick lie, sir;
'twill away gain, from me to you.

HAMLET: What man dost thou dig it for? First Clown For no man, sir.

HAMLET: What woman, then? First Clown For none, neither.

HAMLET: Who is to be buried in't? First Clown One that was a woman, sir;
but, rest her soul, she's dead.

HAMLET: How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken a note of it;
the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he gaffs his kibe. How long hast thou been a grave-maker? First Clown Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.

HAMLET: How long is that since? First Clown Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it was the very day that young Hamlet was born;
he that is mad, and sent into England.

HAMLET: Ay, marry, why was he sent into England? First Clown Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there;
or, if he do not, it's no great matter there.

HAMLET: Why? First Clown 'Twill, a not be seen in him there;
there the men are as mad as he.

HAMLET: How came he mad? First Clown Very strangely, they say.

HAMLET: How strangely? First Clown Faith, e'en with losing his wits.

HAMLET: Upon what ground? First Clown Why, here in Denmark: I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.

HAMLET: How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot? First Clown I' faith, if he be not rotten before he die--as we have many pocky corses now-a-days, that will scarce hold the laying in--he will last you some eight year or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year.

HAMLET: Why he more than another? First Clown Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade, that he will keep out water a great while;
and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. Here's a skull now;
this skull has lain in the earth three and twenty years.

HAMLET: Whose was it? First Clown A whoreson mad fellow's it was: whose do you think it was?

HAMLET: Nay, I know not. First Clown A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a' poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester.

HAMLET: This? First Clown E'en that.

HAMLET: Let me see. Takes the skull Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times;
and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come;
make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

HORATIO: What's that, my lord?

HAMLET: Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth?

HORATIO: E'en so.

HAMLET: And smelt so? pah! Puts down the skull

HORATIO: E'en so, my lord.

HAMLET: To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

HORATIO: 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

HAMLET: No, faith, not a jot;
but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust;
the dust is earth;
of earth we make loam;
and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw! But soft! but soft! aside: here comes the king. Enter Priest, & c. in procession;
the Corpse of

OPHELIA, LAERTES and Mourners following;

KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, their trains, & c The queen, the courtiers: who is this they follow? And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken The corse they follow did with desperate hand Fordo its own life: 'twas of some estate. Couch we awhile, and mark. Retiring with

HORATIO:

LAERTES: What ceremony else?

HAMLET: That is Laertes, A very noble youth: mark.

LAERTES: What ceremony else? First Priest Her obsequies have been as far enlarged As we have warrantise: her death was doubtful;
And, but that great command o'ersways the order, She should in ground unsanctified have lodged Till the last trumpet: for charitable prayers, Shards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her;
Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants, Her maiden strewments and the bringing home Of bell and burial.

LAERTES: Must there no more be done? First Priest No more be done: We should profane the service of the dead To sing a requiem and such rest to her As to peace-parted souls.

LAERTES: Lay her i' the earth: And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering angel shall my sister be, When thou liest howling.

HAMLET: What, the fair Ophelia!

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Sweets to the sweet: farewell! Scattering flowers I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, And not have strew'd thy grave.

LAERTES: O, treble woe Fall ten times treble on that cursed head, Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense Deprived thee of! Hold off the earth awhile, Till I have caught her once more in mine arms: Leaps into the grave Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, Till of this flat a mountain you have made, To o'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head Of blue Olympus.

HAMLET: [Advancing] What is he whose grief Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I, Hamlet the Dane. Leaps into the grave

LAERTES: The devil take thy soul! Grappling with him

HAMLET: Thou pray'st not well. I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat;
For, though I am not splenitive and rash, Yet have I something in me dangerous, Which let thy wiseness fear: hold off thy hand.

KING CLAUDIUS: Pluck them asunder.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Hamlet, Hamlet! All Gentlemen,--

HORATIO: Good my lord, be quiet. The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave

HAMLET: Why I will fight with him upon this theme Until my eyelids will no longer wag.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: O my son, what theme?

HAMLET: I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?

KING CLAUDIUS: O, he is mad, Laertes.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: For love of God, forbear him.

HAMLET: 'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do: Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself? Woo't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile? I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine? To outface me with leaping in her grave? Be buried quick with her, and so will I: And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground, Singeing his pate against the burning zone, Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: This is mere madness: And thus awhile the fit will work on him;
Anon, as patient as the female dove, When that her golden couplets are disclosed, His silence will sit drooping.

HAMLET: Hear you, sir;
What is the reason that you use me thus? I loved you ever: but it is no matter;
Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew and dog will have his day.
Exit.

KING CLAUDIUS: I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon him.
Exit.

HORATIO: To LAERTES: Strengthen your patience in our last night's speech;
We'll put the matter to the present push. Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son. This grave shall have a living monument: An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;
Till then, in patience our proceeding be. Exeunt SCENE II. A hall in the castle. Enter HAMLET and HORATIO:

HAMLET: So much for this, sir: now shall you see the other;
You do remember all the circumstance?

HORATIO: Remember it, my lord?

HAMLET: Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting, That would not let me sleep: methought I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly, And praised be rashness for it, let us know, Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will,--

HORATIO: That is most certain.

HAMLET: Up from my cabin, My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark Groped I to find out them;
had my desire. Finger'd their packet, and in fine withdrew To mine own room again;
making so bold, My fears forgetting manners, to unseal Their grand commission;
where I found, Horatio,-- O royal knavery!--an exact command, Larded with many several sorts of reasons Importing Denmark's health and England's too, With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life, That, on the supervise, no leisure bated, No, not to stay the grinding of the axe, My head should be struck off.

HORATIO: Is't possible?

HAMLET: Here's the commission: read it at more leisure. But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed?

HORATIO: I beseech you.

HAMLET: Being thus be-netted round with villanies,-- Ere I could make a prologue to my brains, They had begun the play--I sat me down, Devised a new commission, wrote it fair: I once did hold it, as our statists do, A baseness to write fair and labour'd much How to forget that learning, but, sir, now It did me yeoman's service: wilt thou know The effect of what I wrote?

HORATIO: Ay, good my lord.

HAMLET: An earnest conjuration from the king, As England was his faithful tributary, As love between them like the palm might flourish, As peace should stiff her wheaten garland wear And stand a comma 'tween their amities, And many such-like 'As'es of great charge, That, on the view and knowing of these contents, Without debatement further, more or less, He should the bearers put to sudden death, Not shriving-time allow'd.

HORATIO: How was this seal'd?

HAMLET: Why, even in that was heaven ordinant. I had my father's signet in my purse, Which was the model of that Danish seal;
Folded the writ up in form of the other, Subscribed it, gave't the impression, placed it safely, The changeling never known. Now, the next day Was our sea-fight;
and what to this was sequent Thou know'st already.

HORATIO: So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to't.

HAMLET: Why, man, they did make love to this employment;
They are not near my conscience;
their defeat Does by their own insinuation grow: 'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes Between the pass and fell incensed points Of mighty opposites.

HORATIO: Why, what a king is this!

HAMLET: Does it not, think'st thee, stand me now upon-- He that hath kill'd my king and whored my mother, Popp'd in between the election and my hopes, Thrown out his angle for my proper life, And with such cozenage--is't not perfect conscience, To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd, To let this canker of our nature come In further evil?

HORATIO: It must be shortly known to him from England What is the issue of the business there.

HAMLET: It will be short: the interim is mine;
And a man's life's no more than to say 'One.' But I am very sorry, good Horatio, That to Laertes I forgot myself;
For, by the image of my cause, I see The portraiture of his: I'll court his favours. But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me Into a towering passion.

HORATIO: Peace! who comes here? Enter OSRIC:

OSRIC: Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.

HAMLET: I humbly thank you, sir. Dost know this water-fly?

HORATIO: No, my good lord.

HAMLET: Thy state is the more gracious;
for 'tis a vice to know him. He hath much land, and fertile: let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's mess: 'tis a chough;
but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.

OSRIC: Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should impart a thing to you from his majesty.

HAMLET: I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of spirit. Put your bonnet to his right use;
'tis for the head.

OSRIC: I thank your lordship, it is very hot.

HAMLET: No, believe me, 'tis very cold;
the wind is northerly.

OSRIC: It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.

HAMLET: But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my complexion.

OSRIC: Exceedingly, my lord;
it is very sultry,--as 'twere,--I cannot tell how. But, my lord, his majesty bade me signify to you that he has laid a great wager on your head: sir, this is the matter,--

HAMLET: I beseech you, remember--

HAMLET: moves him to put on his hat

OSRIC: Nay, good my lord;
for mine ease, in good faith. Sir, here is newly come to court Laertes;
believe me, an absolute gentleman, full of most excellent differences, of very soft society and great showing: indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the card or calendar of gentry, for you shall find in him the continent of what part a gentleman would see.

HAMLET: Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you;
though, I know, to divide him inventorially would dizzy the arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in the verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great article;
and his infusion of such dearth and rareness, as, to make true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror;
and who else would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more.

OSRIC: Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him.

HAMLET: The concernancy, sir? why do we wrap the gentleman in our more rawer breath?

OSRIC: Sir?

HORATIO: Is't not possible to understand in another tongue? You will do't, sir, really.

HAMLET: What imports the nomination of this gentleman?

OSRIC: Of Laertes?

HORATIO: His purse is empty already;
all's golden words are spent.

HAMLET: Of him, sir.

OSRIC: I know you are not ignorant--

HAMLET: I would you did, sir;
yet, in faith, if you did, it would not much approve me. Well, sir?

OSRIC: You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is--

HAMLET: I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with him in excellence;
but, to know a man well, were to know himself.

OSRIC: I mean, sir, for his weapon;
but in the imputation laid on him by them, in his meed he's unfellowed.

HAMLET: What's his weapon?

OSRIC: Rapier and dagger.

HAMLET: That's two of his weapons: but, well.

OSRIC: The king, sir, hath wagered with him six Barbary horses: against the which he has imponed, as I take it, six French rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdle, hangers, and so: three of the carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and of very liberal conceit.

HAMLET: What call you the carriages?

HORATIO: I knew you must be edified by the margent ere you had done.

OSRIC: The carriages, sir, are the hangers.

HAMLET: The phrase would be more german to the matter, if we could carry cannon by our sides: I would it might be hangers till then. But, on: six Barbary horses against six French swords, their assigns, and three liberal-conceited carriages;
that's the French bet against the Danish. Why is this 'imponed,' as you call it?

OSRIC: The king, sir, hath laid, that in a dozen passes between yourself and him, he shall not exceed you three hits: he hath laid on twelve for nine;
and it would come to immediate trial, if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer.

HAMLET: How if I answer 'no'?

OSRIC: I mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in trial.

HAMLET: Sir, I will walk here in the hall: if it please his majesty, 'tis the breathing time of day with me;
let the foils be brought, the gentleman willing, and the king hold his purpose, I will win for him an I can;
if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.

OSRIC: Shall I re-deliver you e'en so?

HAMLET: To this effect, sir;
after what flourish your nature will.

OSRIC: I commend my duty to your lordship.

HAMLET: Yours, yours.
Exit.

OSRIC: He does well to commend it himself;
there are no tongues else for's turn.

HORATIO: This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.

HAMLET: He did comply with his dug, before he sucked it. Thus has he--and many more of the same bevy that I know the dressy age dotes on--only got the tune of the time and outward habit of encounter;
a kind of yesty collection, which carries them through and through the most fond and winnowed opinions;
and do but blow them to their trial, the bubbles are out. Enter a Lord Lord My lord, his majesty commended him to you by young Osric, who brings back to him that you attend him in the hall: he sends to know if your pleasure hold to play with Laertes, or that you will take longer time.

HAMLET: I am constant to my purpose;
they follow the king's pleasure: if his fitness speaks, mine is ready;
now or whensoever, provided I be so able as now. Lord The king and queen and all are coming down.

HAMLET: In happy time. Lord The queen desires you to use some gentle entertainment to Laertes before you fall to play.

HAMLET: She well instructs me.
Exit. Lord

HORATIO: You will lose this wager, my lord.

HAMLET: I do not think so: since he went into France, I have been in continual practise: I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart: but it is no matter.

HORATIO: Nay, good my lord,--

HAMLET: It is but foolery;
but it is such a kind of gain-giving, as would perhaps trouble a woman.

HORATIO: If your mind dislike any thing, obey it: I will forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit.

HAMLET: Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come;
if it be not to come, it will be now;
if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?
Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, LAERTES, Lords, OSRIC, and Attendants with foils.

KING CLAUDIUS: Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.

KING CLAUDIUS: puts

LAERTES:' hand into

HAMLET:'s

HAMLET: Give me your pardon, sir: I've done you wrong;
But pardon't, as you are a gentleman. This presence knows, And you must needs have heard, how I am punish'd With sore distraction. What I have done, That might your nature, honour and exception Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness. Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet: If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away, And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes, Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it. Who does it, then? His madness: if't be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd;
His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy. Sir, in this audience, Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil Free me so far in your most generous thoughts, That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house, And hurt my brother.

LAERTES: I am satisfied in nature, Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most To my revenge: but in my terms of honour I stand aloof;
and will no reconcilement, Till by some elder masters, of known honour, I have a voice and precedent of peace, To keep my name ungored. But till that time, I do receive your offer'd love like love, And will not wrong it.

HAMLET: I embrace it freely;
And will this brother's wager frankly play. Give us the foils. Come on.

LAERTES: Come, one for me.

HAMLET: I'll be your foil, Laertes: in mine ignorance Your skill shall, like a star i' the darkest night, Stick fiery off indeed.

LAERTES: You mock me, sir.

HAMLET: No, by this hand.

KING CLAUDIUS: Give them the foils, young Osric. Cousin Hamlet, You know the wager?

HAMLET: Very well, my lord Your grace hath laid the odds o' the weaker side.

KING CLAUDIUS: I do not fear it;
I have seen you both: But since he is better'd, we have therefore odds.

LAERTES: This is too heavy, let me see another.

HAMLET: This likes me well. These foils have all a length? They prepare to play

OSRIC: Ay, my good lord.

KING CLAUDIUS: Set me the stoops of wine upon that table. If Hamlet give the first or second hit, Or quit in answer of the third exchange, Let all the battlements their ordnance fire: The king shall drink to Hamlet's better breath;
And in the cup an union shall he throw, Richer than that which four successive kings In Denmark's crown have worn. Give me the cups;
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak, The trumpet to the cannoneer without, The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth, 'Now the king dunks to Hamlet.' Come, begin: And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.

HAMLET: Come on, sir.

LAERTES: Come, my lord.
They play.

HAMLET: One.

LAERTES: No.

HAMLET: Judgment.

OSRIC: A hit, a very palpable hit.

LAERTES: Well;
again.

KING CLAUDIUS: Stay;
give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine;
Here's to thy health. Trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within Give him the cup.

HAMLET: I'll play this bout first;
set it by awhile. Come.
They play. Another hit;
what say you?

LAERTES: A touch, a touch, I do confess.

KING CLAUDIUS: Our son shall win.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: He's fat, and scant of breath. Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows;
The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.

HAMLET: Good madam!

KING CLAUDIUS: Gertrude, do not drink.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: I will, my lord;
I pray you, pardon me.

KING CLAUDIUS: [Aside] It is the poison'd cup: it is too late.

HAMLET: I dare not drink yet, madam;
by and by.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Come, let me wipe thy face.

LAERTES: My lord, I'll hit him now.

KING CLAUDIUS: I do not think't.

LAERTES: [Aside] And yet 'tis almost 'gainst my conscience.

HAMLET: Come, for the third, Laertes: you but dally;
I pray you, pass with your best violence;
I am afeard you make a wanton of me.

LAERTES: Say you so? come on.
They play.

OSRIC: Nothing, neither way.

LAERTES: Have at you now!
LAERTES wounds HAMLET;
then in scuffling, they change rapiers, and HAMLET wounds LAERTES.

KING CLAUDIUS: Part them;
they are incensed.

HAMLET: Nay, come, again.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: falls

OSRIC: Look to the queen there, ho!

HORATIO: They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?

OSRIC: How is't, Laertes?

LAERTES: Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric;
I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery.

HAMLET: How does the queen?

KING CLAUDIUS: She swounds to see them bleed.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: No, no, the drink, the drink,--O my dear Hamlet,-- The drink, the drink! I am poison'd.
Dies.

HAMLET: O villany! Ho! let the door be lock'd: Treachery! Seek it out.

LAERTES: It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art slain;
No medicine in the world can do thee good;
In thee there is not half an hour of life;
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, Unbated and envenom'd: the foul practise Hath turn'd itself on me lo, here I lie, Never to rise again: thy mother's poison'd: I can no more: the king, the king's to blame.

HAMLET: The point!--envenom'd too! Then, venom, to thy work.
Stabs KING CLAUDIUS.

All: Treason! treason!

KING CLAUDIUS: O, yet defend me, friends;
I am but hurt.

HAMLET: Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, Drink off this potion. Is thy union here? Follow my mother.
KING CLAUDIUS dies.

LAERTES: He is justly served;
It is a poison temper'd by himself. Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet: Mine and my father's death come not upon thee, Nor thine on me.
Dies.

HAMLET: Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee. I am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu! You that look pale and tremble at this chance, That are but mutes or audience to this act, Had I but time--as this fell sergeant, death, Is strict in his arrest--O, I could tell you-- But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;
Thou livest;
report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied.

HORATIO: Never believe it: I am more an antique Roman than a Dane: Here's yet some liquor left.

HAMLET: As thou'rt a man, Give me the cup: let go;
by heaven, I'll have't. O good Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me! If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. March afar off, and shot within What warlike noise is this?

OSRIC: Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland, To the ambassadors of England gives This warlike volley.

HAMLET: O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit: I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, Which have solicited. The rest is silence.
Dies.

HORATIO: Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! Why does the drum come hither? March within
Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambassadors, and others.

PRINCE FORTINBRAS: Where is this sight?

HORATIO: What is it ye would see? If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.

PRINCE FORTINBRAS: This quarry cries on havoc. O proud death, What feast is toward in thine eternal cell, That thou so many princes at a shot So bloodily hast struck? First Ambassador The sight is dismal;
And our affairs from England come too late: The ears are senseless that should give us hearing, To tell him his commandment is fulfill'd, That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead: Where should we have our thanks?

HORATIO: Not from his mouth, Had it the ability of life to thank you: He never gave commandment for their death. But since, so jump upon this bloody question, You from the Polack wars, and you from England, Are here arrived give order that these bodies High on a stage be placed to the view;
And let me speak to the yet unknowing world How these things came about: so shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on the inventors' reads: all this can I Truly deliver.

PRINCE FORTINBRAS: Let us haste to hear it, And call the noblest to the audience. For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune: I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.

HORATIO: Of that I shall have also cause to speak, And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more;
But let this same be presently perform'd, Even while men's minds are wild;
lest more mischance On plots and errors, happen.
PRINCE FORTINBRAS: Let four captains Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on, To have proved most royally: and, for his passage, The soldiers' music and the rites of war Speak loudly for him. Take up the bodies: such a sight as this Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

A dead march. Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies;
after which a peal of ordnance is shot off.