Ham. 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 shew you more: for look, where my abridgment 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 valanced 13 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 heaven, than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine.14 Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.15——] -Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en to 't like French falconers, fly at anything we see: we'll have a speech straight: come, give us a taste of your quality; come, a passionate speech.

First Play. What speech, my lord?

Ham. 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: 16 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,17 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 chief speech in it I chiefly loved: 'twas Eneas' 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;
Bak'd and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and 'fearful' light

To their vile murders: 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.

Pol. My lord, well spoken; with good accent, and good discretion.

First Play.

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,
strikes wide;

Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage

But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword

The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel his 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,
A roused vengeance sets him new a-work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall

On Mars's armours, forg'd 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!

Pol. This is too long.

Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard.-Prithee, say on-he's for a jig or a tale, or he sleeps:-say on; come to Hecuba.

First Play. But who, O who, had seen the mobled queen-
Ham. The mobled queen ?18

Pol. That's good: mobled queen is good.

First Play. Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning the flame
With bisson rheum; 19 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 pronounc'd.
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.

Pol. Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in his eyes.-Pray you, no more.

Ham. '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 abstracts and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Ham. Odds bodikins, man, 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.

Pol. Come, sirs.

Ham. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow.

[Exit POLONIUS with all the Players, except the First. Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the Murder of Gonzago ?

First Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. We'll have '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 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. Very well.-Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exit First Player.] My good friends [To ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN], I'll leave you till night: you are welcome

to Elsinore.

Ros. Good my lord!

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Ham. Ay, so, good-bye t' you.-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 his 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,20 unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life,
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 ?
Why, 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, lecherous villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, 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 drab, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a cursing, like a very 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,