Take them in.

POL. Come, sirs.

 

[Exit.]

 

HAM. Follow him, friends, we'll hear a play to- morrow. [Exeunt all the Players but the First.] Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play »The Murther of Gonzago«?

[1.] PLAY. Ay, my lord.

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

[1.] PLAY. Ay, my lord.

HAM. 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.

ROS. Good my lord!

HAM.

Ay so, God buy to you.

 

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 the visage wann'd,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,

A broken voice, an' 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 appall 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' th' throat

As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?

Hah, '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 'a' fatted all the region kites

With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,

That I, the son of a dear [father] murthered,

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 stallion. Fie upon't, foh!

About, my brains! Hum – I have heard

That guilty creatures sitting at a play

Have by the very cunning of the scene

Been strook so to the soul, that presently

They have proclaim'd their malefactions:

For murther, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players

Play something like the murther of my father

Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks,

I'll tent him to the quick. If 'a do blench,

I know my course. The spirit that I have seen

May be a [dev'l], and the [dev'l] hath power

T' 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]

Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Lords.

 

KING.

An' can you by no drift of conference

Get from him why he puts on this confusion,

Grating so harshly all his days of quiet

With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

ROS.

He does confess he feels himself distracted,

But from what cause 'a will by no means speak.

GUIL.

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.

Did he receive you well?

ROS.

Most like a gentleman.

GUIL.

But with much forcing of his disposition.

ROS.

Niggard of question, but of our demands

Most free in his reply.

QUEEN.

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.

POL.

'Tis most true,

And he beseech'd me to entreat your Majesties

To hear and see the matter.

KING.

With all my heart, and it doth much content me

To hear him so inclin'd.

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,

And drive his purpose into these delights.

ROS.

We shall, my lord.

 

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

 

KING.

Sweet Gertrude, leave us two,

For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,

That he, as 'twere by accident, may here

Affront Ophelia. Her father and myself,

We'll so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,

We may of their encounter frankly judge,

And gather by him, as he is behav'd,

If't be th' affliction of his love or no

That thus he suffers for.

QUEEN.

I shall obey you.

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish

That your good beauties be the happy cause

Of Hamlet's wildness.