So shall I hope your virtues

Will bring him to his wonted way again,

To both your honors.

OPH.

Madam, I wish it may.

 

[Exit Queen.]

 

POL.

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 color

Your [loneliness]. We are oft to blame in this –

'Tis too much prov'd – that with devotion's visage

And pious action we do sugar o'er

The devil himself.

KING [Aside.]

O, 'tis too true!

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!

The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art,

Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it

Than is my deed to my most painted word.

O heavy burthen!

POL.

I hear him coming. Withdraw, my lord.

 

[Exeunt King and Polonius.]

 

Enter Hamlet.

 

HAM.

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,

Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th' 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 pitch 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 rememb'red.

OPH.

Good my lord,

How does your honor for this many a day?

HAM.

I humbly thank you, well, [well, well].

OPH.

My lord, I have remembrances of yours

That I have longed long to redeliver.

I pray you now receive them.

HAM.

No, not I,

I never gave you aught.

OPH.

My honor'd lord, you know right well you did,

And with them words of so sweet breath compos'd

As made these 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.

HAM. Ha, ha! are you honest?

OPH. My lord?

HAM. Are you fair?

OPH. What means your lordship?

HAM. That if you be honest and fair, [your honesty] should admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPH. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

HAM. 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.

OPH. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAM. You should not have believ'd me, for virtue cannot so [inoculate] our old stock but we shall relish of it. I lov'd you not.

OPH. I was the more deceiv'd.

HAM. Get thee [to] a nunn'ry, 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 offenses 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, believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunn'ry.