Scene IV

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 betweenMuch heat and him. I’ll sconce me even here.Pray you, be round with him.

I’ll warrant you,Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming. Polonius hides behind the arras.

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.

Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;You go not till I set you up a glassWhere you may see the inmost part of you.

What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?Help, help, ho!

Nay, I know not:Is it the king?

A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

Ay, lady, ’twas my word. Lifts up the arras 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 soThat it be proof and bulwark against sense.

What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongueIn noise so rude against me?

Such an actThat blurs the grace and blush of modesty,Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the roseFrom the fair forehead of an innocent loveAnd sets a blister there, makes marriage-vowsAs false as dicers’ oaths: O, such a deedAs from the body of contraction plucksThe very soul, and sweet religion makesA 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.

Ay me, what act,That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

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 MercuryNew-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 ageThe hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,And waits upon the judgment: and what judgmentWould step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have,Else could you not have motion; but sure, that senseIs apoplex’d; for madness would not err,Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thrall’dBut it reserved some quantity of choice,To serve in such a difference. What devil was’tThat 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 senseCould 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 shameWhen the compulsive ardour gives the charge,Since frost itself as actively doth burnAnd reason panders will.

O Hamlet, speak no more:Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul;And there I see such black and grained spotsAs will not leave their tinct.

Nay, but to liveIn the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making loveOver the nasty sty—

O, speak to me no more;These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;No more, sweet Hamlet!

A murderer and a villain;A slave that is not twentieth part the titheOf 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!

Do you not come your tardy son to chide,That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go byThe important acting of your dread command?O, say!

Do not forget: this visitationIs 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.

Alas, how is’t with you,That you do bend your eye on vacancyAnd 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,Start up, and stand an end. O gentle son,Upon the heat and flame of thy distemperSprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

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 convertMy stern effects: then what I have to doWill want true colour; tears perchance for blood.

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.

This the very coinage of your brain:This bodiless creation ecstasyIs very cunning in.

Ecstasy!My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,And makes as healthful music: it is not madnessThat I have utter’d: bring me to the test,And I the matter will re-word; which madnessWould gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,Lay not that flattering 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 timesVirtue itself of vice must pardon beg,Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

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 goodHe likewise gives a frock or livery,That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,And that shall lend a kind of easinessTo the next abstinence: the next more easy;For use almost can change the stamp of nature,And either master¹ the devil, or throw him outWith 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 wellThe 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.

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.

Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,And breath of life, I have no life to breatheWhat thou hast said to me.

Alack,I had forgot: ’tis so concluded on.

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 enginerHoist with his own petar: and’t shall go hardBut 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 counsellorIs 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.