THE CLOSET SCENE FROM HAMLET.

Enter QUEEN and POLONIUS.

Pol. 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 has screen'd and stood between Much heat and him. I'll 'sconce me e'en here.

Pray you, be round with him.

Queen.

Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.

I'll warrant you;

(POLONIUS hides himself.)

Enter HAMLET.

Ham. Now, mother; what's the matter?

Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. Ham. Mother, you have my father much offended. Queen. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. Ham. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue. Queen. Why, how now, Hamlet?

Ham.

Queen. Have you forgot me?
Ham.

You are the queen, your husband's

What's the matter now?

No, by the rood, not so: brother's wife;

And, would it were not so! you are my mother. Queen. Nay, then I'll set those to you that can speak. Ham. 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. What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?

Help, help, ho!

Pol. (Behind.) What, ho! help, help, help!

Ham.

Dead, for a ducat, dead.

How now! a rat? (Draws.)

(HAMLET makes a pass through the arras.)

Pol. (Behind.) Oh, I am slain.

Queen. O me! what hast thou done?

(Falls and dies.)

Ham.

Is it the king?

Nay, I know not:

(Lifts up the arras, and draws forth POLONIUS.) Queen. Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this! Ham. A bloody deed; almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

Queen. As kill a king!
Ham.

-

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.

(To the QUEEN.)

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 hath not brazed it so,

That it be proof and bulwark against sense.

Queen. What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me?

Ham.
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: Oh, 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.

Ah me, what act,

That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

Ham. Look here, upon this picture, and on thi;

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 apoplexed: 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 ardor gives the charge;
Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
And reason panders will.

Queen. O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grainèd spots
As will not leave their tinct.

Ham. Nay, but to live stewed in corruption.
Queen. Oh, speak to me no more;

These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet.

Ham. A murderer, and a villain:

A slave, that is not twentieth part the tythe
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. No more.

Ham. 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. Alas! he's mad.

Ham. 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?
Oh, say!

Ghost. Do not forget. This visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look! amazement on thy mother sits:
Oh, step between her and her fighting soul;
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.

Ham. How is it with you, lady?
Queen. Alas, how is't with you?

That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with th' incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in th' alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements
Starts up and stands on end. Oh, gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

Ham. 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 color; tears, perchance, for blood.
Queen. To whom do you speak this?
Ham. Do you see nothing there?

Queen. Nothing at all; yet all, that is, I see.
Ham. Nor did you nothing hear?

Queen. No, nothing, but ourselves.

Ham. 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. This is the very coinage of your brain: This bodiless creation ecstasy

Is very cunning in.

Ham. 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 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 times,

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg;

Yea, curb and woe, for leave to do him good.

Queen O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.