ACT III.

SCENE 1. A Room in the Castle.

Enter the King, the Queen, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.

King. And 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 he 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'er-raught on the way:2 of these we told him ; And there did seem in him a kind of joy To hear of it. They are about the court; 3

Bat, that those phantasms appear often, and do frequent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and churches, it is because those are the dormitories of the dead, where the devil, like an insolent champion, beholds with pride the spoils and trophies of his victory in Adam."

So the quartos; the folio, circumstance.
Oer-raught is overtook.

Thus the folio; the quartos. "They are here."

H.

H.

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

Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
And drive his purpose on to these delights.
Ros. We shall, my lord.

King.

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
Sweet Gertrude, leave us too:

For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither;
That he, as 'twere by accident, may here
Affront Ophelia :*

Her father and myself, lawful espials,"

Will 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: so shall I hope your virtues Will bring him to his wonted way again,

To both your honours.

Oph.

Madam, I wish it may.

[Exit Queen.

That is, meet her, encounter her; affrontare, Ital. See The Winter's Tale, Act v. sc. 1, note 5.

5 That is, lawful spies. "An espiall in warres, a scoutwatche a beholder, a viewer." - BARET. The two words are found only in the folio.

That show of such an exercise may colour
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.

O, 'tis too true!

[Aside.] How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!

The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art.
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it,
Than is my deed to my most painted word:
O, heavy burden!

Pol. I hear him coming: let's 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, sleep,

- to

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,

That is, the tumult and bustle of this life. It is remarkable

Must give us pause.
That makes calamity of so long life:

There's the respect'

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,o
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love," the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who'd these 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,

that under garbuglio, which has the same meaning in Italian as our coil, Florio has "a pecke of troubles;" of which Shakespeare's "sea of troubles" is only an aggrandized idea.

7 That is, the consideration. This is Shakespeare's most usual sense of the word.

8 Time, for the time, is a very usual expression with our old writers. In Cardanus Comfort, by Thomas Bedingfield, 1599, is a description of the miseries of life strongly resembling that in the text: " Hunger, thirste, sleape, not plentiful or quiet as deade men hav heate in somer, colde in winter, disorder of tyme, terroure of warres, controlment of parents, cares of wedlocke, studye for children, slouthe of servaunts, contention of sutes, and that which is most of all, the condycyon of tyme wherein honestye is disdayned as folye, and crafte is honoured as wisdome."

9 Thus the folio; the quartos have despis'd instead of dispriz'd.

H.

10 The allusion is to the term quietus est, used in settling accounts at exchequer audits. Thus in Sir Thomas Overbury's character of a Franklin: “ Lastly, to end him, he cares not when his end comes; he needs not feare his audit, for his quietus is in heaven." Bodkin was the ancient term for a small dagger.

And enterprises of great pith 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 remember'd.12

Good my lord,

13

Oph. How does your honour 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 re-deliver;

I pray you, now receive them.

Ham.

I never gave you aught.

No, not I;

Oph. My honour'd lord, I know right well you did; 14

And, with them, words of so sweet breath compos'd
As made the 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? 15

11 The quartos have pitch instead of pith. The folio misprints away for awry, in the next line. In the third line before, the words, "of us all," are from the folio.

H.

12 This is a touch of nature. Hamlet, at the sight of Ophelia, does not immediately recollect that he is to personate madness, but makes an address grave and solemn, such as the foregoing meditation excited in his thoughts. - JOHNSON.

13 Thus the folio; the quartos have well but once. The repetition seems very apt and forcible, as suggesting the opposite of what the word means.

H.

14 The quartos have "you know" instead of "I know." We scarce know which to prefer; but, on the whole, the folio reading seems to have more of delicacy, and at least equal feeling.

H.

16 Here it is evident that the penetrating Hamlet perceives, from