Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath,
No nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes, shows of
grief,
[seem,
That can denote me truly these, indeed,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within, which passeth show;
These, but the trapping and the suits of woe.

Immoderate Grief discommended.

"Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,

Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married: O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets '
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.

A complete Man.

He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.

Cautions to young Ladies.

For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor,
Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood;
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute,

Then weigh what loss your honor may sustain,
If with too credent ear you list his songs;
Or lose your heart; or your chaste treasure
open

To his unmaster'd importunity.

To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father; No more.
That father lost, lost his; and the survivor
In filial obligation, for some term [bound,
To do obsequious sorrow. But to persevere
In obstinate condolement, is a course
Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief:
It shows a will most incorrect to Heaven;
A heart unfortified, or mind impatient;
An understanding simple and unschool'd;
For what we know, must be, and is as com-
As any the most vulgar thing to sense, [mon
Why should we, in our peevish opposition,
Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to Heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd; whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried
From the first corse till he that died to-day,
This must be so.

[God!

O

Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister;
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon :
Virtue herself 'scapes not calumnious strokes :
The canker galls the infants of the spring
Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd:
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.

A Satire on ungracious Pastors.

I shall th' effects of this good lesson keep
As watchmen to my heart: but, good my bro-
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, [ther,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whilst, like a puft and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own read.

Hamlet's Soliloquy on his Mother's Marriage.
O that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on 't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in
[this!
Possess it merely. That it should come to Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
But two months dead! nay, not so much, not Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
So excellent a king; that was, to this, [two. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother, Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
That he might not let e'en the winds of heaven! But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Be-
Must I remember ?-why, she would hang on

nature

A Father's Advice to his Son going to travel.
Give thy thoughts no tongue,

ware

As if increase of appetite had grown [him, Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, By what it fed on: and yet within a month-Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee. Let me not think on 't-frailty, thy name is Give ev'ry man thine ear, but few thy voice: woman! Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

A little month;-or ere those shoes were old, With which she follow'd my poor father's body,

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; Like Niobe, all tears ;-why she, even she— For the apparel oft proclaims the man. O Heaven! a beast that wants discourse of Neither a borrower nor a lender be: reason, [mine uncle, For loan oft loses both itself and friend; Would have mourn'd longer-married with And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. My father's brother; but no more like my fa- This above all, to thine own self be true; Than I to Hercules: within a month, [ther, And it must follow, as the night the day, Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Ghost.

Hamlet on the Appearance of his Father's To ears of flesh and blood: list, list, O list. If thou didst ever thy dear father loveHam. O Heaven! [murder. Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural Ham. Murder? [is;

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts
from hell,

Be thy intents wicked, or charitable,
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape,
That I will speak to thee; I'll call thee
Hamlet,

King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me :
Let me not burst in ignorance! but tell,
Why the canoniz'd bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements? why the sepulchre
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
Hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again? What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete
steel,

Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature,
So horribly to shake our disposition [souls?
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our

The Mischief it might tempt him to.
What if it tempt you towards the flood, my
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff, [lord,
That beetles o'er his base into the sea;
And there assume some other horrible form,

Which might deprive your sovereignty of

reason,

And draw you into madness? Think of it:
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into ev'ry brain,
That looks so many fathoms to the sea,
And hears it roar beneath.

Enter Ghost and Hamlet.

Ghost. Murder most foul, as in the best it
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
Ham. Haste me to know it; that I, with
wings as swift

As meditation, or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.

Ghost. I find thee apt;

And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed

That roots itself in ease on Lethe's wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this? Now, Hamlet,
hear:

"Tis given out, that, sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Den-
Is by a forged process of my death [mark
Rankly abus'd; but know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father's life,
Now wears his crown.

Ham. O my prophetic soul! my uncle?
Ghost. Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate

beast,

[gifts,
With witchcraft of his wit, with trait'rous
(O wicked wits and gifts, that have the pow'r
So to seduce!) won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen :
O Hamlet, what a falling off was there!
From me, whose love was of that dignity,
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage; and to decline
Upon a wretch, whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine

But virtue, as it never will be mov'd,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven:
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,

Ham. Whither wilt thou lead me? speak, Will sate itself in a celestial bed,

I'll go no further.

And prey on garbage.

But, soft! methinks, I scent the morning air ;-
Brief let me be Sleeping within mine or-
My custom always of the afternoon,

When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,

Must render up myself.

Ham. Alas, poor ghost!

Ghost. Pity me not, but lend thy serious To what I shall unfold.

[chard,

With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of mine ears did pour
The leperous distilment; whose effect
[hearing Holds such an enmity with blood of man,
That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body;
And, with a sudden vigor, it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it
mine;

Ham. Speak, I am bound to hear.
Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou
Ham. What?
[shalt hear.
Ghost. I am thy father's spirit;
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And, for the day, confin'd to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature And a most instant tetter bark'd about,
Are burnt and purg'd away. But that I am Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
To tell the secrets of my prison-house, [forbid All my smooth body.

blood;

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand,
Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young
[spheres;
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine:
But this eternal blazon must not be

Of life, of crown, of queen, at once despatch di
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin.
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd;
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head:

Ham. O horrible! O horrible! most hor

rible!

Ghost. If thou hast nature in thee, bear it | Hamlet's Reflections on the Player and him

Let not the royal bed of Denmark be [not;
A couch for luxury and damned incest.
But howsoever thou pursuest this act,

Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught; leave her to Hea-Could force his soul so to his own conceit,

Hypocrisy.

We are to blame in this- [visage
"Tis too much prov'd-that, with devotion's
And pious action, we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.

King. O, 'tis too true! how smart
A lash that speech does 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.

Life and Death weighed.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer
The stings 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

As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing; A man, that fortune's buffets and rewards Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those, [mingled, Whose blood and judgment are so well comThat they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger To sound what stop she please: Give me the That flesh is heir to;-'tis a consummation [him Devoutly to be wish'd. To die ;-to sleep; That is not passion's slave, and I will wear To sleep! perchance to dream ;-ay, there 's In my heart's core-ay, in my heart of heart, [come, As I do thee.

the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause there's the respect,
That makes calamity of so long life; [time,
For who would bear the whips and scorns of
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's con-
tumely,

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

man

O heart, lose not thy nature: let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom :
Let me be cruel, not unnatural :

let's Reflections on him.

To grunt and sweat under a weary life; [bear, I will speak daggers to her, but use none.
But that the dread of something after death-The King's despairing Soliloquy, and Ham-
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 pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

A noble Mind disordered.

O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword:

The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
Th' observ'd of all observers! quite, quite
down!

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heav'n;
It hath the primal, eldest curse upon 't,
A brother's murder! Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will;
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood?
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves
But to confront the visage of offence? [mercy,
And what 's in prayer, but this twofold force;
To be forestalled, ere we come to fall,
Or pardon'd, being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past. But O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul
murder!

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music-vows, That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Of those effects for which I did the murder,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
harsh;
[youth, May one be pardon'd, and retain th' offence ?
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown In the corrupted currents of this world,
Blasted with ecstasy.
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice:

Ham. Now might I do it, pat, now he is That, laps'd in time and passion, lets go by And now I'll do 't; and so he goes to heav'n: Th' important acting of your dread command? And so am I reveng'd? that would be scann'd: O, say