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by William Shakespeare
[Enter Queen, Horatio and a Gentleman.]
QUEEN.
I will not speak with her.
GENTLEMAN.
She is importunate, indeed distract.
Her mood will needs be pitied.
QUEEN.
What would she have?
GENTLEMAN.
She speaks much of her father; says she hears
Thereās tricks iā thā world, and hems, and beats her heart,
Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt,
That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,
Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures yield them,
Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
āTwere good she were spoken with, for she may strew
Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
QUEEN.
Let her come in.
[Exit Gentleman.]
To my sick soul, as sinās true nature is,
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
[Enter Ophelia.]
OPHELIA.
Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?
QUEEN.
How now, Ophelia?
OPHELIA.
[Sings.]
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle bat and staff
And his sandal shoon.
QUEEN.
Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
OPHELIA.
Say you? Nay, pray you mark.
[Sings.]
He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone,
At his head a grass green turf,
At his heels a stone.
QUEEN.
Nay, but Opheliaā
OPHELIA.
Pray you mark.
[Sings.]
White his shroud as the mountain snow.
[Enter King.]
QUEEN.
Alas, look here, my lord!
OPHELIA.
[Sings.]
Larded all with sweet flowers;
Which bewept to the grave did go
With true-love showers.
KING.
How do you, pretty lady?
OPHELIA.
Well, God dild you! They say the owl was a bakerās daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!
KING.
Conceit upon her father.
OPHELIA.
Pray you, letās have no words of this; but when they ask you what it means, say you this:
[Sings.]
Tomorrow is Saint Valentineās day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose and donnād his clothes,
And duppād the chamber door,
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.
KING.
Pretty Ophelia!
OPHELIA.
Indeed, la, without an oath, Iāll make an end onāt.
[Sings.]
By Gis and by Saint Charity,
Alack, and fie for shame!
Young men will doāt if they come toāt;
By Cock, they are to blame.
Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
You promisād me to wed.
So would I haā done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.
KING.
How long hath she been thus?
OPHELIA.
I hope all will be well. We must be patient. But I cannot choose but weep, to think they would lay him iā thā cold ground. My brother shall know of it. And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.
[Exit.]
KING.
Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.
[Exit Horatio.]
O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
All from her fatherās death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions. First, her father slain;
Next, your son gone; and he most violent author
Of his own just remove; the people muddied,
Thick and and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers
For good Poloniusā death; and we have done but greenly
In hugger-mugger to inter him. Poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts.
Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France,
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his fatherās death,
Wherein necessity, of matter beggarād,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murdering piece, in many places
Gives me superfluous death.
[A noise within.]
QUEEN.
Alack, what noise is this?
KING.
Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.
[Enter a Gentleman.]
What is the matter?
GENTLEMAN.
Save yourself, my lord.
The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
Oāerbears your offices. The rabble call him lord,
And, as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props of every word,
They cry āChoose we! Laertes shall be king!ā
Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,
āLaertes shall be king, Laertes king.ā
QUEEN.
How cheerfully on the false trail they cry.
O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs.
[A noise within.]
KING.
The doors are broke.
[Enter Laertes, armed; Danes following.]
LAERTES.
Where is this king?āSirs, stand you all without.
DANES.
No, letās come in.
LAERTES.
I pray you, give me leave.
DANES.
We will, we will.
[They retire without the door.]
LAERTES.
I thank you. Keep the door. O thou vile king,
Give me my father.
QUEEN.
Calmly, good Laertes.
LAERTES.
That drop of blood thatās calm proclaims me bastard;
Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
Even here between the chaste unsmirched brow
Of my true mother.
KING.
What is the cause, Laertes,
That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?ā
Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.
Thereās such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.āTell me, Laertes,
Why thou art thus incensād.āLet him go, Gertrude:ā
Speak, man.
LAERTES.
Where is my father?
KING.
Dead.
QUEEN.
But not by him.
KING.
Let him demand his fill.
LAERTES.
How came he dead? Iāll not be juggled with.
To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds, I give to negligence,
Let come what comes; only Iāll be revengād
Most throughly for my father.
KING.
Who shall stay you?
LAERTES.
My will, not all the world.
And for my means, Iāll husband them so well,
They shall go far with little.
KING.
Good Laertes,
If you desire to know the certainty
Of your dear fatherās death, isāt writ in your revenge
That, sweepstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
Winner and loser?
LAERTES.
None but his enemies.
KING.
Will you know them then?
LAERTES.
To his good friends thus wide Iāll ope my arms;
And, like the kind life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood.
KING.
Why, now you speak
Like a good child and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your fatherās death,
And am most sensibly in grief for it,
It shall as level to your judgment āpear
As day does to your eye.
DANES.
[Within.] Let her come in.
LAERTES.
How now! What noise is that?
[Re-enter Ophelia, fantastically dressed with straws and flowers.] =
O heat, dry up my brains. Tears seven times salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye.
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
O heavens, isāt possible a young maidās wits
Should be as mortal as an old manās life?
Nature is fine in love, and where ātis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.
OPHELIA.
[Sings.]
They bore him barefacād on the bier,
Hey no nonny, nonny, hey nonny
And on his grave rainād many a tear.ā
Fare you well, my dove!
LAERTES.
Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move thus.
OPHELIA.
You must sing āDown a-down, and you call him a-down-a.ā O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward that stole his masterās daughter.
LAERTES.
This nothingās more than matter.
OPHELIA.
Thereās rosemary, thatās for remembrance; pray love, remember. And there is pansies, thatās for thoughts.
LAERTES.
A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.
OPHELIA.
Thereās fennel for you, and columbines. Thereās rue for you; and hereās some for me. We may call it herb of grace oā Sundays. O you must wear your rue with a difference. Thereās a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they witherād all when my father died. They say he made a good end.
[Sings.]
For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.
LAERTES.
Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself
She turns to favour and to prettiness.
OPHELIA.
[Sings.]
And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
No, no, he is dead,
Go to thy death-bed,
He never will come again.
His beard was as white as snow,
All flaxen was his poll.
He is gone, he is gone,
And we cast away moan.
God haā mercy on his soul.
And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God bā wiā ye.
[Exit.]
LAERTES.
Do you see this, O God?
KING.
Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
And they shall hear and judge ātwixt you and me.
If by direct or by collateral hand
They find us touchād, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours
To you in satisfaction; but if not,
Be you content to lend your patience to us,
And we shall jointly labour with your soul
To give it due content.
LAERTES.
Let this be so;
His means of death, his obscure burial,ā
No trophy, sword, nor hatchment oāer his bones,
No noble rite, nor formal ostentation,ā
Cry to be heard, as ātwere from heaven to earth,
That I must callāt in question.
KING.
So you shall.
And where thāoffence is let the great axe fall.
I pray you go with me.
[Exeunt.]