- ACT 3, SCENE 4: The Queen's closet.
- Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE and POLONIUS.
- POLONIUS: 'A 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 screened and stood between
- Much heat and him. I'll silence me even here;
- Pray you be round with him. [5]
- HAMLET: Within Mother, Mother, Mother!
- QUEEN: I'll warrant you, fear me not. Withdraw,
- I hear him coming. [Polonius hides behind the arras.]
- Enter HAMLET.
- HAMLET: Now, mother, what's the matter?
- QUEEN: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. [10]
- HAMLET: Mother, you have my father much offended.
- QUEEN: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
- HAMLET: Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
- QUEEN: Why, how now, Hamlet?
- HAMLET: What's the matter now?
- QUEEN: Have you forgot me? [15]
- HAMLET: 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.
- QUEEN: Nay, then I'll set those to you that can speak.
- HAMLET: Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge;
- You go not till I set you up a glass [20]
- Where you may see the inmost part of you.
- QUEEN: What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
- Help ho!
- POLONIUS: Behind. What ho, help!
- HAMLET: Drawing. How now? A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead! [25]
- Kills Polonius [through the arras.]
- POLONIUS: Behind. O, I am slain.
- QUEEN: O me, what hast thou done?
- HAMLET: Nay, I know not, is it the King?
- QUEEN: O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
- HAMLET: A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
- As kill a king, and marry with his brother. [30]
- QUEEN: As kill a king!
- HAMLET: Ay, lady, it was my word.
- [Parts the arras and sees 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, [35]
- And let me wring your heart, for so I shall
- If it be made of penetrable stuff,
- If damned custom have not brassed it so
- That it be proof and bulwark against sense.
- QUEEN: What have I done, that thou dar'st wag thy tongue [40]
- In noise so rude against me?
- HAMLET: 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 [45]
- As false as dicers' oaths, O, such a deed
- As from the body of contraction plucks
- The very soul, and sweet religion makes
- A rhapsody of words. Heaven's face does glow
- O'er this solidity and compound mass [50]
- With heated visage, as against the doom;
- Is thought-sick at the act.
- QUEEN: Ay me, what act,
- That roars so loud and thunders in the index?
- HAMLET: Look here upon this picture, and on this,
- The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. [55]
- 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; [60]
- 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 mildewed ear, [65]
- 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 heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble, [70]
- 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 thralled [75]
- But it reserved some quantity of choice
- To serve in such a difference. What devil was't
- That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?
- Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
- Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all; [80]
- 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 [85]
- And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame
- When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
- Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
- And reason panders will.
- QUEEN: O Hamlet, speak no more!
- Thou turn'st my eyes into my very soul, [90]
- And there I see such black and grained spots
- As will not leave their tinct.
- HAMLET: Nay, but to live
- In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
- Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
- Over the nasty sty! [95]
- QUEEN: O, speak to me no more!
- These words like daggers enter in my ears.
- No more, sweet Hamlet!
- HAMLET: A murderer and a villain!
- A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
- Of your precedent lord, a Vice of kings,
- A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, [100]
- That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
- And put it in his pocket --
- QUEEN: No more!
- Enter GHOST in his night-gown.
- HAMLET: A king of shreds and patches --
- Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
- You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure? [105]
- QUEEN: Alas, he's mad!
- HAMLET: Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
- That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
- Th' important acting of your dread command?
- O, say! [110]
- GHOST: Do not forget! This visitation
- Is 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, [115]
- Speak to her, Hamlet.
- HAMLET: 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, [120]
- And as the sleeping soldiers in th' alarm,
- Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
- Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,
- Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
- Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? [125]
- HAMLET: On him, on him! look you how pale he glares!
- His form and cause conjoined, 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 [130]
- Will want true colour -- tears perchance for blood.
- QUEEN: To whom do you speak this?
- HAMLET: Do you see nothing there?
- QUEEN: Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.
- HAMLET: Nor did you nothing hear?
- QUEEN: No, nothing but ourselves.
- HAMLET: Why, look you there, look how it steals away! [135]
- 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. [140]
- HAMLET: Ecstasy?
- My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,
- And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
- That I have uttered. Bring me to the test,
- And I the matter will reword, which madness
- Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, [145]
- 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,
- Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
- Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven, [150]
- 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, [155]
- Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
- QUEEN: O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
- HAMLET: O, throw away the worser part of it,
- And live the purer with the other half.
- Good night, but go not to my uncle's bed -- [160]
- 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 good
- He likewise gives a frock or livery [165]
- That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
- And that shall lend a kind of easiness
- To the next abstinence, the next more easy;
- For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
- And either [ . . . ] the devil or throw him out [170]
- With wondrous potency. Once more good night,
- And when you are desirous to be blest,
- I'll blessing beg of you. --For this same lord,
- I do repent; but heaven hath pleased it so
- To punish me with this, and this with me, [175]
- That I must be their scourge and minister.
- I will bestow him, and will answer well
- The death I gave him. So again good night.
- I must be cruel only to be kind.
- This bad begins and worse remains behind. [180]
- One word more, good lady.
- QUEEN: What shall I do?
- HAMLET: 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, [185]
- Or paddling in your neck with his damned 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, [190]
- 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, [195]
- To try conclusions in the basket creep,
- And break your own neck down.
- QUEEN: Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,
- And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
- What thou hast said to me. [200]
- HAMLET: I must to England, you know that?
- QUEEN: Alack,
- I had forgot. 'Tis so concluded on.
- HAMLET: There's letters sealed, and my two schoolfellows,
- Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged,
- They bear the mandate, they must sweep my way [205]
- And marshal me to knavery. Let it work,
- For 'tis the sport to have the enginer
- Hoist with his own petar, an't shall go hard
- But I will delve one yard below their mines,
- And blow them at the moon. O, 'tis most sweet [210]
- 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 counsellor
- Is now most still, most secret, and most grave, [215]
- Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
- Come, sir to draw toward an end with you.
- Good night, mother.
- [Exeunt severally,] Hamlet tugging in Polonius.