The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare/Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, The (1990)(Animated Pixels)[!][CDTV-PC].iso/shakes/text/34/03_01

Text File | 1991-04-10 | 9KB | 252 lines

A Room in the Castle.
 Enter KING, QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.

King    And can you by no drift of circumstance
    Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
    Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
    With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

Rosencrantz    He does confess he feels himself distracted,
    But from what cause a' will by no means speak.

Guildenstern    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?

Rosencrantz    Most like a gentleman.

Guildenstern    But with much forcing of his disposition.

Rosencrantz    Niggard of question, but of our demands
    Most free in his reply.

Queen                                    Did you assay him
    To any pastime?

Rosencrantz    Madam, it so fell out that certain players
    We o'erraught on the way; of these we told him,
    And there did seem in him a kind of joy
    To hear of it. They are here about the court,
    And, as I think, they have already order
    This night to play before him.

Polonius                                        'Tis most true,
    And he beseeched me to entreat your majesties
    To hear and see the matter.

King    With all my heart; and it doth much content me
    To hear him so inclined.
    Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
    And drive his purpose into these delights.

Rosencrantz    We shall, my lord.
                           [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

King                            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 behaved,
    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.

Ophelia                                Madam, I wish it may.
                                                [Exit QUEEN.
Polonius    Ophelia, walk you here. - Gracious, so please you,
    We will bestow ourselves. - Read on this book,
    That show of such an exercise may colour
    Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this:
    'Tis too much proved that with devotion's visage
    And pious action we do sugar o'er
    The devil himself.

King    [Aside.]                O, 'tis too true!
    How smart a lash that speech doth 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.
    O heavy burden!

Polonius    I hear him coming. Let's withdraw, my lord.
                                                [Exeunt KING and POLONIUS.

                              Enter HAMLET.

Hamlet    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 - to sleep,
    No more; and by a sleep to say we end
    The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
    That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
    Devoutly to be wished. 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
    Must give us pause. There's the respect
    That makes calamity of so long life,
    For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
    Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
    The pangs of disprized 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 these fardels bear,
    To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
    But that the dread of something after death,
    The undiscovered 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. Soft you now,
    The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
    Be all my sins remembered.

Ophelia                                        Good my lord,
    How does your honour for this many a day?

Hamlet    I humbly thank you, well, well, well.

Ophelia    My lord, I have remembrances of yours
    That I have longd long to re-deliver;
    I pray you now receive them.

Hamlet                                        No, not I;
    I never gave you aught.

Ophelia    My honoured lord, you know right well you did,
    And with them words of so sweet breath composed
    As made these 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.

Hamlet    Ha, ha! Are you honest?

Ophelia    My lord?

Hamlet    Are you fair?

Ophelia    What means your lordship?

Hamlet    That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit
    no discourse to your beauty.

Ophelia    Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with
    honesty?

Hamlet    Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform
    honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty
    can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a
    paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you
    once.

Ophelia    Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

Hamlet    You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so
    inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved
    you not.

Ophelia    I was the more deceived.

Hamlet    Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of
    sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could
    accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had
    not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with
    more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them
    in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.
    What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven
    and earth? We are arrant knaves, all. Believe none of us.
    Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father?

Ophelia    At home, my lord.

Hamlet    Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool
    nowhere but in's own house. Farewell.

Ophelia    O, help him, you sweet heavens!

Hamlet    If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy
    dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou
    shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go,
    farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for
    wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them.
    To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell.

Ophelia    O heavenly powers, restore him!

Hamlet    I have heard of your paintings, too, well enough. God hath
    given you one face and you make yourselves another. You
    jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God's creatures,
    and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no
    more on't; it hath made me mad. I say we will have no more
    marriage. Those that are married already - all but one -
    shall live, the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery,
    go.
                                                [Exit.
Ophelia    O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
    The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword,
    Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state,
    The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
    Th' observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
    And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
    That sucked the honey of his music vows,
    Now see that noble and most sovereign reason
    Like sweet bells jangled out of time, and harsh,
    That unmatched form and feature of blown youth
    Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me,
    T' have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

                       Re-enter KING and POLONIUS.

King    Love! His affections do not that way tend,
    Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little,
    Was not like madness. There's something in his soul
    O'er which his melancholy sits on brood,
    And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
    Will be some danger; which for to prevent
    I have in quick determination
    Thus set it down: - he shall with speed to England
    For the demand of our neglected tribute.
    Haply the seas and countries different,
    With variable objects, shall expel
    This something-settled matter in his heart,
    Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
    From fashion of himself. What think you on't?

Polonius    It shall do well. But yet do I believe
    The origin and commencement of his grief
    Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia?
    You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said,
    We heard it all. My lord, do as you please;
    But if you hold it fit, after the play
    Let his queen mother all alone entreat him
    To show his grief. Let her be round with him,
    And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear
    Of all their conference. If she find him not,
    To England send him, or confine him where
    Your wisdom best shall think.

King                                        It shall be so:
    Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.
                                                [Exeunt.