The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare/Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, The (1990)(Animated Pixels)[!][CDTV-PC].iso/shakes/text/34/03_04

Text File | 1991-04-10 | 11KB | 307 lines

The Queen's closet.
 Enter QUEEN 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 e'en here.
    Pray you, be round with him.

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.

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?

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
    Where you may see the inmost part of you.

Queen    What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
    Help, help, ho!

Polonius    [Behind the arras.] What, ho! Help, help, help!

Hamlet    [Drawing.] How now, aA rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!
                         [Thrusting his sword through the arras.

Polonius    [Behind the arras.]
    O, I am slain!
                                                [Dies.
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.

Queen    As kill a king?

Hamlet                    Ay, lady, 'twas my word.
                     [Lifts up the arras and discovers 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.
    [To QUEEN.]
    Leave wringing of your hands. Peace! Sit you down;
    And let me wring your heart, for so I shall
    If it be made of penetrable stuff;
    If damnd custom have not brazed it so
    That it be proof and bulwark against sense.

Queen    What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue
    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
    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 doth glow
    O'er this solidity and compound mass
    With tristful 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.
    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;
    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
    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,
    And waits upon the judgement; and what judgement
    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
    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,
    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
    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 mine eyes into my very soul,
    And there I see such black and graind spots
    As will not leave their tinct.

Hamlet                                        Nay, but to live
    In the rank sweat of an enseamd bed,
    Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
    Over the nasty sty-

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,
    That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
    And put it in his pocket-

Queen    No more!

Hamlet    A king of shreds and patches-

                               Enter GHOST.

    Save me and hover o'er me with your wings,
    You heavenly guards!
                [To GHOST.] What would your gracious figure?

Queen    Alas, he's mad!

Hamlet    [To GHOST.] 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!

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.
    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,
    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?

Hamlet    On him, on him. Look you how pale he glares.
    His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,
    Would make them capable. [To GHOST.] Do not look upon me,
    Lest with this piteous action you convert
    My stern effects; then what I have to do
    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.
    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.

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 re-word, which madness
    Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
    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,
    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,
    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.
    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
    That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,
    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 house the devil, or throw him out
    With wondrous potency. Once more, good night.
    And when you are desirous to be blest,
    I'll blessing beg of you.
        [Pointing to POLONIUS.] For this same lord
    I do repent; but heaven hath pleased it so
    To punish me with this, and this with me,
    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.
    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
    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,
    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,
    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.

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
    And marshal me to knavery. Let it work,
    For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
    Hoist with his own petard; and't shall go hard
    But I will delve one yard below their mines
    And blow them at the moon. O, 'tis most sweet
    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,
    Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
    Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
    Good night, mother.
                                 [Exit HAMLET with the dead body.
                                                The QUEEN remains.