The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare/Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, The (1990)(Animated Pixels)[!][CDTV-PC].iso/shakes/text/34/04_05

Text File | 1991-04-10 | 10KB | 326 lines

Elsinore. A Room in the Castle.
 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
    There's tricks i'th' 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 unshapd 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.

Horatio    'Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew
    Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.

Queen    Let her come in.
                                                [Exit GENTLEMAN.
    [Aside.] To my sick soul, as sin's 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, distracted, with a lute.

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 hat 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.

    O ho!

Queen    Nay, but Ophelia-

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 not go
                With true-love showers.

King    How do you, pretty lady?

Ophelia    Well, God-dild you! They say the owl was a baker's
    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, let's have no words of this, but when they ask you
    what it means, say you this:

    [Sings.]    Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day,
                All in the morning betime,
            And I a maid at your window,
                To be your Valentine.

            Then up he rose, and donned his clothes,
                And dupped the chamber-door;
            Let in the maid, that out a maid
                Never departed more.

King    Pretty Ophelia!

Ophelia    Indeed la; without an oath, I'll make an end on't:

    [Sings.]    By Gis and by Saint Charity,
                Alack, and fie for shame!
            Young men will do't, if they come to't,
                By Cock, they are to blame.

            Quoth she 'Before you tumbled me,
                You promised me to wed.'
    He answers,
            'So would I ha' 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 i'th' 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 father's death, and now behold!
    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 unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers
    For good Polonius' death; and we have done but greenly
    In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia
    Divided from herself and her fair judgement,
    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 this wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
    And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
    With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
    Wherein necessity, of matter beggared,
    Will nothing stick our person to arraign
    In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
    Like to a murd'ring-piece, in many places
    Gives me superfluous death.
                                                [A noise within.
Queen                                    Alack, what noise is this?

King    Attend! Where is my Switzers? Let them guard the door.

                            Enter A MESSENGER.

    What is the matter?

Messenger                            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
    O'erbears your officers. 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 'Choose we! Laertes shall be king!'
    Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,
    'Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!'

Queen    How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
                                                [Noise within.
    O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!

King    The doors are broke.

                  Enter LAERTES, armed; DANES following.

Laertes    Where is the king? Sirs, stand you all without.

Danes    No, let's come in.

Laertes    I pray you, give me leave.

Danes    We will, we will.

Laertes    I thank you. Keep the door.
                                                [Exeunt DANES.
                                O thou vile king,
    Give me my father.

Queen    [Holding LAERTES.]    Calmly, good Laertes.

Laertes    That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,
    Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
    Even here, between the chaste unsmirchd brow
    Of my true mother.

King                        What is the cause, Laertes,
    That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?
    Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person.
    There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
    That treason can but peep to what it would,
    Acts little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,
    Why thou art thus incensed. Let him go, Gertrude.
    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? - I'll 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 I'll be revenged
    Most throughly for my father.

King    Who shall stay you?

Laertes    My will, not all the world's.
    And for my means, I'll husband them so well
    They shall go far with little.

King                                        Good Laertes,
    If you desire to know the certainty
    Of your dear father's death, is't 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 I'll ope my arms,
    And, like the kind life-rend'ring 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 father's death,
    And am most sensibly in grief for it,
    It shall as level to your judgement pierce
    As day does to your eye.

Danes    [Within.] Let her come in.

Laertes    How now! What noise is that?

                            Re-enter OPHELIA.

    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 with weight
    Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May,
    Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
    O heavens, is't possible a young maid's wits
    Should be as mortal as an old man's life?
    Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine
    It sends some precious instance of itself
    After the thing it loves.

Ophelia    [Sings.]    They bore him barefaced on the bier;
                Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
            And in his grave rained many a tear-

    Fare you well, my dove.

Laertes    Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge,
    It could not move thus.

Ophelia    You must sing 'A-down a-down', and you 'Call him a-down-a'.
    O how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward that
    stole his master's daughter.

Laertes    This nothing's more than matter.

Ophelia    There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love,
    remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts.

Laertes    A document in madness - thoughts and remembrance fitted.

Ophelia    There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for
    you; and here's some for me. We may call it herb of grace a
    Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference.
    There's a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they
    withered all when my father died. They say a' 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 a' not come again?
            And will a' 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 ha' mercy on his soul!

    And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God-buy-you.
                                                [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 'twixt you and me.
    If by direct or by collateral hand
    They find us touched, 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 funeral-
    No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
    No noble rite, nor formal ostentation-
    Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
    That I must call't in question.

King                                        So you shall;
    And where th' offence is, let the great axe fall.
    I pray you go with me.
                                                [Exeunt.