_Bleach_ is radically the same word as _blench_:--to bleach, to blanch,
to blench--_to grow white_.]
[Footnote 4: Emphasis on _May_, as resuming previous doubtful thought
and suspicion.]
[Footnote 5: --caused from the first by his mother's behaviour, not
constitutional.]
[Footnote 6: --'such conditions of the spirits'.]
[Footnote 7: Here is one element in the very existence of the preceding
act: doubt as to the facts of the case has been throughout operating to
restrain him; and here first he reveals, perhaps first recognizes its
influence. Subject to change of feeling with the wavering of conviction,
he now for a moment regards his uncertainty as involving unnatural
distrust of a being in whose presence he cannot help _feeling_ him his
father. He was familiar with the lore of the supernatural, and knew the
doubt he expresses to be not without support.--His companions as well
had all been in suspense as to the identity of the apparition with the
late king.]
[Page 116]
_Enter King, Queene, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosincrance,
Guildenstern, and Lords._[1] [Sidenote: Guyldensterne, Lords.]
[Sidenote: 72] _King._ And can you by no drift of circumstance
[Sidenote: An can | of conference]
Get from him why he puts on[2] this Confusion:
Grating so harshly all his dayes of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous Lunacy.
_Rosin._ He does confesse he feeles himselfe distracted,
[Sidenote: 92] But from what cause he will by no meanes speake.
[Sidenote: a will]
_Guil._ Nor do we finde him forward to be sounded,
But with a crafty Madnesse[3] keepes aloofe:
When we would bring him on to some Confession
Of his true state.
_Qu._ Did he receiue you well?
_Rosin._ Most like a Gentleman.
_Guild._ But with much forcing of his disposition.[4]
_Rosin._ Niggard of question, but of our demands
Most free in his reply.[5]
_Qu._ Did you assay him to any pastime?
_Rosin._ Madam, it so fell out, that certaine Players
We ore-wrought on the way: of these we told him,
[Sidenote: ore-raught[6]]
And there did seeme in him a kinde of ioy
To heare of it: They are about the Court, [Sidenote: are heere about]
And (as I thinke) they haue already order
This night to play before him.
_Pol._ 'Tis most true;
And he beseech'd me to intreate your Majesties
To heare, and see the matter.
_King._ With all my heart, and it doth much content me
To heare him so inclin'd. Good Gentlemen,
[Footnote 1: This may be regarded as the commencement of the Third Act.]
[Footnote 2: The phrase seems to imply a doubt of the genuineness of the
lunacy.]
[Footnote 3: _Nominative pronoun omitted here._]
[Footnote 4: He has noted, without understanding them, the signs of
Hamlet's suspicion of themselves.]
[Footnote 5: Compare the seemingly opposite statements of the two:
Hamlet had bewildered them.]
[Foonote 6: _over-reached_--came up with, caught up, overtook.]
[Page 118]
Giue him a further edge,[1] and driue his purpose on
[Sidenote: purpose into these]
To these delights.
_Rosin._ We shall my Lord. _Exeunt._
[Sidenote: _Exeunt Ros. & Guyl._]
_King._ Sweet Gertrude leaue vs too, [Sidenote: Gertrard | two]
For we haue closely sent for _Hamlet_ hither,
[Sidenote: 84] That he, as 'twere by accident, may there
[Sidenote: heere]
Affront[2] _Ophelia_. Her Father, and my selfe[3] (lawful espials)[4]
Will so bestow our selues, that seeing vnseene
We may of their encounter frankely iudge,
And gather by him, as he is behaued,
If't be th'affliction of his loue, or no,
That thus he suffers for.
_Qu._ I shall obey you,
And for your part _Ophelia_,[5] I do wish
That your good Beauties be the happy cause
Of _Hamlets_ wildenesse: so shall I hope your Vertues
[Sidenote: 240] Will bring him to his wonted way againe,
To both your Honors.[6]
_Ophe._ Madam, I wish it may.
_Pol. Ophelia_, walke you heere. Gracious so please ye[7]
[Sidenote: you,]
We will bestow our selues: Reade on this booke,[8]
That shew of such an exercise may colour
Your lonelinesse.[9] We are oft too blame in this,[10]
[Sidenote: lowlines:]
'Tis too much prou'd, that with Deuotions visage,
And pious Action, we do surge o're [Sidenote: sugar]
The diuell himselfe.
[Sidenote: 161] _King._ Oh 'tis true: [Sidenote: tis too true]
How smart a lash that speech doth giue my Conscience?
The Harlots Cheeke beautied with plaist'ring Art
Is not more vgly to the thing that helpes it,[11]
Then is my deede, to my most painted word.[12]
Oh heauie burthen![13]
[Footnote 1: '_edge_ him on'--somehow corrupted into _egg_.]
[Footnote 2: _confront_.]
[Footnote 3: _Clause in parenthesis not in Q._]
[Footnote 4: --apologetic to the queen.]
[Footnote 5: --_going up to Ophelia_--I would say, who stands at a
little distance, and has not heard what has been passing between them.]
[Footnote 6: The queen encourages Ophelia in hoping to marry Hamlet, and
may so have a share in causing a certain turn her madness takes.]
[Footnote 7: --_aside to the king_.]
[Footnote 8: --_to Ophelia:_ her prayer-book. 122.]
[Footnote 9: _1st Q._
And here _Ofelia_, reade you on this booke,
And walke aloofe, the King shal be vnseene.]
[Footnote 10: --_aside to the king._ I insert these _asides_, and
suggest the queen's going up to Ophelia, to show how we may easily hold
Ophelia ignorant of their plot. Poor creature as she was, I would
believe Shakspere did not mean her to lie to Hamlet. This may be why he
omitted that part of her father's speech in the _1st Q._ given in the
note immediately above, telling her the king is going to hide. Still, it
would be excuse enough for _her_, that she thought his madness justified
the deception.]
[Footnote 11: --ugly to the paint that helps by hiding it--to which it
lies so close, and from which it has no secrets. Or, 'ugly to' may mean,
'ugly _compared with_.']
[Footnote 12: 'most painted'--_very much painted_. His painted word is
the paint to the deed. _Painted_ may be taken for _full of paint_.]
[Footnote 13: This speech of the king is the first _assurance_ we have
of his guilt.]
[Page 120]
_Pol._ I heare him comming, let's withdraw my Lord.
[Sidenote: comming, with-draw]
_Exeunt._[1]
_Enter Hamlet._[2]
_Ham._ To be, or not to be, that is the Question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the minde to suffer
The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune,
[Sidenote: 200,250] Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles,[3]
And by opposing end them:[4] to dye, to sleepe
No more; and by a sleepe, to say we end
The Heart-ake, and the thousand Naturall shockes
That Flesh is heyre too? 'Tis a consummation
Deuoutly to be wish'd.[5] To dye to sleepe,
To sleepe, perchance to Dreame;[6] I, there's the rub,
For in that sleepe of death, what[7] dreames may come,[8]
When we haue shuffle'd off this mortall coile,
[Sidenote: 186] Must giue vs pawse.[9] There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:[10]
For who would beare the Whips and Scornes of time,
The Oppressors wrong, the poore mans Contumely,
[Sidenote: proude mans]
[Sidenote: 114] The pangs of dispriz'd Loue,[11] the Lawes delay,
[Sidenote: despiz'd]
The insolence of Office, and the Spurnes
That patient merit of the vnworthy takes, [Sidenote: th']
When he himselfe might his _Quietus_ make
[Sidenote: 194,252-3] With a bare Bodkin?[12] Who would these Fardles
beare[13] [Sidenote: would fardels]
To grunt and sweat vnder a weary life,
[Sidenote: 194] But that the dread of something after death,[14]
The vndiscouered Countrey, from whose Borne
No Traueller returnes,[15] Puzels the will,
And makes vs rather beare those illes we haue,
Then flye to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of vs all,[16]
[Sidenote: 30] And thus the Natiue hew of Resolution[17]
Is sicklied o're, with the pale cast of Thought,[18]
[Sidenote: sickled]
[Footnote 1: _Not in Q._--They go behind the tapestry, where it hangs
over the recess of the doorway. Ophelia thinks they have left the room.]
[Footnote 2: _In Q. before last speech._]
[Footnote 3: Perhaps to a Danish or Dutch critic, or one from the
eastern coast of England, this simile would not seem so unfit as it does
to some.]
[Footnote 4: To print this so as I would have it read, I would complete
this line from here with points, and commence the next with points. At
the other breaks of the soliloquy, as indicated below, I would do the
same--thus:
And by opposing end them....
....To die--to sleep,]
[Footnote 5: _Break_.]
[Footnote 6: _Break_.]
[Footnote 7: Emphasis on _what_.]
[Footnote 8: Such dreams as the poor Ghost's.]
[Footnote 9: _Break._ --'_pawse_' is the noun, and from its use at page
186, we may judge it means here 'pause for reflection.']
[Footnote 10: 'makes calamity so long-lived.']
[Footnote 11: --not necessarily disprized by the _lady_; the disprizer
in Hamlet's case was the worldly and suspicious father--and that in
part, and seemingly to Hamlet altogether, for the king's sake.]
[Footnote 12: _small sword_. If there be here any allusion to suicide,
it is on the general question, and with no special application to
himself. 24. But it is the king and the bare bodkin his thought
associates. How could he even glance at the things he has just
mentioned, as each, a reason for suicide? It were a cowardly country
indeed where the question might be asked, 'Who would not commit suicide
because of any one of these things, except on account of what may follow
after death?'! One might well, however, be tempted to destroy an
oppressor, _and risk his life in that._]
[Footnote 13: _Fardel_, burden: the old French for _fardeau_, I am
informed.]
[Footnote 14: --a dread caused by conscience.]
[Footnote 15: The Ghost could not be imagined as having _returned_.]
[Footnote 16: 'of us all' _not in Q._ It is not the fear of evil that
makes us cowards, but the fear of _deserved_ evil. The Poet may intend
that conscience alone is the cause of fear in man. '_Coward_' does not
here involve contempt: it should be spoken with a grim smile. But Hamlet
would hardly call turning from _suicide_ cowardice in any sense. 24.]
[Footnote 17: --such as was his when he vowed vengeance.]
[Footnote 18: --such as immediately followed on that The _native_ hue of
resolution--that which is natural to man till interruption comes--is
ruddy; the hue of thought is pale. I suspect the '_pale cast_' of an
allusion to whitening with _rough-cast_.]
[Page 122]
And enterprizes of great pith and moment,[1] [Sidenote: pitch [1]]
With this regard their Currants turne away, [Sidenote: awry]
And loose the name of Action.[2] Soft you now,
[Sidenote: 119] The faire _Ophelia_? Nimph, in thy Orizons[3]
Be all my sinnes remembred.[4]
_Ophe._ Good my Lord,
How does your Honor for this many a day?
_Ham._ I humbly thanke you: well, well, well.[5]
_Ophe._ My Lord, I haue Remembrances of yours,
That I haue longed long to re-deliuer.
I pray you now, receiue them.
_Ham._ No, no, I neuer gaue you ought.[6]
[Sidenote: No, not I, I never]
_Ophe._ My honor'd Lord, I know right well you did,
[Sidenote: you know]
And with them words of so sweet breath compos'd,
As made the things more rich, then perfume left:
[Sidenote: these things | their perfume lost.[7]]
Take these againe, for to the Noble minde
Rich gifts wax poore, when giuers proue vnkinde.
There my Lord.[8]
_Ham._ Ha, ha: Are you honest?[9]
_Ophe._ My Lord.
_Ham._ Are you faire?
_Ophe._ What meanes your Lordship?
_Ham._ That if you be honest and faire, your
[Sidenote: faire, you should admit]
Honesty[10] should admit no discourse to your Beautie.
_Ophe._ Could Beautie my Lord, haue better
Comerce[11] then your Honestie?[12]
[Sidenote: Then with honestie?[11]]
_Ham._ I trulie: for the power of Beautie, will
sooner transforme Honestie from what it is, to a
Bawd, then the force of Honestie can translate
Beautie into his likenesse. This was sometime a
Paradox, but now the time giues it proofe. I did
loue you once.[13]
_Ophe._ Indeed my Lord, you made me beleeue so.
[Footnote 1: How could _suicide_ be styled _an enterprise of great
pith_? Yet less could it be called _of great pitch_.]
[Footnote 2: I allow this to be a general reflection, but surely it
serves to show that _conscience_ must at least be one of Hamlet's
restraints.]
[Footnote 3: --by way of intercession.]
[Footnote 4: Note the entire change of mood from that of the last
soliloquy. The right understanding of this soliloquy is indispensable to
the right understanding of Hamlet. But we are terribly trammelled and
hindered, as in the understanding of Hamlet throughout, so here in the
understanding of his meditation, by traditional assumption. I was roused
to think in the right direction concerning it, by the honoured friend
and relative to whom I have feebly acknowledged my obligation by
dedicating to him this book. I could not at first see it as he saw it:
'Think about it, and you will,' he said. I did think, and by
degrees--not very quickly--my prejudgments thinned, faded, and almost
vanished. I trust I see it now as a whole, and in its true relations,
internal and external--its relations to itself, to the play, and to the
Hamlet, of Shakspere.
Neither in its first verse, then, nor in it anywhere else, do I find
even an allusion to suicide. What Hamlet is referring to in the said
first verse, it is not possible with certainty to determine, for it is
but the vanishing ripple of a preceding ocean of thought, from which he
is just stepping out upon the shore of the articulate. He may have been
plunged in some profound depth of the metaphysics of existence, or he
may have been occupied with the one practical question, that of the
slaying of his uncle, which has, now in one form, now in another,
haunted his spirit for weeks. Perhaps, from the message he has just
received, he expects to meet the king, and conscience, confronting
temptation, has been urging the necessity of proof; perhaps a righteous
consideration of consequences, which sometimes have share in the primary
duty, has been making him shrink afresh from the shedding of blood, for
every thoughtful mind recoils from the irrevocable, and that is an awful
form of the irrevocable. But whatever thought, general or special, this
first verse may be dismissing, we come at once thereafter into the light
of a definite question: 'Which is nobler--to endure evil fortune, or to
oppose it _à outrance_; to bear in passivity, or to resist where
resistance is hopeless--resist to the last--to the death which is its
unavoidable end?'
Then comes a pause, during which he is thinking--we will not say 'too
precisely on the event,' but taking his account with consequences: the
result appears in the uttered conviction that the extreme possible
consequence, death, is a good and not an evil. Throughout, observe, how
here, as always, he generalizes, himself being to himself but the type
of his race.
Then follows another pause, during which he seems prosecuting the
thought, for he has already commenced further remark in similar strain,
when suddenly a new and awful element introduces itself:
....To die--to sleep.--
--To _sleep_! perchance to _dream_!
He had been thinking of death only as the passing away of the present
with its troubles; here comes the recollection that death has its own
troubles--its own thoughts, its own consciousness: if it be a sleep, it
has its dreams. '_What dreams may come_' means, 'the sort of dreams that
may come'; the emphasis is on the _what_, not on the _may_; there is no
question whether dreams will come, but there is question of the
character of the dreams. This consideration is what makes calamity so
long-lived! 'For who would bear the multiform ills of life'--he alludes
to his own wrongs, but mingles, in his generalizing way, others of those
most common to humanity, and refers to the special cure for some of his
own which was close to his hand--'who would bear these things if he
could, as I can, make his quietus with a bare bodkin'--that is, by
slaying his enemy--'who would then bear them, but that he fears the
future, and the divine judgment upon his life and actions--that
conscience makes a coward of him!'[14]
To run, not the risk of death, but the risks that attend upon and follow
death, Hamlet must be certain of what he is about; he must be sure it is
a right thing he does, or he will leave it undone. Compare his speech,
250, 'Does it not, &c.':--by the time he speaks this speech, he has had
perfect proof, and asserts the righteousness of taking vengeance in
almost an agony of appeal to Horatio.
The more continuous and the more formally logical a soliloquy, the less
natural it is. The logic should be all there, but latent; the bones of
it should not show: they do not show here.]
[Footnote 5: _One_ 'well' _only in Q._]
[Footnote 6: He does not want to take them back, and so sever even that
weak bond between them. He has not given her up.]
[Footnote 7: The _Q._ reading seems best. The perfume of his gifts was
the sweet words with which they were given; those words having lost
their savour, the mere gifts were worth nothing.]
[Footnote 8: Released from the commands her father had laid upon her,
and emboldened by the queen's approval of more than the old relation
between them, she would timidly draw Hamlet back to the past--to love
and a sound mind.]
[Footnote 9: I do not here suppose a noise or movement of the arras, or
think that the talk from this point bears the mark of the madness he
would have assumed on the least suspicion of espial. His distrust of
Ophelia comes from a far deeper source--suspicion of all women, grown
doubtful to him through his mother. Hopeless for her, he would give his
life to know that Ophelia was not like her. Hence the cruel things he
says to her here and elsewhere; they are the brood of a heart haunted
with horrible, alas! too excusable phantoms of distrust. A man wretched
as Hamlet must be forgiven for being rude; it is love suppressed, love
that can neither breathe nor burn, that makes him rude. His horrid
insinuations are a hungry challenge to indignant rejection. He would
sting Ophelia to defence of herself and her sex. But, either from her
love, or from gentleness to his supposed madness, as afterwards in the
play-scene, or from the poverty and weakness of a nature so fathered and
so brothered, she hears, and says nothing. 139.]
[Footnote 10: Honesty is here figured as a porter,--just after, as a
porter that may be corrupted.]
[Footnote 11: If the _Folio_ reading is right, _commerce_ means
_companionship_; if the _Quarto_ reading, then it means _intercourse_.
Note _then_ constantly for our _than_.]
[Footnote 12: I imagine Ophelia here giving Hamlet a loving look--which
hardens him. But I do not think she lays emphasis on _your_; the word is
here, I take it, used (as so often then) impersonally.]
[Footnote 13: '--proof in you and me: _I_ loved _you_ once, but my
honesty did not translate your beauty into its likeness.']
[Footnote 14: That the Great Judgement was here in Shakspere's thought,
will be plain to those who take light from the corresponding passage in
the _1st Quarto_. As it makes an excellent specimen of that issue in the
character I am most inclined to attribute to it--that of original sketch
and continuous line of notes, with more or less finished passages in
place among the notes--I will here quote it, recommending it to my
student's attention. If it be what I suggest, it is clear that Shakspere
had not at first altogether determined how he would carry the
soliloquy--what line he was going to follow in it: here hope and fear
contend for the place of motive to patience. The changes from it in the
text are well worth noting: the religion is lessened: the hope
disappears: were they too much of pearls to cast before 'barren
spectators'? The manuscript could never have been meant for any eye but
his own, seeing it was possible to print from it such a chaos--over
which yet broods the presence of the formative spirit of the Poet.
_Ham._ To be, or not to be, I there's the point,
To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all:
No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes,
For in that dreame of death, when wee awake,
[Sidenote: 24, 247, 260] And borne before an euerlasting Iudge,
From whence no passenger euer retur'nd,
The vndiscouered country, at whose sight
The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd.
But for this, the ioyfull hope of this,
Whol'd beare the scornes and flattery of the world,
Scorned by the right rich, the rich curssed of the poore?
The widow being oppressed, the orphan wrong'd,
The taste of hunger, or a tirants raigne,
And thousand more calamities besides,
To grunt and sweate vnder this weary life,
When that he may his full _Quietus_ make,
With a bare bodkin, who would this indure,
But for a hope of something after death?
Which pulses the braine, and doth confound the sence,
Which makes vs rather beare those euilles we haue,
Than flie to others that we know not of.
I that, O this conscience makes cowardes of vs all,
Lady in thy orizons, be all my sinnes remembred.]
[Page 126]
_Ham._ You should not haue beleeued me. For
vertue cannot so innocculate[1] our old stocke,[2] but
we shall rellish of it.[3] I loued you not.[4]
_Ophe._ I was the more deceiued.
_Ham._ Get thee to a Nunnerie. Why would'st [Sidenote: thee a]
thou be a breeder of Sinners? I am my selfe indifferent[5]
[Sidenote: 132] honest, but yet I could accuse me of
such things,[6] that it were better my Mother had
[Sidenote: 62] not borne me,[7] I am very prowd, reuengefull,
Ambitious, with more offences at my becke, then I
haue thoughts to put them in imagination, to giue
them shape, or time to acte them in. What should
such Fellowes as I do, crawling betweene Heauen
[Sidenote: earth and heauen]
and Earth.[8] We are arrant Knaues all[10], beleeue
none of vs.[9] Goe thy wayes to a Nunnery.
Where's your Father?[11]
_Ophe._ At home, my Lord.[12]
_Ham._ Let the doores be shut vpon him, that
he may play the Foole no way, but in's owne house.[13]
[Sidenote: no where but]
Farewell.[14]
_Ophe._ O helpe him, you sweet Heauens.
_Ham._[15] If thou doest Marry, Ile giue thee this
Plague for thy Dowrie. Be thou as chast as Ice,
as pure as Snow, thou shalt not escape Calumny.[16]
Get thee to a Nunnery. Go,[17] Farewell.[18] Or if
thou wilt needs Marry, marry a fool: for Wise men
know well enough, what monsters[19] you make of
them. To a Nunnery go, and quickly too. Farwell.[20]
_Ophe._ O[21] heauenly Powers, restore him.
_Ham._[22] I haue heard of your pratlings[23] too wel
[Sidenote: your paintings well]
enough. God has giuen you one pace,[23] and you
[Sidenote: hath | one face,]
make your selfe another: you gidge, you amble,
[Sidenote: selfes | you gig and amble, and]
and you lispe, and nickname Gods creatures, and
[Sidenote: you list you nickname]
make your Wantonnesse, your[24] Ignorance.[25] Go
[Footnote 1: 'inoculate'--_bud_, in the horticultural use.]
[Footnote 2: _trunk_ or _stem_ of the family tree.]
[Footnote 3: Emphasis on _relish_--'keep something of the old flavour of
the stock.']
[Footnote 4: He tries her now with denying his love--perhaps moved in
part by a feeling, taught by his mother's, of how imperfect it was.]
[Footnote 5: tolerably.]
[Footnote 6: He turns from baiting woman in her to condemn himself. Is
it not the case with every noble nature, that the knowledge of wrong in
another arouses in it the consciousness of its own faults and sins, of
its own evil possibilities? Hurled from the heights of ideal humanity,
Hamlet not only recognizes in himself every evil tendency of his race,
but almost feels himself individually guilty of every transgression.
'God, God, forgive us all!' exclaims the doctor who has just witnessed
the misery of Lady Macbeth, unveiling her guilt.
This whole speech of Hamlet is profoundly sane--looking therefore
altogether insane to the shallow mind, on which the impression of its
insanity is deepened by its coming from him so freely. The common nature
disappointed rails at humanity; Hamlet, his earthly ideal destroyed,
would tear his individual human self to pieces.]
[Footnote 7: This we may suppose uttered with an expression as startling
to Ophelia as impenetrable.]
[Footnote 8: He is disgusted with himself, with his own nature and
consciousness--]
[Footnote 9: --and this reacts on his kind.]
[Footnote 10: 'all' _not in Q._]
[Footnote 11: Here, perhaps, he grows suspicious--asks himself why he is
allowed this prolonged _tête à tête_.]
[Footnote 12: I am willing to believe she thinks so.]
[Footnote 13: Whether he trusts Ophelia or not, he does not take her
statement for correct, and says this in the hope that Polonius is not
too far off to hear it. The speech is for him, not for Ophelia, and will
seem to her to come only from his madness.]
[Footnote 14: _Exit_.]
[Footnote 15: (_re-entering_)]
[Footnote 16: 'So many are bad, that your virtue will not be believed
in.']
[Footnote 17: 'Go' _not in Q._]
[Footnote 18: _Exit, and re-enter._]
[Footnote 19: _Cornuti._]
[Footnote 20: _Exit._]
[Footnote 21: 'O' _not in Q._]
[Footnote 22: (_re-entering_)]
[Footnote 23: I suspect _pratlings_ to be a corruption, not of the
printed _paintings_, but of some word substituted for it by the Poet,
perhaps _prancings_, and _pace_ to be correct.]
[Footnote 24: 'your' _not in Q._]
[Footnote 25: As the present type to him of womankind, he assails her
with such charges of lightness as are commonly brought against women. He
does not go farther: she is not his mother, and he hopes she is
innocent. But he cannot make her speak!]
[Page 128]
too, Ile no more on't, it hath made me mad. I say,
we will haue no more Marriages.[1] Those that are
[Sidenote: no mo marriage,]
married already,[2] all but one shall liue, the rest
shall keep as they are. To a Nunnery, go.
_Exit Hamlet_. [Sidenote: _Exit_]
[3]_Ophe._ O what a Noble minde is heere o're-throwne?
The Courtiers, Soldiers, Schollers: Eye, tongue, sword,
Th'expectansie and Rose[4] of the faire State,
[Sidenote: Th' expectation,]
The glasse of Fashion,[5] and the mould of Forme,[6]
Th'obseru'd of all Obseruers, quite, quite downe.
Haue I of Ladies most deiect and wretched, [Sidenote: And I of]
That suck'd the Honie of his Musicke Vowes: [Sidenote: musickt]
Now see that Noble, and most Soueraigne Reason, [Sidenote: see what]
Like sweet Bels iangled out of tune, and harsh,[7]
[Sidenote: out of time]
That vnmatch'd Forme and Feature of blowne youth,[8]
[Sidenote: and stature of]
Blasted with extasie.[9] Oh woe is me,
T'haue scene what I haue scene: see what I see.[10]
[Sidenote: _Exit_.]
_Enter King, and Polonius_.
_King_. Loue? His affections do not that way tend,
Nor what he spake, though it lack'd Forme a little, [Sidenote: Not]
Was not like Madnesse.[11] There's something in his soule?
O're which his Melancholly sits on brood,
And I do doubt the hatch, and the disclose[12]
Will be some danger,[11] which to preuent [Sidenote: which for to]
I haue in quicke determination
[Sidenote: 138, 180] Thus set it downe. He shall with speed to England
For the demand of our neglected Tribute:
Haply the Seas and Countries different
[Footnote 1: 'The thing must be put a stop to! the world must cease! it
is not fit to go on.']
[Footnote 2: 'already--(_aside_) all but one--shall live.']
[Footnote 3: _1st Q_.
_Ofe._ Great God of heauen, what a quicke change is this?
The Courtier, Scholler, Souldier, all in him,
All dasht and splinterd thence, O woe is me,
To a seene what I haue seene, see what I see. _Exit_.
To his cruel words Ophelia is impenetrable--from the conviction that not
he but his madness speaks.
The moment he leaves her, she breaks out in such phrase as a young girl
would hardly have used had she known that the king and her father were
listening. I grant, however, the speech may be taken as a soliloquy
audible to the spectators only, who to the persons of a play are _but_
the spiritual presences.]
[Footnote 4: 'The hope and flower'--The _rose_ is not unfrequently used
in English literature as the type of perfection.]
[Footnote 5: 'he by whom Fashion dressed herself'--_he who set the
fashion_. His great and small virtues taken together, Hamlet makes us
think of Sir Philip Sidney--ten years older than Shakspere, and dead
sixteen years before _Hamlet_ was written.]
[Footnote 6: 'he after whose ways, or modes of behaviour, men shaped
theirs'--therefore the mould in which their forms were cast;--_the
object of universal imitation_.]
[Footnote 7: I do not know whether this means--the peal rung without
regard to tune or time--or--the single bell so handled that the tongue
checks and jars the vibration. In some country places, I understand,
they go about ringing a set of hand-bells.]
[Footnote 8: youth in full blossom.]
[Footnote 9: madness 177.]
[Footnote 10: 'to see now such a change from what I saw then.']
[Footnote 11: The king's conscience makes him keen. He is, all through,
doubtful of the madness.]
[Footnote 12: --of the fact- or fancy-egg on which his melancholy sits
brooding]
[Page 130]
With variable Obiects, shall expell
This something setled matter[1] in his heart
Whereon his Braines still beating, puts him thus
From[2] fashion of himselfe. What thinke you on't?
_Pol_. It shall do well. But yet do I beleeue
The Origin and Commencement of this greefe [Sidenote: his greefe,]
Sprung from neglected loue.[3] How now _Ophelia_?
You neede not tell vs, what Lord _Hamlet_ saide,
We heard it all.[4] My Lord, do as you please,
But if you hold it fit after the Play,
Let his Queene Mother all alone intreat him
To shew his Greefes: let her be round with him, [Sidenote: griefe,]
And Ile be plac'd so, please you in the eare
Of all their Conference. If she finde him not,[5]
To England send him: Or confine him where
Your wisedome best shall thinke.
_King_. It shall be so:
Madnesse in great Ones, must not vnwatch'd go.[6]
[Sidenote: unmatched]
_Exeunt_.
_Enter Hamlet, and two or three of the Players_.
[Sidenote: _and three_]
_Ham_.[7] Speake the Speech I pray you, as I
pronounc'd it to you trippingly[8] on the Tongue:
But if you mouth it, as many of your Players do,
[Sidenote: of our Players]
I had as liue[9] the Town-Cryer had spoke my [Sidenote: cryer spoke]
Lines:[10] Nor do not saw the Ayre too much your [Sidenote: much with]
hand thus, but vse all gently; for in the verie
Torrent, Tempest, and (as I may say) the Whirlewinde
[Sidenote: say, whirlwind]
of Passion, you must acquire and beget a [Sidenote: of your]
Temperance that may giue it Smoothnesse.[11] O it
offends mee to the Soule, to see a robustious Perywig-pated
[Sidenote: to heare a]
Fellow, teare a Passion to tatters, to [Sidenote: totters,]
verie ragges, to split the eares of the Groundlings:[12]
[Sidenote: spleet]
who (for the most part) are capeable[13] of nothing,
but inexplicable dumbe shewes,[14] and noise:[15] I
could haue such a Fellow whipt for o're-doing [Sidenote: would]
[Footnote 1: 'something of settled matter'--_idée fixe_.]
[Footnote 2: '_away from_ his own true likeness'; 'makes him so unlike
himself.']
[Footnote 3: Polonius is crestfallen, but positive.]
[Footnote 4: This supports the notion of Ophelia's ignorance of the
espial. Polonius thinks she is about to disclose what has passed, and
_informs_ her of its needlessness. But it _might_ well enough be taken
as only an assurance of the success of their listening--that they had
heard without difficulty.]
[Footnote 5: 'If she do not find him out': a comparable phrase, common
at the time, was, _Take me with you_, meaning, _Let me understand you_.
Polonius, for his daughter's sake, and his own in her, begs for him
another chance.]
[Footnote 6: 'in the insignificant, madness may roam the country, but in
the great it must be watched.' The _unmatcht_ of the _Quarto_ might bear
the meaning of _countermatched_.]
[Footnote 7: I should suggest this exhortation to the Players introduced
with the express purpose of showing how absolutely sane Hamlet was,
could I believe that Shakspere saw the least danger of Hamlet's pretence
being mistaken for reality.]
[Footnote 8: He would have neither blundering nor emphasis such as might
rouse too soon the king's suspicion, or turn it into certainty.]
[Footnote 9: 'liue'--_lief_]
[Footnote 10: 1st Q.:--
I'de rather heare a towne bull bellow,
Then such a fellow speake my lines.
_Lines_ is a player-word still.]
[Footnote 11: --smoothness such as belongs to the domain of Art, and
will both save from absurdity, and allow the relations with surroundings
to manifest themselves;--harmoniousness, which is the possibility of
co-existence.]
[Footnote 12: those on the ground--that is, in the pit; there was no
gallery then.]
[Footnote 13: _receptive_.]
[Footnote 14: --gestures extravagant and unintelligible as those of a
dumb show that could not by the beholder be interpreted; gestures
incorrespondent to the words.