Try what
repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it when one cannot repent?
O
wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engag'd! Help, angels! Make assay.
Bow,
stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!
All may be well. He kneels.
Enter Hamlet.
Ham. Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven,
And so am I reveng'd. That would be scann'd.
A
villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same
villain send
To heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge!
He took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
'Tis heavy with him; and am I then reveng'd,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?
No.
Up, sword, and know thou a more
horrid hent.
When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage;
Or in th' incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no
relish of
salvation in't-
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.
This physic but prolongs thy
sickly days. Exit.
King. [rises] My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. Exit.
Scene IV.
The Queen's closet.
Enter Queen and Polonius.
Pol. He 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 screen'd and stood between
Much heat and him. I'll silence me even here.
Pray you be round with him.
Ham. (within) Mother, mother, mother!
Queen. I'll
warrant you; fear me not. Withdraw; I hear him coming.
[Polonius hides behind the arras.]
Enter Hamlet.
Ham. Now, mother, what's the matter?
Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Ham. Mother, you have my father much offended.
Queen. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Ham. Go, go, you question with a
wicked tongue.
Queen. Why, how now, Hamlet?
Ham. What's the matter now?
Queen. Have you forgot me?
Ham. 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.
Ham. Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge I
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 murther me?
Help, help, ho!
Pol. [behind] What, ho! help, help, help!
Ham. [draws] How now? a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Makes a pass through the arras and] kills Polonius.
Pol. [behind] O, I am slain!
Queen. O me, what hast thou done?
Ham. Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
Queen. O, what a rash and
bloody deed is this!
Ham. A
bloody deed- almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
Queen. As kill a king?
Ham. Ay, lady, it was my word.
[Lifts up 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 hinds. Peace! sit you down
And let me wring your heart; for so I shall
If it be made of penetrable stuff;
If
damned custom have not braz'd it so
That it is proof and
bulwark against sense.
Queen. What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?
Ham. Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;
Calls
virtuehypocrite; 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;
Yea, 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?
Ham. Look here upon th's 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 mildew'd 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 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 apoplex'd; for
madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstacy was ne'er so thrall'd
But it reserv'd some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was't
That thus hath cozen'd 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 grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.
Ham. Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew'd in
corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty!
Queen. O, speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in mine ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet!
Ham. A murtherer 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!
Enter the Ghost in his nightgown.
Ham. A king of shreds and patches!-
Save me and hover o'er me with your wings,
You
heavenly guards! What would your
gracious figure?
Queen. Alas, he's mad!
Ham. Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, laps'd 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.
Ham. How is it with you, lady?
Queen. Alas, how is't with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with th' encorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the
sleeping soldiers in th' alarm,
Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,
Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,
Upon the beat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience! Whereon do you look?
Ham. On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares!
His form and cause conjoin'd,
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
Will want true colour- tears
perchance for blood.
Queen. To whom do you speak this?
Ham. Do you see nothing there?
Queen. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
Ham. Nor did you nothing hear?
Queen. No, nothing but ourselves.
Ham. Why, look you there! Look how it steals away!
My father, in his habit as he liv'd!
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.
Ham. Ecstasy?
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as
healthful music. It is not
madnessThat I have utt'red. Bring me to the test,