On Mars's armor, forged for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.--

Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod, take away her power;

Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!

Pol. This is too long.

Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard.— 'Pr'ythee, say on.-He's for a jig,' or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps.-Say on: come to Hecuba.

1 Play. But who, ah, woe! had seen the mobled" queen

Ham. The mobled queen ?

Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good.

1 Play. Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames

With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head,
Where late the diadem stood; and, for a robe,
About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,

A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up,
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped,
'Gainst fortune's state would treason have pronounced.
But if the gods themselves did see her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs;
The instant burst of clamor that she made,
(Unless things mortal move them not at all,)
Would have made milch' the burning eye of heaven,
And passion in the gods.

1 Giga, in Italian, was a fiddle, or crowd; gigaro, a fiddler, or minstrel. Hence a jig (first written gigge, though pronounced with a g soft, after the Italian) was a ballad, or ditty, sung to the fiddle. There are several of the old ballads and dialogues called jigs in the Harleian Collection. 2 The folio reads inobled, an evident error of the press, for mobled, which means muffled.

3 Bisson is blind. Bisson rheum, therefore, is blinding tears.

4 i. e. mild, tender-hearted.-TODD.-By a hardy poetical license, this expression means, "Would have filled with tears the burning eye of heaven." To have "made passion in the gods" would have been to move them to compassion.

VOL. VII.

39

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 pith1 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.

Oph.
Good my lord,
How does your honor for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thank you; well.

Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours, That I have longed long to re-deliver;

I

pray you, now receive them.

Ham.

I never gave you aught.

No, not I;

Oph. My honored lord, you know right well, you

did;

And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed As made the 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.

Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest?

Oph. My lord?

Ham. Are you fair?

Oph. What means your lordship?

Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty

should admit no discourse to your beauty.

3

Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce

than with honesty?

Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner

1 Quartos-pitch.

2 Folio-away.

3 i. e. "your honesty should not admit your beauty to any discourse with her." The first quarto reads, "Your beauty should admit no discourse to your honesty;" that of 1604, "You should admit no discourse to your beauty."

Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspéct,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing?
For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue1 for passion,

That I have? He would drown the stage with

tears,

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property, and most dear life,

A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the

throat,

As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha!

Why, I should take it; for it cannot be,
But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter; or, ere this,
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain ! 1
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave;

1 i. e. the hint or prompt word; the word or sign given by the prompter for a player to enter on his part.

2 John-a-dreams, or John-a-droynes, was a common term for any dreaming or droning simpleton. Unpregnant is not quickened or properly impressed with.

3 Defeat here signifies destruction. It was frequently used in the sense of undo or take away by our old writers.

4 Kindless is unnatural.

and nickname God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to; I'll no more of it; it hath made me mad.' I say, we will have no more marriages those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are.

nunnery, go.

To a [Exit HAMLET. Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword ; The expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The 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 tune, and harsh;
That unmatched form and feature of blown youth,
Blasted with ecstasy.3 O, woe is me!

To 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 cn 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?

1 "You mistake by wanton affectation, and pretend to mistake by

ignorance."

2 Quarto-time.

3 Ecstasy is alienation of the mind. Vide Tempest, Act iii. Sc. 3.

4 To disclose was the ancient term for hatching birds of any kind; from the Fr. esclos.

Pol. It shall do well; but yet, I do 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.

SCENE II. A Hall in the same.

Enter HAMLET, and certain Players.

[Exeunt.

Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the towncrier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows, and

1 See note on Act ii. Sc. 2.

2 The first quarto has, "I'd rather hear a town-bull bellow, than such a fellow speak my lines."

3 The first quarto reads, "of the ignorant." Our ancient theatres were far from the commodious, elegant structures which later times have seen. The pit was an unfloored space, in the area of the house, sunk considerably beneath the level of the stage; and it was necessary to clevate the head very much to get a view of the performance. Hence this part of the audience were called groundlings.