Hamlet continued.]

how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! Act ii. Sc. 2.

Man delights not me ; no, nor woman neither.

I know a hawk from a hand-saw.

Ibid. Ibid.

Come, give us a taste of your quality. Ibid.

The play, I remember, pleased not the million; 't was caviare to the general.

Ibid.

They are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

Ibid.

Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?

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

That he should weep for her?

Ibid.

Ibid.

Unpack my heart with words,

And fall a cursing, like a very drab. Ibid.

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

1 See Chaucer, The Nonnes Preestes Tale, Line 15058.

[Hamlet continued.

With devotion's visage,

And pious action, we do sugar o'er

The Devil himself.

Act iii. Sc. 1.

To be, or not to be; that is the question: Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep,No more and, by a sleep, to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, - 't is a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep:To sleep! perchance, to dream: ay, there's the

rub ;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's con

tumely,

The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels 1bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

Who would these fardels,' White, Knight.

Hamlet continued.]

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 pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Act iii. Sc. I.

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go.

Ibid.

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

Ibid.

O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's eye, tongue,

sword.

Ibid.

The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, The observed of all observers !

Ibid.

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.

Ibid.

Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently; for in the very

[Hamlet continued.

torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) the whirlwind of 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 shews, and noise; I would have such a fellow whipp'd for o'er-doing Termagant; it out-herods Herod. Act iii. Sc. 2.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.

Ibid.

To hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature.

Ibid.

The very age and body of the time, his form and pressure.

Ibid.

Though it make the unskilful laugh,cannot but make the judicious grieve.

Not to speak it profanely.

Ibid.

Ibid.

I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

O, reform it altogether.

Horatio, thou are e'en as just a man

As e'er my conversation coped withal.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

No; let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp ; And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, Where thrift may follow fawning.

Ibid.

Hamlet continued.]

A man, that Fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks.

Act iii. Sc. 2.

They are not a pipe for Fortune's finger To sound what stop she please. Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core, aye, in my heart of heart, As I do thee. Something too much of this.

Nay, then let the Devil wear black, for I 'll have a suit of sables.

For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot.1

Ibid.

Ibid.

This is miching mallecho; it means mischief.

Ibid.

Ham. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring? Oph. "T is brief, my lord.

Ham. As woman's love.

Ibid.

The lady doth protest 2 too much, methinks.

Ibid.

Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.

Why, let the strucken deer go weep,

The hart ungalled play;

Ibid.

For some must watch, while some must sleep;

Thus runs the world away.

1 See Love's Labour's Lost, Act iii. Sc. 1.

2.

'protests too much,' White, Knight.

Ibid.