Enter HORATIO, [QUEEN] GERTRUDE,
and a GENTLEMAN. Full Summary
QUEEN
1 I will not speak with her.
Gentleman
2 She is importunate, indeed distract:
3 Her mood will needs be pitied.
QUEEN
3 What would she have?
Gentleman
4 She speaks much of her father; says she hears
5 There's tricks i' the world; and hems, and beats her heart;
6 Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,
7 That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
8 Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
9 The hearers to collection; they yawn at it,
10 And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
11 Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures yield them,
12 Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
13 Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
HORATIO
14 'Twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew
15 Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
QUEEN
16 Let her come in.
17 To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is,
18 Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss:
19 So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
20 It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
Enter OPHELIA [and Horatio].
Full Summary
OPHELIA
21 Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?
QUEEN
22 How now, Ophelia!
OPHELIA [She sings.]
23 "How should I your true love know
24 From another one?
25 By his cockle hat and staff,
26 And his sandal shoon."
QUEEN
27 Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
OPHELIA
28 Say you? nay, pray you, mark.
29 "He is dead and gone, lady,
30 He is dead and gone;
31 At his head a grass-green turf,
32 At his heels a stone."
33 O ho!
QUEEN
34 Nay, but, Ophelia—
OPHELIA
35 Pray you, mark.
36 "White his shroud as the mountain snow,"—
Enter KING. Full Summary
QUEEN
37 Alas, look here, my lord.
OPHELIA
38 "Larded with sweet flowers
39 Which bewept to the grave did not go
40 With true-love showers."
KING
41 How do you, pretty lady?
OPHELIA
42 Well, God 'ild you! They say the owl was a baker's
43 daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not
44 what we may be. God be at your table!
KING
45 Conceit upon her father.
OPHELIA
46 Pray you, let's have no words of this; but when they
47 ask you what it means, say you this:
48 "Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day.
49 All in the morning betime,
50 And I a maid at your window,
51 To be your Valentine.
52 "Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
53 And dupp'd the chamber-door;
54 Let in the maid, that out a maid
55 Never departed more."
KING
56 Pretty Ophelia!
OPHELIA
57 Indeed, la, without an oath, I'll make an end on't:
58 "By Gis and by Saint Charity,
59 Alack, and fie for shame!
60 Young men will do't, if they come to't;
61 By cock, they are to blame.
62 Quoth she, 'Before you tumbled me,
63 You promised me to wed.'
64 He answers:
65 'So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
66 An thou hadst not come to my bed.'"
KING
67 How long hath she been thus?
OPHELIA
68 I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I
69 cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him
70 i' the cold ground. My brother shall know of it:
71 and so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my
72 coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies;
73 good night, good night.
[Exit.] Full Summary
KING
74 Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.
75 O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
76 All from her father's death—and now behold!
77 O Gertrude, Gertrude,
78 When sorrows come, they come not single spies
79 But in battalions. First, her father slain:
80 Next, your son gone; and he most violent author
81 Of his own just remove: the people muddied,
82 Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers,
83 For good Polonius' death; and we have done but greenly,
84 In hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Ophelia
85 Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
86 Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts;
87 Last, and as much containing as all these,
88 Her brother is in secret come from France;
89 Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
90 And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
91 With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
92 Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
93 Will nothing stick our person to arraign
94 In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
95 Like to a murdering-piece, in many places
96 Gives me superfluous death.
QUEEN
96 Alack, what noise is this?
KING
97 Attend!
98 Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.
98 What is the matter?
Messenger
99 Save yourself, my lord:
100 The ocean, overpeering of his list,
101 Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
102 Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
103 O'erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord;
104 And, as the world were now but to begin,
105 Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
106 The ratifiers and props of every word,
107 They cry "Choose we: Laertes shall be king!"
108 Caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds:
109 "Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!"
QUEEN
110 How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
111 O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!
KING
112 The doors are broke.
LAERTES
113 Where is this king? Sirs, stand you all without.
Danes
114 No, let's come in.
LAERTES
114 I pray you, give me leave.
Danes
115 We will, we will.
LAERTES
116 I thank you: keep the door.
[Exeunt Laertes' followers.] Full Summary
116 O thou vile king,
117 Give me my father!
QUEEN
117 Calmly, good Laertes.
LAERTES
118 That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,
119 Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
120 Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brows
121 Of my true mother.
KING
121 What is the cause, Laertes,
122 That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?
123 Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person:
124 There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
125 That treason can but peep to what it would,
126 Acts little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,
127 Why thou art thus incensed. Let him go, Gertrude.
128 Speak, man.
LAERTES
129 Where is my father?
KING
129 Dead.
QUEEN
129 But not by him.
KING
130 Let him demand his fill.
LAERTES
131 How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
132 To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
133 Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
134 I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
135 That both the worlds I give to negligence,
136 Let come what comes; only I'll be revenged
137 Most thoroughly for my father.
KING
137 Who shall stay you?
LAERTES
138 My will, not all the world's.
139 And for my means, I'll husband them so well,
140 They shall go far with little.
KING
140 Good Laertes,
141 If you desire to know the certainty
142 Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge,
143 That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
144 Winner and loser?
LAERTES
145 None but his enemies.
KING
145 Will you know them then?
LAERTES
146 To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
147 And like the kind life-rendering pelican,
148 Repast them with my blood.
KING
148 Why, now you speak
149 Like a good child and a true gentleman.
150 That I am guiltless of your father's death,
151 And am most sensibly in grief for it,
152 It shall as level to your judgment pierce
153 As day does to your eye.
Danes
153 Let her come in!
LAERTES
154 How now! what noise is that?
Enter OPHELIA. Full Summary
155 O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
156 Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
157 By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
158 Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
159 Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
160 O heavens! is't possible, a young maid's wits
161 Should be as mortal as an old man's life?
162 Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine,
163 It sends some precious instance of itself
164 After the thing it loves.
OPHELIA
165 "They bore him barefaced on the bier;
166 Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
167 And in his grave rain'd many a tear"—
168 Fare you well, my dove!
LAERTES
169 Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
170 It could not move thus.
OPHELIA
171 You must sing "a-down a-down," and you call him
172 a-down-a. O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the
173 false steward, that stole his master's daughter.
LAERTES
174 This nothing's more than matter.
OPHELIA
175 There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray,
176 love, remember. And there is pansies; that's for
177 thoughts.
LAERTES
178 A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance
179 fitted.
OPHELIA
180 [To King.] There's fennel for you, and columbines.
181 [To Queen.] There's rue for you; and here's some
182 for me: we may call it herb of grace a' Sundays.
183 You may wear your rue with a difference. There's
184 a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they
185 withered all when my father died. They say he
186 made a good end—
187 "For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy."
LAERTES
188 Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
189 She turns to favour and to prettiness.
OPHELIA
190 "And will he not come again?
191 And will he not come again?
192 No, no, he is dead:
193 Go to thy death-bed:
194 He never will come again.
195 "His beard was as white as snow,
196 All flaxen was his poll:
197 He is gone, he is gone,
198 And we cast away moan:
199 God ha' mercy on his soul!"
200 And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God buy
201 you.
[Exit.]
Full Summary
LAERTES
202 Do you see this, O God?
KING
203 Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
204 Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
205 Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
206 And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me:
207 If by direct or by collateral hand
208 They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give,
209 Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
210 To you in satisfaction; but if not,
211 Be you content to lend your patience to us,
212 And we shall jointly labour with your soul
213 To give it due content.
LAERTES
213 Let this be so;
214 His means of death, his obscure funeral—
215 No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
216 No noble rite nor formal ostentation—
217 Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
218 That I must call't in question.
KING
218 So you shall;
219 And where the offence is let the great axe fall.
220 I pray you, go with me.