{Where wilt thou lead me? speak; I'll go no further.}
{I will.}
{Alas, poor ghost!}
{Speak; I am bound to hear.}
{What?}
{O God!}
{Murder!}
{Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge.}
{O my prophetic soul! My uncle!}
{O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else? And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart; And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee! Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there; And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven! O most pernicious woman! O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables, meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:}
{So be it!}
{Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come, bird, come.}
{O, wonderful!}
{No; you'll reveal it.}
{How say you, then; would heart of man once think it? But you'll be secret?}
{There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark But he's an arrant knave.}
{Why, right; you are i' the right; And so, without more circumstance at all, I hold it fit that we shake hands and part: You, as your business and desire shall point you; For every man has business and desire, Such as it is; and for mine own poor part, Look you, I'll go pray.}
{I'm sorry they offend you, heartily; Yes, 'faith heartily.}
{Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio, And much offence too. Touching this vision here, It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you: For your desire to know what is between us, O'ermaster 't as you may. And now, good friends, As you are friends, scholars and soldiers, Give me one poor request.}
{Never make known what you have seen to night.}
{Nay, but swear't.}
{Upon my sword.}
{Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.}
{Ah, ha, boy! say'st thou so? art thou there, truepenny? Come on. you hear this fellow in the cellarage. Consent to swear.}
{Never to speak of this that you have seen, Swear by my sword.}
{Hic et ubique? then we'll shift our ground. Come hither, gentlemen, And lay your hands again upon my sword: Never to speak of this that you have heard, Swear by my sword.}
{Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast? A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends.}
{And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come; Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on, That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, With arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,' Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,' Or such ambiguous giving out, to note That you know aught of me: this not to do, So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.}
{Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!}
{Well, God a mercy.}
{Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.}
{Then I would you were so honest a man.}
{Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.}
{For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion, Have you a daughter?}
{Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to 't.}
{Words, words, words.}
{Between who?}
{Into my grave.}
{You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.}
{These tedious old fools!}
{My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?}
{Nor the soles of her shoe?}
{Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?}
{In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet. What's the news?}
{Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true. Let me question more in particular: what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?}
{Denmark's a prison.}
{A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.}
{Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.}
{O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.}
{A dream itself is but a shadow.}
{Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.}
{No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest of my servants, for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?}
{Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak.}
{Why, any thing, but to the purpose. You were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks which your modesties have not craft enough to colour: I know the good king and queen have sent for you.}
{That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for, or no?}
{Nay, then, I have an eye of you. If you love me, hold not off.}
{I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no feather. I have of late. but wherefore I know not. lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.}
{Why did you laugh then, when I said 'man delights not me'?}
{He that plays the king shall be welcome; his majesty shall have tribute of me; the adventurous knight shall use his foil and target; the lover shall not sigh gratis; the humourous man shall end his part in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickled o' the sere; and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for't. What players are they?}
{How chances it they travel? their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.}
{Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? are they so followed?}
{How comes it? do they grow rusty?}
{What, are they children? who maintains 'em? how are they escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing? will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players. as it is most like, if their means are no better. their writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their own succession?}
{Is't possible?}
{Do the boys carry it away?}
{It is not very strange; for mine uncle is king of Denmark, and those that would make mows at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, an hundred ducats a piece for his picture in little. 'Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.}
{Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come then: the appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony: let me comply with you in this garb, lest my extent to the players, which, I tell you, must show fairly outward, should more appear like entertainment than yours. You are welcome: but my uncle father and aunt mother are deceived.}
{I am but mad north north west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.}
{Hark you, Guildenstern; and you too: at each ear a hearer: that great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts.}
{I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players; mark it. You say right, sir: o' Monday morning; 'twas so indeed.}
{My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in Rome,}
{Buz, buz!}
{Then came each actor on his ass,}
{O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!}
{Why, 'One fair daughter and no more, The which he loved passing well.'}
{Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah?}
{Nay, that follows not.}
{Why, 'As by lot, God wot,' and then, you know, 'It came to pass, as most like it was,'. the first row of the pious chanson will show you more; for look, where my abridgement comes.}
{I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted; or, if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general: but it was. as I received it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of mine. an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of affectation; but called it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I chiefly loved: 'twas Aeneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of Priam's slaughter: if it live in your memory, begin at this line: let me see, let me see. 'The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,'. it is not so: it begins with Pyrrhus: 'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms, Black as his purpose, did the night resemble When he lay couched in the ominous horse, Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd With heraldry more dismal; head to foot Now is he total gules; horridly trick'd With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, Baked and impasted with the parching streets, That lend a tyrannous and damned light To their lord's murder: roasted in wrath and fire, And thus o'er sized with coagulate gore, With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus Old grandsire Priam seeks.' So, proceed you.}
{It shall to the barber's, with your beard. Prithee, say on: he's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps: say on: come to Hecuba.}
{'The mobled queen?'}
{'Tis well: I'll have thee speak out the rest soon. Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.}
{God's bodykins, man, much better: use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.}
{Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to morrow.}
{We'll ha't to morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down and insert in't, could you not?}
{Very well. Follow that lord; and look you mock him not.}
{Ay, so, God be wi' ye;}
{To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis 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 heart ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis 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 contumely, The pangs of despised 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 bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn 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.Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd.}
{I humbly thank you; well, well, well.}
{No, not I; I never gave you aught.}
{Ha, ha! are you honest?}
{Are you fair?}
{That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.}
{Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.}
{You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not.}
{Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father?}
{Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.}
{If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell.}
{I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; 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. To a nunnery, go.}
{Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to his doctor; for, for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far more choler.}
{I am tame, sir: pronounce.}
{You are welcome.}
{Sir, I cannot.}
{Make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseased: but, sir, such answer as I can make, you shall command; or, rather, as you say, my mother: therefore no more, but to the matter: my mother, you say,}
{O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother! But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's admiration? Impart.}
{We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any further trade with us?}
{So I do still, by these pickers and stealers.}
{Sir, I lack advancement.}
{Ay, but sir, 'While the grass grows,'the proverb is something musty.}
{I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?}
{I pray you.}
{I do beseech you.}
{'Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your lingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.}
{Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass: and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.}
{Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?}
{Methinks it is like a weasel.}
{Or like a whale?}
{Then I will come to my mother by and by. They fool me to the top of my bent. I will come by and by.}
{By and by is easily said.}
{Now, mother, what's the matter?}
{Mother, you have my father much offended.}
{Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.}
{What's the matter now?}
{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.}
{Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge; You go not till I set you up a glass Where you may see the inmost part of you.}
{Nay, I know not: Is it the king?}
{A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king, and marry with his brother.}
{Ay, lady, 'twas my word.}
{Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls virtue hypocrite, 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.}
{Look here, upon this 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 hey day 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 ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd But it reserved 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.}
{Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty,}
{A murderer 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!}
{A king of shreds and patches,}
{Do you not come your tardy son to chide, That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by The important acting of your dread command? O, say!}
{How is it with you, lady?}
{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.}
{Do you see nothing there?}
{Nor did you nothing hear?}
{Why, look you there! look, how it steals away! My father, in his habit as he lived! Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!}
{Ecstasy! My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, And makes as healthful music: it is not madness That I have utter'd: bring me to the test, And I the matter will re word; which madness Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, Lay not that mattering unction to your soul, That not your trespass, but my madness speaks: It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, Whilst rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven; Repent what's past; avoid what is to come; And do not spread the compost on the weeds, To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue; For in the fatness of these pursy times Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.}
{O, throw away the worser part of it, And live the purer with the other half. Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed; Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits devil, is angel yet in this, That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock or livery, That aptly is put on. Refrain to night, And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence: the next more easy; For use almost can change the stamp of nature, And either  the devil, or throw him out With wondrous potency. Once more, good night: And when you are desirous to be bless'd, I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,}
{Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed; Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse; And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers, Make you to ravel all this matter out, That I essentially am not in madness, But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know; For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise, Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib, Such dear concernings hide? who would do so? No, in despite of sense and secrecy, Unpeg the basket on the house's top. Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape, To try conclusions, in the basket creep, And break your own neck down.}
{I must to England; you know that?}
{There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows, Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd, They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way, And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; For 'tis the sport to have the engineer Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines, And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet, When in one line two crafts directly meet. This man shall set me packing: I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room. Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor Is now most still, most secret and most grave, Who was in life a foolish prating knave. Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. Good night, mother.}
{Safely stowed.}
{What noise? who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come.}
{Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.}
{Do not believe it.}
{That I can keep your counsel and not mine own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge! what replication should be made by the son of a king?}
{Ay, sir, that soaks up the king's countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the king best service in the end: he keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be last swallowed: when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.}
{I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.}
{The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing}
{Of nothing: bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.}
{At supper.}
{Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.}
{A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.}
{Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.}
{In heaven; send thither to see: if your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.}
{He will stay till ye come.}
{For England!}
{Good.}
{I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for England! Farewell, dear mother.}
{My mother: father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England!}
{Good sir, whose powers are these?}
{How purposed, sir, I pray you?}
{Who commands them, sir?}
{Goes it against the main of Poland, sir, Or for some frontier?}
{Why, then the Polack never will defend it.}
{Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats Will not debate the question of this straw: This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace, That inward breaks, and shows no cause without Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.}
{I'll be with you straight go a little before.}
{A little more than kin, and less than kind.}
{Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun.}
{Ay, madam, it is common.}
{Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.' 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play: But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe.}
{I shall in all my best obey you, madam.}
{O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month. Let me not think on't. Frailty, thy name is woman! A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears: why she, even she. O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn'd longer. married with my uncle, My father's brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules: within a month: Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not nor it cannot come to good: But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.}
{I am glad to see you well: Horatio, or I do forget myself.}
{Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you: And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? Marcellus?}
{I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir. But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?}
{I would not hear your enemy say so, Nor shall you do mine ear that violence, To make it truster of your own report Against yourself: I know you are no truant. But what is your affair in Elsinore? We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.}
{I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow student; I think it was to see my mother's wedding.}
{Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio! My father! methinks I see my father.}
{In my mind's eye, Horatio.}
{He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.}
{Saw? who?}
{The king my father!}
{For God's love, let me hear.}
{But where was this?}
{Did you not speak to it?}
{'Tis very strange.}
{Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me. Hold you the watch to night?}
{Arm'd, say you?}
{From top to toe?}
{Then saw you not his face?}
{What, look'd he frowningly?}
{Pale or red?}
{And fix'd his eyes upon you?}
{I would I had been there.}
{Very like, very like. Stay'd it long?}
{His beard was grizzled. no?}
{I will watch to night; Perchance 'twill walk again.}
{If it assume my noble father's person, I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight, Let it be tenable in your silence still; And whatsoever else shall hap to night, Give it an understanding, but no tongue: I will requite your loves. So, fare you well: Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, I'll visit you.}
{Your loves, as mine to you: farewell.}
{The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.}
{What hour now?}
{No, it is struck.}
{The king doth wake to night and takes his rouse, Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up spring reels; And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The kettle drum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge.}
{Ay, marry, is't: But to my mind, though I am native here And to the manner born, it is a custom More honour'd in the breach than the observance. This heavy headed revel east and west Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations: They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase Soil our addition; and indeed it takes From our achievements, though perform'd at height, The pith and marrow of our attribute. So, oft it chances in particular men, That for some vicious mole of nature in them, As, in their birth. wherein they are not guilty, Since nature cannot choose his origin. By the o'ergrowth of some complexion, Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason, Or by some habit that too much o'er leavens The form of plausive manners, that these men, Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, Being nature's livery, or fortune's star, Their virtues else. be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo. Shall in the general censure take corruption From that particular fault: the dram of eale Doth all the noble substance of a doubt To his own scandal.}
{Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou comest in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me! Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre, Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd, Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws, To cast thee up again. What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous; and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?}
{It will not speak; then I will follow it.}
{Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life in a pin's fee; And for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself? It waves me forth again: I'll follow it.}
{It waves me still. Go on; I'll follow thee.}
{Hold off your hands.}
{My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve. Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen. By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me! I say, away! Go on; I'll follow thee.}