Hamlet

by William Shakespeare

What art thou, that usurp’st this time of night, Together with that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee, speak!

I’ll cross it, though it blast me.—Stay, illusion! If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, Speak to me: If there be any good thing to be done, That may to thee do ease, and, race to me, 145 Speak to me: If thou art privy to thy country’s fate, Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak! Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life 150 Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,

We do it wrong, being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence; 160 For it is, as the air, invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery.

A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, To reason most absurd; whose common theme Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, From the first corse till he that died to-day, ‘This must be so.’ We pray you, throw to earth

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 160 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!

If it assume my noble father’s person, I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape 265 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: 270 I will requite your loves. So, fare ye well: Upon the platform, ‘twixt eleven and twelve, I’ll visit you.

My father’s spirit in arms! All is not well; I doubt some foul play: would the night were come! Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour, Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood: A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting; 10 The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more.

His greatness weigh’d, his will is not his own; For he himself is subject to his birth: He may not, as unvalu’d persons do, Carve for himself; for on his choice depends The safety and health of this whole state;

To his unmaster’d importunity. Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister; And keep you in the rear of your affection, Out of the shot and danger of desire. The chariest maid is prodigal enough 40 If she unmask her beauty to the moon:

Contagious blastments are most imminent. Be wary then; best safety lies in fear: Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whilst, like a puff’d and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not his own read.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware 70 Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well What I have said to you. OPHELIA 90 ’Tis in my memory lock’d, And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

I do know, When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter, Giving more light than heat,—extinct in both, Even in their promise, as it is a-making,—

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 often doubt 40 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, 45 Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com’st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee: I’ll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane; O, answer me!

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? 60 Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?

Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at 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.

I am thy father’s spirit; Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, 15 And for the day confin’d to waste in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purg’d away. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abus’d; but know, thou noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father’s life 45 Now wears his crown.

Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,— 50 O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen:

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand, Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch’d: Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, Unhous’led, disappointed, unanel’d; No reckoning made, but sent to my account 85 With all my imperfections on my head:

O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible! If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest.

Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her.

Faith, no; as you may season it in the charge. You must not put another scandal on him, That he is open to incontinency; That’s not my meaning: but breathe his faults so quaintly That they may seem the taints of liberty; 35 The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind; A savageness in unreclaimed blood, Of general assault.

Come, go with me: I will go seek the King. This is the very ecstasy of love; 115 Whose violent property fordoes itself, And leads the will to desperate undertakings, As oft as any passion under heaven That does afflict our natures. I am sorry,—

‘Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; 125 Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love. ‘O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers; I have not art to reckon my groans: but that I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu.

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 305 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.

With this slave’s offal: bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! O, vengeance!

With most miraculous organ, I’ll have these players Play something like the murder of my father Before mine uncle: I’ll observe his looks; I’ll tent him to the quick: if he but blench, I know my course.

The spirit that I have seen 585 May be the devil: and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy,— As he is very potent with such spirits,— Abuses me to damn me:

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish That your good beauties be the happy cause 45 Of Hamlet’s wildness: so shall I hope your virtues Will bring him to his wonted way again, To both your honours.

The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering art, 60 Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it Than is my deed to my most painted word:

To be, or not to be,—that is the question:— 65 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

To die,—to sleep,— No more; and by a sleep to say we end 70 The heartache, 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,

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 90 Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution

And with them words of so sweet breath compos’d As made the things more rich; their perfume lost, 110 Take these again; for to the noble mind Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with 120 honesty?

If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry,— be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou 145 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.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance.

Observe mine uncle: if his occulted guilt Do not itself unkennel in one speech, It is a damned ghost that we have seen; And my imaginations are as foul As Vulcan’s stithy. Give him heedful note; 80 For I mine eyes will rivet to his face; And, after, we will both our judgments join In censure of his seeming.

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; 160 Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love. A second time I kill my husband dead When second husband kisses me in bed.

The violence of either grief or joy Their own enactures with themselves destroy: Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament; Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident. This world is not for aye; nor ’tis not strange

’Tis now the very witching time of night, 365 When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother.—

Let me be cruel, not unnatural; I will speak daggers to her, but use none; My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites,—

How now? a rat? [Draws.] Dead for a ducat, dead!

[Behind.] O, I am slain! [Falls and dies.]

Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty; Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose