Hamlet

by William Shakespeare

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:

To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame When the compulsive ardour gives the charge, 95 Since frost itself as actively doth burn, And reason panders will.

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;

I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so, To punish me with this, and this with me, That I must be their scourge and minister. I will bestow him, and will answer well The death I gave him.

I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.—

The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England; For like the hectic in my blood he rages, 70 And thou must cure me: till I know ’tis done, Howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.

To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is, Each toy seems Prologue to some great amiss: 20 So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

poor Ophelia Divided from herself and her fair judgment, Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts:

That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard; 120 Cries cuckold to my father; brands the harlot Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow Of my true mother.

Nature is fine in love; and where ’tis fine, It sends some precious instance of itself After the thing it loves.

He that hath kill’d my king, and whor’d my mother; 70 Popp’d in between the election and my hopes; Thrown out his angle for my proper life, And with such cozenage—is’t

I here proclaim was madness. Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet: If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away, 220 And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes, Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it. Who does it, then? His madness: if’t be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d; His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy.

I have a voice and precedent of peace To keep my name ungor’d. But till that time I do receive your offer’d love like love, And will not wrong it.

It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art slain; No medicine in the world can do thee good; In thee there is not half an hour of life; The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, Unbated and envenom’d: the foul practice 320 Hath turn’d itself on me; lo, here I lie, Never to rise again: thy mother’s poison’d: I can no more:—the king, the king’s to blame.