TPTT The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: ACT III
Introduction
ACT I
ACT II
ACT III
SCENE I. A room in the castle.
SCENE II. A hall in the castle.
SCENE III. A room in the castle.
SCENE IV. The Queen's closet.
ACT IV
ACT V
About the Play
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SCENE IV. The Queen's closet.
Enter QUEEN MARGARET and POLONIUS
LORD POLONIUS
      He will come straight. Look you lay home to him:
      Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
      And that your grace hath screen'd and stood between
      Much heat and him. I'll sconce me even here.
5     Pray you, be round with him.
HAMLET
      (Within) Mother, mother, mother!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      I'll warrant you,
      Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.
POLONIUS hides behind the arras
Enter HAMLET
HAMLET
      Now, mother, what's the matter?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
10    Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
HAMLET
      Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
HAMLET
      Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      Why, how now, Hamlet!
HAMLET
15    What's the matter now?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      Have you forgot me?
HAMLET
      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.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
20    Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.
HAMLET
      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.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
25    Help, help, ho!
LORD POLONIUS
      (Behind) What, ho! help, help, help!
HAMLET
      (Drawing) How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
Makes a pass through the arras
LORD POLONIUS
      (Behind) O, I am slain!
Falls and dies
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
30    Nay, I know not:
      Is it the king?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
HAMLET
      A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
      As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
35    As kill a king!
HAMLET
      Ay, lady, 'twas my word.

Lifts up the array and discovers POLONIUS

      Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
      I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;
      Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger.
40    Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down,
      And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,
      If it be made of penetrable stuff,
      If damned custom have not brass'd it so
      That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
45    What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
      In noise so rude against me?
HAMLET
      Such an act
      That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
      Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
50    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
55    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.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      Ay me, what act,
60    That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
HAMLET
      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;
65    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,
70    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,
75    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,
80    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
85    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.
90    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,
95    Since frost itself as actively doth burn
      And reason panders will.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      O Hamlet, speak no more:
      Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
      And there I see such black and grained spots
100   As will not leave their tinct.
HAMLET
      Nay, but to live
      In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
      Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
      Over the nasty sty,--
QUEEN GERTRUDE
105   O, speak to me no more;
      These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
      No more, sweet Hamlet!
HAMLET
      A murderer and a villain;
      A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
110   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!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      No more!
HAMLET
115   A king of shreds and patches,--

Enter Ghost

      Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
      You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      Alas, he's mad!
HAMLET
      Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
120   That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
      The important acting of your dread command? O, say!
Ghost
      Do not forget: this visitation
      Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
      But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
125   O, step between her and her fighting soul:
      Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
      Speak to her, Hamlet.
HAMLET
      How is it with you, lady?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      Alas, how is't with you,
130   That you do bend your eye on vacancy
      And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
      Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
      And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
      Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
135   Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son,
      Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
      Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?
HAMLET
      On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares!
      His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones,
140   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.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      To whom do you speak this?
HAMLET
145   Do you see nothing there?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
HAMLET
      Nor did you nothing hear?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
      Why, look you there! look, how it steals away!
150   My father, in his habit as he lived!
      Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!
Exit Ghost
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      This the very coinage of your brain:
      This bodiless creation ecstasy
      Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
155   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
160   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,
165   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
170   Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
      Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
HAMLET
      O, throw away the worser part of it,
      And live the purer with the other half.
175   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
180   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,
185   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,

Pointing to POLONIUS

      I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,
190   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. So, again, good night.
      I must be cruel, only to be kind:
195   Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.
      One word more, good lady.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      What shall I do?
HAMLET
      Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
      Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed;
200   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,
205   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,
210   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.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,
215   And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
      What thou hast said to me.
HAMLET
      I must to England; you know that?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
      Alack,
      I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on.
HAMLET
220   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
225   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:
230   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.
235   Good night, mother.
Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in POLONIUS
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