my

virtue:

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
For in the fatness of these pursy times,
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg;
Yea, curbt and woo, for leave to do him good.
Queen. O Hamlet! thou hast cleft my heart in
twain.

Ham. O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
Good night, but go not to my unele's bed;
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habit's 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 curb 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 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. So, again, good night!
I must be cruel, only to be kind:

Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.—
But one word more, good lady.

Queen.

What shall I do?

Ham. 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,

* Manure. † Bend.
Steaming with heat.

A term of endearment.

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 secresy,

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. Be thou assur'd, if words be made of breath,
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.

Ham. I must to England: you know that?
Queen.

I had forgot; 'tis so concluded on.

Alack,

Ham. 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 from his own petar:|| and it shall go
hard,
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon.

ACT IV

HAMLET'S IRRESOLUTION.

How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, If his chief good, and market¶ of his time, Be but to sleep, and feed? a beast, no more. Sure, he, that made us with such large discourse,** Looking before, and after, gave, us not That capability and godlike reason

To fust* in us unus'd. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some cravent scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,-

A thought, which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom,

And, ever, three parts coward,—I do not know
Why yet I live to say, This thing's to do;

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means,

To do't. Examples, gross as earth, exhort me:
Witness, this army of such mass, and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince;
Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff'd,
Makes mouths at the invisible event;
Exposing what is mortal, and unsure,
To all that fortune, death, and danger, dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great,
Is, not to stir without great argument;
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd
Excitements of my reason, and my blood.
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy, and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds: fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough, and continent,
To hide the slain?-O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

SORROWS RARELY SINGLE.

O Gertrude, Gertrude,

When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions!

THE DIVINITY OF KINGS.

Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person;
There's such a divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but keep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.

DESCRIPTION OF OPHELIA'S DEATH.

Queen. There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; There with fantastic garlands did she make Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,* That liberalt shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them: There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke; When down her weedy trophies, and herself, Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide; And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up: Which time, she chanted snatches of old tunes; As one incapablet of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and indu'd

Unto that element: but long it could not be,
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

ACT V.

HAMLET'S REFLECTIONS ON YORICK'S SCULL.

Grave-digger. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! he poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once, this same scull, sir, was Yorick's scull, the king's jester.

Ham This?
Grave-digger. E'en that.

[Takes the scull.

Ham. Alas! poor Yorick!-I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest; of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips, that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let

Orchis morio mas. + Ticentious. + Insensible.

her paint an inch thick, to this favour* she must come; make her laugh at that.

OPHELIA'S INTERMENT.

Lay her i' the earth;

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh,
May violets spring!-I tell thee, churlish priest,
A ministering angel shall my sister be,
When thou liest howling.

MELANCHOLY.

'This is mere madness:

And thus awhile the fit will work on him.
Anon, as patient as the female dove,

When that her golden couplets are disclos'd,
His silence will sit drooping.

PROVIDENCE DIRECTS OUR ACTIONS.

And that should teach us,

There's a divinity that shapes our ends
Rough-hew them how we will.

Give me the cups;

A HEALTH.

And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneer without,

The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth,
Now the king drinks to Hamlet.

JULIUS CESAR.

ACT I.

PATRIOTISM.

WHAT is that you would impart to me?
If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honour in one eye, and death i' the other,
And I will look on both indifferently:
For, let the gods so speed me, as I love
The name of honour more than I fear death.

CONTEMPT OF CASSIUS FOR CESAR.

I was born free as Cesar; so were you.
* Countenance, complexion. + Hatched..