That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth,
Blasted with ecstacy: O, woe is me!

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see !
Re-enter King and POLONIUS.

King. Love! his affections do not that way tend ;
Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,
Was not like madness. There's something in his soul,
O'er which his melancholy sits on brood ;

And, I do doubt, the hatch, and the disclose,
Will be some danger: Which for to prevent,
I have, in quick determination,

Thus set it down; He shall with speed to England,
For the demand of our neglected tribute :
Haply, the seas, and countries different,
With variable objects, shall expel

This something-settled matter in his heart;
Whereon his brains still beating, puts him thus
From fashion of himself. What think you on't?

Pol. It shall do well. But yet I do believe,
The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love.-How now, Ophelia ?
You need not tell us what lord Hamlet said;

We heard it all.—My lord, do as you please;
But, if you hold it fit, after the play,
Let his queen mother all alone entreat him
To show his griefs; let her be round with him
And I'll be plac'd, so please you, in the ear
Of all their conference: If she find him not,
To England send him; or confine him, where
Your wisdom best shall think.

King. It shall be so:

Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.

SCENE II.

[Exeunt.

A Hall in the same. Enter HAMLET, and certain Players. Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue : but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that

:

[1] The word ecstacy was anciently used to signify some degree of alienation of mind. STEEVENS. C 2

VOL. X.

may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows, and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing Termagant; it outherods Herod :3 Pray you, avoid it.

1 Play. I warrant your honour.

Ham. Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor : suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure.* Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players, that I have seen play,and heard others praise, and that highly,--not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of christians, nor the gait of christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's jour neymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

1 Play. I hope, we have reformed that indifferently with us.

Ham. O, reform it altogether. And let those, that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them for there be of them, that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too;

[2] The groundlings-The meaner people then seem to have sat below, as they now sit in the upper gallery, who, not well understanding poetical language, were sometimes gratified by a mimical and mute representation of the drama, previous to the dialogue. JOHNSON.

In our early playhouses, the pit had neither floor nor benches. Hence the term of groundlings for those who frequented it. STEEVENS.

[S] Termagant was a Saracen deity, very clamorous and violent, in the old moralities. PERCY.-The character of Herod, in the ancient mysteries, was always a violent one.

STEEVENS.

[4] Resemblance, as in a print.

JOHNSON.

[5] Profanely seems to relate, not to the praise which he has mentioned, but to the censure which he is about to utter. Any gross or indelicate language was called profane. JOHNSON.

[6] The clown very often addressed the audience, in the middle of the play, and entered into a contest of raillery and sarcasm with such of the audience as chose to engage with him.

MALONE.

though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: thu's villanous; and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. [Exeunt Players.

Enter POLONIUS, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern. How now, my lord? will the king hear this piece of work? Pol. And the queen too, and that presently. Ham. Bid the players make haste.

Will you two help to hasten them?

Both. Ay, my lord.

Ham. What, ho; Horatio!

[Exit POLON.

[Exeunt Ros. and GUIL.

Enter HORATIO.

Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service. Ham. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man As e'er my conversation cop'd withal.

Hor. O, my dear lord,

Ham. Nay, do not think I flatter :

For what advancement may I hope from thee,
That no revenue hast, but thy good spirits,

To feed, and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp;

And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,7.
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,

And could of men distinguish her election,

She hath seal'd thee for herself: for thou hast been
As one, in suffering a, that suffers nothing;
A man, that fortune's buffets and rewards

Has ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those,
Whose blood and judgment are so well co-mingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please: Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.-Something too much of this.-
There is a play to-night before the king;
One scene of it comes near the circumstance,
Which I have told thee of my father's death.
pr'ythee, when thou seest that act a-foot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul

[7] I believe the sense of pregnant in this place is, quick, ready.

JOHNSON.

8 According to the doctrine of the four humours, desire and confidence were seated in the blood, and judgment in the phlegm, and the due mixture of the humours made a perfect character. JOHNSON.

Observe my 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 :
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face ;
And, after, we will both our judgments join
In censure of his seeming.

Hor. Well, my lord :

If he steal aught, the whilst this play is playing,
And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

Ham. They are coming to the play; I must be idle Get you a place.

:

Danish march. A flourish. Enter King, Queen, POLONIUS. OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and others. King. How fares our cousin Hamlet?

Ham. Excellent, i̇’faith; of the camelion's dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed: You cannot feed capons so. King. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not mine.

Ham. No, nor mine now.' My lord,-you play'd once in the university, you say? [TO POLONIUS. Pol. That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good

actor.

Ham. And what did you enact?

Pol. I did enact Julius Cæsar: I was killed i'the capitol: Brutus killed me.

Ham. It was a brute part of him, to kill so capital a calf there. Be the players ready?

Ros. Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.
Queen. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
Ham. No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.
Pol. O ho! do you mark that?
[To the King.

Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

Oph. No, my lord.

[Lying down at OPHELIA's feet.

Ham. I mean, my head upon your lap?

Oph. Ay, my lord.

Ham. Do you think, I meant country matters ?

Oph. I think nothing, my lord.

Ham. That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.

Oph. What is, my lord?

[9] Stithy is a smith's anvil.

問

JOHNSON.

A man's words, says the proverb, are his own no longer than he keeps them
JOHNSON,

unspoken.

Ham. Nothing.

Oph. You are merry, my lord.
Ham. Who, I?

Oph. Ay, my lord.

Ham. O! your only jig-maker. What should a man do, but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.

Oph. Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.

Ham. So long? Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? then there's hope, a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year: but, by'rlady, he must build churches then; or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse; whose epitaph is. For, O, for, 0, the hobby-horse is forgot.3

Trumpets sound. The dumb Show follows.

Enter a King and a Queen, very lovingly; the Queen embracing him, and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers; she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the King dead, and makes possionate action. The Poisoner, with some two or three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts; she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but, in the end, accepts his love. [Exeunt.

Oph. What means this, my lord? Ham. Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief."

Oph. Belike, this show imports the argument of the play.

[2] A suit trimmed with sables was in Shakespeare's time the richest dress worn by men in England; and wherever his scene might happen to be, the customs of his own country were still in his thoughts. By the statute of apparel, 24 Henry VIII. it is ordained, that none under the degree of an earl may use sables. It is well known this fur is not black. MALONE.

[3] Among the country May-games there was an hobby-horse, which, when the puritanical humour of those times opposed and discredited these games, was brought by the poets and ballad-makers as an instance of the ridiculous zeal of the sectaries: from these ballads Hamlet quotes a line or two. WARBURTON. See Illustrations, Vol. X.

Miching--secret, sneaking, lying hid. Michers are lurking vagabonds. Our author himself says, of prince Henry," Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher? Shall the son of England prove a thief?" WARBURTON.