The Queen's closet.
 Enter QUEEN and POLONIUS.

Polonius	A' 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 screened and stood between
	Much heat and him. I'll silence me e'en here.
	Pray you, be round with him.

Hamlet	[Within.] Mother, mother, mother!

Queen	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	Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

Hamlet	Mother, you have my father much offended.

Queen	Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

Hamlet	Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

Queen	Why, how now, Hamlet!

Hamlet								What's the matter now?

Queen	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	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	What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
	Help, help, ho!

Polonius	[Behind the arras.] What, ho! Help, help, help!

Hamlet	[Drawing.] How now, aA rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!
						 [Thrusting his sword through the arras.

Polonius	[Behind the arras.]
	O, I am slain!
												[Dies.
Queen					O me, what hast thou done?

Hamlet	Nay, I know not. Is it the king?

Queen	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	As kill a king?

Hamlet					Ay, lady, 'twas my word.
					 [Lifts up the arras 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.
	[To QUEEN.]
	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 damnd custom have not brazed it so
	That it be proof and bulwark against sense.

Queen	What have I done that thou dar'st 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
	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
	A rhapsody of words. Heaven's face doth glow
	O'er this solidity and compound mass
	With tristful visage, as against the doom,
	Is thought-sick at the act.

Queen										Ay me, what act,
	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,
	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
	To give the world assurance of a man.
	This was your husband. Look you now what follows:
	Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear
	Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
	Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
	And batten on this moor? Ha, have you eyes?
	You cannot call it love, for at your age
	The heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble,
	And waits upon the judgement; and what judgement
	Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,
	Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense
	Is apoplexed, for madness would not err,
	Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thralled
	But it reserved some quantity of choice
	To serve in such a difference. What devil was't
	That thus hath cozened 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.
	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,
	Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
	And reason panders will.

Queen								O Hamlet, speak no more.
	Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul,
	And there I see such black and graind spots
	As will not leave their tinct.

Hamlet										Nay, but to live
	In the rank sweat of an enseamd bed,
	Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
	Over the nasty sty- 

Queen							O, speak to me no more!
	These words like daggers enter in my ears.
	No more, sweet Hamlet.

Hamlet									A murderer and a villain,
	A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
	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	No more!

Hamlet	A king of shreds and patches-

                               Enter GHOST.

	Save me and hover o'er me with your wings,
	You heavenly guards!
				[To GHOST.] What would your gracious figure?

Queen	Alas, he's mad!

Hamlet	[To GHOST.] Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
	That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
	Th' 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.
	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									Alas, how is't with you,
	That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
	And with th' incorporal air do hold discourse?
	Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,
	And, as the sleeping soldiers in th' alarm,
	Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
	Start up and stand an 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 conjoined, preaching to stones,
	Would make them capable. [To GHOST.] 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	To whom do you speak this?

Hamlet	Do you see nothing there?

Queen	Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

Hamlet	Nor did you nothing hear?

Queen								No, nothing but ourselves.

Hamlet	Why, look you there. Look how it steals away.
	My father, in his habit as he lived.
	Look, where he goes even now out at the portal.
												[Exit GHOST.
Queen	This is the very coinage of your brain.
	This bodiless creation ecstasy
	Is very cunning in.

Hamlet							Ecstasy!
	My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,
	And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
	That I have uttered. Bring me to the test,
	And I the matter will re-word, which madness
	Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
	Lay not that flattering unction to your soul
	That not your trespass but my madness speaks.
	It will but skin and film the ulcerous place
	Whiles 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,
	For in the fatness of these pursy times
	Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
	Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

Queen	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.
	Good night: but go not to my 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
	He likewise gives a frock or livery
	That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,
	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 house the devil, or throw him out
	With wondrous potency. Once more, good night.
	And when you are desirous to be blest,
	I'll blessing beg of you.
		[Pointing to POLONIUS.] For this same lord
	I do repent; but heaven hath pleased 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.
	This bad begins, and worse remains behind.
	One word more, good lady.

Queen									What shall I do?

Hamlet	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
	Or paddling in your neck with his damned 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 secrecy,
	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 assured, if words be made of breath
	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										Alack,
	I had forgot. 'Tis so concluded on.

Hamlet	There's letters sealed, and my two schoolfellows,
	Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged,
	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 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.
	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.
	Good night, mother.
								 [Exit HAMLET with the dead body.
												The QUEEN remains.
