Scene II

So much for this, sir: now shall you see the other;
You do remember all the circumstance?

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting,
That would not let me sleep: methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboesiron restraints used to hold prisoners by the ankles. Rashly,
And praised be rashness for it, let us know,
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will⁠—

Up from my cabin,
My sea-gown scarf’d about me, in the dark
Groped I to find out them; had my desire,
Finger’d their packet, and in fine withdrew
To mine own room again; making so bold,
My fears forgetting manners, to unseal
Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio⁠—
O royal knavery!⁠—an exact command,
Larded with many several sorts of reasons
Importing Denmark’s health and England’s too,
With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life,
That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,
No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
My head should be struck off.

Here’s the commission: read it at more leisure.
But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed?

Being thus be-netted round with villainies⁠—
Ere I could make a prologue to my brains,
They had begun the play⁠—I sat me down,
Devised a new commission, wrote it fair:
I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness to write fair and labour’d much
How to forget that learning, but, sir, now
It did me yeoman’s service: wilt thou know
The effect of what I wrote?

An earnest conjuration from the king,
As England was his faithful tributary,
As love between them like the palm might flourish,
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear
And stand a comma ’tween their amities,
And many such-like “As”es of great charge,
That, on the view and knowing of these contents,
Without debatement further, more or less,
He should the bearers put to sudden death,
Not shriving-time allow’d.

Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.
I had my father’s signet in my purse,
Which was the model of that Danish seal;
Folded the writ up in form of the other,
Subscribed it, gave’t the impression, placed it safely,
The changeling never known. Now, the next day
Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent
Thou know’st already.

Why, man, they did make love to this employment;
They are not near my conscience; their defeat
Does by their own insinuation grow:
’Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
Between the pass and fell incensed points
Of mighty opposites.

Does it not, think’st thee, stand me now upon⁠—
He that hath kill’d my king and whored my mother,
Popp’d in between the election and my hopes,
Thrown out his angle for my proper life,
And with such cozenage⁠—is’t not perfect conscience,
To quit him with this arm? and is’t not to be damn’d,
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil?

It must be shortly known to him from England
What is the issue of the business there.

It will be short: the interim is mine;
And a man’s life’s no more than to say “One.”
But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
That to Laertes I forgot myself;
For, by the image of my cause, I see
The portraiture of his: I’ll court his favours:
But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me
Into a towering passion.

Give me your pardon, sir: I’ve done you wrong;
But pardon’t, as you are a gentleman.
This presence knows,
And you must needs have heard, how I am punish’d
With sore distraction. What I have done,
That might your nature, honour and exception
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet:
If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away,
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.
Sir, in this audience,
Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts,
That I have shot mine arrow o’er the house,
And hurt my brother.

I am satisfied in nature,
Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most
To my revenge: but in my terms of honour
I stand aloof; and will no reconcilement,
Till by some elder masters, of known honour,
I have a voice and precedent of peace,
To keep my name ungored. But till that time,
I do receive your offer’d love like love,
And will not wrong it.

I embrace it freely;
And will this brother’s wager frankly play.
Give us the foils. Come on.

I’ll be your foil, Laertes: in mine ignorance
Your skill shall, like a star i’ the darkest night,
Stick fiery off indeed.

Give them the foils, young Osric. Cousin Hamlet,
You know the wager?

Very well, my lord;
Your grace hath laid the odds o’ the weaker side.

I do not fear it; I have seen you both:
But since he is better’d, we have therefore odds.

Set me the stoups of wine upon that table.
If Hamlet give the first or second hit,
Or quit in answer of the third exchange,
Let all the battlements their ordnance fire;
The king shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath;
And in the cup an union shall he throw,
Richer than that which four successive kings
In Denmark’s crown have worn. Give me the cups;
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth,
“Now the king drinks to Hamlet.” Come, begin:
And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.

Stay; give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine;
Here’s to thy health. Trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within. Give him the cup.

He’s fat, and scant of breath.
Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows:
The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.

Come, for the third, Laertes: you but dally;
I pray you, pass with your best violence;
I am afeard you make a wanton of me.

Why, as a woodcock to mine own springea snare for catching birds, Osric;
I am justly kill’d with mine own treachery.

No, no, the drink, the drink⁠—O my dear Hamlet⁠—
The drink, the drink! I am poison’d. Dies.

O villany! Ho! let the door be lock’d:
Treachery! Seek it out.

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
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.

The point envenom’d too!
Then, venom, to thy work. Stabs the King.

Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother. King dies.

He is justly served;
It is a poison temper’d by himself.
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet:
Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee,
Nor thine on me! Dies.

Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.
I am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu!
You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time⁠—as this fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest⁠—O, I could tell you⁠—
But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;
Thou livest; report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.

Never believe it:
I am more an antique Roman than a Dane:
Here’s yet some liquor left.

As thou’rt a man,
Give me the cup: let go; by heaven, I’ll have’t.
O good Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story. March afar off, and shot within. What warlike noise is this?

Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,
To the ambassadors of England gives
This warlike volley.

O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o’er-crows my spirit:
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence. Dies.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
Why does the drum come hither? March within.

What is it ye would see?
If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.

This quarry cries on havoc. O proud death,
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes at a shot
So bloodily hast struck?

The sight is dismal;
And our affairs from England come too late:
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
To tell him his commandment is fulfill’d,
That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead:
Where should we have our thanks?

Not from his mouth,
Had it the ability of life to thank you:
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
Are here arrived give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placed to the view;
And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
How these things came about: so shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall’n on the inventors’ heads: all this can I
Truly deliver.

Let us haste to hear it,
And call the noblest to the audience.
For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune:
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.

Of that I shall have also cause to speak,
And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more:
But let this same be presently perform’d,
Even while men’s minds are wild; lest more mischance,
On plots and errors, happen.

Let four captains
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royally: and, for his passage,
The soldiers’ music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies: such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot. A dead march. Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after which a peal of ordnance is shot off.