HAMLET. William Shakespeare
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So he does indeed.
Pol.
At such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him:
Be you and I behind an arras then;
Mark the encounter: if he love her not,
And he not from his reason fall’n thereon
Let me be no assistant for a state,
But keep a farm and carters.
King.
We will try it.
Queen.
But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.
Pol.
Away, I do beseech you, both away
I’ll board him presently:—O, give me leave.
[Exeunt King, Queen, and Attendants.]
[Enter Hamlet, reading.]
How does my good Lord Hamlet?
Ham.
Well, God-a-mercy.
Pol.
Do you know me, my lord?
Ham.
Excellent well; you’re a fishmonger.
Pol.
Not I, my lord.
Ham.
Then I would you were so honest a man.
Pol.
Honest, my lord!
Ham. Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
Pol.
That’s very true, my lord.
Ham. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god-kissing carrion,—Have you a daughter?
Pol.
I have, my lord.
Ham. Let her not walk i’ the sun: conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive:—friend, look to’t.
Pol. How say you by that?—[Aside.] Still harping on my daughter:—yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I’ll speak to him again.—What do you read, my lord?
Ham.
Words, words, words.
Pol.
What is the matter, my lord?
Ham.
Between who?
Pol.
I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
Ham. Slanders, sir: for the satirical slave says here that old men have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum; and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward.
Pol.
[Aside.] Though this be madness, yet there is a method in’t.—
Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
Ham.
Into my grave?
Pol. Indeed, that is out o’ the air. [Aside.] How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter.—My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.
Ham. You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal,—except my life, except my life, except my life.
Pol.
Fare you well, my lord.
Ham.
These tedious old fools!
[Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]
Pol.
You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.
Ros.
[To Polonius.] God save you, sir!
[Exit Polonius.]
Guil.
My honoured lord!
Ros.
My most dear lord!
Ham.
My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah,
Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?
Ros.
As the indifferent children of the earth.
Guil.
Happy in that we are not over-happy;
On fortune’s cap we are not the very button.
Ham.
Nor the soles of her shoe?
Ros.
Neither, my lord.
Ham. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?
Guil.
Faith, her privates we.
Ham. In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet. What’s the news?
Ros.
None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest.
Ham. Then is doomsday near; but your news is not true. Let me question more in particular: what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?
Guil.
Prison, my lord!
Ham.
Denmark’s a prison.
Ros.
Then is the world one.
Ham. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ the worst.
Ros.
We think not so, my lord.
Ham. Why, then ‘tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.
Ros. Why, then, your ambition makes it one; ‘tis too narrow for your mind.
Ham. O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
Guil. Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
Ham.
A dream itself is but a shadow.
Ros. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
Ham. Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretch’d heroes the beggars’ shadows. Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.
Ros. and Guild.
We’ll wait upon you.
Ham. No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest of my servants; for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?
Ros.
To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.
Ham. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak.