A reception room in the castle.
THE KING, THE QUEEN, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, and some of their attendants, enter .
KING. Though the memory of Hamlet’s death, our beloved brother, be still green and vivid, though it were fitting for us to lay aside our hearts in sorrow, and for our whole kingdom to show as one brow contracted with the same grief, yet reason, contending with nature, hath brought us to think of him with wise grief, and not without some remembrance of ourselves. Therefore here is she who was first our sister, now our queen, companion of our empire over these warlike dominions, and whom, with bewildered joy, with one eye shining, while the other shed tears, mingling rejoicing with funeral, and obsequies with marriage, weighing in equal scales pleasure and sorrow, we have taken to wife. We have not in this resisted your superior wisdoms, which have had their free course in all this affair. Receive our thanks.
Now it is a question, as you know, of young Fortinbras, who, paying little attention to what we can be worth, or thinking that the recent death of our beloved brother would have shaken this kingdom and disturbed its springs, and without any other ally than this phantom of his dreamed advantages, has not failed to insult us by a message, to demand back the domains lost by his father, and which our most valiant brother acquired by all the ties and with all the seals of the law. But that is enough about him. As for us and the object of this assembly, here is what the matter is: we have written by these letters to the king of Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras, who, impotent and bedridden, has barely heard of his nephew’s project, inviting him to stop the continuation; because the levies, the enlistments and the full organization of the corps, everything is done among his subjects. And we dispatch you today, brave Cornelius, and you, Voltimand, to bring our greetings to this old king, without giving you personal power to treat with this prince outside the circle to which the development of these instructions may extend. Farewell, and may your diligence testify to your devotion.
VOLTIMAND.—In this and in all things, we will show our devotion.
KING.—We doubt not. Farewell with a good heart. ( Exit Voltimand and Cornelius .) And now, Laertes, what new thing have you to say to us? You have announced a request; what is it, Laertes? You cannot say a reasonable thing to the King of Denmark, and waste your words. What can you ask, Laertes, but in advance my offer rather than your request? The head is not sister to the heart, nor the hand servant to the lips more closely than the throne of Denmark is bound to your father. What do you wish, Laertes?
LAERTES.—My dread lord, I ask your leave and permission to return to France. Though I set out with eagerness to do you homage at your coronation, now, I confess, that duty once performed, my thoughts and desires turn again to France, and bow before you to obtain your gracious leave and indulgence.
THE KING.—Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?
POLONIUS.—He hath wrung from me, my lord, by the exertion of his entreaties a slow permission, and at last I have sealed his desire with my painful consent. I beg you to grant him leave to depart.
KING.—Take the hour that pleases thee, Laertes; thy moments are thine, and my best wishes are thine.3 ; use it as you wish. And now, Hamlet, my cousin, my son…
Note 3: (back) We translate from an excellent correction by Johnson:Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time is thin,
And my best graces.
HAMLET, aside. —A little more than cousin, and a little less than son.
THE KING.—Why is it that the clouds still weigh upon you?
HAMLET.—Nay, my lord; I am but too much in the sun.
QUEEN.—Dear Hamlet, forsake these dark colors, and let thine eye look with friend on the King of Denmark. Go not endlessly, under the lowered veil of thy eyelids, seeking thy noble father in the dust. Thou knowest, it is the common lot; all that liveth must die, and but pass through this world to eternity.
HAMLET.—Yes, madam, it is the common lot.
THE QUEEN.—If so, why does it seem strange to you?
HAMLET.—It seems to me , madam! nay, it is. Seeming and I know not each other. ‘Tis not my ink-black cloak only, good mother, nor the customary livery of stately mourning, nor the stormy blast of labored breathing, no, nor the abundant spring that streams in the eyes, nor the downcast look of the face, nor all the forms, all the modes, all the signs of grief, that can testify of me truly. Well, this is what seems: for these are actions that a man may play; but I have within me that which no sign equals, what all these harnesses and livery of grief do not tell.
KING. It is a tender and honorable mark of your nature, Hamlet, to pay your father these gloomy duties. But, you must know, your father lost a father; that father whom he lost had lost his own; and the survivor is bound, by filial obligation, to pay the dead, for a time, homage of his grief. But to persist in obstinate grief, is an act of impious obstinacy, is a grief unfit for man. It shows a will very undisciplined towards heaven, a heart unarmed or a rebellious spirit, an understanding too simple and unlearned: for what must be, to our knowledge, of all necessity, what is as usual as the most common things that fall under the senses, why, in our childish rebellion, should we take it so much to heart? Fie! it is a sin against heaven, a sin against the dead, a sin against nature, an absurdity against reason, whose usual text is the death of the fathers, and which has not ceased to cry out, from the first corpse to the one who died today: It must be so . We beg you, throw down this fruitless sorrow, and consider us as a father; for it must be known to the world, you are the nearest to our throne, and that same excellence of love which the most tender father bears to his son, we ourselves offer you. As for your design to return to the schools of Wittenberg, it is most contrary to our desires. We beg you, submit to remain here for the consolation and joy of our eyes, you, the first of our court, our cousin and our son.
QUEEN.—Let not thy mother’s prayers be lost; Hamlet, I pray thee, abide with us, go not to Wittenberg.
HAMLET.—I will obey you as well as I can in all things, madam.
KING.—Well, that’s a tender and good answer. Be in Denmark as ourselves.—Come, madam; this sweet and willing concession of Hamlet enters smiling into my heart; in thanksgiving, I will that the King of Denmark shall not drink a merry health this day, without the great cannon telling the clouds, and heaven shall answer each draught of the king, repeating the crash of earthly thunder. Come.
(The king, the queen, the court, etc., Polonius and Laertes exit.)
HAMLET.—Oh! that this solid, too solid flesh could melt, and flow, and resolve itself into a dew! Or at least the Lord had not set his sacred law against self-murder! O God! O God! how heavy and worn, and flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the practices of this world! Away with this world! oh! away with it! It is an unhoeed garden, where all things go to seed; it is coarse and wild weeds that only take possession of it… That things should have come to this! Dead only two months… nay, less, not two months… So excellent a king! Who was to this what Apollo is to a satyr… so tender to my mother, that he could not bear the winds of heaven to come too roughly to his face. Heaven and earth! must I remember? How? One would have seen her cling to him as if her appetite had only increased from what he was feeding on… and yet, in a month… Let us not think of that. Fragility, thy name is woman! A short month, and before those shoes were old, in which she had followed the body of my poor father, all in tears, like a Niobe… What? She, herself? O heavens! a beast who lacks the discourses of reason would have lamented longer.—Married to my uncle, to my father’s brother, who resembles my father no more than I do Hercules… in a month, before the salt of her vicious tears had ceased to redden her aching eyes, she was married! O criminal haste to throw herself—and so lightly—into an incestuous bed! This is not good, this cannot turn to good. But break yourself, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.
(Horatio, Marcellus and Bernardo enter.)
HORATIO.—Hail to your lordship.
HAMLET.—I am glad to see you well. Horatio, is it not?—or I know not who I am myself.
HORATIO.—Himself, my lord, and your most humble servant for ever.
HAMLET.—Say, my good friend, sir; I will exchange that name with you. And what brings you back from Wittenberg, Horatio?—Marcellus?
MARCELLUS.—My good lord…
HAMLET.—I am glad to see you. Good morning, sir. But, indeed, what made you leave Wittenberg?
HORATIO.—A vagabond’s nature, my good lord.
HAMLET.—I would not hear your enemy speak thus; you will not do my ear the violence of making it the depositary of your testimony against yourself. I know you are no vagabond. But what business have you in Elsinore? We will teach you to drink deep before you go hence.
HORATIO.—My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.
HAMLET.—I pray thee, comrade, mock me not; I think it is to see my mother’s wedding.
HORATIO.—It is true, my lord, they followed very closely.
HAMLET.—Economy, Horatio, pure economy! The meats cooked for the funeral have been served cold on the wedding tables. Would to God I had met my best enemy in heaven, rather than seen this day, Horatio!—My father!—Methinks I see my father?
HORATIO.—Where, my lord?
HAMLET.—With the eyes of the soul, Horatio.
HORATIO.—I saw him once; he was a perfect king.
HAMLET.—He was a man, to say it all in one word, such as I shall never see again.
HORATIO.—My lord, I think I saw him last night.
HAMLET.—Seen! Who?
HORATIO.—My lord, the king your father.
HAMLET.—The king, my father!
HORATIO.—Reduce your surprise for a moment, by listening attentively, that I may, with the testimony of these gentlemen, tell you this prodigy.
HAMLET.—For God’s sake, make yourself heard.
HORATIO. For two nights together, these gentlemen, Marcellus and Bernardo, being on sentry duty, in the idle and dead hour of midnight, had this adventure: a figure, like your father, fully armed, exactly from head to toe, appeared before them, and, with a solemn gait, passed slowly and gravely by them. Three times he walked before their eyes, overwhelmed and fixed with terror, at the distance of this staff, while, dissolved almost into some melting jelly, by the effect of fear, they remained dumb and spoke not to him. They shared this with me as a terrible secret; and I, the third night, stood guard with them. Then, just as they had told me, at the same hour, in the same form, every one of their words being true and certain, the apparition came. I recognized your father; these two hands are not more similar.
HAMLET.—But where did it happen?
MARCELLUS.—My lord, on the platform where we stood guard.
HAMLET.—Have you not spoken to him?
HORATIO. My lord, I did. But he made no answer; once, however, as I thought, he raised his head and began to move as if he would speak; but at that very moment the morning cock crowed aloud, and he, at the sound, drew back in all haste, and vanished from our sight.
HAMLET.—That is very strange.
HORATIO.—As surely as I live, my honourable lord, it is true; and we thought it our duty to tell you.
HAMLET.—Verily, verily, gentlemen, it troubles me. Are you keeping watch tonight?
ALL.—Yes, my lord.
HAMLET.—Armed, you say?
ALL.—Armed, my lord.
HAMLET.—From head to foot?
ALL.—My lord, from head to toe.
HAMLET.—Then you have not seen his face.
HORATIO.—Oh, yes, my lord; his visor was up.
HAMLET.—Well! had he a irritated look?
HORATIO.—A look of sadness rather than anger.
HAMLET.—Pale or red?
HORATIO.—No, very pale.
HAMLET.—And he fixed his eyes on you?
HORATIO.—Constantly.
HAMLET.—I wish I had been there.
HORATIO.—That would have struck you very strongly.
HAMLET.—No doubt, no doubt. Hath he dwelt long?
HORATIO.—Time to count to a hundred, without hurrying too much?
MARCELLUS and BERNARDO.—Longer! Longer!
HORATIO.—Not when I saw him.
HAMLET.—His beard was grizzled, was it not?
HORATIO.—As when I saw him in his life; like a shield sable sown argent4 .
Note 4: (back) In the language of blazonry, sable is the color black.
HAMLET.—I will watch to-night, perhaps he may appear again.
HORATIO.—I warrant it will appear.
HAMLET.—If he be yet in my noble father’s shape, I will speak to him, though yawning hell bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, if you have hidden this vision, continue in your silence; and whatever thing may yet come to pass this night, give it to your consideration, but not to your tongue. I will reward your affection! So farewell. On the platform, between eleven and twelve, I will meet you.
ALL.—Our respects to your lordship.
HAMLET.—No, your affection, as mine is yours. Farewell! ( Exit Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo . )—My father’s soul all armed! all is not well. I suspect some evil mystery. O, I would night were come! Till then, be calm, my soul! Evil deeds, though the whole earth were heavy upon them, shall arise before men’s eyes.
(He leaves.)
