A plain in Denmark.
FORTINBRAS enters at the head of his troops .
FORTINBRAS.—Go, Captain, salute the King of Denmark for me; tell him, that with his consent, Fortinbras claims the promised passage for an expedition through his kingdom. You know where the rendezvous is. If his Majesty wants anything from us, we will go in person to pay him our respects; let him know.
THE CAPTAIN.—I will, my lord.
FORTINBRAS.—Advance gently.
(Fortinbras and his troops exit.)
(Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, etc., enter.)
HAMLET.—Good sir, whose are these forces?
THE CAPTAIN.—They are Norwegians, sir.
HAMLET.—What is their destination, sir, I pray you?
THE CAPTAIN.—They are marching against a part of Poland?
HAMLET.—Who commands them, sir?
THE CAPTAIN.—The nephew of the old king of Norway, Fortinbras.
HAMLET.—Are they against the main part of Poland, sir, or is it some frontier?
THE CAPTAIN.—To speak frankly, sir, and without amplification, we are going to conquer a small piece of land which has little other value than its name. If it cost five ducats, I say five! I would not lease it, and it will not bring Norway, nor Poland, a greater profit, even if it were sold outright.
HAMLET.—Well! then the Poles will never defend him.
THE CAPTAIN.—Yes, there is already a garrison.
HAMLET.—Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats will not settle the matter of this straw. This is like a boil, gathered by too much wealth and peace, that bursts within, and shows not without the cause that kills the man. I humbly thank you, sir.
THE CAPTAIN.—God help you, sir!
(The captain leaves.)
ROSENCRANTZ.—Will it please you to come forward, my lord?
HAMLET.—I’ll have you in a moment. Go a little forward. ( Exit Rosencrantz and Guildenstern . ) How all circumstances testify against me, and spur my soft vengeance!… What is a man whose highest good and sole discharge of his time were but to sleep and eat? an animal, and nothing more. Surely he who made us, with that vast intelligence that looks forward and backward, gave us not this capacity and divine reason to molder within us without employment. Now then, whether it be from bestial forgetfulness, or some cowardly scruple of considering too precisely the issue…. and in these reflections, to quarter them, there’s only one-fourth wisdom and always three-fourths cowardice… I know not why I live still to say, “It must be done;” when I have motive, will, strength, and means to do it. I have as many examples as the earth to exhort me! Witness this army, of such mass and weight, led by a delicate and frail prince, whose soul, swollen with divine ambition, grimaces in defiance at the invisible event, and who exposes all that is mortal and fragile in him to all that fortune, death and peril can dare; and that for an eggshell! To take it properly, to be great is not to be moved without a great cause, but also to greatly extract a quarrel from a straw, when honor is at stake. How can I then remain here, I who have a murdered father, a dishonored mother, so many stimulants of my reason and my blood! and let all this sleep, while to my shame I see the imminent death of twenty thousand men, who, for a fancy and a bauble of glory, go to their grave as to a bed, fighting for a corner of the ground, where too many players will not be able to engage the game, and which is not even a pit and space sufficient to hide the dead?… Oh! from now on let my thoughts be bloody, or esteemed as nothing!
(He leaves.)
