An apartment in the castle.
THE KING, THE QUEEN, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, RETINUE, enter .
KING.—Be welcome, dear Rosencrantz, and you, Guildenstern! Besides the great desire we have long had to see you, the need we have of your services has caused our hasty summons. You have known something of Hamlet’s transformation; I say transformation, for in him neither the outward nor the inward man is any longer what he was. What could be the cause, other than his father’s death, that has thrown him so far beyond all consciousness of himself, I cannot imagine. You, then, who were brought up with him from such a young age, and who, since then, have lived so close to his youth and his tastes, I beg you both to be good enough to devote some of your leisure to our court, in order to attract him to pleasures by your company, and to seize, by all the clues that chance will allow you to glean, if there is some reason unknown to us which afflicts him thus, and which, coming to be discovered, would be within reach of our remedies.
THE QUEEN.—Good gentlemen, he has spoken much of you; and I am sure there are not two men in this world to whom he is more attached. If you will be pleased to show us enough courtesy and goodwill to spend some time with us, for the aid and benefit of our hopes, your visit will be loaded with all the thanks that are fitting for a king’s gratitude.
ROSENCRANTZ.—Your Majesties might, by the sovereign power they have over us, give their dreaded pleasure the form of a command rather than a prayer.
GUILDENSTERN.—We both obey, and here we pay homage to ourselves and our efforts, strained to the utmost, placing our services at your feet to be commanded by you.
THE KING.—I thank you, Rosencrantz, and you, kind Guildenstern.
THE QUEEN.—I thank you, Guildenstern, and you, amiable Rosencrantz; and I conjure you to go instantly to my son, alas! much changed.—Let some of you conduct these gentlemen to where Hamlet is.
GUILDENSTERN.—Heaven make our presence and our care agreeable and salutary to him!
THE QUEEN.—Alas! So be it!
(Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and some of the retinue leave.)
(Polonius enters.)
POLONIUS.—The ambassadors are returned from Norway, well satisfied, my good lord.
THE KING.—You are always the father of good news.
POLONIUS.—Truly, my lord? Be assured, my good sovereign, that I hold my services, as I hold my soul, both at the disposal of my God and my gracious king; and I think (or this brain of mine cannot track a case as surely as it used to) I think I have found the true cause of Hamlet’s madness.
THE KING.—Ah! tell me that! That is what I long to hear!
POLONIUS.—Give audience to the ambassadors first; my news will be dessert after this great feast.
KING.—Do them the honours yourself, and introduce them. ( Exit Polonius . ) He tells me, my dear Gertrude, that he has found the chief point and source of all our son’s trouble.
THE QUEEN.—I doubt there is any other than this great cause: the death of his father and the extreme haste of our marriage.
(Polonius returns with Voltimand and Cornelius.)
THE KING.—Good! we will sound him out.—Be welcome, my good friends. Say, Voltimand, what do you bring us from our brother in Norway?
VOLTIMAND.—The richest reciprocity of compliments and good wishes. From our first approach, he sent orders to suspend his nephew’s recruitments, which appeared to him to be preparations against the Pole; but, having looked into them more closely, he found them really directed against Your Highness. Then, hurt to see how his illness, his age, his impotence had been abused, he had his orders served on Fortinbras, who immediately obeyed, received the king’s reprimands, and, finally, swore before his uncle never again to try his arms against Your Majesty. Whereupon the old king, overjoyed, assigned him an annual income of three thousand crowns, and commissioned him to employ against the Pole the soldiers he had previously raised. Attached is a petition ( he hands over a paper ), which its contents will explain more fully, asking you to please grant free passage through your States for this expedition, under such conditions of safety and good understanding as are proposed here.
KING.—That suits us well, and at a more thoughtful moment of leisure, we will read, answer, and consider this matter. However, we thank you for the trouble you have so well taken: go and rest; this evening we will feast together; you will be very welcome at my house.
(Voltimand and Cornelius exit)
POLONIUS.—This matter is well ended. My sovereign, and you, madam, to inquire what majesty should be, what obedience is, why day is day, night is night, and time is time, would be nothing else but to lose night, day, and time; therefore… since brevity is the soul of wit, whose anatomy and outward flowers are but weariness, I will be brief. Your noble son is mad. Mad I call him, for to wish to define madness in truth, what is it? If not to be oneself nothing less than mad? But let that be.
THE QUEEN.—More things and less art.
POLONIUS.—Madam, I swear to you that I use no art at all. That your son is mad, that is true. It is true that it is a pity. And it is a pity that it is true. Foolish figure of speech. But let us bid him farewell, for I will not use art. So, let us grant that he is mad; and now it remains for us to find the cause of this effect, or, to speak better, the cause of this mischief, for this effect is a mischief that comes from a cause. This is what remains demonstrated, and this is what remains to be demonstrated. Weigh everything well. I have a daughter; I have her, since she is still mine; a daughter who, in her respect and obedience, follow, has given me this. Now, summarize and conclude…
To the celestial idol of my soul, to the blessed beauty Ophelia…
That’s a bad phrase, a vulgar phrase. “Blessed beauty” is a vulgar word. But listen; let’s continue.
May, in his perfect and white breast, these words, etc.
THE QUEEN.—This was addressed to him by Hamlet?
POLONIUS.—My good lady, wait a moment, I will be punctual.
(He reads.)
Doubt that the stars are of fire,
Doubt that the sun turns,
Doubt that the truth can be a lie5 ,
But never doubt my love.
O dear Ophelia! I am ill at ease in this meter; I have not the art of calculating the length of my moans. But how well I love you, oh! perfectly well, believe it. Farewell.
Yours forever, dear lady, as long as this mortal machine belongs to her.
HAMLET.
This is what my daughter, in obedience, showed me; and furthermore, the instances of your son, at what times, in what manners and in what places they occurred, she confided everything to my ear.
Note 5: (return)This is vague. But why would the translator take sides when the author has left the thought hanging? The text reads:Doubt thou, the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
The English verb to doubt sometimes means to doubt, sometimes to suspect. Should the third line be translated as: “Suspects the truth of being a liar”—or as: “Doubts that the truth is a liar?” Both meanings are in the text; they should have been kept in the translation, confounded and even confused. Let us never take away from Hamlet’s language, especially from the second act onward, after he has seen the spectre, learned of the crime and conceived revenge, after he has announced to his friends his intention of feigning a whimsical character, after the king has portrayed him as completely transformed and sick, let us never take away from his language a touch of abruptness, a drop of bitterness, or a shadow of darkness. Does Hamlet say that the truth is true, or that what is so called is only a lie? Is it an axiom of common sense or an axiom of subtle and sad skepticism that he proposes to Ophelia? Is it to the certainty of truth or to the truth of uncertainty that he compares and prefers the evidence of his love? Who knows? But whatever the case, whether intentional or accidental, the confusion of the two meanings is Shakespearean. One would readily say that Ophelia, reading this verse, understood it in the simplest sense, and that Hamlet had written it in the other sense, the most covert and desolate.
THE KING.—But how did she receive his love?
POLONIUS.—What idea have you of me?
THE KING.—The idea of a faithful and honorable man.
POLONIUS.—I would only ask, in this respect, to prove myself. But what would you think, if, when I saw this warm love take its flight (for I perceived it, I must tell you, before my daughter had spoken to me), what would you think of me, you and her gracious Majesty the Queen here, if I had played the inert part of a desk or a wallet, or had let my heart work dully and silently, or had looked on this love with a careless eye? What would you think? Nay, I set myself squarely to it; and thus spake to my young damsel: ‘The Lord Hamlet is a prince above thy sphere; this must not be.’ And then I gave her precepts to keep herself shut out of his reach, to admit no messenger, to receive no gift. This done, she reaped the fruit of my advice, and he (to give you a short story), seeing himself rejected, fell into sadness; from there into disgust; from there into insomnia; from there into weakness; from there into floating reveries, and, through this decline, into madness, where he now strays, and which puts us all in mourning.
THE KING.—Do you think that is it?
THE QUEEN.—It may be, very likely.
POLONIUS.—Has it ever happened (I wish I knew) that I have positively said, “This is it ,” and it has turned out otherwise?
THE KING.—No, not that I know of.
POLONIUS, showing his head and shoulders. —Take this away, if it be otherwise. Provided I am guided by circumstances, I shall find the point where truth is hidden, were it hidden, indeed, in the center of the earth.
THE KING.—How can we investigate further?
POLONIUS.—You know that sometimes he walks four hours together here in the gallery.
THE QUEEN.—He does walk there, indeed.
POLONIUS.—In one of these moments I’ll let him have my daughter; then let us be, you and I, behind a tapestry; observe their meeting; if he loves her not, and if this is not what made him fall from reason, let me not be a councillor of a kingdom, send me to govern a farm and carters.
THE KING.—We will try that.
(Hamlet enters while reading.)
THE QUEEN.—But look with what a sad air the poor wretch comes reading.
POLONIUS.—Begone, I beseech you, begone both; I will come to him instantly: oh, give me free hand. ( Exeunt the King, Queen, and attendants . ) How is my good lord Hamlet?
HAMLET.—Well, thank God!
POLONIUS.—Do you know me, my lord?
HAMLET.—Perfectly well: you are a fishmonger.
POLONIUS.—Not I, my lord.
HAMLET.—Then I wish you were as honest a man.
POLONIUS.—Honest, my lord?
HAMLET.—Yes, sir; to be honest, as the world goes, is to be one man out of ten thousand.
POLONIUS.—That is very true, my lord.
HAMLET.—For if the sun breeds worms in a dead dog,—he being a god, kissing a carcass——have you a daughter?
POLONIUS.—I have one, my lord.
HAMLET.—Let her not walk in the sun. Conception is a good thing: but as to how your daughter may conceive—friend, take care.
POLONIUS.—What do you mean by that? ( Aside . ) Again his refrain about my daughter! Yet he did not know me at first; he said I was a fishmonger. He is not there, he is not there! Indeed, in my youth I suffered many extremities through love; very little as this. I will speak to him again. What do you read, my lord?
HAMLET.—Words, words, words!
POLONIUS.—What is the question, my lord?
HAMLET.—Question? Between whom?
POLONIUS.—I mean in the book you are reading, my lord.
HAMLET.—Slander, sir; for that rascal of a satirist says that old men have gray beards; that their faces are wrinkled; that their eyes secrete a thick amber like plum gum, and that they have abundant absence of wit, with very weak hocks. All this, sir, though I believe it with all my power and might, yet I hold it not honest to have written it thus; for you yourself, sir, will be as old as I am, if ever, like a crab, you can go backward.
POLONIUS, aside. —Though these are follies, there is still some consistency in them. Will you change your air, my lord, and come elsewhere?
HAMLET.—In my grave?
POLONIUS.—That would certainly be a complete change of air. How full of meaning his remarks are sometimes! Happy accidents, where often madness strikes directly, while reason and sound thoughts would not be so lucky to express themselves well! I will leave him and immediately consider how to bring about a meeting between him and my daughter. My honorable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.
HAMLET.—You can take nothing from me, sir, that I would more willingly give up—except my life, except my life, except my life!
POLONIUS.—Farewell, my lord.
HAMLET.—These tiresome old fools!
(Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter.)
POLONIUS.—You seek Lord Hamlet; he is here.
ROSENCRANTZ, to Polonius. —God save you, sir!
(Polonius leaves.)
GUILDENSTERN.—My honoured lord!…
ROSENCRANTZ.—My dearest lord!…
HAMLET.—My good, my excellent friends! How do you do, Guildenstern? Ah! Rosencrantz! Good fellows, how do you both do?
ROSENCRANTZ.—Like the common children of the earth.
GUILDENSTERN.—Fortunate in that we are not too fortunate. We are not precisely the finest jewel that fortune wears in her cap.
HAMLET.—Nor the soles that tread upon his shoes?
ROSENCRANTZ.—No, my lord.
HAMLET.—Then you live near his girdle, in the centre of his favour?
GUILDENSTERN.—Yes, indeed! we are private friends of his.
HAMLET.—Lodged in fortune’s secret bosom? Oh, yes, that’s true. She’s a harlot. What news?
ROSENCRANTZ.—None, my lord; except that the world is become honest.
HAMLET.—Then judgment is near; but your news is not true. Let me ask you a more particular question: what have you done to fortune, my good friends, that she has sent you here to prison?
GUILDENSTERN.—In prison, my lord?
HAMLET.—Denmark is a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ.—Then the world is one too.
HAMLET.—A great prison, in which are many vaults, pits, and dungeons: Denmark is one of the worst.
ROSENCRANTZ.—We do not think so, my lord.
HAMLET.—Well! Denmark is not a dungeon to you, then; for there is good and evil only according to opinion. To me it is a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ.—So be it! It is your ambition that makes it appear so; it is too narrow for your soul.
HAMLET.—O God! I could be shut up in a nut-shell, and think myself king of infinite space, were it not that I dream evil dreams.
GUILDENSTERN.—Which dreams are indeed ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is nothing more than the shadow of a dream.
HAMLET.—A dream itself is but a shadow.
ROSENCRANTZ.—Certainly, and I hold that ambition is of such an airy and light essence that it is but the shadow of a shadow.
HAMLET.—Then our beggars are real bodies, and our monarchs and great heroes that never end are beggars’ shadows.—Shall we go to court? for, by my faith, I am not fit to reason.
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN.—We will be there with you.
HAMLET.—Not so; I will not rank you with the rest of my servants, for, speaking honestly, I am fearfully accompanied. But tell me,—to go straight by the beaten paths of friendship,—what are you doing at Elsinore?
ROSENCRANTZ.—To see you, my lord, no other motive.
HAMLET.—Beggar as I am, I am poor even in thanks, but I thank you, and be sure, my dear friends, that my thanks are too dear for a penny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclination? Is it a visit of your own free will? Come, come! Deal justly with me. Come, come! in truth, speak!
GUILDENSTERN.—What shall we say, my lord?
HAMLET.—Whatever it be, but let it be to the point. You were sent for, and there’s a sort of confession in your looks which your modesty has not skill to color. I know, the good king and queen have sent for you.
ROSENCRANTZ.—To what end, my lord?
HAMLET.—That is what you have to tell me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our comradeship, by the harmony of our youth, by the duties of our ever-maintained affection, and by all the more touching motives that a better orator could call upon you, be plain and straight with me: have you been sent for, yes or no?
ROSENCRANTZ, to Guildenstern. —What do you say?
HAMLET, aside. —Well! I have a glimpse of you already. ( Aloud ). If you love me, don’t hold it against me.
GUILDENSTERN.—My lord, we have been sent for.
HAMLET.—I will tell you why. So my anticipated confessions shall relieve you of your confidences, and your discretion towards the king and queen shall not have to change a single pen. I have, of late (but why? I know not), lost all my cheerfulness, left all my wonted exercises there; and indeed, there is so much depression in my disposition, that this vast assemblage, the earth, seems to me a barren promontory; that this admirable pavilion, the air, see you, this firmament boldly suspended, this stately vault encrusted with golden flames, why, it seems to me nothing but a foul and pestilent heap of vapours. What a masterpiece is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! how admirable and expressive in form and motion! in action how like an angel! in conception how like a god! He is the wonder of the world, the supreme type of animated beings! Well! in my eyes, what is this quintessence of dust? Man does not charm me, nor woman either, although by your smile you seem to contradict me.
ROSENCRANTZ.—My lord, there was nothing of that in my thoughts.
HAMLET.—Why did you laugh when I said, “The man pleases me not?”
ROSENCRANTZ.—Because I was thinking, my lord,—if the man please you not,—what a poor reception the actors will receive from you! We met them on the way; they come here to offer you their services.
HAMLET.—He that playeth the king shall be welcome; his majesty shall have tribute from me; the adventurous knight may use his foil and shield; the lover shall not sigh for nothing; the jester may quietly finish his part; the fool shall make even those laugh whose lungs are shaken with a dry cough, and the princess shall tell us her feelings with all liberty, though the blank verse must limp to keep up with her. What actors are these?
ROSENCRANTZ.—Those very ones you were wont to see with pleasure, the tragedians of the City.
HAMLET.—And by what chance did they become ambulants? Their fixed abode, as well for fame as for profit, was better in every respect.
ROSENCRANTZ.—I think their hindrance arises from the recent innovation.
HAMLET.—Do they hold the same esteem as when I was in the city? Are they so followed?
ROSENCRANTZ.—No, indeed, they are not.
HAMLET.—Whence comes this? Do they rust?
ROSENCRANTZ.—No, their efforts have lost none of their accustomed allure. But there is, sir, a brood of children, of hawks on the spit, who squawk at the top of the dialogue, and are slapped to the bone for it; they are the fashion now, and have so disparaged the common theatre (that is what they call it) that many people who carry swords are afraid of quill pens and hardly dare to come to them.
HAMLET.—What, are they children? Who keeps them? How is their allowance regulated? Will they pursue this profession only as long as they can sing? Will they not say, afterward, if they themselves become common actors (as is likely, if they have nothing better to do), that the authors of their company have wronged them, by making them declaim beforehand against their future inheritance?
ROSENCRANTZ.—My goodness! there has been much to be done on both sides, and the nation thinks it no sin to stir them up to dispute. There was for a time no money to be made out of a play, unless the poet and the actor came to quarrel with their rivals in the middle of a dialogue.
HAMLET.—Is it possible?
GUILDENSTERN.—Oh! there has been a great deal of brainwashing already.
HAMLET.—Do the children carry it off?
ROSENCRANTZ.—Yes, my lord, they carry all, Hercules and his burden with him6 .
Note 6: (back) This whole passage is nothing but a tissue of allusions to the history of the various theatres which had been established shortly before the performance of Hamlet , and where the choirboys of St. Paul’s Church and the Elizabeth Chapel Royal competed with Shakespeare’s troupe. It is not only of their competition that Shakspeare complains, but also of the abuses and disorders which had been introduced onto the stage with the new actors. Personal attacks had taken full license there. We see in the Apology for Actors , by Heywood, published in 1612, that “the State, the court, the law, the city and their governments” were not spared and that certain authors “put their bitter invectives into the mouths of children, counting that the youth of the actors would have the privilege of passing these violent particularities against the various humors of private and living men, noble or otherwise.” But the success soon caused scandal; part of the public became disgusted and moved away; the children’s performances were banned from 1591 to 1600, and the other troupes suffered in turn from the vogue and the disparagement of their young rivals, from the severe regulations to which they gave rise and from their return to the stage. Shakespeare’s theater was the Globe theater and had for its ensign Hercules carrying the world.
HAMLET.—That is not strange, for my uncle is King of Denmark; and those who, in my father’s life, would have pouted at him, now give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats a head for his miniature. By the sambleu! there is something in it that is more than natural; if philosophy could discover it!
(A trumpet fanfare is heard behind the theater.)
GUILDENSTERN.—They are the actors.
HAMLET. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands. Come near: the usual mark of a good welcome is compliments and ceremonies; suffer me to treat you in this manner, lest my manner, in receiving actors, to whom, I warn you, I ought to show much respect, appear more civil than to you. You are welcome; but this uncle who is my father, and this aunt who is my mother, are deceived.
GUILDENSTERN.—In what way, my good lord?
HAMLET.—I am only mad when the wind is north-north-west; when the wind is south, I can well distinguish a hawk from a heron.
(Polonius enters.)
POLONIUS.—Good for you, gentlemen.
HAMLET.—Listen, Guildenstern—and you too—to every ear a listener—that great brat you see there is not yet out of his jersey.
ROSENCRANTZ.—Perhaps he has returned, for they say the old man is a child a second time.
HAMLET.—I prophesy to you that he comes to speak to me about the actors; beware!… You are right, sir; Monday morning, indeed.
POLONIUS.—My lord, I have news to tell you.
HAMLET.—”My lord, I have news to tell you.” While Roscius was an actor at Rome…
POLONIUS.—The actors are here, my lord.
HAMLET.—Bah! bah!
POLONIUS.—Upon my honor.
HAMLET.—Then comes each actor on his donkey…
POLONIUS.—The best actors in the world, for tragedy, for comedy, for historical drama, for comic pastoral, for pastoral history, for historical tragedy, for tragicomedy, for plays with unity, or for poems without rules, Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light for them; for the regular genre, as for the free genre, they have no equal.
HAMLET.—O Jephthah, judge of Israel! What treasure thou hadst!
POLONIUS.—What treasure had he, my lord?
HAMLET.—What a treasure!
A very beautiful girl, and nothing more,
He liked her better than well.
POLONIUS, aside. —Again, question of my daughter!
HAMLET.—Am I not right, old Jephthah?
POLONIUS.—If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter whom I love better than well.
HAMLET.—No, that does not follow.
POLONIUS.—What then follows, my lord?
HAMLET.—Well!
As luck would have it,
God knows!….
And then you know:
So it happened,
As one might believe?
The first verse of the pious lament will tell you more, for, look! here comes my interruption. ( Four or five actors enter .) You are welcome, my masters, all welcome.—I am delighted to see you well.—Good morning, my good friends.—Oh! my old friend, what is it? Your head has grown a fringe since I last saw you; have you come to Denmark to shave me? What! my young lady and princess, by Our Lady! Your Lordship is nearer to heaven than when I last saw you, at the height of an Italian clog! God grant that your voice, like a gold coin that is no longer current, has not cracked beyond the ring7 ! My masters, you are all welcome. Come, let us go at once, let us go, like falconers of France, and fly to the first game we see. We must have a speech at once; give us a foretaste of your talent; come, some impassioned speech.
Note 7: (back) This is addressed to a young actor entrusted with female roles. Hamlet, seeing him grown up, supposes that his voice has changed or will change and render him unfit for his former roles. It was the rule in England that a gold coin was no longer valid when it was damaged by any crack beyond the circle with which the effigy was surrounded.
THE FIRST COMEDIAN.—What tirade, my lord?
HAMLET.—I heard you once say a speech, but it was never acted on the stage, or if it was, it was not beyond once; for the play, I remember, did not please the multitude; it was caviar to the many.8 ; but, in my opinion, and according to others whose judgments on this matter set the tone for mine much higher, it was an excellent play; well-spun scenes, written with as much reserve as finesse. I remember someone saying that there was no spice in the verses to give the thought a swell, nor in the sentences a thought that could convince the author of affectation; he said that it was a work of estimable taste, as healthy as it was sweet, and much more beautiful than adorned9. There was one piece in particular that I liked very much; it was the story of Aeneas to Dido, and especially the passage where he speaks of the murder of Priam. If it is still alive in your memory, begin at this verse,… let’s see, let’s see:
The bristling Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast….
Note 8: (back) Caviar, only recently known to the English in Shakespeare’s time, was a delight to refined gourmets, and Ben Jonson often ridiculed the importance of these exotic delicacies, anchovies, macaroni, caviar, etc.
Note 9: (back) Commentators are a race of men apart and capable of anything; one must be convinced of this in advance to believe one’s eyes, when one sees one of the most learned and fervent English interpreters of Shakespeare claim that there is no irony in the remarks of Hamlet that we have just translated, nor parody in the tirades that follow. It is as much to say that Molière was of the opinion of Philinte, and not of Alceste, about the sonnet of Orontes. We will see later (Act III, Sc. II) what Shakspeare thought of bombastic actors. Here we have his opinion on pompous and precious writers. That Shakspeare himself sometimes fell, in the process, into some of the faults that he thus mocks, one must admit; but we must not conclude that, in cold blood, and in others, he admired these defects systematically piled up and without any beauty to compensate for them. Each of the praises put here in the mouth of Hamlet is an untruth under the pen of Shakspeare. Hamlet announces as simple and measured the verses in which Shakspeare imitated the violence and the false ornaments of the fashionable style. To what extent the intention is satirical and its imitation exact, one can judge by this fragment of the play which he parodied: Dido, Queen of Carthage , tragedy of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nash. Aeneas tells Dido how Pyrrhus, in the royal palace of Troy, responded to the tears of Priam and Hecuba: “Not at all moved, smiling at their tears, this butcher, while Priam still held his hands up, stepped on his chest, and with his sword made his hands fly off…. At once the frenzied queen sprang into Pyrrhus’s sight, and, hanging by her nails from her eyelids, prolonged her husband’s life a little; but in the end the soldiers pulled her by the heels and dangled her, panting, into the void which sent an echo to the wounded king; then the latter lifted his bedridden limbs from the ground and would have liked to grapple with the son of Achilles, forgetting both his lack of strength and his lack of hands. Pyrrhus disdains him; he sweeps around him with his sword, the shock of which brought down the old king, and from the navel to the throat, with a single blow, he cleaves old Priam. At the dying man’s last sigh, the statue of Jupiter began to lower its marble brow, as if in hatred of Pyrrhus and his wicked deed; but he, unmoved, took his father’s banner, plunged it into the cold, frozen blood of the old king, and ran in triumph to the streets; he could not pass because of the slain men: then, leaning on his sword, he stood as motionless as a stone, contemplating the fire with which rich Ilion burned.” But, do you not agree with Dido who cries out, as soon as Priam’s hands are cut off: “Oh! stop…I can’t hear any more?
It is not that; it begins with Pyrrhus.
The bristling Pyrrhus, whose sable arms, black as his design, resembled the night when he lay in the grim horse, now wears those dreadful and black colors daubed with a more lugubrious blazon: from head to toe, now he is all gules, horribly colored with the blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, baked and pasted by the burning streets that lend a tyrannical and damned glow to the murder of their lord and master. Roasted in his wrath and in these flames, and thus clad with coagulated clots, with eyes like carbuncles, the infernal Pyrrhus seeks the old ancestor Priam….
Now go on.
POLONIUS.—Before God! my lord, well declaimed, with good accent and good discernment!
THE FIRST COMEDIAN.—Soon he finds him throwing too short blows at the Greeks; his ancient sword, rebelling against his arm, remains where it falls and disobeys the command. An unequal adversary, Pyrrhus pushes at Priam; in his rage, he strikes wide; but at nothing but the whistling and the wind of his fierce sword, the enraged father falls. Then the insensible Ilion, who seems moved by this blow, sinks to his base with his flaming peaks, and, with a hideous crash, takes Pyrrhus’s ear captive; for behold: his sword, which was about to fall on the milk-white head of the respectable Priam, seemed to adhere to the air and fix itself there. Pyrrhus then, like a tyrant in a painting, stopped, and as if he had been a neutral person in the presence of his will and his interests, he did nothing. But as we often see, at the approach of some storm, a silence in the heavens, the clouds stopped, the bold north winds without speech, and, below, the globe as mute as death, and suddenly the dread thunder rending the whole country; so, after this pause of Pyrrhus, an awakening of vengeance brings him back to the work, and never did the hammers of the Cyclopes fall on the armor of Mars, forged to be put to the test of eternity, with less remorse than the bloody sword of Pyrrhus now falls on Priam. Out of here, out of here, you prostitute, O Fortune! And all you, O gods! assembled in general synod, take away her power; break all the spokes and rims of her wheel, and roll its rounded hub down the slope of the hills of heaven, as low as among the demons!
POLONIUS.—This speech is too long.
HAMLET.—He’ll go to the barber with your beard. Pray go on; he must have some jig or some tale of bad place; without that he falls asleep; go on. Let’s go to Hecuba.
THE FIRST ACTOR.—But he (ah! woe!) who would have seen the hooded queen…
HAMLET.—The hooded queen!
POLONIUS.—Is that right? Yes, “hooded queen” is right.
THE FIRST COMEDIAN.—…running barefoot here and there, and with the blind stream of her eyes threatening the flames—having a rag over her head where the diadem once stood—and in the manner of a robe, around her gaunt loins, all worn out by too many childbirths, a quilt gathered in the alarm of fear—he who had seen this would, with a tongue infused with venom, have pronounced against the empire of fortune the grievance of high treason. But if the gods themselves had seen her then, when she saw Pyrrhus make a malicious sport of reducing to mince, with blows of the sword, the body of her husband, the sudden burst of clamour which she made (unless mortal things do not move them at all) could have milked the burning eyes of heaven and all the passion which is in the gods.
POLONIUS.—See if he has not changed color; there are tears in his eyes. I pray you, let us leave it at that.
HAMLET.—Very well! I’ll soon have the rest spoken to you. My good lord, will you see that the actors are well provided for? You hear, they must be well treated, for they are the essence and abridged chronicle of the times. It were better for you to have a mean epitaph after your death, than to be ill-treated by them in your life.
POLONIUS.—My lord, I will treat them according to their merit.
HAMLET.—Ah, man! much better, by the blue-head! Treat me every man according to his merit, and who, then, shall escape the stirrups? Treat them according to your own rank and dignity; the less their rights, the more meritorious your kindness. Take them away.
POLONIUS.—Come, gentlemen.
HAMLET.—Follow him, my friends; we shall see a play to-morrow. Hark, my old friend: can you play the Murder of Gonzaga ?
THE FIRST ACTOR.—Yes, my lord.
HAMLET.—Well, we’ll give it to-morrow evening. You could, if need be, study a speech of some twelve or sixteen lines, which I would write down and insert? Could you not?
THE FIRST ACTOR.—Yes, my lord.
HAMLET.—Very well. Follow this gentleman, and take care not to mock him. ( Exit Polonius and the actors .)—( To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern . ) My good friends, I leave you till this evening; you are welcome to Elsinore.
ROSENCRANTZ.—My good lord!
(Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exit.)
HAMLET.—Now, God be with you!—Now I am alone. Oh, what a queer and inert boor I am! Is it not a monstrous thing that this actor here, in a mere fiction, in a dreamed passion, can, according to his own idea, constrain his soul so much that, by the travail of his soul, his whole face grows pale. And tears in his eyes! madness in his countenance! a broken voice! and all his action fitting forms to the idea! And all for nothing! for Hecuba! What is Hecuba to him, or what is he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her? What would he do, if he had, for his passion, the motive and the watchword that I have? He would flood the theater with tears, he would tear the ears of the multitude with formidable words, he would drive the guilty mad and terrify the innocent; he would confound the ignorant and stupefy, upon my word! the very faculties of hearing and seeing. And me! me, however, flat rascal, courage of mud, I am here speaking like a dreaming Jeannot10 , poorly imbued with the fertility of my cause, and I can say nothing, no, nothing for a king whose domain and dearest life have suffered a hellish failure. Am I a coward? Who comes to call me funny? To throw himself across my path11 ? Tear out my beard and blow it in my face? Pull me by the nose? Give me denials down my throat, until they shove them into my lungs? Who does this to me? Ah! What is it? I would gladly take it, for I must surely have a pigeon’s liver, and lack the gall that must make oppression bitter; otherwise, before this hour, I would have already fattened all the vultures in the region with the entrails of this lackey! O bloody, sensual rogue! Traitor without remorse, without shame, unnatural rogue! Well! what? What kind of ass am I? This is very brave that I, the son of a beloved murdered father, I, excited to my vengeance by heaven and hell, should need like a whore to unload my heart in words and that I fall into curses like a true street runner, like a kitchen maid! Fi! Fi! Forward, my brain! One moment: I heard that guilty creatures, attending a play, had, by the very artifice of the stage, been struck in the soul so that, on the spot, they had declared their crimes12. For murder, though it has no tongue, will know how to speak by some miraculous organ. I will have these actors play something resembling the murder of my father before my uncle, and I will observe his appearance, I will search him to the quick; if he is troubled, I know my way. The spirit I saw could well be a demon; the demon has the power to take a form that pleases; yes, and perhaps, thanks to my weakness and my melancholy (for he is very powerful over temperaments of this kind), he deceives me to damn me. I want to base myself on more direct proofs than this. Yes, this play is the trap where I will surprise the king’s conscience.
(He leaves.)
Note 10: (back) John-a-dreams , by allusion to some character in a popular story. Similarly in France, the nickname Guillot le Dreameur was formerly given, and Brantôme still gave, to those who wasted their time and their swords in excogitating various means of action—in memory of the knight Guillan le Pensif, one of the characters in Amadis .
Note 11: (return) The text reads:Who calls me villain? breaks my dough across?
But it seems obvious to me that it should be read: my pace or my path . The extreme negligence with which the first editions of Shakespeare were printed excuses, and more, this small correction. As it stands, the text would mean: “Who comes to split my head from beyond to beyond?” After that, the drawn nose and the most profound denials would be of little consequence, and Hamlet would not be very cowardly to take well to a treatment which would put him out of a position to take badly anything. His madness, if madness there is, is not so foolish; it has method, as Polonius told us. With each thought he conceives, with each fact he imagines, we see him quickly go and roll from consequence to consequence, a passionate reasoner who is intoxicated by his remarks, his calculations, his suspicions, the game he plays before others, his severity towards himself. This hurriedly regular course, these successive leaps by which the impetuous logic of Hamlet’s thoughts and words advance, were too much in keeping with the genius of Shakespeare not to be everywhere in the character of his hero. Hamlet, in the passage which concerns us here, represents to himself a graduated series of insults of which he finds himself worthy; he thinks of it, he sees it, he is in it; his adversary becomes more insolent as he himself sinks to more patience; this is how everything passes in his mind. Thus, a few lines above, when he supposes an actor driven by the motives which leave Hamlet motionless, when he represents to himself at the same time the actor and the spectators under the influence of such a poignant reality, he finally manages to “strike with stupor the very faculties of hearing and seeing.” Note this abstraction. The ear was already torn, the eye already terrified; but further still, deep in the brain and the soul, Hamlet seeks the very faculty of hearing and seeing; it is the last hyperbole of a furious analyst. We are too happy when he has only to translate with true exactitude to reproduce these admirably reasonable nuances of Shakespeare. When there is only one letter to change to give them back to him, must we respect to the point of superstition an old text, condemned in a hundred other places?
Note 12: (return) > It is likely that Shakspeare had in mind an adventure of his time. The old story of Brother Francis was being performed by the Earl of Sussex’s actors at Lynn, in the province of Norfolk; a woman was represented in it as being in love with a young gentleman; and, to better secure the possession of her lover, she had secretly murdered her husband, whose shadow pursued her and appeared before her several times in the most secluded places where she shut herself up. There was at the performance a woman of the town who until then had enjoyed a good reputation, and who at that moment felt her conscience extremely troubled and uttered this sudden cry: “O my husband! my husband!” “I see the shadow of my husband pursuing me and threatening me…” At these sharp and unexpected cries, the people who surrounded her were astonished, and asked her the reason. Immediately, without further urging, she replied that seven years ago, in order to enjoy a young lover whom she named, she had poisoned her husband, whose terrible image had appeared to her in the form of this spectre; she confessed everything before the judges, and was condemned. The actors and several inhabitants of the town were witnesses to this fact.
END OF THE SECOND ACT.
