To sing a requiem and such rest to her
As to peace-parted souls.

Laer.

Lay her i' the earth: 270

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
A ministering angel shall my sister be,

When thou liest howling.

Ham.

What, the fair Ophelia! Queen. [Scattering flowers] Sweets to the sweet:

farewell!

I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;

I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet

maid,

And not have strew'd thy grave.

Laer.

O, treble woe
Fall ten times treble on that cursed head
Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense 280
Deprived thee of! Hold off the earth a while,
Till I have caught her once more in mine arms:
[Leaps into the grave.

Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
Till of this flat a mountain you have made
To o'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus.

Ham. [Advancing] What is he whose grief

Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow

269. "a requiem" is a mass sung for the rest of the soul. So called from the words, "Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine."H. N. H.

278. "treble woe"; the reading of Qq. 2, 3, 6; F. 1, "terrible woer"; Ff. 2, 3, 4, "terrible wooer.”—I. G.

་

Conjures the wandering stars and makes them

stand

Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,
Hamlet the Dane. [Leaps into the

Laer. The devil take thy soul!

Ham.

grave.

290

[Grappling with him.
Thou pray'st not well.

I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat;
For, though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I in me something dangerous,

Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy

hand.

Hor. Good my lord, be quiet.

[The Attendants part them, and they

come out of the grave.

Ham. Why, I will fight with him upon this theme
Until my eyelids will no longer wag.

Queen. O my son, what theme?

Ham. I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,

300

Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her? King. O, he is mad, Laertes.

Queen. For love of God, forbear him.

Ham. 'Swounds, show me what thou 'lt do:

Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo 't tear thyself?

Woo't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile?

308. “wov't drink up eisel”; vide Glossary, "eisel"; the various emendations Weissel,” “Vssel," (a northern branch of the Rhine), "Nile," "Nilus," are all equally unnecessary.-I. G.

www

310

I'll do 't. Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
Be buried quick with her, and so will I:
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,

Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou 'It
mouth,

I'll rant as well as thou.

Queen.

This is mere madness:

And thus a while the fit will work on him;
Anon, as patient as the female dove

When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.

Ham.

Hear you, sir; 320
What is the reason that you use me thus?
I loved you ever: but it is no matter;
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.

[Exit. King. I pray thee, good Horatio, wait upon him. [Exit Horatio.

[To Laertes] Strengthen your patience in our
last night's speech;

We'll put the matter to the present push.
Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.
This grave shall have a living monument:
An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;
Till then, in patience our proceeding be.

330

[Exeunt.

SCENE II

A hall in the castle.

Enter Hamlet and Horatio.

Ham. So much for this, sir: now shall you see the other;

You do remember all the circumstance?

Hor. Remember it, my lord!

Ham. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fight-
ing,

That would not let me sleep: methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly,
And praised be rashness for it, let us know,
Our indiscretion sometime serves us well
When our deep plots do pall; and that should
learn us

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.

Hor.

Ham. Up from my cabin,

10

That is most certain.

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, Ho-
ratio,-

O royal knavery!- an exact command,
Larded with many several sorts of reasons,

9. "pall"; so Q. 2; F. 1, "parle"; Pope, "fail.”—I. G.

20

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.

Hor.

Is 't possible?

Ham. Here's the commission: read it at more leis

ure,

But wilt thou hear now how I did proceed?

Hor. I beseech you.

Ham. Being thus be-netted round with villainies,-
Or 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 labor'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?

Hor.

Aye, good my lord. Ham. An earnest conjuration from the king, As England was his faithful tributary,

30

40

As love between them like the palm might flour-
ish,
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear
And stand a comma 'tween their amities,
And many such-like 'As' es of great charge,

23. "the supervise, no leisure bated"; the supervise is the looking over; no leisure bated means without any abatement or intermission of time.-H. N. H.

31. 'they," i. e. my brains.-I. G.