Ham. God's bodykins, man, much better: use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

Pol. Come, sirs.

Ham. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play
to-morrow. [Exit Polonius with all the 580
Players but the First.] Dost thou hear me,
old friend; can you play the Murder of
Gonzago?

First Play. Aye, my lord.
Ham. We'll ha 't to-morrow night.
night. You
could, for a need, study a speech of some
dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set
down and insert in 't, could you not?
First Play. Aye, my lord.

Ham. Very well. Follow that lord; and look 590 you mock him not. [Exit First Player.] My good friends, I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore.

Ros. Good my lord!

Ham. Aye, so, God be wi' ye! [Exeunt Rosen

crantz and Guildenstern.] Now I am alone.

586. "a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines"; there was much throwing about of brains in the attempt to find these lines in the play-scene in Act III. Sc. ii. "The discussion," as Furness aptly puts it, "is a tribute to Shakespeare's consummate art," and the view of this scholar commends itself-viz., that "in order to give an air of probability to what everyone would feel [otherwise] highly improbable, Shakespeare represents Hamlet as adapting an old play to his present needs by inserting in it some pointed lines.” -I. G.

600

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,

Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with

tears

And cleave the general air with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and appal the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet I,

611

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my câuse,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? 620
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the
throat,

As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!

'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be

But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless vil-

lain!

O, vengeance!

630

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,

A scullion!

Fie upon 't! foh! About, my brain! Hum, I have heard

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,

• “oppression bitter"; of course the meaning is, "lack gall to make me feel the bitterness of oppression." There were no need of saying this, but that Collier, on the strength of his second folio, would read transgression, and Singer, on the strength of nothing, aggression. Dyce justly pronounces the alteration "nothing less than villainous.-H. N. H.

632, "dear father murdered"; thus the folio; some copies of the undated quarto, and the quarto of 1611, read, "the son of a dear father murderd. The quartos of 1604 and 1605 are without father; and that of 1603 reads, "the son of my dear father." There can be no question that the reading we have adopted, besides having the most authority, is much the more beautiful and expressive, though modern editors commonly take the other. The words, “O, vengeance!" are found only in the folio.-H. N. H.

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play," &c.,

vide Heywood's Apology for Actors, where a number of these stories are collected; perhaps, however, Shakespeare had in mind the plot of A Warning for Faire Women, a play on this theme published in 1599, referring to a cause célèbre which befell at Lynn in Norfolk. -I. G.

640

Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will
speak

With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players

Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I 'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil; and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy. 651
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds
More relative than this. The play 's the thing
Wherein I 'll catch the conscience of the king.

[Exit.

ACT THIRD

SCENE I

A room in the castle.

Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.

King. And can you, by no drift of circumstance,
Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
Ros. He does confess he feels himself distracted,
But from what cause he will by no means speak.
Guil. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded;
But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,

When we would bring him on to some confes

sion

Of his true state.

Queen.

well? 10

Did he receive you well?
Ros. Most like a gentleman.

Guil. But with much forcing of his disposition.
Ros. Niggard of question, but of our demands

Most free in his reply.

13-14. "Niggard of question, but of our own demands most free"; Hanmer, "Most free of our question, but to our demands most niggard"; Warburton, “Most free of question, but of our demands most niggard"; Collier MS., "niggard of our question, but to our demands most free.”—I. G.