Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead;
And Paris too: come, I'll dispose of thee
Among a sisterhood of holy nuns:
Stay not to question, for the watch is coming;
Come, go, good Juliet, [Noise again.] I dare
[Exit.

stay no longer.

Jul. Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.-
What's here? a cup, clos'd in my true love's hand?
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end:-
O churl! drink all; and leave no friendly drop,
To help me after?-I will kiss thy lips;
Haply, some poison yet doth hang on them,
To make me die with a restorative. [Kisses him.
Thy lips are warm!

1 Watch. [Within.] Lead, boy:- Which way? Jul. Yea, noise ?-Then I'll be brief. O happy dagger! [Snatching ROMEO'S Dagger. This is thy sheath; [Stabs herself.] there rust, and let me die.

[Falls on ROMEO'S Body, and dies.

Enter Watch, with the Page of PARIS. Page. This is the place; there, where the torch doth burn.

1 Watch. The ground is bloody; Search about
the churchyard:

Go, some of you, whoe'er you find, attach.
[Exeunt some.
Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain;-
And Juliet bleeding; warm, and newly dead,
Who here hath lain these two days buried.-
Go, tell the prince, run to the Capulets,-
Raise up the Montagues, some others search;-

[Exeunt other Watchmen.

We see the ground whereon these woes do lie;
But the true ground of all these piteous woes,
We cannot without circumstance descry.

Enter some of the Watch, with BALTHAZAR.
2 Watch. Here's Romeo's man, we found him in
the churchyard.

1 Watch. Hold him in safety, till the prince come
hither.

Enter another Watchman, with FRIAR LAURENCE.
3 Watch. Here is a friar, that trembles, sighs, and
We took this mattock and this spade from him,
As he was coming from this churchyard side.

weeps:

1 Watch. A great suspicion: Stay the friar too. Enter the PRINCE and Attendants.

Prince. What misadventure is so early up, That calls our person from our morning's rest? Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, and others. Cap. What should it be, that they so shriek

abroad?

La. Cap. The people in the street cry-Romeo, Some-Juliet, and some-Paris; and all run, With open outcry toward our monument.

Prince. What fear is this, which startles in our ears?

1 Watch. Sovereign, here lies the county Paris
slain;

And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before,
Warm and new kill'd.

Prince. Search, seek, and know how this foul
murder comes.

1 Watch. Here is a friar, and slaughter'd Romeo's

man;

With instruments upon them, fit to open

These dead men's tombs.

This dagger hath mista'en, for lo! his house1
Is empty on the back of Montague,-
And is mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom.
La Cap. O me! this sight of death is as a bell,
That warns my old age to a sepulchre.

Enter MONTAGUE and others.

Prince. Come, Montague; for thou art early up, To see thy son and heir more early down.

Mon. Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night;
Grief of my son's exile hath stopp'd her breath:
What further woe conspires against mine age?

Prince. Look, and thou shalt see.
Mon. O thou untaught; what manners is in this,
To press before thy father to a grave!

Prince. Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,
Till we can clear these ambiguities,
And know their spring, their head, their true
descent;

And then will I be general of your woes,
And lead you even to death: Meantime forbear,
And let mischance be slave to patience.-
Bring forth the parties of suspicion.

Fri. I am the greatest, able to do least,
Yet most suspected, as the time and place
Doth make against me, of this direful murder;
And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
Myself condemned and myself excus'd.

Prince. Then say at once what thou dost know!

in this.

Fri. I will be brief, for my short date of breath
Is not so long as is a tedious tale.

Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;
And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful wife:
I married them; and their stolen marriage-day
Was Tybalt's dooms-day, whose untimely death
Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from this
city;

For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
You to remove that siege of grief from her,-
Betroth'd, and would have married her perforce,
To county Paris: -Then comes she to me;
And, with wild looks, bid me devise some means
To rid her from this second marriage,
Or, in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her
The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come at this dire night,
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
Being the time the potion's force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, friar John,
Was staid by accident; and yesternight
Return'd my letter back: Then all alone,
At the prefixed hour of her waking,
Came I to take her from her kindred's vault;
Meaning to keep her closely at my cell,
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:
But, when I came, (some minute ere the time
Of her awakening,) here untimely lay
The noble Paris, and true Romeo, dead.

She wakes; and I entreated her come forth,
And bear this work of heaven with patience:
But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
But (as it seems) did violence on herself.
All this I know; and to the marriage,
Her nurse is privy: And, if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrificed, some hour before his time,

Cap. O, heavens!-0 wife! look how our Unto the rigor of severest law.

daughter bleeds!

HAMLET,

PRINCE OF DENMARK.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

CLAUDIUS, King of Denmark.

FRANCISCO, a Soldier.

HAMLET, Son to the former, and Nephew to the REYNALDO, Servant to Polonius.

present King.

POLONIUS, Lord Chamberlain.

HORATIO, Friend to Hamlet.

LAERTES, Son to Polonius.

A Captain.

An Ambassador.

Another Courtier.

A Priest.

MARCELLUS,

ants.

BERNARDO,

Officers.

A piece of him.

SCENE I.-Elsinore. A Platform before the

Castle.

FRANCISCO Oon his Post. Enter to him BERNARDO.
Ber. Who's there?

Fran. Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold
Yourself.

Ber. Long live the king!
Fran.

Ber.

Bernardo?

He.

Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour.

Ber. Welcome, Horatio; welcome, good Marcellus.

Hor. What, has this thing appear'd again to night?

Ber. I have seen nothing.

Mar. Horatio says, 'tis but our fantasy, And will not let belief take hold of him, Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us;

Ber. "Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Therefore I have entreated him, along

!

1

Mar. Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio. Ber. Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.

Hor. Most like :-it harrows me with fear, and
wonder.

Ber. It would be spoke to.
Mar.

Speak to it, Horatio.

Hor. What art thou, that usurp'st this time of
night,

Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark

Shark'd' up a list of landless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprize
That hath a stomach in't; which is no other,
(As it doth well appear unto our state,)
But to recover of us, by strong hand,
And terms compulsatory, those 'foresaid lands
So by his father lost: And this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations;
The source of this our watch; and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage in the land.
Ber. I think, it be no other, but even so:

Did sometimes march? By heaven, I charge thee, Well may it sort, that this portentous figure

speak.

Mar. It is offended.
Ber.

See! it stalks away. Hor. Stay, speak: speak I charge thee, speak. [Exit Ghost.

Mar. 'Tis gone, and will not answer.
Ber. How now, Horatio? you tremble, and look
pale:

Is not this something more than fantasy?

What think you of it?

Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
That was, and is, the question of these wars.

Hor. A mote it is, to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

*

As, stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star

Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe, Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands,

Without the sensible and true avouch

Of mine own eyes.

Hor. As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armor he had on,
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polack on the ice.
'Tis strange.

Mar. Thus, twice before, and jump at this dead
hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
Hor. In what particular thought to work, I know
not;

But in the gross and scope of mine opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that
knows,

Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land;
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war:
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week:
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-laborer with the day;
Who is't, that can inform me?

At least, the whisper goes so.. Our last king,
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteem'd him)
Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by a seal'd compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,

Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands,
Which he stood seis'd of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,

Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same comart,
And carriage of the article design'd,

His fell to Hamlet: Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full,

Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,

Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of fierce events,-
As harbingers preceding still the fates,
And prologues to the omen' coming on,-
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.-

Re-enter Ghost.

But, soft; behold! lo, where it comes again!
I'll cross it, though it blast me.-Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me;

If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease, and grace to me,
Speak to me:

If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing, may avoid,
O speak!

Or, if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,

For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
[Cock crows.
Speak of it:-stay, and speak. -Stop it, Marcellus.
Mar. Shall I strike at it with my partizan?"
Hor. Do, if it will not stand.

Ber.

Hor.

Mar. 'Tis gone.

'Tis here!

'Tis here!

[Exit Ghost.

We do it wrong, being so majestical,.
To offer it the show of violence;

For it is, as the air, invulnerable,

And our vain blows malicious mockery.

Ber. It was about to speak, when the cock crew.

Hor. And then it started like a guilty thing

Upon a fearful summons. I have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet of the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day; and, at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine: and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.1

Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock
Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated:

This bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad;

Hor. So have I heard, and do in part believe it. Your leave and favor to return to France;

But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill:
Break we our watch up; and, by my advice,
Let us impart what we have seen to-night
Unto young Hamlet: for, upon my life,
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him:
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

Mar. Let's do't, I pray; and I this morning know
Where we shall find him most convenient.