FROM HAMLET.

HORATIO ANNOUNCES THE APPEARANCE OF THE GHOST. Act I. Scene 2.

Hamlet, Horatio, Bernardo, Marcellus.

Hor. Hail to your Lordship!

Ham.

I am glad to see you well:

Horatio,—or do I forget myself?

Hor. The same, my Lord, and your poor servant ever. Ham. Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you. And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?— Marcellus?

Mar. My good lord-,

Ham. I am very glad to see you. Good even, Sir.-
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

Hor. A truant disposition, good my lord.

Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so;
Nor shall you do mine ear that violence,
To make it truster of your own report
Against yourself. I know you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?

We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.1
Hor. My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.
Ham. I pray thee do not mock me, fellow-student;

I think, it was to see my mother's wedding.

Hor. Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon.

Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio; the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage-tables.
Would I had met my dearest 2 foe in heaven,

Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio !—
My father, methinks I see my father.

Hor.

My lord ?3

Ham. In my mind's eye, Horatio.

Where,

Hor. I saw him once, he was a goodly king.
Ham He was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again.

Hor. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
Ham. Saw whom?

Hor. My lord, the King your father.

Ham.

The King my father!

Hor. Season your admiration for a while

With an attent ear; till I may deliver,
Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
This marvel to you.

1 He tries to assume the tone of their university companionship.

2" For direst, most dreadful and dangerous."-Johnson. It seems rather to mean

the foe in whose punishment I felt the deepest and most eager interest.

3 This exclamation is very natural in the state of Horatio's mind.

FROM HAMLET.

Ham. For God's love, let me hear.

Hor. Two nights together had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,

In the dead vast and middle of the night,
Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father,
Arm'd at all points, exactly, cap-à-pé,

Appears before them, and, with solemn march,
Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd
By their oppress'd and fear surprised eyes,
Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distill'd
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,

Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me
In dreadful1 secrecy impart they did;

And I with them the third night kept the watch:
Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,

Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes: I knew your father;
These hands are not more like.

But where was this?

Ham.
Mar. My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd.
Ham. Did you not speak to it?

Hor.

My lord, I did;
But answer made it none; yet once, methought,
It lifted up its head, and did address

Itself to motion, like as it would speak:

But, even then, the morning cock crew loud;

And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
And vanish'd from our sight.

Ham.

'Tis very strange.

Hor. As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true;

And we did think it writ down in our duty,

To let you know of it.

Ham. Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
Hold you the watch to-night?

Then saw you not his face?

All. My lord, from head to foot.

Ham.

Hor. O, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver up.

Ham. What, look'd he frowningly?

Hor. A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.❜

Ham.

Pale, or red?

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1 Used here passively, not in the common meaning of causing dread: in the same manner, fearful in the Tempest, Act I. Sc. 2. "He's gentle and not fearful;" i e afraid. By a similar exchange of sense, fear is used actively for terrify: "He shall : I but fear the knave."-B. Jonson, Every Man in his Humour.

not

But Horatio in the first scene mentions specially the ghost's frown ;

So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,

He smote the sledded Polack on the ice.

Hor. Nay, very pale.
Ham.

Hor. Most constantly.

Ham.

And fix'd his eyes upon you?

I would I had been there!

Very like,

Hor. It would have much amazed you.
Ham.

Very like: Stay'd it long?

Hor. While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.

Mar. Ber. Longer, longer.

Hor. Not when I saw it.

Ham. If it assume my noble father's person,
I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape,
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight,
Let it be tenable in your silence still:
And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,
Give it an understanding, but no tongue;
I will requite your loves: so, fare you well.
Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve,
I'll visit you.

All.

Our duty to your honour.

Ham. Your loves, as mine to you: farewell.
My father's spirit in arms! all is not well.

I doubt some foul play: would the night were come!
Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.

Act I. Scene 3.

POLONIUS COUNSELS HIS SON ON HIS DEPARTURE FOR TRAVEL.

These few precepts in thy memory

Look thou character.1 Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware

1 A similar accentuation of this word often occurs. See Richard III. Act. III. Sc. I. The change of accent in the course of two or three centuries disfigures to our ears much of the harmony of the old poetry; attention to this would mend many of the verses of Chaucer and his successors. Other instances are record for rècord (Richard III.); aspèct (Henry V.); revènue (Hamlet); obdùrate (Milton); àngelic, nature, creature, honour.-Chaucer.

FROM HAMLET.

Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,

Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man ;

And they in France, of the best rank and station,

Are most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all-to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!

Act III. Scene 1.

HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON DEATH.

To be, or not to be, that is the question :-
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And, by opposing, end them :-To die,-to sleep,--
No more ; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,--'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die ;—to sleep ;—

To sleep! perchance to dream ;-ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,1

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunts and sweat under a weary life,

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1 "Turmoil."-Warburton. It may mean envelopment, i.e., the body. Shakespeare is abundant in these periphrases; "Model of the barren earth." Richard II. Act III. Sc. 2. "Speculative and active instruments," i.e., eyes and limbs. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3;-" pickers and stealers,” ¿.e., fingers. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

* Burdens.

Modern delicacy reads "groan." "Grunt is undoubtedly the true reading, but can scarcely be borne by modern ears."-Johnson.

"It may be remarked, that Hamlet, in his enumeration of miseries, forgets, whether properly or not, that he is a prince, and mentions many evils to which

But that the dread of something after death,-
The undiscovered country, from whose bourne1
No traveller returns,—puzzles the will;

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ;
And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Act III. Scene 2.

HAMLET'S SPEECH TO THE PLAYERS.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it as many of your players do, I had as lief2 the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows, and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing Termagant; it out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.

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Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature; to show Virtue her own feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly,-not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, or man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had inferior stations only are exposed."-Johnson. Johnson's aristocratic criticism would apply equally to Lear, in which there is a similar remembrance of humble humanity. 1 Boundary (Fr. borner). Streams act so frequently in this capacity, that the word in Scotch (burn) means a rivulet.

2 As willingly.-The word is apparently cognate with libens, Lat.

The theatrical "Gods" in Shakespeare's days occupied "the pit," or ground. 4 Compare Burns: "She proved ye were nae journey-wark, John Anderson, my Joe:" and "her prentice hand she tried on man."