فصل 16

QUEEN I will not speak with her.

GENTLEMAN She is importunate, Indeed distract . Her mood will needs be pitied.

QUEEN What would she have?

GENTLEMAN She speaks much of her father, says she hears There’s tricks i’th’ world, and hems , and beats her heart , Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing, Yet the unshapèd use of it doth move The hearers to collection; they yawn at it, And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts, Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them, Indeed would make one think there might be thought, Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.

HORATIO ‘Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.

QUEEN Let her come in.

To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss .

So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

OPHELIA Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?

QUEEN How now, Ophelia?

OPHELIA “How should I your true love know From another one? By his cockle hat and staff, And his sandal shoon .”

QUEEN Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

OPHELIA Say you? Nay, pray you, mark.

“He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone. At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone.”

QUEEN Nay, but Ophelia—

OPHELIA Pray you, mark.

“White his shroud as the mountain snow”— Enter King.

QUEEN Alas, look here, my lord.

OPHELIA “Larded with sweet flowers. Which bewept to the ground did not go With true-love showers .”

KING How do you, pretty lady?

OPHELIA Well, God ‘ild you! They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!

KING Conceit upon her father.

OPHELIA Pray let’s have no words of this; but when they ask you what it means, say you this:

“Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day, All in the morning betime

And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine.

Then up he rose, and donned his clothes

And dupped the chamber door

Let in the maid, that out a maid

Never departed more.”

KING Pretty Ophelia—

OPHELIA Indeed, la, without an oath, I’ll make an end on’t: “By Gis and by Saint Charity, Alack, and fie for shame!

Young men will do’t, if they come to’t

By Cock , they are to blame.

Quoth she, ‘Before you tumbled me

You promised me to wed.’ ” He answers:

“ ‘So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun

An thou hadst not come to my bed.’ ”

KING How long hath she been thus?

OPHELIA I hope all will be well. We must be patient, but I cannot choose but weep to think they would lay him i’th’ cold ground. My brother shall know of it.

And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

KING Follow her close. Give her good watch, I pray you.

Oh, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs All from her father’s death—and now behold!

Oh, Gertrude, Gertrude, When sorrows come, they come not single spies , But in battalions. First, her father slain; Next, your son gone, and he most violent author Of his own just remove; the people muddied , Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers For good Polonius’ death. And we have done but greenly , In hugger-mugger to inter him. poor Ophelia Divided from herself and her fair judgment, Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts. Last, and as much containing as all these, Her brother is in secret come from France, Feeds on this wonder, keeps himself in clouds. And wants not buzzers to infect his ear With pestilent speeches of his father’s death, Wherein necessity, of matter beggared , Will nothing stick our person to arraign In ear and ear. Oh, my dear Gertrude, this, Like to a murd’ring piece , in many places Gives me superfluous death .

QUEEN Alack, what noise is this?

KING Attend! Where is my Switzers ? Let them guard the door.

What is the matter?

MESSENGER Save yourself, my lord!

The ocean, overpeering of his list , Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste Than young Laertes, in a riotous head , O’erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord, And, as the world were now but to begin, Antiquity forgot, custom not known, The ratifiers and props of every word, They cry, “Choose we! Laertes shall be king!” Caps , hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds, “Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!”

QUEEN How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!

Oh, this is counter , you false Danish dogs!

KING The doors are broke.

LAERTES Where is this King?—Sirs, stand you all without.

ALL No, let’s come in.

LAERTES I pray you, give me leave.

ALL We will, we will.

LAERTES I thank you. Keep the door.

Oh, thou vile king, Give me my father!

QUEEN Calmly, good Laertes.

LAERTES That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard, Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot Even here between the chaste unsmirchèd brow Of my true mother.

KING What is the cause, Laertes, That thy rebellion looks so giantlike ?

Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.

There’s such divinity doth hedge a king That treason can but peep to what it would , Acts little of his will . Tell me, Laertes, Why thou art thus incensed. Let him go, Gertrude.

Speak, man.

LAERTES Where is my father?

KING Dead.

QUEEN But not by him.

KING Let him demand his fill.

LAERTES How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with .

To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!

Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!

I dare damnation. To this point I stand

That both the worlds I give to negligence

Let come what comes, only I’ll be revenged

Most throughly for my father.

KING Who shall stay you?

LAERTES My will, not all the world’s. And for my means, I’ll husband them so well They shall go far with little.

KING Good Laertes, If you desire to know the certainty Of your dear father, is’t writ in your revenge

That, swoopstake , you will draw both friend and foe, Winner and loser?

LAERTES None but his enemies.

KING Will you know them, then?

LAERTES To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms, And like the kind life-rendering pelican Repast them with my blood.

KING Why, now you speak Like a good child and a true gentleman.

That I am guiltless of your father’s death, And am most sensibly in grief for it, It shall as level to your judgment ‘pear As day does to your eye.

LAERTES How now, what noise is that?

KING Let her come in.

LAERTES O heat, dry up my brains! Tears seven times salt Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!

By heaven, thy madness shall be paid with weight Till our scale turn the beam . O rose of May!

Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!

O heavens, is’t possible a young maid’s wits Should be as mortal as an old man’s life?

Nature is fine in love, and where ‘tis fine It sends some precious instance of itself After the thing it loves.

OPHELIA “They bore him barefaced on the bier,

Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny,

And in his grave rained many a tear—”

Fare you well, my dove!

LAERTES Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge, It could not move thus.

OPHELIA You must sing “A-down a -down,” and you “call him a-down-a.”

Oh, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward that stole his master’s daughter.

LAERTES This nothing’s more than matter .

OPHELIA There’s rosemary , that’s for remembrance; pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies ; that’s for thoughts.

LAERTES A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.

OPHELIA There’s fennel for you, and columbines .

There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. You must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy . I would give you some violets , but they withered all when my father died. They say ‘a made a good end—

“For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.”

LAERTES Thought and affliction, passion , hell itself, She turns to favor and to prettiness.

OPHELIA “And will ‘a not come again?

And will ‘a not come again?

No, no, he is dead.

Go to thy deathbed, He never will come again.

“His beard was as white as snow, All flaxen was his poll .

He is gone, he is gone, And we cast away moan.

God ha’ mercy on his soul!”

And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God b’wi’you.

LAERTES Do you see this, O God?

KING Laertes, I must commune with your grief, Or you deny me right. Go but apart, Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will, And they shall hear and judge twixt you and me.

If by direct or by collateral hand They find us touched , we will our kingdom give, Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours To you in satisfaction; but if not, Be you content to lend your patience to us, And we shall jointly labor with your soul To give it due content.

LAERTES Let this be so.

His means of death, his obscure funeral— No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones, No noble rite, nor formal ostentation — Cry to be heard, as ‘twere from heaven to earth, That I must call’t in question .

KING So you shall, And where th’offense is, let the great ax fall.

I pray you, go with me.