Read The Complete Works of William Shakespeare In Plain and Simple English (Translated) Online
Authors: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Queen's closet
Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE and POLONIUS
LORD POLONIUS
He will come straight. Look you lay home to him:
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
And that your grace hath screen'd and stood between
Much heat and him. I'll sconce me even here.
Pray you, be round with him.
HAMLET
Mother, mother, mother!
Mother, mother, mother!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
I will, don’t worry. Hide, I hear him coming.
I'll warrant you,
Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.
POLONIUS hides behind the arras
Enter HAMLET
HAMLET
Now, mother, what’s the matter?
Now, mother, what's the matter?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Hamlet, you have offended your father.
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
HAMLET
Mother, you are the one who has offended my father
Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
HAMLET
Go on. You are questioning me angrily.
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
What are you talking about, Hamlet?
Why, how now, Hamlet!
HAMLET
What's the matter now?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Have you forgot me?
HAMLET
No, by the rood, not so:
You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife;
And--would it were not so!--you are my mother.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alright then, I’ll bring in someone who can speak some sense into you.
Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.
HAMLET
No. Sit down. You will not leave until I give you a mirror and show you your true self.
Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
What are you going to do? Murder me? Help, help!
What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help, ho!
LORD POLONIUS
What is going on? Help! Help!
What, ho! help, help, help!
HAMLET
What now? A rat? He’ll be a dead rat, I bet!
How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
Makes a pass through the arras
LORD POLONIUS
Oh, I am killed!
O, I am slain!
Falls and dies
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
I do not know. Is it the king?
Nay, I know not:
Is it the king?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Oh what a horrible, bloody deed this is!
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
HAMLET
It is a bloody deed; almost as bad, good mother, as killing a king and marrying his brother.
A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
As kill a king!
HAMLET
Yes, lady, that’s what I said.
Ay, lady, 'twas my word.
Lifts up the array and discovers POLONIUS
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;
Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger.
Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down,
And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damned custom have not brass'd it so
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
What have I done so terribly that you dare talk to me this way?
What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?
HAMLET
You have done such an awful act that is unforgiveable.
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow:
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
What have I done that is so awful?
Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
HAMLET
Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow;
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man:
This was your husband. Look you now, what follows:
Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
You cannot call it love; for at your age
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment
Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense
Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd
But it reserved some quantity of choice,
To serve in such a difference. What devil was't
That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope.
O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn
And reason panders will.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Oh, Hamlet, stop saying those things. I am looking into my own wretched soul, black with sin.
O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.
HAMLET
Yes, and you live in a bed of sin, corrupt with love making.
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty,--
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Say no more. You’re killing me! No more, please, Hamlet!
O, speak to me no more;
These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet!
HAMLET
You are married to a murderer and a villain, a shadow of your first husband, who stole the crown.
A murderer and a villain;
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
No more!
HAMLET
A king of shreds and patches,--
Enter Ghost
Oh, God, sending your angel to save me. What do you want?
Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alas, he's mad!
HAMLET
Please don’t be upset that it has taken me so long to obey you. Tell me?
Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
The important acting of your dread command? O, say!
Ghost
Don’t forget your purpose. Your mother is close to breaking. Keep talking to her.
Do not forget: this visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
O, step between her and her fighting soul:
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
Speak to her, Hamlet.
HAMLET
How is it with you, lady?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alas, how is't with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?
HAMLET