Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Act 3 - Scene 4

The Queen’s closet.

Polonius : He will come straight. Look you lay home to him. [p]Tell him his
pranks have been too broad to bear with, [p]And that your Grace hath
screen'd and stood between [p]Much heat and him. I'll silence me even
here. [p]Pray you be round with him.

Hamlet : [within] Mother, mother, mother!

Gertrude : I'll warrant you; fear me not. Withdraw; I hear him coming.

Hamlet : Now, mother, what's the matter?

Gertrude : Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

Hamlet : Mother, you have my father much offended.

Gertrude : Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

Hamlet : Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

Gertrude : Why, how now, Hamlet?

Hamlet : What's the matter now?

Gertrude : Have you forgot me?

Hamlet : No, by the rood, not so! [p]You are the Queen, your husband's
brother's wife, [p]And (would it were not so!) you are my mother.

Gertrude : Nay, then I'll set those to you that can speak.

Hamlet : Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge; [p]You go not till
I set you up a glass [p]Where you may see the inmost part of you.

Gertrude : What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murther me? [p]Help, help, ho!

Polonius : [behind] What, ho! help, help, help!

Hamlet : [draws] How now? a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!

Polonius : [behind] O, I am slain!

Gertrude : O me, what hast thou done?

Hamlet : Nay, I know not. Is it the King?

Gertrude : O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

Hamlet : A bloody deed- almost as bad, good mother, [p]As kill a king, and
marry with his brother.

Gertrude : As kill a king?

Hamlet : Ay, lady, it was my word. [p][Lifts up the arras and sees
Polonius.] [p]Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! [p]I took
thee for thy better. Take thy fortune. [p]Thou find'st to be too busy
is some danger. [p]Leave wringing of your hands. Peace! sit you
down [p]And let me wring your heart; for so I shall [p]If it be made
of penetrable stuff; [p]If damned custom have not braz'd it so [p]That
it is proof and bulwark against sense.

Gertrude : What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue [p]In noise so rude
against me?

Hamlet : Such an act [p]That blurs the grace and blush of modesty; [p]Calls
virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose [p]From the fair forehead of an
innocent love, [p]And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows [p]As
false as dicers' oaths. O, such a deed [p]As from the body of
contraction plucks [p]The very soul, and sweet religion makes [p]A
rhapsody of words! Heaven's face doth glow; [p]Yea, this solidity and
compound mass, [p]With tristful visage, as against the doom, [p]Is
thought-sick at the act.

Gertrude : Ah me, what act, [p]That roars so loud and thunders in the index?

Hamlet : Look here upon th's picture, and on this, [p]The counterfeit
presentment of two brothers. [p]See what a grace was seated on this
brow; [p]Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; [p]An eye like
Mars, to threaten and command; [p]A station like the herald
Mercury [p]New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill: [p]A combination and
a form indeed [p]Where every god did seem to set his seal [p]To give
the world assurance of a man. [p]This was your husband. Look you now
what follows. [p]Here is your husband, like a mildew'd ear [p]Blasting
his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? [p]Could you on this fair
mountain leave to feed, [p]And batten on this moor? Ha! have you
eyes [p]You cannot call it love; for at your age [p]The heyday in the
blood is tame, it's humble, [p]And waits upon the judgment; and what
judgment [p]Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have, [p]Else
could you not have motion; but sure that sense [p]Is apoplex'd; for
madness would not err, [p]Nor sense to ecstacy was ne'er so
thrall'd [p]But it reserv'd some quantity of choice [p]To serve in
such a difference. What devil was't [p]That thus hath cozen'd you at
hoodman-blind? [p]Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, [p]Ears
without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, [p]Or but a sickly part of
one true sense [p]Could not so mope. [p]O shame! where is thy blush?
Rebellious hell, [p]If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones, [p]To
flaming youth let virtue be as wax [p]And melt in her own fire.
Proclaim no shame [p]When the compulsive ardour gives the
charge, [p]Since frost itself as actively doth burn, [p]And reason
panders will.

Gertrude : O Hamlet, speak no more! [p]Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very
soul, [p]And there I see such black and grained spots [p]As will not
leave their tinct.

Hamlet : Nay, but to live [p]In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, [p]Stew'd in
corruption, honeying and making love [p]Over the nasty sty!

Gertrude : O, speak to me no more! [p]These words like daggers enter in mine
ears. [p]No more, sweet Hamlet!

Hamlet : A murtherer and a villain! [p]A slave that is not twentieth part the
tithe [p]Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings; [p]A cutpurse of the
empire and the rule, [p]That from a shelf the precious diadem
stole [p]And put it in his pocket!

Gertrude : No more!

Hamlet : A king of shreds and patches!- [p]Save me and hover o'er me with your
wings, [p]You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

Gertrude : Alas, he's mad!

Hamlet : Do you not come your tardy son to chide, [p]That, laps'd in time and
passion, lets go by [p]Th' important acting of your dread
command? [p]O, say!

Father's Ghost : Do not forget. This visitation [p]Is but to whet thy almost blunted
purpose. [p]But look, amazement on thy mother sits. [p]O, step between
her and her fighting soul [p]Conceit in weakest bodies strongest
works. [p]Speak to her, Hamlet.

Hamlet : How is it with you, lady?

Gertrude : Alas, how is't with you, [p]That you do bend your eye on
vacancy, [p]And with th' encorporal air do hold discourse? [p]Forth at
your eyes your spirits wildly peep; [p]And, as the sleeping soldiers
in th' alarm, [p]Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements, [p]Start
up and stand an end. O gentle son, [p]Upon the heat and flame of thy
distemper [p]Sprinkle cool patience! Whereon do you look?

Hamlet : On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares! [p]His form and cause
conjoin'd, preaching to stones, [p]Would make them capable.- Do not
look upon me, [p]Lest with this piteous action you convert [p]My stern
effects. Then what I have to do [p]Will want true colour- tears
perchance for blood.

Gertrude : To whom do you speak this?

Hamlet : Do you see nothing there?

Gertrude : Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

Hamlet : Nor did you nothing hear?

Gertrude : No, nothing but ourselves.

Hamlet : Why, look you there! Look how it steals away! [p]My father, in his
habit as he liv'd! [p]Look where he goes even now out at the portal!

Gertrude : This is the very coinage of your brain. [p]This bodiless creation
ecstasy [p]Is very cunning in.

Hamlet : Ecstasy? [p]My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time [p]And makes
as healthful music. It is not madness [p]That I have utt'red. Bring me
to the test, [p]And I the matter will reword; which madness [p]Would
gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, [p]Lay not that flattering
unction to your soul [p]That not your trespass but my madness
speaks. [p]It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, [p]Whiles
rank corruption, mining all within, [p]Infects unseen. Confess
yourself to heaven; [p]Repent what's past; avoid what is to
come; [p]And do not spread the compost on the weeds [p]To make them
ranker. Forgive me this my virtue; [p]For in the fatness of these
pursy times [p]Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg- [p]Yea, curb and
woo for leave to do him good.

Gertrude : O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

Hamlet : O, throw away the worser part of it, [p]And live the purer with the
other half, [p]Good night- but go not to my uncle's bed. [p]Assume a
virtue, if you have it not. [p]That monster, custom, who all sense
doth eat [p]Of habits evil, is angel yet in this, [p]That to the use
of actions fair and good [p]He likewise gives a frock or
livery, [p]That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night, [p]And that shall
lend a kind of easiness [p]To the next abstinence; the next more
easy; [p]For use almost can change the stamp of nature, [p]And either
[master] the devil, or throw him out [p]With wondrous potency. Once
more, good night; [p]And when you are desirous to be blest, [p]I'll
blessing beg of you.- For this same lord, [p]I do repent; but heaven
hath pleas'd it so, [p]To punish me with this, and this with
me, [p]That I must be their scourge and minister. [p]I will bestow
him, and will answer well [p]The death I gave him. So again, good
night. [p]I must be cruel, only to be kind; [p]Thus bad begins, and
worse remains behind. [p]One word more, good lady.

Gertrude : What shall I do?

Hamlet : Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: [p]Let the bloat King tempt
you again to bed; [p]Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his
mouse; [p]And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, [p]Or paddling in
your neck with his damn'd fingers, [p]Make you to ravel all this
matter out, [p]That I essentially am not in madness, [p]But mad in
craft. 'Twere good you let him know; [p]For who that's but a queen,
fair, sober, wise, [p]Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib [p]Such
dear concernings hide? Who would do so? [p]No, in despite of sense
and secrecy, [p]Unpeg the basket on the house's top, [p]Let the birds
fly, and like the famous ape, [p]To try conclusions, in the basket
creep [p]And break your own neck down.

Gertrude : Be thou assur'd, if words be made of breath, [p]And breath of life, I
have no life to breathe [p]What thou hast said to me.

Hamlet : I must to England; you know that?

Gertrude : Alack, [p]I had forgot! 'Tis so concluded on.

Hamlet : There's letters seal'd; and my two schoolfellows, [p]Whom I will trust
as I will adders fang'd, [p]They bear the mandate; they must sweep my
way [p]And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; [p]For 'tis the sport
to have the enginer [p]Hoist with his own petar; and 't shall go
hard [p]But I will delve one yard below their mines [p]And blow them
at the moon. O, 'tis most sweet [p]When in one line two crafts
directly meet. [p]This man shall set me packing. [p]I'll lug the guts
into the neighbour room.- [p]Mother, good night.- Indeed, this
counsellor [p]Is now most still, most secret, and most grave, [p]Who
was in life a foolish peating knave. [p]Come, sir, to draw toward an
end with you. [p]Good night, mother.

Previous: Act 3 - Scene 3

Next: Act 4 - Scene 1

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