3.1 95-175

The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons  

Be all my sins remember’d.  100

  Oph.        Good my lord,  

How does your honour for this many a day?  

  Ham.  I humbly thank you; well, well, well.  

  Oph.  My lord, I have remembrances of yours,  104

That I have longed long to re-deliver;  

I pray you, now receive them.  

  Ham.        No, not I;  

I never gave you aught.  108

  Oph.  My honour’d lord, you know right well you did;  

And, with them, words of so sweet breath compos’d  

As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,  

Take these again; for to the noble mind  112

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.  

There, my lord.  

  Ham.  Ha, ha! are you honest?  

  Oph.  My lord!  116

  Ham.  Are you fair?  

  Oph.  What means your lordship?  

  Ham.  That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.  

  Oph.  Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?  120

  Ham.  Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love thee once.  

  Oph.  Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.  

  Ham.  You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not.  

  Oph.  I was the more deceived.  124

  Ham.  Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?  

  Oph.  At home, my lord.  

  Ham.  Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in ’s own house. Farewell.  

  Oph.  O! help him, you sweet heavens!  128

  Ham.  If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go; farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell.  

  Oph.  O heavenly powers, restore him!  

  Ham.  I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages; those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.  [Exit.  

  Oph.  O! what a noble mind is here o’erthrown:  132

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword;  

The expectancy and rose of the fair state,  

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,  

The observ’d of all observers, quite, quite down!  136

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,  

That suck’d the honey of his music vows,  

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,  

Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;  140

That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth  

Blasted with ecstasy: O! woe is me,  

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!  

  

Re-enter KING and POLONIUS.  144

  King.  Love! his affections do not that way tend;  

Nor what he spake, though it lack’d form a little,  

Was not like madness. There’s something in his soul  

O’er which his melancholy sits on brood;  148

And, I do doubt, the hatch and the disclose  

Will be some danger; which for to prevent,  

I have in quick determination  

Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England,  152

For the demand of our neglected tribute:  

Haply the seas and countries different  

With variable objects shall expel  

This something-settled matter in his heart,  156

Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus  

From fashion of himself. What think you on’t?  

  Pol.  It shall do well: but yet do I believe  

The origin and commencement of his grief  160

Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia!  

You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said;  

We heard it all. My lord, do as you please;  

But, if you hold it fit, after the play,  164

Let his queen mother all alone entreat him  

To show his griefs: let her be round with him;  

And I’ll be plac’d, so please you, in the ear  

Of all their conference. If she find him not,  168

To England send him, or confine him where  

Your wisdom best shall think.  

  King.        It shall be so:  

Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.  [Exeunt.  172