that cry out on the top of the question,' and are most tyrannically clapped for't. These are now the fashion; and so berattle the common stages, (so they call them,) that many, wearing rapiers, are afraid of goose quills, and dare scarce come thither.

2

4

Ham. What, are they children? who maintains them? how are they escoted? Will they pursue the quality, no longer than they can sing? will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players, (as it is most like, if their means are no better,) their writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their own succession?

Ros. 'Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the nation holds it no sin, to tarre 5 them on to controversy. There was, for a while, no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.

Ham. Is it possible?

Guil. O, there has been much throwing about of brains.

Ham. Do the boys carry it away?

Ros. Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load too."

Ham. It is not very strange; for my uncle is king of Denmark, and those that would make mouths' at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece, for his picture in little. 'Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out. [Flourish of trumpets within. Guil. There are the players.

1 Question is speech, conversation. The meaning may therefore be, tney cry out on the top of their voice.

2 i. e. paid.

3 i. e. profession. Mr. Gifford has remarked, that "this word seems more peculiarly appropriated to the profession of a player by our old

writers."

4 "No longer than they can sing," i. e. no longer than they keep the voices of boys, and sing in the choir.

5 i. e. set them on; a phrase borrowed from the setting on a dog.

6 i. e. carry all the world before them: there is, perhaps, an allusion to the Globe theatre, the sign of which is said to have been Hercules carrying the globe.

7 First copy, "mops and moes;" folio, "mowes."

Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspéct,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing?
For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do, Had he the motive and the cue1 for passion,

That I have? He would drown the stage with

tears,

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property, and most dear life,

A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i'the

throat,

As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha!

Why, I should take it; for it cannot be,
But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter; or, ere this,
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
Why, what an ass am 1! This is most brave;

1 i. e. the hint or prompt word; the word or sign given by the prompter for a player to enter on his part.

2 John-a-dreams, or John-a-droynes, was a common term for any dreaming or droning simpleton. Unpregnant is not quickened or properly impressed with.

3 Defeat here signifies destruction. It was frequently used in the sense of undo or take away by our old writers.

4 Kindless is unnatural.

That I, the son of a dear father murdered,1

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a cursing like a very drab,

A scullion!

2

Fie upon't! foh! About my brains! Humph! I have

heard,

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,3
Have, by the very cunning of the scene,
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father,
Before mine uncle; I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick; if he do blench,5
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen,
May be a devil; and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
(As he is very potent with such spirits,)
Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds

6

More relative than this. The play's the thing, Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. [Exit.

1 The first folio reads thus:

"Oh vengeance!

Who? What an ass am I! I sure this is most brave,

That I the sonne of the Deere murthered."

The quarto of 1604 omits "Oh vengeance," and reads, "a deere mur thered;" the quarto of 1603, "that I the son of my dear father."

2 "About my brains is nothing more than "to work, my brains." Steevens quotes the following from Heywood's Iron Age:—

"My brain about again! for thou hast found

New projects now to work on."

3 A number of instances of the kind are collected by Thomas Heywood in his Apology for Actors.

4 To tent was to probe, to search a wound.

5 To blench is to shrink or start. Vide Winter's Tale, Act i. Sc. 2. 6 i. e. more near, more immediately connected. The first quarto reads “I will have sounder proofs."

ACT III.

SCENE I. A Room in the Castle.

Enter King, Queen, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSEN-
CRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN.

King. And can you, by no drift of conference,'
Get from him why he puts on this confusion;
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

Ros. He does confess, he feels himself distracted; But from what cause he will by no means speak.

Guil. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded; But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,

When we would bring him on to some confession "Of his true state.

Queen.

Did he receive you well?

Ros. Most like a gentleman.

Guil. But with much forcing of his disposition. Ros. Niggard of question; but, of our demands, Most free in his reply.2

Queen.

To any pastime?

Did you assay him

Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain players. We o'er-raught on the way. Of these we told him;

And there did seem in him a kind of joy

To hear of it. They are about the court;

And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.

Pol.

'Tis most true;

And he beseeched me to entreat your majesties,

To hear and see the matter.

King. With all my heart; and it doth much content

me

1 Folio-circumstance.

2 Slow to begin conversation, but free enough in answering our demands."

3 i. e. reached, overtook.

The rugged Pyrrhus,-he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble,
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,-
Hath now this dread and black complexion smeared
With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
Now he is total gules;1 horridly tricked
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons;
Baked and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and a damned light

To their lord's murder. Roasted in wrath, and fire,
And thus o'ersized with coagulate gore,

With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus Old grandsire Priam seeks. So proceed you. Pol. 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken; with good accent, and good discretion.

1 Play. Anon he finds him

Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command. Unequal matched,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage, strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base; and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear; for lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seemed i' the air to stick.
So as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood;
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.

But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack2 stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death; anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region; so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
A roused vengeance sets him new a-work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall

1 Gules, i. e. red, in the language of heraldry. To trick is to color. 2 The rack is the clouds.