HAMLET,

PRINCE OF DENMARK.

ACT I.

SCENE I.-Elsinore. A Platform before
the Castle.

FRANCISCO on guard. Enter to him BERNARDO.

W

Ber.

Bernardo.

HO'S there?

Fran. Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold youself.

Ber. Long live the king!

Fran.

Bernardo?

He.

Fran. You come most carefully upon your

hour.

Ber. 'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed,

Francisco.

Fran. For this relief, much thanks: 'tis bitter

cold,

And I am sick at heart.

Ber. Have you had quiet guard?

Fran.

Ber. Well, good night.

VOL. XI.

Not a mouse stirring.

I

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,

The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.

Fran. I think I hear them.-Stand! who's there?

Hor. Friends to this ground.

Mar. What, has this thing appear'd again tonight?

Ber. I have seen nothing.

Mar. Horatio says, 'tis but our fantasy;
And will not let belief take hold of him,
Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us :
'Therefore I have entreated him along

With us to watch the minutes of this night;
That, if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes, and speak to it.
Hor. Tush! tush! 'twill not appear.
Ber.
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
What we two nights have seen.

Hor.

Sit down awhile;

Well, sit we down,

And let us hear Bernado speak of this.

Ber. Last night of all.

When yon same star, that's westward from the

pole,

Had made his course to illume that part of heaven

Where now it burns, Marcellus, and myself,
The bell then beating one,—

Mar. Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

Enter Ghost.

Ber. In the same figure, like the king that's dead.

Mar. Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio. Ber. Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.

Hor. Most like :-it harrows me with fear, and wonder.

Ber. It would be spoke to.

Mar.

Question it, Horatio.

Hor. What art thou, that usurp'st this time of

night,

Together with that fair and warlike form

In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee,

speak.

Mar. It is offended.

Ber.

See! it stalks away.

[Exit Ghost.

Hor. Stay; speak: speak! I charge thee,

speak!

Mar. 'Tis gone, and will not answer.

Ber. How now, Horatio? you tremble, and look

pale :

Is not this something more than fantasy?

What think you on't?

Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe,

Without the sensible and true avouch

Of mine own eyes.

Mar.

Is it not like the king?

Hor. As thou art to thyself:

Such was the very armour he had on,
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.

'Tis strange.

Mar. Thus, twice before, and jump at this dead hour,

With martial stalk hath he passed through our watch.

Hor. In what particular thought to work, I know not;

But, in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he
that knows,

Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land?
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war:
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore
task

Does not divide the Sunday from the week:
What might be toward that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day;
Who is't that can inform me?

Hor.

That can I;
Our last king,

At least, the whisper goes so.
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant
Hamlet

(For so this side of our known world esteem'd him)

Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by a seal'd com

pact,

Well ratified by law, and heraldry,

Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands,
Which he stood seized on, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gagèd by our king; which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,

Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same co

venant

And carriage of the article design'd,

His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full,

Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,
Shark'd up a list of landless resolutes,

For food and diet, to some enterprise

That hath a stomach in't: which is no other
(As it doth well appear unto our state,)
But to recover of us, by strong hand,
And terms compulsative, those 'foresaid lands
So by his father lost; and this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations;
The source of this our watch; and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage in the land.
Ber. I think it be no other, but even so:
Well may it sort, that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch: so like the king
That was, and is, the question of these wars.
Hor. A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted
dead

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets :