You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time, (as this fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest,) O, I could tell you,-
But let it be :-Horatio, I am dead;

Thou liv'st; report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.

I am more an antique Roman than a Dane,
Here's yet some liquor left.

Ham.

As thou 'rt a man,

Give me the cup; let go; by heaven I'll have it.

O, good Horatio, what a wounded name,

Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me?
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

Absent thee from felicity a while,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,

To tell my story.

[March afar off, and shot within. What warlike noise is this?

Osr. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,
To the ambassadors of England gives
This warlike volley.

Ham.

O, I die, Horatio;

The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit ;
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited.-The rest is silence.
Hor. Now cracks a noble heart.
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
Why does the drum come hither?

Good night, sweet prince;

[Dies.

[March within

Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambassadors, and others. Fort. Where is this sight?

Hor.

What is it ye would see ?

If aught of woe, or wonder, cease your search.

Fort. This quarry cries on havoc.-O proud death! What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,

That thou so many princes, at a shoot,

So bloodily hast struck?

↑ Amb.

The sight is dismal;

And our affairs from England come too late :

The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
To tell him, his commandment is fulfill'd,

That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead :
Where should we have our thanks?

Not from his mouth,

Hor.
Had it the ability of life to thank you;
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question,

You from the Polack wars, and you from England
Are here arriv'd, give order, that these bodies
High on a stage be placed to the view;
And let me speak, to the yet unknowing world,
How these things came about: So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts;
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;
Of deaths put on by cunning, and forc'd cause;
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I
Truly deliver.

Fort. Let us haste to hear it,

And call the noblest to the audience.

For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune;

I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.

Hor. Of that I shall have always cause to speak,
And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more:
But let this same be presently perform'd,

E'en while men's minds are wild; lest more mischance,
On plots, and errors, happen.

Fort.

Let four captains

Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;

For he was likely, had he been put on,

To have prov'd most royally: and, for his passage, 'The soldiers' music, and the rights of war,

Speak loudly for him.

Take up the body :-Such a sight as this

Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.

Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

[A dead March. [Exeunt, marching; after which a peal of ordnance is shot off.

From isles of Greece

IN Troy there lies the scene.
The princes orgulous, their high blood chaf'd,
Have to the port of Athens sent their ships,
Fraught with the ministers and instruments
Of cruel war: Sixty and nine that wore
Their crownets regal, from the Athenian bay
Put forth toward Phrygia and their vow is made
To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures
The ravish'd Helen, Menelaus' queen,

With wanton Paris sleeps,—and that's the quarrel.
To Tenedos they come ;

And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge
Their warlike fraughtage: Now on Dardan plains
The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch
Their brave pavilions; Priam's six-gated city,
Dardan, and Tymbria, Ilias, Chetas, Trojan,
And Antenorides, with massy staples,
And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts,
Sperr up the sons of Troy.

VOL. III.

G

Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits,
On one and other side, Trojan and Greek,
Sets all on hazard ;-And hither am I come
A prologue arm'd,-but not in confidence
Of author's pen, or actor's voice; but suited
In like conditions as our argument,—
To tell you, fair beholders, that our play
Leaps o'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils,
Beginning in the middle; starting thence away
To what may be digested in a play.

Like, or find fault; do as your pleasures are;
Now good, or bad, 'tis but the chance of war.

ACT I.

SCENE I.-Troy. Before Priam's Palace.

Enter TROILUS armed, and PANDARUS.

Tro. Call here my varlet, I'll unarm again :
Why should I war without the walls of Troy,
That find such cruel battle here within?
Each Trojan that is master of his heart,
Let him to field; Troilus, alas! hath none.
Pan. Will this gear ne'er be mended?

Tro. The Greeks are strong, and skilful to their strength,
Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant ;

But I am weaker than a woman's tear,

Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance,

Less valiant than the virgin in the night,

And skill-less as unpractis'd infancy.

Pan. Well, I have told you enough of this: for my part I'll not meddle nor make no farther.

He that will have a cake out of the

Pan. Ay, the grinding: but you must tarry the bolting.
Tro.

Have I not tarried?

Pan. Ay, the bolting: but you must tarry the leavening.
Tro. Still have I tarried.

Pan. Ay, to the leavening but here's yet in the word hereafter, the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven, and the baking; nay, you must stay the cooling too, or you may chance to burn your lips.

Tro. Patience herself, what goddess e'er she be Doth lesser blench at sufferance than I do.

At Priam's royal table do I sit;

And when fair Cressid comes into my thoughts,

So, traitor! when she comes !-When is she thence?

Pan. Well, she looked yesternight fairer than ever I saw her

look, or any woman else.

Tro. I was about to tell thee,-When my heart,

As wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain ;
Lest Hector or my father should perceive me,
I have (as when the sun doth light a storm)
Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile :

But sorrow that is couch'd in seeming gladness
Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness.

Pan. An her hair were not somewhat darker than Helen's, (well, go to,) there were no more comparison between the women.-But, for my part, she is my kinswoman; I would not, as they term it, praise her, But I would somebody had heard her talk yesterday, as I did. I will not dispraise your sister Cassandra's wit; butTro. O, Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus,— When I do tell thee, there my hopes lie drown'd, Reply not in how many fathoms deep

They lie indrench'd. I tell thee, Í am mad

In Cressid's love: Thou answer'st, she is fair;
Pour'st in the open ulcer of my heart

Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;
Handlest in thy discourse, O, that her hand,

In whose comparison all whites are ink,

Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure

The cygnet's down is harsh, and spirit of sense

Hard as the palm of ploughman ; this thou tell'st me,
As true thou tell'st me, when I say I love her;

But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm,

Thou lay'st in every gash that love hath given me

The knife that made it.

Pan. I speak no more than truth.

Tro. Thou dost not speak so much.

Pan. 'Faith, I'll not meddle in 't. Let her be as she is: if she be fair 'tis the better for her; an she be not, she has the mends in her own hands.

Tro. Good Pandarus! How now, Pandarus?

Pan. I have had my labour for my travail; ill-thought on of her, and ill-thought on of you: gone between and between, but small thanks for my labour.

Tro. What, art thou angry, Pandarus? what, with me?

Pan. Because she is kin to me, therefore she's not so fair as Helen an she were not kin to me, she would be as fair on Friday as Helen is on Sunday. But what care I? I care not an she were a black-a-moor; 'tis all one to me.

Tro. Say I she is not fair?

Pan. I do not care whether you do or no.

She's a fool to stay

behind her father; let her to the Greeks; and so I'll tell her the

next time I see her: for my part, I'll meddle nor make no more

in the matter.

Tro. Pandarus,—

Pan. Not I.

Tro. Sweet Pandarus.

Pan. Pray you, speak no more to me; I will leave all as I found it, and there an end. [Exit PANDARUS. An alarum. Tro. Peace, you ungracious clamours! peace, rude sounds!