Ham. Let me see. [Takes the skull.] Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chapfallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour1 she must come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing. Hor. What's that, my lord?

Ham. Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth?

loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Cæsar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!3 But soft! but soft! aside: here comes the king,

Enter Priests, &c. in procession; the Corpse of OPHELIA, LAERTES and Mourners following; KING, QUEEN, their trains, &c.

The queen, the courtiers: who is that they follow?

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But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed? Hor. I beseech you.

Ham. Being thus be-netted round with villanies,

Ere I could make a prologue to my brains,
They had begun the play,-I sat me down;
Devis'd a new commission; wrote it fair:
I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much
How to forget that learning; but, sir, now
It did me yeoman's service: wilt thou know
Th' effect of what I wrote?

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Ham. I humbly thank you, sir. [Aside to Horatio] Dost know this water-fly?

Hor. [Aside to Hamlet] No, my good lord.

Ham. [Aside to Horatio] Thy state is the more gracious; for 't is a vice to know him. [He hath much land, and fertile: let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's mess: 't is a chough, but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.]

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