Act 4 Scene 5

Enter Horatio, Queen, and a Gentleman.

QUEEN
I will not speak with her.

GENTLEMAN
She is importunate,
Indeed distract; her mood will needs be pitied.

QUEEN
What would she have?

GENTLEMAN
She speaks much of her father, says she hears
There's tricks i' th' world, and hems, and beats her
heart,
Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt
That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
The hearers to collection. They aim at it
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield
them,
Indeed would make one think there might be
thought,
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.

HORATIO
'Twere good she were spoken with, for she may
strew
Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.

QUEEN
Let her come in. [Gentleman exits.]
To my sick soul (as sin's true nature is),
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

OPHELIA
Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?

QUEEN
How now, Ophelia?

OPHELIA
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff
And his sandal shoon.

QUEEN
Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

OPHELIA
Say you? Nay, pray you, mark.
He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.
Oh, ho!

QUEEN
Nay, but Ophelia--

OPHELIA
Pray you, mark.
White his shroud as the mountain snow--

QUEEN
Alas, look here, my lord.

OPHELIA
Larded all with sweet flowers;
Which bewept to the ground did not go
With true-love showers.

KING
How do you, pretty lady?

OPHELIA
Well, God dild you. They say the owl was a
baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are but
know not what we may be. God be at your table.

KING
Conceit upon her father.

OPHELIA
Pray let's have no words of this, but when
they ask you what it means, say you this:
Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose and donned his clothes
And dupped the chamber door,
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.

KING
Pretty Ophelia--

OPHELIA
Indeed, without an oath, I'll make an end on 't:
By Gis and by Saint Charity,
Alack and fie for shame,
Young men will do 't, if they come to 't;
By Cock, they are to blame.
Quoth she "Before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed."
He answers:
"So would I 'a done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed."

KING
How long hath she been thus?

OPHELIA
I hope all will be well. We must be patient,
but I cannot choose but weep to think they would
lay him i' th' cold ground. My brother shall know of
it. And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come,
my coach! Good night, ladies, good night, sweet
ladies, good night, good night.

KING
Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.
[Horatio exits.]
O, this is the poison of deep grief. It springs
All from her father's death, and now behold!
O Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions: first, her father slain;
Next, your son gone, and he most violent author
Of his own just remove; the people muddied,
Thick, and unwholesome in their thoughts and
whispers
For good Polonius' death, and we have done but
greenly
In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts;
Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France,
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father's death,
Wherein necessity, of matter beggared,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear. O, my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murd'ring piece, in many places
Gives me superfluous death.

QUEEN
Alack, what noise is this?

KING
Attend!
Where is my Switzers? Let them guard the door.

KING
What is the matter?

MESSENGER
Save yourself, my lord.
The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impiteous haste
Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
O'erbears your officers. The rabble call him "lord,"
And, as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props of every word,
They cry "Choose we, Laertes shall be king!"
Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,
"Laertes shall be king! Laertes king!"

QUEEN
How cheerfully on the false trail they cry.
O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!

KING
The doors are broke.

LAERTES
Where is this king?--Sirs, stand you all without.

ALL
No, let's come in!

LAERTES
I pray you, give me leave.

ALL
We will, we will.

LAERTES
I thank you. Keep the door. [Followers exit.] O, thou
vile king,
Give me my father!

QUEEN
Calmly, good Laertes.

LAERTES
That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me
bastard,
Cries "cuckold" to my father, brands the harlot
Even here between the chaste unsmirched brow
Of my true mother.

KING
What is the cause, Laertes,
That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?--
Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.
There's such divinity doth hedge a king
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.--Tell me, Laertes,
Why thou art thus incensed.--Let him go,
Gertrude.--
Speak, man.

LAERTES
Where is my father?

KING
Dead.

QUEEN
But not by him.

KING
Let him demand his fill.

LAERTES
How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with.
To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes, only I'll be revenged
Most throughly for my father.

KING
Who shall stay you?

LAERTES
My will, not all the world.
And for my means, I'll husband them so well
They shall go far with little.

KING
Good Laertes,
If you desire to know the certainty
Of your dear father, is 't writ in your revenge
That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and
foe,
Winner and loser?

LAERTES
None but his enemies.

KING
Will you know them, then?

LAERTES
To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms
And, like the kind life-rend'ring pelican,
Repast them with my blood.

KING
Why, now you speak
Like a good child and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father's death
And am most sensibly in grief for it,
It shall as level to your judgment 'pear
As day does to your eye.

A noise within: "Let her come in!"

LAERTES
How now, what noise is that?

LAERTES
O heat, dry up my brains! Tears seven times salt
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid with weight
Till our scale turn the beam! O rose of May,
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
O heavens, is 't possible a young maid's wits
Should be as mortal as an old man's life?
Nature is fine in love, and, where 'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.

OPHELIA
They bore him barefaced on the bier,
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny,
And in his grave rained many a tear.
Fare you well, my dove.

LAERTES
Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move thus.

OPHELIA
You must sing "A-down a-down"--and you
"Call him a-down-a."--O, how the wheel becomes
it! It is the false steward that stole his master's
daughter.

LAERTES
This nothing's more than matter.

OPHELIA
There's rosemary, that's for remembrance.
Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies,
that's for thoughts.

LAERTES
A document in madness: thoughts and remembrance
fitted.

OPHELIA
There's fennel for you, and columbines.
There's rue for you, and here's some for me; we
may call it herb of grace o' Sundays. You must wear
your rue with a difference. There's a daisy. I would
give you some violets, but they withered all when
my father died. They say he made a good end.
For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.

LAERTES
Thought and afflictions, passion, hell itself
She turns to favor and to prettiness.

OPHELIA
And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
No, no, he is dead.
Go to thy deathbed.
He never will come again.

OPHELIA
His beard was as white as snow,
All flaxen was his poll.
He is gone, he is gone,
And we cast away moan.
God 'a mercy on his soul.
And of all Christians' souls, I pray God. God be wi'
you.

LAERTES
Do you see this, O God?

KING
Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me.
If by direct or by collateral hand
They find us touched, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
To you in satisfaction; but if not,
Be you content to lend your patience to us,
And we shall jointly labor with your soul
To give it due content.

LAERTES
Let this be so.
His means of death, his obscure funeral
(No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
No noble rite nor formal ostentation)
Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call 't in question.

KING
So you shall,
And where th' offense is, let the great ax fall.
I pray you, go with me.

They exit.

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