Act III, Scene 4, continued
[Ghost exits.]
QUEEN GERTRUDE
This is the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET Ecstasy?
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have uttered. Bring me to the test,
And i the matter will reword, which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul
That not your trespass but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven,
Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come,
And do not spread the compost on the weeds
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue,
For, in the fatness of these pursy times,
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain!
HAMLET
O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half!
Good night. But go not to my uncle’s bed.
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence, the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either…the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night,
And, when you are desirous to be blest,
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord
[Pointing to POLONIUS]
I do repent; but heaven hath pleased it so
To punish me with this and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him and will answer well
The death I gave him. So, again, good night!
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This bad begins, and worse remains behind.
One word more, good lady.
QUEEN GERTRUDE What shall I do?
HAMLET
Not this by no means that I bid you do.
Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed,
Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses
Or paddling in your neck with his damnéd fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft. ‘Twere good you let him know,
For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?
No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house’s top,
Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep
And break your own neck down.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Be thou assured, if words be made of breath
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.
HAMLET I must to England, you know that.
QUEEN GERTRUDE Alack,
I had forgot! ‘Tis is so concluded on.
HAMLET
There’s letters sealed; and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work,
For ‘tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard. And ‘t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon. O, ‘tis most sweet
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
This man shall set me packing. [referring to POLONIUS’ body]
I’ll lug the guts into the neighbor room.
Mother, good night indeed. This counselor
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave.
Who in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Good night, mother.
[They exeunt, with HAMLET tugging POLONIUS’ body.]
End of Act III, Scene 4