SCENE I. A room in the castle. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark  Shakespeare homepage  |  Hamlet  | Act 3, Scene 1 

 Previous scene  |  Next scene  SCENE I. A room in the castle. 

 Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN  KING CLAUDIUS  And can you, by no drift of circumstance, 

 Get from him why he puts on this confusion, 

 Grating so harshly all his days of quiet 

 With turbulent and dangerous lunacy? 

 ROSENCRANTZ  He does confess he feels himself distracted; 

 But from what cause he will by no means speak. 

 GUILDENSTERN  Nor do we find him forward to be sounded, 

 But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof, 

 When we would bring him on to some confession 

 Of his true state. 

 QUEEN GERTRUDE  Did he receive you well? 

 ROSENCRANTZ  Most like a gentleman. 

 GUILDENSTERN  But with much forcing of his disposition. 

 ROSENCRANTZ  Niggard of question; but, of our demands, 

 Most free in his reply. 

 QUEEN GERTRUDE  Did you assay him? 

 To any pastime? 

 ROSENCRANTZ  Madam, it so fell out, that certain players 

 We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him; 

 And there did seem in him a kind of joy 

 To hear of it: they are about the court, 

 And, as I think, they have already order 

 This night to play before him. 

 LORD POLONIUS  'Tis most true: 

 And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties 

 To hear and see the matter. 

 KING CLAUDIUS  With all my heart; and it doth much content me 

 To hear him so inclined. 

 Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, 

 And drive his purpose on to these delights. 

 ROSENCRANTZ  We shall, my lord. 



 Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN  KING CLAUDIUS  Sweet Gertrude, leave us too; 

 For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither, 

 That he, as 'twere by accident, may here 

 Affront Ophelia: 

 Her father and myself, lawful espials, 

 Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen, 

 We may of their encounter frankly judge, 

 And gather by him, as he is behaved, 

 If 't be the affliction of his love or no 

 That thus he suffers for. 

 QUEEN GERTRUDE  I shall obey you. 

 And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish 

 That your good beauties be the happy cause 

 Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues 

 Will bring him to his wonted way again, 

 To both your honours. 

 OPHELIA  Madam, I wish it may. 



 Exit QUEEN GERTRUDE  LORD POLONIUS  Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious, so please you, 

 We will bestow ourselves. 



 To OPHELIA  Read on this book; 

 That show of such an exercise may colour 

 Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,-- 

 'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage 

 And pious action we do sugar o'er 

 The devil himself. 

 KING CLAUDIUS  [Aside]          O, 'tis too true! 

 How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience! 

 The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art, 

 Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it 

 Than is my deed to my most painted word: 

 O heavy burthen! 

 LORD POLONIUS  I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord. 



 Exeunt KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS 

 Enter HAMLET  HAMLET  To be, or not to be: that is the question: 

 Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer 

 The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 

 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 

 And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; 

 No more; and by a sleep to say we end 

 The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks 

 That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation 

 Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; 

 To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; 

 For in that sleep of death what dreams may come 

 When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 

 Must give us pause: there's the respect 

 That makes calamity of so long life; 

 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 

 The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 

 The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, 

 The insolence of office and the spurns 

 That patient merit of the unworthy takes, 

 When he himself might his quietus make 

 With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, 

 To grunt and sweat under a weary life, 

 But that the dread of something after death, 

 The undiscover'd country from whose bourn 

 No traveller returns, puzzles the will 

 And makes us rather bear those ills we have 

 Than fly to others that we know not of? 

 Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; 

 And thus the native hue of resolution 

 Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, 

 And enterprises of great pith and moment 

 With this regard their currents turn awry, 

 And lose the name of action.--Soft you now! 

 The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons 

 Be all my sins remember'd. 

 OPHELIA  Good my lord, 

 How does your honour for this many a day? 

 HAMLET  I humbly thank you; well, well, well. 

 OPHELIA  My lord, I have remembrances of yours, 

 That I have longed long to re-deliver; 

 I pray you, now receive them. 

 HAMLET  No, not I; 

 I never gave you aught. 

 OPHELIA  My honour'd lord, you know right well you did; 

 And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed 

 As made the things more rich: their perfume lost, 

 Take these again; for to the noble mind 

 Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 

 There, my lord. 

 HAMLET  Ha, ha! are you honest? 

 OPHELIA  My lord? 

 HAMLET  Are you fair? 

 OPHELIA  What means your lordship? 

 HAMLET  That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should 

 admit no discourse to your beauty. 

 OPHELIA  Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than 

 with honesty? 

 HAMLET  Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner 

 transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the 

 force of honesty can translate beauty into his 

 likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the 

 time gives it proof. I did love you once. 

 OPHELIA  Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. 

 HAMLET  You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot 

 so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of 

 it: I loved you not. 

 OPHELIA  I was the more deceived. 

 HAMLET  Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a 

 breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; 

 but yet I could accuse me of such things that it 

 were better my mother had not borne me: I am very 

 proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at 

 my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, 

 imagination to give them shape, or time to act them 

 in. What should such fellows as I do crawling 

 between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, 

 all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. 

 Where's your father? 

 OPHELIA  At home, my lord. 

 HAMLET  Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the 

 fool no where but in's own house. Farewell. 

 OPHELIA  O, help him, you sweet heavens! 

 HAMLET  If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for 

 thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as 

 snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a 

 nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs 

 marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough 

 what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, 

 and quickly too. Farewell. 

 OPHELIA  O heavenly powers, restore him! 

 HAMLET  I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God 

 has given you one face, and you make yourselves 

 another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and 

 nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness 

 your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath 

 made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: 

 those that are married already, all but one, shall 

 live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a 

 nunnery, go. 



 Exit  OPHELIA  O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! 

 The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword; 

 The expectancy and rose of the fair state, 

 The glass of fashion and the mould of form, 

 The observed of all observers, quite, quite down! 

 And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, 

 That suck'd the honey of his music vows, 

 Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 

 Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh; 

 That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth 

 Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me, 

 To have seen what I have seen, see what I see! 



 Re-enter KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS  KING CLAUDIUS  Love! his affections do not that way tend; 

 Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little, 

 Was not like madness. There's something in his soul, 

 O'er which his melancholy sits on brood; 

 And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose 

 Will be some danger: which for to prevent, 

 I have in quick determination 

 Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England, 

 For the demand of our neglected tribute 

 Haply the seas and countries different 

 With variable objects shall expel 

 This something-settled matter in his heart, 

 Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus 

 From fashion of himself. What think you on't? 

 LORD POLONIUS  It shall do well: but yet do I believe 

 The origin and commencement of his grief 

 Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia! 

 You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said; 

 We heard it all. My lord, do as you please; 

 But, if you hold it fit, after the play 

 Let his queen mother all alone entreat him 

 To show his grief: let her be round with him; 

 And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear 

 Of all their conference. If she find him not, 

 To England send him, or confine him where 

 Your wisdom best shall think. 

 KING CLAUDIUS  It shall be so: 

 Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go. 



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