• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

That I have longed long to re-deliver.

I pray you, now receive them.

Ham. No, not I!

I never gave you aught.

Oph. My honour'd lord, you know right well you did,

And with them words of so sweet breath compos'd

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.

Ham. Ha, ha! Are you honest?

Oph. My lord?

Ham. Are you fair?

Oph. What means your lordship?

Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no

discourse to your beauty.

Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

Ham. 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.

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

Ham. You should not have believ'd me; for virtue cannot so

inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.

Oph. I was the more deceived.

Ham. 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?

Oph. At home, my lord.

Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool

nowhere but in's own house. Farewell.

Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens!

Ham. 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.

Oph. O heavenly powers, restore him!

Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath

given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you

amble, and you lisp; you nickname 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.

Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

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

Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

Th' observ'd 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

T' have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Enter King and Polonius.

King. 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?

Pol. 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