That from her working, all his visage wann'd ; A broken voice, and his whole function suiting What 's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do, That I have? He would drown the stage with tears, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat, Ha! Why, I should take it: for it cannot be, I should have fatted all the region kites What an ass am I! ay, sure, this is most braved; That I, the son of the dear murthered, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words, Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave." So the folio. The quartos, omitting the short line, "O vengeance," read So the folio, and two of the quartos. In others, we have "a dear father murder'd." The rejection, by the editors, of the beautiful reading of "the dear murthered," rests upon the belief that "father" is a material word. TRAGEDIES.-VOL. I, L That guilty creatures, sitting at a play, For murther, though it have no tongue, will speak KING. And can you, by no drift of circumstancea, Get from him, why he puts on this confusion; When we would bring him on to some confession QUEEN. Did he receive you well? • Circumstance, in folio; in quartos, conference. Ros. Most like a gentleman. GUIL. But with much forcing of his disposition. QUEEN. Did you assay him to any pastime? POL. We o'er-raught on the way of these we told him; "T is most true: And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties, To hear and see the matter. KING. With all my heart; and it doth much content me Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, KING. [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too: That he, as 't were by accident, may here Her father, and myself (lawful espials), Will so bestow ourselves, that, seeing, unseen, If 't be the affliction of his love or no, That thus he suffers for. QUEEN. 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. ОРН. Madam, I wish it may. POL. Ophelia, walk you here:-Gracious, so please you, That show of such an exercise may colour It was suggested by Warburton to read "Most free of question; but of our demands Affront, encounter, confront. [Exit QUEEN. [TO OPHELIA. How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience a! The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art, Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it, POL. I hear him coming; let 's withdraw, my lord. Enter HAMLET. [Aside. [Exeunt KING and POLONIUS. HAM. To be, or not to be, that is the question: To sleep! perchance to dream;-ay, there's the rub; That makes calamity of so long life: For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make * Modern editors have destroyed the original metrical arrangement, and print these two lines thus, against all authority: It is so given in Ayscough's edition. The doubt whether death and sleep are identical comes too early, the passage being so pointed. The doubt is expressed in "perchance to dream." The "no more" is nothing more-the "rien de plus" of the French translators of Hamlet. d Proud, in the quartos. In the folio we have "the poor man's contumely," the contumely which the poor man bears. Dispriz'd, in the folio; in the quartos, despis'd. |