The Director's Cuts:
Act 3, Scene 4
The Queen's closet.
Enter QUEEN MARGARET and POLONIUS
LORD POLONIUS Pray you, be round with him.
HAMLET
[Within] Mother, mother, mother! QUEEN GERTRUDE I'll warrant you,
Fear me not:
withdraw, I hear him coming.
POLONIUS hides behind the arras Enter HAMLET HAMLET [Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
Makes a pass through the arras LORD POLONIUS QUEEN GERTRUDE Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! As false as dicers' oaths:
O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow: Yea, this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is thought-sick at the act.
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QUEEN GERTRUDE New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man: This was your husband. Look you now, what follows: Would step from this to this?
Sense, sure, you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err, Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd But it reserved some quantity of choice, To serve in such a difference. What devil was't That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind? Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, Or but a sickly part of one true sense Could not so mope. O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, And melt in her own fire:
proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge, Since frost itself as actively doth burn And reason panders will. QUEEN GERTRUDE Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings, Alas, how is't with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse? Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep; And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son, Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? HAMLET On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares! His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, Would make them capable. Do not look upon me; Lest with this piteous action you convert My stern effects: then what I have to do Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood. QUEEN GERTRUDE To whom do you speak this? |
HAMLET QUEEN GERTRUDE 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 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 to-night, 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: I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so, 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. Thus 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 damn'd 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? They bear the mandate;
they must sweep my way,
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; For 'tis the sport to have the engineer 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: |
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