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Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4

Polonius is slain behind the arras · William Shakespeare
Every note, for your class

Previously, in Act 3, Scene 3

Claudius orders Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to escort Hamlet to England, while Polonius prepares to overhear Hamlet's meeting with Gertrude. Alone, Claudius confesses his murder and attempts to pray but admits he cannot surrender the gains of his crime. Hamlet finds Claudius apparently praying but postpones killing him because he fears sending the king's soul to heaven.

SCENE IV. Another room in the Castle.

Enter Queen and Polonius.
POLONIUS
He will come straight. Look you lay home to him,Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,And that your Grace hath screen’d and stood betweenMuch heat and him. I’ll silence me e’en here.Pray you be round with him.
HAMLET
Mother, mother, mother.
QUEEN
I’ll warrant you, Fear me not.Withdraw, I hear him coming.
Polonius goes behind the arras.
Enter Hamlet.
HAMLET
Now, mother, what’s the matter?
QUEEN
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
HAMLET
Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
HAMLET
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
QUEEN
Why, how now, Hamlet?
HAMLET
What’s the matter now?
QUEEN
Have you forgot me?
HAMLET
No, by the rooda cross or crucifix, especially one bearing an image of Christ., not so.You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,And, would it were not so. You are my mother.
QUEEN
Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.
HAMLET
Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge.You go not till I set you up a glassWhere you may see the inmost part of you.
QUEEN
What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?Help, help, ho!
POLONIUS
What, ho! help, help, help!
HAMLET
How now? A rat?Dead for a ducat, dead!
Makes a pass through the arras.
POLONIUS
O, I am slain!
Falls and dies.
QUEEN
O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
Draws forth Polonius.
QUEEN
O what a rash and bloody deed is this!
HAMLET
A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother,As kill a king and marry with his brother.
QUEEN
As kill a king?
HAMLET
Ay, lady, ’twas my word.—Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune,Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.—Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down,And let me wring your heart, for so I shall,If it be made of penetrable stuff;If damned custom have not braz’d it so,That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
QUEEN
What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongueIn noise so rude against me?
HAMLET
Such an actThat blurs the grace and blush of modesty,Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the roseFrom the fair forehead of an innocent love,And sets a blister there. Makes marriage vowsAs false as dicers’ oaths. O such a deedAs from the body of contraction plucksThe very soul, and sweet religion makesA rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face doth glow,Yea this solidity and compound mass,With tristfulSorrowful or melancholy. visage, as against the doom,Is thought-sick at the act.
QUEEN
Ay me, what act,That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
HAMLET
Look here upon this picture, and on this,The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.See what a grace was seated on this brow,Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,An eye like Mars, to threaten and command,A station like the herald MercuryNew 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.Here is your husband, like a mildew’d earBlasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?You cannot call it love; for at your ageThe hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,And waits upon the judgement: and what judgementWould step from this to this? Sense sure you have,Else could you not have motion; but sure that senseIs apoplex’dto strike with apoplexy, causing sudden insensibility or paralysis., for madness would not errNor sense to ecstacy was ne’er so thrall’dBut it reserv’d some quantity of choiceTo serve in such a difference. What devil was’tThat thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blindblind man’s buff, a game in which a blindfolded player tries to catch the others.?Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,Or but a sickly part of one true senseCould not so mope. O shame! where is thy blush?Rebellious hell,If thou canst mutineTo rebel or rise in mutiny. in a matron’s bones,To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shameWhen the compulsive ardour gives the charge,Since frost itself as actively doth burn,And reason panders will.
QUEEN
O Hamlet, speak no more.Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,And there I see such black and grained spotsAs will not leave their tinct.
HAMLET
Nay, but to liveIn the rank sweat of an enseamedGreasy, filthy, or foul with accumulated fat. bed,Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making loveOver the nasty sty.
QUEEN
O speak to me no more;These words like daggers enter in mine ears;No more, sweet Hamlet.
HAMLET
A murderer and a villain;A slave that is not twentieth part the titheOf your precedent lord. A vicethe stock comic villain of a morality play, characterised by mischievous buffoonery. of kings,A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,That from a shelf the precious diadem stoleAnd put it in his pocket!
QUEEN
No more.
HAMLET
A king of shreds and patches!—
Enter Ghost.
HAMLET
Save me and hover o’er me with your wings,You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
QUEEN
Alas, he’s mad.
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide,That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go byThe important acting of your dread command?O say!
GHOST
Do not forget. This visitationIs but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.But look, amazement on thy mother sits.O step between her and her fighting soul.Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.Speak to her, Hamlet.
HAMLET
How is it with you, lady?
QUEEN
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 hairs, like life in excrements,Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,Upon the heat and flame of thy distemperSprinkle 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 convertMy stern effects. Then what I have to doWill want true colour; tears perchance for blood.
QUEEN
To whom do you speak this?
HAMLET
Do you see nothing there?
QUEEN
Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
HAMLET
Nor did you nothing hear?
QUEEN
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! look how it steals away!My father, in his habit as he liv’d!Look where he goes even now out at the portal.
Exit Ghost.
QUEEN
This is the very coinage of your brain.This bodiless creation ecstasyIs very cunning in.
HAMLET
Ecstasy!My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,And makes as healthful music. It is not madnessThat I have utter’d. Bring me to the test,And I the matter will re-word; which madnessWould gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,Lay not that flattering unction to your soulThat not your trespass, but my madness speaks.It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,Whilst 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 pursyfat and short-winded. timesVirtue itself of vice must pardon beg,Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
QUEEN
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 mine uncle’s bed.Assume a virtue, if you have it not.That monster custom, who all sense doth eat,Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,That to the use of actions fair and goodHe likewise gives a frock or liveryThat aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,And that shall lend a kind of easinessTo the next abstinence. The next more easy;For use almost can change the stamp of nature,And either curb the devil, or throw him outWith wondrous potency. Once more, good night,And when you are desirous to be bles’d,I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lordPointing to Polonius.I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d 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 wellThe death I gave him. So again, good night.I must be cruel, only to be kind:Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.One word more, good lady.
QUEEN
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 reechySmoky, sooty, or begrimed with smoke. 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 paddockA toad., from a bat, a giba male cat, especially an old castrated tomcat.,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 creepAnd break your own neck down.
QUEEN
Be thou assur’d, if words be made of breath,And breath of life, I have no life to breatheWhat thou hast said to me.
HAMLET
I must to England, you know that?
QUEEN
Alack,I had forgot. ’Tis so concluded on.
HAMLET
There’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows,Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,—They bear the mandate, they must sweep my wayAnd marshal me to knavery. Let it work;For ’tis the sport to have the enginerA person who devises and constructs military engines, mines, or explosive devices.Hoist with his own petarda small explosive charge used to blow open a gate or breach a fortification., and ’t shall go hardBut I will delve one yard below their minesAnd blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet,When in one line two crafts directly meet.This man shall set me packing.I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.Mother, good night. Indeed, this counsellorIs now most still, most secret, and most grave,Who was in life a foolish prating knave.Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.Good night, mother.
Exit Hamlet dragging out Polonius.