Page 49
O, the recorders. Let me see one.—To withdraw with you, why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?
Guildenstern:
O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.
Hamlet:
I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?
Guildenstern:
My lord, I cannot.
Hamlet:
I pray you.
Guildenstern:
Believe me, I cannot.
Hamlet:
I do beseech you.
Guildenstern:
I know no touch of it, my lord.
Hamlet:
’Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.
Guildenstern:
But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony. I have not the skill.
Hamlet:
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.
Enter Polonius.
God bless you, sir.
Polonius:
My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.
Hamlet:
Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius:
By the mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.
Hamlet:
Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius:
It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet:
Or like a whale.
Polonius:
Very like a whale.
Hamlet:
Then will I come to my mother by and by.—They fool me to the top of my bent.—I will come by and by.
Polonius:
I will say so.
(Exit.)
Hamlet:
By and by is easily said. Leave me, friends.
(Exeunt all but Hamlet.)
’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft now, to my mother.
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:
Let me be cruel, not unnatural.
I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.
How in my words somever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my soul, consent.
(Exit.)