51

Source document

HAMLET. Do you not come your tardy son to chide, That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go by The important acting of your dread command? O say! GHOST. Do not forget. This visitation Is 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 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. 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 ecstasy Is very cunning in. HAMLET. Ecstasy! My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time, And makes as healthful music. It is not madness That I have utter’d. Bring me to the test, And I the matter will re-word; which madness Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, Lay not that flattering unction to your soul That 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 pursy times Virtue 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.