Hamlet: Act 4, Scene 5 Translation

Enter Horatio, Queen, and a Gentleman.

QUEEN I will not speak with her.

GENTLEMAN She is importunate,
Indeed distract; her mood will needs be pitied.

QUEEN What would she have?

GENTLEMAN
She speaks much of her father, says she hears 5
There’s tricks i’ th’ world, and hems, and beats her
heart,
Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt
That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshapèd use of it doth move 10
The hearers to collection. They aim at it
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield
them,
Indeed would make one think there might be 15
thought,
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.

HORATIO
’Twere good she were spoken with, for she may
strew
Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds. 20

QUEEN Let her come in. Gentleman exits.
Aside. To my sick soul (as sin’s true nature is),
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. 25

Enter Ophelia distracted.

OPHELIA
Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?

QUEEN How now, Ophelia?

OPHELIA sings
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff 30
And his sandal shoon.

QUEEN
Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

OPHELIA Say you? Nay, pray you, mark.
Sings. He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone; 35
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.
Oh, ho!

QUEEN Nay, but Ophelia—

OPHELIA Pray you, mark. 40
Sings. White his shroud as the mountain snow—

Enter King.

QUEEN Alas, look here, my lord.

OPHELIA sings
Larded all with sweet flowers;
Which bewept to the ground did not go
With true-love showers. 45

KING How do you, pretty lady?

OPHELIA Well, God dild you. They say the owl was a
baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are but
know not what we may be. God be at your table.

KING Conceit upon her father. 50

OPHELIA Pray let’s have no words of this, but when
they ask you what it means, say you this:
Sings. Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window, 55
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose and donned his clothes
And dupped the chamber door,
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more. 60

KING Pretty Ophelia—

OPHELIA
Indeed, without an oath, I’ll make an end on ’t:
Sings. By Gis and by Saint Charity,
Alack and fie for shame,
Young men will do ’t, if they come to ’t; 65
By Cock, they are to blame.
Quoth she “Before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed.”
He answers:
“So would I ’a done, by yonder sun, 70
An thou hadst not come to my bed.”

KING How long hath she been thus?

OPHELIA I hope all will be well. We must be patient,
but I cannot choose but weep to think they would
lay him i’ th’ cold ground. My brother shall know of 75
it. And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come,
my coach! Good night, ladies, good night, sweet
ladies, good night, good night.

She exits.

KING
Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.

Horatio exits.

O, this is the poison of deep grief. It springs 80
All from her father’s death, and now behold!
O Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions: first, her father slain;
Next, your son gone, and he most violent author 85
Of his own just remove; the people muddied,
Thick, and unwholesome in their thoughts and
whispers
For good Polonius’ death, and we have done but
greenly 90
In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts;
Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France, 95
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father’s death,
Wherein necessity, of matter beggared,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign 100
In ear and ear. O, my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murd’ring piece, in many places
Gives me superfluous death.

A noise within.

QUEEN Alack, what noise is this?

KING Attend! 105
Where is my Switzers? Let them guard the door.

Enter a Messenger.

What is the matter?

MESSENGER Save yourself, my lord.
The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impiteous haste 110
Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
O’erbears your officers. The rabble call him “lord,”
And, as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props of every word, 115
They cry “Choose we, Laertes shall be king!”
Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,
“Laertes shall be king! Laertes king!”

A noise within.

QUEEN
How cheerfully on the false trail they cry.
O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs! 120

KING The doors are broke.

Enter Laertes with others.

LAERTES
Where is this king?—Sirs, stand you all without.

ALL No, let’s come in!

LAERTES I pray you, give me leave.

ALL We will, we will. 125

LAERTES
I thank you. Keep the door. Followers exit. O, thou
vile king,
Give me my father!

QUEEN Calmly, good Laertes.

LAERTES
That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me 130
bastard,
Cries “cuckold” to my father, brands the harlot
Even here between the chaste unsmirchèd brow
Of my true mother.

KING What is the cause, Laertes, 135
That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?—
Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.
There’s such divinity doth hedge a king
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.—Tell me, Laertes, 140
Why thou art thus incensed.—Let him go,
Gertrude.—
Speak, man.

LAERTES Where is my father?

KING Dead. 145

QUEEN
But not by him.

KING Let him demand his fill.

LAERTES
How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with.
To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit! 150
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes, only I’ll be revenged
Most throughly for my father.

KING Who shall stay you? 155

LAERTES My will, not all the world.
And for my means, I’ll husband them so well
They shall go far with little.

KING Good Laertes,
If you desire to know the certainty 160
Of your dear father, is ’t writ in your revenge
That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and
foe,
Winner and loser?

LAERTES None but his enemies. 165

KING Will you know them, then?

LAERTES
To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms
And, like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,
Repast them with my blood.

KING Why, now you speak 170
Like a good child and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father’s death
And am most sensibly in grief for it,
It shall as level to your judgment ’pear
As day does to your eye. 175

A noise within: “Let her come in!”

LAERTES How now, what noise is that?

Enter Ophelia.

O heat, dry up my brains! Tears seven times salt
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid with weight 180
Till our scale turn the beam! O rose of May,
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
O heavens, is ’t possible a young maid’s wits
Should be as mortal as an old man’s life?
Nature is fine in love, and, where ’tis fine, 185
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.

OPHELIA sings
They bore him barefaced on the bier,
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny,
And in his grave rained many a tear. 190
Fare you well, my dove.

LAERTES
Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move thus.

OPHELIA You must sing “A-down a-down”—and you
“Call him a-down-a.”—O, how the wheel becomes 195
it! It is the false steward that stole his master’s
daughter.

LAERTES This nothing’s more than matter.

OPHELIA There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.
Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, 200
that’s for thoughts.

LAERTES A document in madness: thoughts and remembrance
fitted.

OPHELIA There’s fennel for you, and columbines.
There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we 205
may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. You must wear
your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would
give you some violets, but they withered all when
my father died. They say he made a good end.
Sings. For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy. 210

LAERTES
Thought and afflictions, passion, hell itself
She turns to favor and to prettiness.

OPHELIA sings
And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
No, no, he is dead. 215
Go to thy deathbed.
He never will come again.

His beard was as white as snow,
All flaxen was his poll.
He is gone, he is gone, 220
And we cast away moan.
God ’a mercy on his soul.
And of all Christians’ souls, I pray God. God be wi’
you.

She exits.

LAERTES Do you see this, O God? 225

KING
Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
And they shall hear and judge ’twixt you and me.
If by direct or by collateral hand 230
They find us touched, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
To you in satisfaction; but if not,
Be you content to lend your patience to us,
And we shall jointly labor with your soul 235
To give it due content.

LAERTES Let this be so.
His means of death, his obscure funeral
(No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones,
No noble rite nor formal ostentation) 240
Cry to be heard, as ’twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call ’t in question.

KING So you shall,
And where th’ offense is, let the great ax fall.
I pray you, go with me. 245

They exit.