Complete Plays, The Page 42
Show thee a jay’s nest and instruct thee how
To snare the nimble marmoset; I’ll bring thee
To clustering filberts and sometimes I’ll get thee
Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?
Stephano
I prithee now, lead the way without any more talking. Trinculo, the king and all our company else being drowned, we will inherit here: here; bear my bottle: fellow Trinculo, we’ll fill him by and by again.
Caliban
[Sings drunkenly]
Farewell master; farewell, farewell!
Trinculo
A howling monster: a drunken monster!
Caliban
No more dams I’ll make for fish
Nor fetch in firing
At requiring;
Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish
’Ban, ’Ban, Cacaliban
Has a new master: get a new man.
Freedom, hey-day! hey-day, freedom! freedom, hey-day, freedom!
Stephano
O brave monster! Lead the way.
Exeunt
ACT III
SCENE I. BEFORE PROSPERO’S CELL.
Enter Ferdinand, bearing a log
Ferdinand
There be some sports are painful, and their labour
Delight in them sets off: some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone and most poor matters
Point to rich ends. This my mean task
Would be as heavy to me as odious, but
The mistress which I serve quickens what’s dead
And makes my labours pleasures: O, she is
Ten times more gentle than her father’s crabbed,
And he’s composed of harshness. I must remove
Some thousands of these logs and pile them up,
Upon a sore injunction: my sweet mistress
Weeps when she sees me work, and says, such baseness
Had never like executor. I forget:
But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,
Most busy lest, when I do it.
Enter Miranda; and Prospero at a distance, unseen
Miranda
Alas, now, pray you,
Work not so hard: I would the lightning had
Burnt up those logs that you are enjoin’d to pile!
Pray, set it down and rest you: when this burns,
’Twill weep for having wearied you. My father
Is hard at study; pray now, rest yourself;
He’s safe for these three hours.
Ferdinand
O most dear mistress,
The sun will set before I shall discharge
What I must strive to do.
Miranda
If you’ll sit down,
I’ll bear your logs the while: pray, give me that;
I’ll carry it to the pile.
Ferdinand
No, precious creature;
I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,
Than you should such dishonour undergo,
While I sit lazy by.
Miranda
It would become me
As well as it does you: and I should do it
With much more ease; for my good will is to it,
And yours it is against.
Prospero
Poor worm, thou art infected!
This visitation shows it.
Miranda
You look wearily.
Ferdinand
No, noble mistress;’tis fresh morning with me
When you are by at night. I do beseech you —
Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers —
What is your name?
Miranda
Miranda.— O my father,
I have broke your hest to say so!
Ferdinand
Admired Miranda!
Indeed the top of admiration! worth
What’s dearest to the world! Full many a lady
I have eyed with best regard and many a time
The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues
Have I liked several women; never any
With so fun soul, but some defect in her
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed
And put it to the foil: but you, O you,
So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature’s best!
Miranda
I do not know
One of my sex; no woman’s face remember,
Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen
More that I may call men than you, good friend,
And my dear father: how features are abroad,
I am skilless of; but, by my modesty,
The jewel in my dower, I would not wish
Any companion in the world but you,
Nor can imagination form a shape,
Besides yourself, to like of. But I prattle
Something too wildly and my father’s precepts
I therein do forget.
Ferdinand
I am in my condition
A prince, Miranda; I do think, a king;
I would, not so!— and would no more endure
This wooden slavery than to suffer
The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service; there resides,
To make me slave to it; and for your sake
Am I this patient log — man.
Miranda
Do you love me?
Ferdinand
O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound
And crown what I profess with kind event
If I speak true! if hollowly, invert
What best is boded me to mischief! I
Beyond all limit of what else i’ the world
Do love, prize, honour you.
Miranda
I am a fool
To weep at what I am glad of.
Prospero
Fair encounter
Of two most rare affections! Heavens rain grace
On that which breeds between ’em!
Ferdinand
Wherefore weep you?
Miranda
At mine unworthiness that dare not offer
What I desire to give, and much less take
What I shall die to want. But this is trifling;
And all the more it seeks to hide itself,
The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning!
And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!
I am your wife, it you will marry me;
If not, I’ll die your maid: to be your fellow
You may deny me; but I’ll be your servant,
Whether you will or no.
Ferdinand
My mistress, dearest;
And I thus humble ever.
Miranda
My husband, then?
Ferdinand
Ay, with a heart as willing
As bondage e’er of freedom: here’s my hand.
Miranda
And mine, with my heart in’t; and now farewell
Till half an hour hence.
Ferdinand
A thousand thousand!
Exeunt Ferdinand and Miranda severally
Prospero
So glad of this as they I cannot be,
Who are surprised withal; but my rejoicing
At nothing can be more. I’ll to my book,
For yet ere supper-time must I perform
Much business appertaining.
Exit
SCENE I. ELSINORE. A PLATFORM BEFORE THE CASTLE.
Francisco at his post. Enter to him Bernardo
Bernardo
Who’s there?
Francisco
Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.
Bernardo
Long live the king!
Francisco
Bernardo?
Bernardo
He.
Francisco
You come most carefully upon your hour.
Bernardo
’Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.
Francisco
For this relief much thanks: ’tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.
Bernardo
Have you had quiet guard?
Francisco
Not a mouse stirring.
Bernardo
Well, good night.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
Francisco
I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who’s there?
Enter Horatio and Marcellus
Horatio
Friends to this ground.
Marcellus
And liegemen to the Dane.
Francisco
Give you good night.
Marcellus
O, farewell, honest soldier:
Who hath relieved you?
Francisco
Bernardo has my place.
Give you good night.
Exit
Marcellus
Holla! Bernardo!
Bernardo
Say,
What, is Horatio there?
Horatio
A piece of him.
Bernardo
Welcome, Horatio: welcome, good Marcellus.
Marcellus
What, has this thing appear’d again to-night?
Bernardo
I have seen nothing.
Marcellus
Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy,
And will not let belief take hold of him
Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us:
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us to watch the minutes of this night;
That if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes and speak to it.
Horatio
Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.
Bernardo
Sit down awhile;
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story
What we have two nights seen.
Horatio
Well, sit we down,
And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.
Bernardo
Last night of all,
When yond same star that’s westward from the pole
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one,—
Enter Ghost
Marcellus
Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!
Bernardo
In the same figure, like the king that’s dead.
Marcellus
Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.
Bernardo
Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.
Horatio
Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.
Bernardo
It would be spoke to.
Marcellus
Question it, Horatio.
Horatio
What art thou that usurp’st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!
Marcellus
It is offended.
Bernardo
See, it stalks away!
Horatio
Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!
Exit Ghost
Marcellus
’Tis gone, and will not answer.
Bernardo
How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on’t?
Horatio
Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
Marcellus
Is it not like the king?
Horatio
As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armour he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown’d he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
’Tis strange.
Marcellus
Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
Horatio
In what particular thought to work I know not;
But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
Marcellus
Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
Who is’t that can inform me?
Horatio
That can I;
At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,
Whose image even but now appear’d to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick’d on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet —
For so this side of our known world esteem’d him —
Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal’d compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had return’d
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
And carriage of the article design’d,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Shark’d up a list of lawless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in’t; which is no other —
As it doth well appear unto our state —
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost: and this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage in the land.
Bernardo
I think it be no other but e’en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
That was and is the question of these wars.
Horatio
A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and
earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.—
But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
Re-enter Ghost
I’ll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me:
If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me:
Cock crows
If thou art privy to thy country’s fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it, Marcellus.
Marcellus
Shall I strike at it with my partisan?
Horatio
Do, if it will not stand.
Bernardo
’Tis here!
Horatio
’Tis here!
Marcellus
’Tis gone!
Exit Ghost
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.
Bernardo
It was about to speak, when the cock crew.
Horatio
And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day; and, at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine: and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.
Marcellus
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.
Horatio
So have I heard and do in part believe it.
But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill:
Break we our watch up; and by my advice,
Let us impart what we have seen to-night
Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?
Marcellus
Let’s do’t, I pray; and I this morning know
Where we shall find him most conveniently.
Exeunt
SCENE II. ANOTHER PART OF THE ISLAND.
Enter Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo