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Hamlet: Act III, Scene 3

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Hamlet
Act III, Scene 3

Elsinore. A room in Elsinore castle.

Pray can I not

John Austen, circa 1922

  1. Enter King, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.

Claudius

1 - 7
  1. I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
  2. To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you.
  3. I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
  4. And he to England shall along with you.
  5. The terms of our estate may not endure
  6. Hazard so near ’s as doth hourly grow
  7. Out of his brows.

Guildenstern

8 - 11
  1.                   We will ourselves provide.
  2. Most holy and religious fear it is
  3. To keep those many many bodies safe
  4. That live and feed upon your Majesty.

Rosencrantz

12 - 24
  1. The single and peculiar life is bound
  2. With all the strength and armor of the mind
  3. To keep itself from noyance, but much more
  4. That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests
  5. The lives of many. The cess of majesty
  6. Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
  7. What’s near it with it. Or it is a massy wheel
  8. Fix’d on the summit of the highest mount,
  9. To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
  10. Are mortis’d and adjoin’d, which when it falls,
  11. Each small annexment, petty consequence,
  12. Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never alone
  13. Did the King sigh, but with a general groan.

Claudius

25 - 27
  1. Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage,
  2. For we will fetters put about this fear,
  3. Which now goes too free-footed.

Rosencrantz

28
  1.                                 We will haste us.
  1. Exeunt Gentlemen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
  1. Enter Polonius.

Polonius

29 - 37
  1. My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet.
  2. Behind the arras I’ll convey myself
  3. To hear the process. I’ll warrant she’ll tax him home,
  4. And as you said, and wisely was it said,
  5. ’Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
  6. Since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear
  7. The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege,
  8. I’ll call upon you ere you go to bed,
  9. And tell you what I know.

Claudius

38 - 75
  1.                           Thanks, dear my lord.
  2. Exit Polonius.
  3. O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven,
  4. It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
  5. A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,
  6. Though inclination be as sharp as will.
  7. My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,
  8. And, like a man to double business bound,
  9. I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
  10. And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
  11. Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,
  12. Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
  13. To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
  14. But to confront the visage of offense?
  15. And what’s in prayer but this twofold force,
  16. To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
  17. Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up.
  18. My fault is past, but, O, what form of prayer
  19. Can serve my turn? “Forgive me my foul murder”?
  20. That cannot be, since I am still possess’d
  21. Of those effects for which I did the murder:
  22. My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
  23. May one be pardon’d and retain th’ offense?
  24. In the corrupted currents of this world
  25. Offense’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
  26. And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
  27. Buys out the law, but ’tis not so above:
  28. There is no shuffling, there the action lies
  29. In his true nature, and we ourselves compell’d,
  30. Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
  31. To give in evidence. What then? What rests?
  32. Try what repentance can. What can it not?
  33. Yet what can it, when one can not repent?
  34. O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
  35. O limed soul, that struggling to be free
  36. Art more engag’d! Help, angels! Make assay,
  37. Bow, stubborn knees, and heart, with strings of steel,
  38. Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!
  39. All may be well.
  1. He kneels.
  1. Enter Hamlet.

Now might I do it pat

Edwin Austin Abbey, unknown date

Hamlet

76 - 99
  1. Now might I do it pat, now ’a is a-praying;
  2. And now I’ll do’t—and so ’a goes to heaven,
  3. And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d:
  4. A villain kills my father, and for that
  5. I, his sole son, do this same villain send
  6. To heaven.
  7. Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
  8. ’A took my father grossly, full of bread,
  9. With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May,
  10. And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
  11. But in our circumstance and course of thought
  12. ’Tis heavy with him. And am I then revenged,
  13. To take him in the purging of his soul,
  14. When he is fit and season’d for his passage?
  15. No!
  16. Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent:
  17. When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
  18. Or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed,
  19. At game a-swearing, or about some act
  20. That has no relish of salvation in’t—
  21. Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
  22. And that his soul may be as damn’d and black
  23. As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays,
  24. This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
  1. Exit.

Claudius

100 - 101
  1. Rising.
  2. My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
  3. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
  1. Exit.
Scene design for Hamlet at the Princess's Theatre

Scene design for Hamlet at the Princess's Theatre

John K. Chapman and Co., 1859

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