Hamlet
Act IV, Scene 4
Near Elsinore. A plain in Denmark.
Costume design for Fortinbras
John Miller, George Scharf, 1825
- Enter Fortinbras with his army over the stage.
Fortinbras
1 - 7- Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king.
- Tell him that by his license Fortinbras
- Craves the conveyance of a promis’d march
- Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.
- If that his Majesty would aught with us,
- We shall express our duty in his eye,
- And let him know so.
Norwegian Captain
8- I will do’t, my lord.
Fortinbras
9- Go softly on.
- Exeunt all but the Captain.
- Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, etc.
Hamlet
10- Good sir, whose powers are these?
Norwegian Captain
11- They are of Norway, sir.
Hamlet
12- How purpos’d, sir, I pray you?
Norwegian Captain
13- Against some part of Poland.
Hamlet
14- Who commands them, sir?
Norwegian Captain
15- The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.
Hamlet
16 - 17- Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
- Or for some frontier?
Norwegian Captain
18 - 23- Truly to speak, and with no addition,
- We go to gain a little patch of ground
- That hath in it no profit but the name.
- To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
- Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
- A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.
Hamlet
24- Why then the Polack never will defend it.
Norwegian Captain
25- Yes, it is already garrison’d.
Hamlet
26 - 30- Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
- Will not debate the question of this straw.
- This is th’ imposthume of much wealth and peace,
- That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
- Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.
Norwegian Captain
31- God buy you, sir.
- Exit.
Rosencrantz
32- Will’t please you go, my lord?
Hamlet
33 - 68- I’ll be with you straight—go a little before.
- Exeunt all but Hamlet.
- How all occasions do inform against me,
- And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
- If his chief good and market of his time
- Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
- Sure He that made us with such large discourse,
- Looking before and after, gave us not
- That capability and godlike reason
- To fust in us unus’d. Now whether it be
- Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
- Of thinking too precisely on th’ event—
- A thought which quarter’d hath but one part wisdom
- And ever three parts coward—I do not know
- Why yet I live to say, “This thing’s to do,”
- Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
- To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
- Witness this army of such mass and charge,
- Led by a delicate and tender prince,
- Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d
- Makes mouths at the invisible event,
- Exposing what is mortal and unsure
- To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
- Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
- Is not to stir without great argument,
- But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
- When honor’s at the stake. How stand I then,
- That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,
- Excitements of my reason and my blood,
- And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
- The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
- That for a fantasy and trick of fame
- Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
- Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
- Which is not tomb enough and continent
- To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
- My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
- Exit.
Page decorations from the Selwyn & Blount edition of Hamlet
John Austen, 1922