To Be or Not to Be — Act III, Scene 1 — A room in the castle

And can you by no drift of conference get from him why he puts on this confusion, grating so harshly all his days of quiet with turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

He does confess he feels himself distracted, but from what cause he will by no means speak.

Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please you, we will bestow ourselves.—Read on this book, that show of such an exercise may colour your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this, 'tis too much proved, that with devotion's visage and pious action we do sugar o'er the devil himself.

O, 'tis too true! How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience. The harlot's cheek beautied with plast'ring art is not more ugly to the thing that helps it than is my deed to my most painted word. O heavy burden!

To be, or not to be, that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them. To die, to sleep— no more—and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep— to sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause. There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of th' unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.—Soft you now, the fair Ophelia!—Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered.

Good my lord, how does your honour for this many a day?

I humbly thank you, well, well, well.

My lord, I have remembrances of yours that I have longed long to re-deliver. I pray you now receive them.

No, not I. I never gave you aught.

My honoured lord, you know right well you did, and with them words of so sweet breath composed as made the things more rich. Their perfume lost, take these again, for to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. There, my lord.

Ha, ha, are you honest?

My lord?

Are you fair?

What means your lordship?

Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father?

At home, my lord.

Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in's own house. Farewell.

If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go, farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell.

O heavenly powers, restore him!

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't. It hath made me mad. I say we will have no more marriages. Those that are married already, all but one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.

O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword, th' expectancy and rose of the fair state, the glass of fashion and the mould of form, th' observed of all observers, quite, quite down! And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, that sucked the honey of his music vows, now see that noble and most sovereign reason like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh; that unmatched form and feature of blown youth blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me, t' have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Love? His affections do not that way tend, nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little, was not like madness. There's something in his soul o'er which his melancholy sits on brood, and I do doubt the hatch and the disclose will be some danger; which for to prevent, I have in quick determination thus set it down: he shall with speed to England for the demand of our neglected tribute. Haply the seas, and countries different, with variable objects, shall expel this something-settled matter in his heart, whereon his brains still beating puts him thus from fashion of himself. What think you on't?

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.