QUEEN GERTRUDE falls OSRIC Look to the queen there, ho! HORATIO They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord? OSRIC How is't, Laertes? LAERTES Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric;I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery. HAMLET How does the queen? KING CLAUDIUS She swounds to see them bleed. QUEEN GERTRUDE No, no, the drink, the drink,--O my dear Hamlet,--The drink, the drink! I am poison'd.
Dies HAMLET O villany! Ho! let the door be lock'd:
Treachery! Seek it out. LAERTES It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art slain;No medicine in the world can do thee good;In thee there is not half an hour of life;The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, Unbated and envenom'd: the foul practise Hath turn'd itself on me lo, here I lie, Never to rise again: thy mother's poison'd:
I can no more: the king, the king's to blame. HAMLET The point!--envenom'd too!
Then, venom, to thy work.
Stabs KING CLAUDIUS All Treason! treason! KING CLAUDIUS O, yet defend me, friends; I am but hurt. HAMLET Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.
KING CLAUDIUS dies LAERTES He is justly served;It is a poison temper'd by himself.
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet:
Mine and my father's death come not upon thee, Nor thine on me.
Dies HAMLET Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.
I am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu!
You that look pale and tremble at this chance, That are but mutes or audience to this act, Had I but time--as this fell sergeant, death, Is strict in his arrest--O, I could tell you--But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;Thou livest; report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied. HORATIO Never believe it:
I am more an antique Roman than a Dane:
Here's yet some liquor left. HAMLET As thou'rt a man, Give me the cup: let go; by heaven, I'll have't.
O good Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story.
March afar off, and shot within What warlike noise is this? OSRIC Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland, To the ambassadors of England gives This warlike volley. HAMLET O, I die, Horatio;The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit:
I cannot live to hear the news from England;But I do prophesy the election lights On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, Which have solicited. The rest is silence.
Dies HORATIO Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
Why does the drum come hither?
March within Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambassadors, and others PRINCE FORTINBRAS Where is this sight? HORATIO What is it ye would see?
If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search. PRINCE FORTINBRAS This quarry cries on havoc. O proud death, What feast is toward in thine eternal cell, That thou so many princes at a shot So bloodily hast struck? First Ambassador The sight is dismal;And our affairs from England come too late:
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing, To tell him his commandment is fulfill'd, That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead:
Where should we have our thanks? HORATIO Not from his mouth, Had it the ability of life to thank you:
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question, You from the Polack wars, and you from England, Are here arrived give order that these bodies High on a stage be placed to the view;And let me speak to the yet unknowing world How these things came about: so shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on the inventors' reads: all this can ITruly deliver. PRINCE FORTINBRAS Let us haste to hear it, And call the noblest to the audience.
For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune:
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me. HORATIO Of that I shall have also cause to speak, And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more;But let this same be presently perform'd, Even while men's minds are wild; lest more mischance On plots and errors, happen. PRINCE FORTINBRAS Let four captains Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;For he was likely, had he been put on, To have proved most royally: and, for his passage, The soldiers' music and the rites of war Speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies: such a sight as this Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.
A dead march. Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after which a peal of ordnance is shot off
