So, proceed you.
Pol.
’Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent
and good
discretion.
I Play.
Anon he finds him,
Striking too short at Greeks:
his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where
it falls,
Repugnant to command: unequal
match’d,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage
strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his
fell sword
The unnerved father falls.
Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with
flaming top
Stoops to his base; and with a hideous
crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus’ ear:
for lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky
head
Of reverend Priam, seem’d
i’ the air to stick:
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus
stood;
And, like a neutral to his will
and matter,
Did nothing.
But as we often see, against some
storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack
stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the
orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful
thunder
Doth rend the region; so, after
Pyrrhus’ pause,
A roused vengeance sets him new
a-work;
And never did the Cyclops’
hammers fall
On Mars’s armour, forg’d
for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus’
bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.—
Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune!
All you gods,
In general synod, take away her
power;
Break all the spokes and fellies
from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the
hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!
Pol.
This is too long.
Ham.
It shall to the barber’s, with your beard.—Pr’ythee
say on.—
He’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps:—say
on; come
to Hecuba.
I Play.
But who, O who, had seen the mobled
queen,—
Ham.
‘The mobled queen’?
Pol.
That’s good! ‘Mobled queen’
is good.
I Play.
Run barefoot up and down, threatening
the flames
With bisson rheum; a clout upon
that head
Where late the diadem stood, and
for a robe,
About her lank and all o’erteemed
loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear
caught up;—
Who this had seen, with tongue in
venom steep’d,
’Gainst Fortune’s state
would treason have pronounc’d:
But if the gods themselves did see
her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious
sport
In mincing with his sword her husband’s
limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that
she made,—
Unless things mortal move them not
at all,—
Would have made milch the burning
eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods.
Pol.
Look, whether he has not turn’d his colour,
and has tears in’s
eyes.—Pray you, no more!
Ham. ’Tis well. I’ll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.— Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear? Let them be well used; for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time; after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.