Oph. 
Belike this show imports the argument of the play.

[Enter Prologue.]

Ham. 
We shall know by this fellow:  the players cannot keep counsel;
they’ll tell all.

Oph. 
Will he tell us what this show meant?

Ham. 
Ay, or any show that you’ll show him:  be not you ashamed to
show, he’ll not shame to tell you what it means.

Oph. 
You are naught, you are naught:  I’ll mark the play.

Pro. 
   For us, and for our tragedy,
   Here stooping to your clemency,
   We beg your hearing patiently.

Ham. 
Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

Oph. 
’Tis brief, my lord.

Ham. 
As woman’s love.

[Enter a King and a Queen.]

P. King. 
Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round
Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrow’d sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been,
Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands,
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

P. Queen. 
So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o’er ere love be done! 
But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer and from your former state. 
That I distrust you.  Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must: 
For women’s fear and love holds quantity;
In neither aught, or in extremity. 
Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
And as my love is siz’d, my fear is so: 
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

P. King. 
Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
My operant powers their functions leave to do: 
And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honour’d, belov’d, and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou,—­

P. Queen. 
O, confound the rest! 
Such love must needs be treason in my breast: 
In second husband let me be accurst! 
None wed the second but who kill’d the first.

Ham.
[Aside.] Wormwood, wormwood!

P. Queen. 
The instances that second marriage move
Are base respects of thrift, but none of love. 
A second time I kill my husband dead
When second husband kisses me in bed.

P. King. 
I do believe you think what now you speak;
But what we do determine oft we break. 
Purpose is but the slave to memory;
Of violent birth, but poor validity: 
Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree;
But fall unshaken when they mellow be. 
Most necessary ’tis that we forget
To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt: 
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose. 
The violence of either grief or joy
Their own enactures with themselves destroy: 
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;