His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

That it should come to this!

Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 2.

Ibid.

Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven

My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules.

Ibid.

It is not nor it cannot come to good.

Ibid.

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven

Or ever I had seen that day.

Ibid.

In my mind's eye, Horatio.

Ibid.

He was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again.

Ibid.

Season your admiration for a while.

Ibid.

In the dead vast and middle of the night.

Ibid.

Arm'd at point exactly, cap-a-pe.1

Ibid.

A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

Ibid.

1 "Armed at all points" in Singer and White.

While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred. Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 2.

Ham. His beard was grizzled,

no?

Hor. It was, as I have seen it in his life,

Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve.

Ibid.

Foul deeds will rise,

Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.

Ibid.

A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute.

Sc. 3.

The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes:
The canker galls the infants of the spring
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed,
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.1

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops 2 of steel.

Ibid.

1 And may you better reck the rede,

Than ever did the adviser.

BURNS: Epistle to a Young Friend.

2 "Hooks" in Singer.

Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,

Bear 't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 3.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Ibid.

Springes to catch woodcocks.

Ibid.

When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows.

Ibid.

Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence.

Ibid.

Ham. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air.

Sc. 4.

But to my mind, though I am native here

And to the manner born, it is a custom

More honoured in the breach than the observance.

Ibid.

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,

Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou comest in such a questionable shape

That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,

King, father, royal Dane: Oh, answer me!

Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell

Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,

Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws
To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous,' and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

I do not set my life at a pin's fee.

My fate cries out,

Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 4.

Ibid.

And makes each petty artery in this body

As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.

Ibid.

Unhand me, gentlemen.

By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me!

Ibid.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Ibid.

I am thy father's spirit,

Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confin'd to fast in fires,2
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg'd away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part

And each particular hair to stand an end,

8

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, Oh, list!

Sc. 5.

And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed

That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf.

Ibid.

1 And makes night hideous. - POPE: The Dunciad, book iii. line 166.

2 "To lasting fires" in Singer.

3 "Porcupine" in Singer and Staunton.

4 "Rots itself" in Staunton.

My uncle!

O my prophetic soul!

O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!

Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 5.

Ibid.

But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon.

Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,

Ibid.

Unhousell'd, disappointed, unaneled,

No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.

Ibid.

Leave her to heaven

And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her.

Ibid.

The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

Ibid.

While memory holds a seat

In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory

I'll wipe away all trivial fond records.

Ibid.

Within the book and volume of my brain.

Ibid.

O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables, - meet it is I set it down,

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain :
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark.

Ibid.

Ham. There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark But he's an arrant knave.

Hor. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the

Come on you hear this fellow in the cellarage.

Ibid.

Ibid.