on Priam.--
Out, out, thou fickle Fortune!_

_Pol._ (R.) This is too long.

_Ham._ It shall to the barber's, with your beard.--Say on;--come to
Hecuba.

_1st Play._ _But who, ah woe, had seen the mobled queen_--

_Ham._ The mobled queen?[63]

_Pol._ That's good; mobled queen is good.

_1st Play._ _Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames;
A clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood; and, for a robe,
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 pronounced._

_Pol._ Look, whether he has not turned his colour, and has tears in's
eyes.--Prithee, no more.

_Ham._ (C.) '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 abstract and brief
chronicles of the time: After your death you were better have a bad
epitaph than their ill report while you live.

_Pol._ (R.) My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

_Ham._ Much better: Use every man after his desert, and who shall
'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: The less
they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

[_Crosses to_ R.H.]

_Pol._ Come, sirs.

_Ham._ Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow.

[_Exit_ POLONIUS _with some of the_ Players, L.H.]

Old friend

[_Crosses to_ C.]

--My good friends

[_To_ ROSENCRANTZ _and_ GUILDENSTERN.]

I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore--can you play
the murder of Gonzago?

[_Exeunt_ ROSENCRANTZ _and_ GUILDENSTERN, R.H.]

_1st Play._ Ay, my lord.

_Ham._ We'll have it to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a
speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would insert
in't--could you not?

_1st Play._ Ay, my lord.

_Ham._ Very well.--Follow that lord; and look you mock him not.

[_Exit_ Player, L.H.]

Now I am alone.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous, that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit,
That, from her working, all his visage wann'd;[64]
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit?[65] And all for nothing!
For Hecuba?
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he