pious action, we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.

_King._ O, 'tis too true! how smart
A lash that speech doth give my conscience!

[_Aside._]

_Pol._ I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord.

[_Exeunt_ KING _and_ POLONIUS, R.H.2 E., _and_
OPHELIA, R.H.U.E.]

_Enter_ HAMLET (L.H.)

_Ham._ To be, or not to be, that is the question:[8]
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,[9]
And, by opposing end them?--To die,--to sleep,
No more;--and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die,--to sleep,--
To sleep! perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,[10]
Must give us pause:[11] There's the respect[12]
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,[13]
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,[14]
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make[15]
With a bare bodkin?[16] Who would fardels bear,[17]
To groan and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn[18]
No traveller returns,[19] puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus, conscience does make cowards of us all;[20]
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,[21]
With this regard, their currents turn away,
And lose the name of action.[22]--

[OPHELIA _returns._]

--Soft you now![23]
The fair Ophelia:--Nymph, in thy orisons[24]
Be all my sins remember'd.

_Oph._ (R.C.) Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?

_Ham._ (L.C.) I humbly thank you; well.

_Oph._ My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver;
I pray you, now receive them.

_Ham._ No, not I;
I never gave you aught.

_Oph._ My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
And, with them, wo