me Friends:
'Tis now the verie witching time of night,
When Churchyards yawne, and Hell it selfe breaths out
[Sidenote: brakes[2]]
Contagion to this world.[3] Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter businesse as the day
[Sidenote: such busines as the bitter day]
Would quake to looke on.[4] Soft now, to my Mother:
Oh Heart, loose not thy Nature;[5] let not euer
The Soule of _Nero_[6] enter this firme bosome:
Let me be cruell, not vnnaturall.
[Sidenote: 172] I will speake Daggers[7] to her, but vse none:
[Sidenote: dagger]
My Tongue and Soule in this be Hypocrites.[8]
How in my words someuer she be shent,[9]
To giue them Seales,[10] neuer my Soule consent.[4]
[Sidenote: _Exit._]

_Enter King, Rosincrance, and Guildensterne_.

_King_. I like him not, nor stands it safe with vs,
To let his madnesse range.[11] Therefore prepare you,
[Sidenote: 167] I your Commission will forthwith dispatch,[12]
[Sidenote: 180] And he to England shall along with you:
The termes of our estate, may not endure[13]
Hazard so dangerous as doth hourely grow [Sidenote: so neer's as]
Out of his Lunacies. [Sidenote: his browes.]

_Guild_. We will our selues prouide:
Most holie and Religious feare it is[14]
To keepe those many many bodies safe
That liue and feede vpon your Maiestie.[15]

_Rosin_. The single
And peculiar[16] life is bound
With all the strength and Armour of the minde,

[Footnote 1: The _Quarto_, not having _Polon., Exit, or Ham._, and
arranging differently, reads thus:--

They foole me to the top of my bent, I will come by and by,
Leaue me friends.
I will, say so. By and by is easily said,
Tis now the very &c.]

[Footnote 2: _belches_.]

[Footnote 3: --thinking of what the Ghost had told him, perhaps: it was
the time when awful secrets wander about the world. Compare _Macbeth_,
act ii. sc. 1; also act iii. sc. 2.]

[Footnote 4: The assurance of his uncle's guilt, gained through the
effect of the play upon him, and the corroboration of his mother's guilt
by this partial confirmation of the Ghost's assertion, have once more
stirred in Hamlet the fierceness of vengeance. But here afresh comes
out the balanced nature of the man--say rather, the supremacy in him of
reason and wil