哈姆雷特（中文译本）

底本：Project Gutenberg 英文原文；文脉中文导读。
版权：英文原文公版；未录入现代中译；中文导读为文脉自写。

中文导读

《哈姆雷特》常被读成复仇悲剧，但它真正改变戏剧史的地方，是把“行动为何被延迟”写成一种意识结构。鬼魂给出命令，戏中戏验证真相，墓地把一切政治和爱情都拖回肉身终点；整部剧让复仇从一条情节线变成现代主体的裂缝。

英文原文

THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK

by William Shakespeare

Contents

ACT I
Scene I. Elsinore. A platform before the Castle
Scene II. Elsinore. A room of state in the Castle
Scene III. A room in Polonius’s house
Scene IV. The platform
Scene V. A more remote part of the Castle

ACT II
Scene I. A room in Polonius’s house
Scene II. A room in the Castle

ACT III
Scene I. A room in the Castle
Scene II. A hall in the Castle
Scene III. A room in the Castle
Scene IV. Another room in the Castle

ACT IV
Scene I. A room in the Castle
Scene II. Another room in the Castle
Scene III. Another room in the Castle
Scene IV. A plain in Denmark
Scene V. Elsinore. A room in the Castle
Scene VI. Another room in the Castle
Scene VII. Another room in the Castle

ACT V
Scene I. A churchyard
Scene II. A hall in the Castle

Dramatis Personæ

HAMLET, Prince of Denmark
CLAUDIUS, King of Denmark, Hamlet’s uncle
The GHOST of the late king, Hamlet’s father
GERTRUDE, the Queen, Hamlet’s mother, now wife of Claudius
POLONIUS, Lord Chamberlain
LAERTES, Son to Polonius
OPHELIA, Daughter to Polonius
HORATIO, Friend to Hamlet
FORTINBRAS, Prince of Norway
VOLTEMAND, Courtier
CORNELIUS, Courtier
ROSENCRANTZ, Courtier
GUILDENSTERN, Courtier
MARCELLUS, Officer
BARNARDO, Officer
FRANCISCO, a Soldier
OSRIC, Courtier
REYNALDO, Servant to Polonius
Players
A Gentleman, Courtier
A Priest
Two Clowns, Grave-diggers
A Captain
English Ambassadors.
Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers, and Attendants

SCENE. Elsinore.

正文

丹麦王子哈姆雷特之悲剧

威廉·莎士比亚 著

目录

第一幕
第一场：埃尔西诺。城堡前的露台
第二场：埃尔西诺。城堡中的一间国事厅
第三场：波洛涅斯家中的一个房间
第四场：露台
第五场：城堡中一处更偏远的所在

第二幕
第一场：波洛涅斯家中的一个房间
第二场：城堡中的一个房间

第三幕
第一场：城堡中的一个房间
第二场：城堡中的一座大厅
第三场：城堡中的一个房间
第四场：城堡中的另一个房间

第四幕
第一场：城堡中的一个房间
第二场：城堡中的另一个房间
第三场：城堡中的另一个房间
第四场：丹麦的一处平原
第五场：埃尔西诺。城堡中的一个房间
第六场：城堡中的另一个房间
第七场：城堡中的另一个房间

第五幕
第一场：一处教堂墓地
第二场：城堡中的一座大厅

剧中人物

哈姆雷特，丹麦王子
克劳狄斯，丹麦国王，哈姆雷特的叔父
先王鬼魂，哈姆雷特的父亲
乔特鲁德，王后，哈姆雷特的母亲，现为克劳狄斯之妻
波洛涅斯，御前大臣
雷欧提斯，波洛涅斯之子
奥菲莉娅，波洛涅斯之女
霍拉旭，哈姆雷特之友
福丁布拉斯，挪威王子
伏尔提曼德，朝臣
科尼律斯，朝臣
罗森格兰兹，朝臣
吉尔登斯吞，朝臣
马塞勒斯，军官
伯纳多，军官
弗朗西斯科，一名士兵
奥斯里克，朝臣
雷纳尔多，波洛涅斯之仆
众伶人
一名绅士，朝臣
一名教士
两名小丑，掘墓人
一名队长
英格兰使臣
贵族、贵妇、军官、士兵、水手、使者及侍从

场景：埃尔西诺。

ACT I

第一幕

SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the Castle.

Enter Francisco and Barnardo, two sentinels.

BARNARDO.
Who’s there?

FRANCISCO.
Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

BARNARDO.
Long live the King!

FRANCISCO.
Barnardo?

BARNARDO.
He.

FRANCISCO.
You come most carefully upon your hour.

BARNARDO.
’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.

FRANCISCO.
For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.

BARNARDO.
Have you had quiet guard?

FRANCISCO.
Not a mouse stirring.

BARNARDO.
Well, good night.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

Enter Horatio and Marcellus.

FRANCISCO.
I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who is there?

HORATIO.
Friends to this ground.

MARCELLUS.
And liegemen to the Dane.

FRANCISCO.
Give you good night.

MARCELLUS.
O, farewell, honest soldier, who hath reliev’d you?

FRANCISCO.
Barnardo has my place. Give you good-night.

[Exit.]

MARCELLUS.
Holla, Barnardo!

BARNARDO.
Say, what, is Horatio there?

HORATIO.
A piece of him.

BARNARDO.
Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.

MARCELLUS.
What, has this thing appear’d again tonight?

BARNARDO.
I have seen nothing.

MARCELLUS.
Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy,
And will not let belief take hold of him
Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us.
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us to watch the minutes of this night,
That if again this apparition come
He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

HORATIO.
Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.

BARNARDO.
Sit down awhile,
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
What we two nights have seen.

HORATIO.
Well, sit we down,
And let us hear Barnardo speak of this.

BARNARDO.
Last night of all,
When yond same star that’s westward from the pole,
Had made his course t’illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one—

MARCELLUS.
Peace, break thee off. Look where it comes again.

Enter Ghost.

BARNARDO.
In the same figure, like the King that’s dead.

MARCELLUS.
Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

BARNARDO.
Looks it not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.

HORATIO.
Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.

BARNARDO
It would be spoke to.

MARCELLUS.
Question it, Horatio.

HORATIO.
What art thou that usurp’st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee speak.

MARCELLUS.
It is offended.

BARNARDO.
See, it stalks away.

HORATIO.
Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee speak!

[Exit Ghost.]

MARCELLUS.
’Tis gone, and will not answer.

BARNARDO.
How now, Horatio! You tremble and look pale.
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on’t?

HORATIO.
Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.

MARCELLUS.
Is it not like the King?

HORATIO.
As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armour he had on
When he th’ambitious Norway combated;
So frown’d he once, when in an angry parle
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
’Tis strange.

MARCELLUS.
Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

HORATIO.
In what particular thought to work I know not;
But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

MARCELLUS.
Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week.
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
Who is’t that can inform me?

HORATIO.
That can I;
At least, the whisper goes so. Our last King,
Whose image even but now appear’d to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick’d on by a most emulate pride,
Dar’d to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet,
For so this side of our known world esteem’d him,
Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal’d compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seiz’d of, to the conqueror;
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our King; which had return’d
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as by the same cov’nant
And carriage of the article design’d,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle, hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,
Shark’d up a list of lawless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in’t; which is no other,
As it doth well appear unto our state,
But to recover of us by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost. And this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch, and the chief head
Of this post-haste and rummage in the land.

BARNARDO.
I think it be no other but e’en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch so like the King
That was and is the question of these wars.

HORATIO.
A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.

Re-enter Ghost.

But, soft, behold! Lo, where it comes again!
I’ll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me.
If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease, and grace to me,
Speak to me.
If thou art privy to thy country’s fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid,
O speak!
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it. Stay, and speak!

[The cock crows.]

Stop it, Marcellus!

MARCELLUS.
Shall I strike at it with my partisan?

HORATIO.
Do, if it will not stand.

BARNARDO.
’Tis here!

HORATIO.
’Tis here!

[Exit Ghost.]

MARCELLUS.
’Tis gone!
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence,
For it is as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.

BARNARDO.
It was about to speak, when the cock crew.

HORATIO.
And then it started, like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day; and at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
Th’extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine. And of the truth herein
This present object made probation.

MARCELLUS.
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm;
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

HORATIO.
So have I heard, and do in part believe it.
But look, the morn in russet mantle clad,
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.
Break we our watch up, and by my advice,
Let us impart what we have seen tonight
Unto young Hamlet; for upon my life,
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

MARCELLUS.
Let’s do’t, I pray, and I this morning know
Where we shall find him most conveniently.

[Exeunt.]

第一场：埃尔西诺。城堡前的露台

弗朗西斯科与伯纳多，两名哨兵，上。

伯纳多。
谁在那里？

弗朗西斯科。
不，回答我。站住，报上名来。

伯纳多。
国王万岁！

弗朗西斯科。
伯纳多？

伯纳多。
正是。

弗朗西斯科。
你倒来得极为准时。

伯纳多。
刚敲过十二点。去睡吧，弗朗西斯科。

弗朗西斯科。
多谢你来换岗。天冷得刺骨，
我心里也闷得慌。

伯纳多。
你守的这一班还安静吗？

弗朗西斯科。
连一只老鼠都没动过。

伯纳多。
好，晚安。
你要是遇见霍拉旭和马塞勒斯，
同我一起值夜的那两位，就叫他们快些。

霍拉旭与马塞勒斯上。

弗朗西斯科。
我好像听见他们了。站住，喂！谁在那里？

霍拉旭。
是此地的朋友。

马塞勒斯。
也是丹麦王的臣下。

弗朗西斯科。
祝你们晚安。

马塞勒斯。
哦，再会了，忠实的士兵。是谁接替了你？

弗朗西斯科。
伯纳多接了我的岗。祝你们晚安。

〔弗朗西斯科下。〕

马塞勒斯。
喂，伯纳多！

伯纳多。
说，怎么，霍拉旭在那儿吗？

霍拉旭。
他的一小部分在。

伯纳多。
欢迎，霍拉旭。欢迎，好马塞勒斯。

马塞勒斯。
怎么，那东西今晚又出现了吗？

伯纳多。
我什么也没看见。

马塞勒斯。
霍拉旭说这不过是我们的幻觉，
我们两度亲见的这骇人景象，
他一点儿也不肯相信。
所以我恳求他今夜同我们一起
守候这黑夜里的每一分钟，
这样，倘若那幻象再度来临，
他就能见证我们的眼睛，并与之说话。

霍拉旭。
得啦，得啦，它不会出现的。

伯纳多。
暂且坐下吧，
让我们再一次向您的耳朵发起进攻，
它们如此严阵以待，不肯接纳我们两夜
亲眼所见之事。

霍拉旭。
好，我们就坐下，
让我们听伯纳多讲讲这事。

伯纳多。
就在昨夜，
当那颗此刻正燃在那边天空的星辰，
那颗在北极星西边的同一颗星，
已循它的轨迹照亮那片天宇之时，
马塞勒斯和我，那时钟正敲响一点——

马塞勒斯。
别出声，停下。瞧，它又来了。

〔鬼魂上。〕

伯纳多。
正是那模样，就像已故的国王。

马塞勒斯。
你是个读书人；霍拉旭，你跟它说话。

伯纳多。
它难道不像国王吗？霍拉旭，你仔细看。

霍拉旭。
最为相似。它令我恐惧与惊异齐生。

伯纳多。
它是想要人跟它说话的。

马塞勒斯。
去问它，霍拉旭。

霍拉旭。
你是什么东西，竟敢窃据这夜晚的时刻，
偕同那既俊美而又威武的形貌，
那已入土的丹麦君王的威仪
当年出征时所披戴的身姿？我以天国的名义，命令你开口！

马塞勒斯。
它被触怒了。

伯纳多。
瞧，它昂首阔步地走开了。

霍拉旭。
站住！说话，说话！我命令你说话！

〔鬼魂下。〕

马塞勒斯。
它走了，不肯回答。

伯纳多。
怎么了，霍拉旭！您浑身发抖，脸色苍白。
这难道不仅仅是幻觉吗？
您对此作何感想？

霍拉旭。
在我的上帝面前，若非凭我双眼
那确凿无疑、真真切切的明证，
我断不肯相信这事。

马塞勒斯。
它难道不像国王吗？

霍拉旭。
正如你像你自己一样：
他当年讨伐野心勃勃的挪威时，
所穿的正是这一身甲胄；
他也曾这般皱眉紧蹙，那时在一场盛怒的谈判中，
他挥锤击打乘雪橇的波兰人于冰原之上。
真是怪异。

马塞勒斯。
先前已有两次，恰在这死寂的时辰，
他迈着威仪的步伐，走过我们的看守。

霍拉旭。
它究竟用意何在，我想不真切；
但据我大略所见，推想其大端，
这预兆着我国中，将有奇异的变故。

马塞勒斯。
好吧，请坐下，知情的人哪，告诉我，
究竟为了什么，要这般严加戒备，
夜夜叫国人如此劳苦不休，
又为何日日铸造这许多铜炮，
向外邦采买这许多军械；
为何要强征这许多造船匠，使他们重役加身，
连礼拜日也和无别，
究竟有什么事将要发生，竟需如此匆忙急切，
叫黑夜也与白昼一同流汗：
谁能给我一个说明？

霍拉旭。
我能；
至少，人们私下是这么传说。我们那位先王，
他的形象方才还向我们显现，
正如你们所知，曾被挪威王福丁布拉斯，
出于一份好胜争强的傲心，激起，
向他挑战决斗；在那场决斗中，我们英勇的哈姆雷特——
我们这边举世所知，都这般敬重他——
便斩了那福丁布拉斯；那福丁布拉斯，按照一份画押的契约，
又经法律与纹章官的郑重认可，
随着他性命，将他所占有的
一切土地，都输给了那胜者；
而对应那份赌注，我们王上也押下了
一份相当的领地；倘若胜者是福丁布拉斯，
那份领地便要归他继承；
正如这同一纸契约，按其条款所载的明文，
福丁布拉斯的领土归了哈姆雷特。如今，大人，这位小福丁布拉斯，
血气未驯，性如烈火且全无顾忌，
在挪威边境各处，这儿那儿，
已搜罗了一群亡命的无赖之徒，
以充衣食之需，去图谋一桩
必须有胆量才敢去做的事业；那桩事业，非为别事，
照我们国中清楚的情势看来，
无非是用强横的手段，
以胁迫的条款，从我们手中夺回
他父亲所丧失的那片土地。依我看，
这便是我们此番备战的
首要动机，是我们严加看守的缘由，
也是全国这般紧急匆忙、一片骚动的根源。

伯纳多。
我想这原因非此莫属了：
这也正可解释，为何那征兆可怖的身影，
全身披挂，穿过我们的守卫，活像那位国王，
那位如今正是这场战事的起因的国王。

霍拉旭。
那只是一粒微尘，搅乱心灵之眼。
在罗马那鼎盛至极的盛世，
在盖世无双的尤利乌斯陨落前夕，
坟墓尽空，裹着殓布的死尸
在罗马街头尖啸嗫嚅；
星辰拖着火尾，降下血露，
太阳出现凶兆；而那颗湿润之星——
海神之国全赖其力左右——
晦暗得几乎濒于末日之蚀。
而与此相同的惨烈变故之先兆——
犹如朕兆莅临之前必有先驱，
犹如预兆将至之前必有开场——
苍天与大地早已一同昭示于
我们这方水土与国人。

〔鬼魂重上。〕

且慢，看！瞧，它又来了！
即使将我击倒，我也要拦住它。站住，幻象！
你若有什么响动，或能运用嗓音，
对我说话吧。
若有什么善事可为，
能令你安息，令我蒙恩，
对我说话吧。
你若知晓祖国命运之秘，
幸而预知，或许可避，
啊，请说！
又或者你生前将搜刮而来的宝藏
埋藏于大地之腹，
为此，人说，你们魂灵死后常要游荡，
说出来吧。站住，说！

〔鸡鸣。〕

拦住它，马塞勒斯！

马塞勒斯。
要我用戟击打它吗？

霍拉旭。
它若不肯站住，便打。

伯纳多。
在这儿！

霍拉旭。
在这儿！

〔鬼魂下。〕

马塞勒斯。
它走了！
我们行事有亏，它如此庄严，
我们却示以暴力之状，
因为它如同空气，刀枪不入，
我们徒劳的击打不过是恶意的嘲弄。

伯纳多。
鸡鸣之时，它正要开口说话。

霍拉旭。
于是它惊起，如同一个负罪之物
听到了可怖的召唤。我听闻，
公鸡，这黎明的号角，
用它高昂而尖锐的啼鸣
唤醒白昼之神；在它的警告之下，
无论在海上火中，在土里空中，
一切游荡漂泊的魂灵都仓皇
赶回它的界域。此事之确凿，
眼前这物已作了明证。

马塞勒斯。
鸡鸣之际，它便消退了。
有人说，每逢那个时节临近——
即救主诞辰庆祝之时——
这报晓之禽会彻夜长鸣；
于是，他们说，没有魂魄敢外出游荡，
夜晚变得无害，星辰不降祸，
妖仙不惑人，巫婆无从施咒；
这时间如此神圣，又这般蒙恩。

霍拉旭。
我也听说过，而且有几分相信。
可是您看，清晨披着赭色斗篷，
已经踏上那东边高岗上的露水了。
我们散了岗吧；依我之见，
把我们今夜所见的事
去告诉年轻的哈姆雷特；
因为我敢拿性命打赌，这个对我们
守口如瓶的鬼魂，一定会对他开口。
你们是不是同意，我们该把这事告诉他，
既出于我们的爱戴，也合乎我们的职分？

马塞勒斯。
就这么办吧，我请求；而且我知道今早
在什么地方最容易找到他。

〔众人下。〕

SCENE II. Elsinore. A room of state in the Castle.

Enter Claudius King of Denmark, Gertrude the Queen, Hamlet, Polonius,
Laertes, Voltemand,
Cornelius, Lords and Attendant.

KING.
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe;
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy,
With one auspicious and one dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,
Taken to wife; nor have we herein barr’d
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along. For all, our thanks.
Now follows, that you know young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,
He hath not fail’d to pester us with message,
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother. So much for him.
Now for ourself and for this time of meeting:
Thus much the business is: we have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,
Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears
Of this his nephew’s purpose, to suppress
His further gait herein; in that the levies,
The lists, and full proportions are all made
Out of his subject: and we here dispatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway,
Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the King, more than the scope
Of these dilated articles allow.
Farewell; and let your haste commend your duty.

CORNELIUS and VOLTEMAND.
In that, and all things, will we show our duty.

KING.
We doubt it nothing: heartily farewell.

[Exeunt Voltemand and Cornelius.]

And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?
You told us of some suit. What is’t, Laertes?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane,
And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

LAERTES.
Dread my lord,
Your leave and favour to return to France,
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark
To show my duty in your coronation;
Yet now I must confess, that duty done,
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France,
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

KING.
Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?

POLONIUS.
He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
By laboursome petition; and at last
Upon his will I seal’d my hard consent.
I do beseech you give him leave to go.

KING.
Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine,
And thy best graces spend it at thy will!
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—

HAMLET.
[Aside.] A little more than kin, and less than kind.

KING.
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET.
Not so, my lord, I am too much i’ the sun.

QUEEN.
Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know’st ’tis common, all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

HAMLET.
Ay, madam, it is common.

QUEEN.
If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?

HAMLET.
Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not seems.
’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forc’d breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

KING.
’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father;
But you must know, your father lost a father,
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation, for some term
To do obsequious sorrow. But to persevere
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness. ’Tis unmanly grief,
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool’d;
For what we know must be, and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? Fie, ’tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd, whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died today,
‘This must be so.’ We pray you throw to earth
This unprevailing woe, and think of us
As of a father; for let the world take note
You are the most immediate to our throne,
And with no less nobility of love
Than that which dearest father bears his son
Do I impart toward you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire:
And we beseech you bend you to remain
Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

QUEEN.
Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.
I pray thee stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.

HAMLET.
I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

KING.
Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply.
Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come;
This gentle and unforc’d accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart; in grace whereof,
No jocund health that Denmark drinks today
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.

[Exeunt all but Hamlet.]

HAMLET.
O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter. O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t! Oh fie! ’tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead—nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on; and yet, within a month—
Let me not think on’t—Frailty, thy name is woman!
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body
Like Niobe, all tears.—Why she, even she—
O God! A beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourn’d longer,—married with mine uncle,
My father’s brother; but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

Enter Horatio, Marcellus and Barnardo.

HORATIO.
Hail to your lordship!

HAMLET.
I am glad to see you well:
Horatio, or I do forget myself.

HORATIO.
The same, my lord,
And your poor servant ever.

HAMLET.
Sir, my good friend;
I’ll change that name with you:
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?—
Marcellus?

MARCELLUS.
My good lord.

HAMLET.
I am very glad to see you.—Good even, sir.—
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

HORATIO.
A truant disposition, good my lord.

HAMLET.
I would not hear your enemy say so;
Nor shall you do my ear that violence,
To make it truster of your own report
Against yourself. I know you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?
We’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.

HORATIO.
My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.

HAMLET.
I prithee do not mock me, fellow-student.
I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.

HORATIO.
Indeed, my lord, it follow’d hard upon.

HAMLET.
Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak’d meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio.
My father,—methinks I see my father.

HORATIO.
Where, my lord?

HAMLET.
In my mind’s eye, Horatio.

HORATIO.
I saw him once; he was a goodly king.

HAMLET.
He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.

HORATIO.
My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

HAMLET.
Saw? Who?

HORATIO.
My lord, the King your father.

HAMLET.
The King my father!

HORATIO.
Season your admiration for a while
With an attent ear, till I may deliver
Upon the witness of these gentlemen
This marvel to you.

HAMLET.
For God’s love let me hear.

HORATIO.
Two nights together had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch
In the dead waste and middle of the night,
Been thus encounter’d. A figure like your father,
Armed at point exactly, cap-à-pie,
Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk’d
By their oppress’d and fear-surprised eyes,
Within his truncheon’s length; whilst they, distill’d
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did,
And I with them the third night kept the watch,
Where, as they had deliver’d, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes. I knew your father;
These hands are not more like.

HAMLET.
But where was this?

MARCELLUS.
My lord, upon the platform where we watch.

HAMLET.
Did you not speak to it?

HORATIO.
My lord, I did;
But answer made it none: yet once methought
It lifted up it head, and did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak.
But even then the morning cock crew loud,
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
And vanish’d from our sight.

HAMLET.
’Tis very strange.

HORATIO.
As I do live, my honour’d lord, ’tis true;
And we did think it writ down in our duty
To let you know of it.

HAMLET.
Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
Hold you the watch tonight?

MARCELLUS and BARNARDO.
We do, my lord.

HAMLET.
Arm’d, say you?

Both.
Arm’d, my lord.

HAMLET.
From top to toe?

BOTH.
My lord, from head to foot.

HAMLET.
Then saw you not his face?

HORATIO.
O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.

HAMLET.
What, look’d he frowningly?

HORATIO.
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

HAMLET.
Pale, or red?

HORATIO.
Nay, very pale.

HAMLET.
And fix’d his eyes upon you?

HORATIO.
Most constantly.

HAMLET.
I would I had been there.

HORATIO.
It would have much amaz’d you.

HAMLET.
Very like, very like. Stay’d it long?

HORATIO.
While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.

MARCELLUS and BARNARDO.
Longer, longer.

HORATIO.
Not when I saw’t.

HAMLET.
His beard was grizzled, no?

HORATIO.
It was, as I have seen it in his life,
A sable silver’d.

HAMLET.
I will watch tonight;
Perchance ’twill walk again.

HORATIO.
I warrant you it will.

HAMLET.
If it assume my noble father’s person,
I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
If you have hitherto conceal’d this sight,
Let it be tenable in your silence still;
And whatsoever else shall hap tonight,
Give it an understanding, but no tongue.
I will requite your loves. So, fare ye well.
Upon the platform ’twixt eleven and twelve,
I’ll visit you.

ALL.
Our duty to your honour.

HAMLET.
Your loves, as mine to you: farewell.

[Exeunt Horatio, Marcellus and Barnardo.]

My father’s spirit in arms! All is not well;
I doubt some foul play: would the night were come!
Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

[Exit.]

第二场：艾尔西诺。城堡中的一间国事厅。

克劳狄斯丹麦国王、乔特鲁德王后、哈姆雷特、波洛涅斯、雷欧提斯、伏尔提曼德、科尼律斯、众贵族及侍从上。

克劳狄斯。
虽说朕亲爱的兄长哈姆雷特之死
记忆犹新，我们理应
心中充满哀恸，举国上下
一致紧锁愁眉；
然而理智与天性相争由来如此，
我们只得用最明达的悲伤追念他，
同时也不忘顾念我们自身。
因此，朕昔日的嫂嫂，今日的王后，
这尚武之邦的共享国柄者，
朕已娶为妻子——这近乎是强颜欢笑，
一只眼喜气洋洋，一只眼泪水汪汪，
丧礼中有欢欣，婚庆中有挽歌，
将喜悦与悲伤放在天平上等量齐观；
而朕在此事上也并未排斥
诸位的高明见教，诸位对此事
畅行不阻。这一切，朕深表感谢。
接下来，你们都已知道，年轻的福丁布拉斯，
小看了朕的威望，
或许以为自从朕亲爱的兄长去世，
我国便分崩离析、国体失调，
他仗着这种妄想，
接二连三地派来使节，
要求交还那些由他父王丧失、
根据法律条文全归我英武长兄所有的土地。
关于他，就说这么多。
现在说说朕自己，以及这次会议的要旨：
事情是这样的：朕已修书一封
给挪威王，即年轻的福丁布拉斯的叔父，
他孱弱无力，卧病在床，几乎不知
他侄儿的此种图谋，请他制止
他侄儿继续作此打算；因为征募兵员、
凡此种种，都是取自他的臣民；
为此，朕派你，贤良的科尼律斯，还有你，伏尔提曼德，
充作信使，向老挪威王转达这番致意，
你们面见国王，交涉时所受权限，
不得超过这些详细载明的条款所定范围。
再会；望你们火速前往，以示忠勤。

科尼律斯及伏尔提曼德。
此事以及诸事，臣等必示忠忱。

国王。
我毫不怀疑：衷心告别。

〔伏尔提曼德与科尼律斯下。〕

那么，雷欧提斯，你有何消息？
你提起过有所陈情。是什么，雷欧提斯？
你若对丹麦王说有理的话，
绝不会白费唇舌。你想求什么，雷欧提斯，
那不会是我未曾提议，而你才开口的？
头脑之于心不相亲，
手之于口不相助，
都胜过丹麦王座之于你父亲。
你想要什么，雷欧提斯？

雷欧提斯。
威严的君主，
请准许并赐恩于我返回法兰西，
我从该国虽甘愿来到丹麦，
为您的加冕礼尽忠示敬；
可是如今我须承认，此职既毕，
我的心愿与思绪重又向往法兰西，
并仰求您仁慈的允诺与宽宥。

国王。
你得到父亲的许可了吗？波洛涅斯怎么说？

波洛涅斯。
主上，他用法不倦的恳求，
逼使我勉强同意；最终
我不得不顺从他的心意，盖下了我艰难的赞同。
我恳请您准他离去。

国王。
把握良辰吧，雷欧提斯；时间归你，
任你的美德随心使用！
可是来，我的侄儿哈姆雷特，我的儿子——

哈姆雷特。
〔旁白。〕比亲属过了点头，却算不得亲善。

国王。
怎么，愁云依旧笼罩着你？

哈姆雷特。
并非如此，陛下，我是晒得太多了。

王后。
好哈姆雷特，抛开你夜色般的阴沉，
让你的眼睛像朋友那样看向丹麦。
不要永远垂着你的眼睑，
在尘土中找寻你高贵的父亲。
你知道这很寻常，一切有生必有死，
穿过俗世走向永恒。

哈姆雷特。
嗯，母亲，这很寻常。

王后。
既然这样，
为什么它在你身上显得如此独特？

哈姆雷特。
显得，母亲！不，它就是如此；我不懂什么“显得”。
好母亲，不光是我这墨黑的外套，
合乎风俗的庄严黑衣，
勉强吐出的呜咽叹气，
不，也不光是眼中丰沛的河流，
面容上沮丧的神情，
连同一切形态、心绪、悲伤的表现，
能真正表达我。这些确实只是“显得”，
因为它们是一个人可以扮演的行径；
但我有那超越表演的东西在内心；
这些不过是哀痛的装饰与外表罢了。

国王。
你这种尽孝守丧的哀痛，哈姆雷特，
在你天性之中确是甜美可嘉；
但你该明白，你的父亲也曾失去父亲，
那位父亲又失去过他的父亲，而存活的嗣子
必须依照孝道，在一段时日之内
恪尽服丧之礼。然而，一味坚持
恒久不变的悲悼，便成了一种
不敬神明的顽固。那是不丈夫的哀情，
它昭示了对上天极其悖逆的意志，
一颗毫不坚强的心，一副焦躁不耐的性情，
一种简单而未经教化的浅薄见识。
既然我们知道那是必然之事，而且稀松平常，
如同最庸常的感官便能感知的事物一般，
我们又何必以一意孤行的倔强对抗
将它耿耿于怀？呸！这是对上天的过失，
对这死者本人的过失，对天理的过失，
在理性面前更是极其荒谬，毕竟，理性一贯的主题
便是父亲终有一死，它从世上第一具尸体起
直到今日刚落气的人，始终高喊：
“此事理当如此。”我们恳请你，把这份
无济于事的哀恸抛于尘土，并把我
视作你的父亲；让世人尽皆知晓，
你是离我这王座最近之人；
而我将以绝不逊于
最慈爱的父亲对待他亲子的那份挚情，
向你倾注我的爱。至于你打算
返回威登堡继续求学的想望，
则与我们的心愿大相违背。
我们恳请你，勉为其难，留在
我们眼中足以愉悦欣慰的近处，
做我们最亲近的廷臣、外甥和儿子。

王后。
别让你的母亲白白祈求，哈姆雷特。
我请你，与我们待在一起；别去威登堡。

哈姆雷特。
我定当竭尽所能，听从您，母亲。

国王。
好啊，这才是一句仁爱而美好的答复。
在丹麦，你便如同朕自己一般。夫人，来吧；
哈姆雷特这番温和而毫不勉强的允诺，
对着我的心灵粲然微笑；为了庆贺此事，
今日丹麦王大杯饮下的每一回欢宴，
巨炮都要向云端高声宣告，
而君王的祝饮引动的天之回响，
也将再度宏亮地答报大地震恸的雷鸣。来吧。

〔除哈姆雷特外，众人同下。〕

哈姆雷特。
啊，但愿这太坚实的肉体会融解、
消散，化成一滴露水！
或者那永生的神未曾定下
禁止自杀的戒律。上帝啊！上帝啊！
这世间一切的常行惯事，
在我看多么陈腐、乏味、平淡又无益！
呸！呸！那是一座荒芜的花园，
只管结籽，蔓生恶臭的草木
把它整个儿盘踞。事情竟到这步田地！
才死了两个月——不，不到，还不满两个月：
那样一位卓越的君王，比起这一位，
恰似许珀里翁比萨堤尔；对母亲那样恩爱，
甚至不让天风太粗鲁地
吹痛她的面庞。苍天与大地啊！
难道我还得记着？嘿，她依偎着他，
仿佛越吃越增胃口；
可短短一个月之内——别再想了——
脆弱啊，你的名字就是女人！——
短短一个月，她给我那可怜的父亲送葬时
穿的鞋子还没有旧，她哭得像尼俄柏一般，
只不停地淌泪——怎么，她，就是她——
上帝啊！一头没有理性的畜生，
也会哀悼得更长久——竟嫁给了我的叔父，
我父亲的弟弟；可一点也不像我父亲，
正如我不像赫拉克勒斯。短短一个月，
那最虚伪的眼泪的咸涩
还未消去她哭红的眼眶，
她就嫁了。唉，多么邪恶的匆忙，这样乖巧地
奔向乱伦的床帏！
这绝非好事，也不会有好结局。
可是我的心啊，碎了吧，因为我必须闭嘴。

〔霍拉旭、马塞勒斯及伯纳多上。〕

霍拉旭。
拜见殿下！

哈姆雷特。
看见你好好的，我很高兴：
霍拉旭——我没有认错人吧。

霍拉旭。
正是，殿下，永远是您卑微的仆人。

哈姆雷特。
先生，我的好朋友；
我跟你换一个称呼；
你怎么离开威登堡了，霍拉旭？——
马塞勒斯？

马塞勒斯。
殿下。

哈姆雷特。
见到你非常高兴。——晚上好，先生。——
老实说，你为什么离开威登堡？

霍拉旭。
不过是偷懒逃学，好殿下。

哈姆雷特。
我不愿听你的仇家这么说；
你也不能这样强逼我的耳朵，
让我信你亲口所说的
不利于你自己的话。我知道你不是偷懒的人。
可是你到艾尔西诺来有什么事？
走之前，我们要好好教你痛饮。

霍拉旭。
殿下，我原是为参加您父王的葬礼而来。

哈姆雷特。
我请你别取笑我，老同学。
我想你是来看我母后的婚礼的。

霍拉旭。
的确，殿下，这两件事挨得太紧了。

哈姆雷特。
省，真省啊，霍拉旭！葬礼上烤好的肉，
凉冰冰地端上了婚宴的餐桌。
我宁愿在天堂里遇见我最痛恨的仇敌，
也不愿看到那一天，霍拉旭。
我的父亲——我觉得我看见了父亲。

霍拉旭。
在哪儿，殿下？

哈姆雷特。
在我心灵的眼睛里，霍拉旭。

霍拉旭。
我见过他一次；他是个堂堂的君王。

哈姆雷特。
他是个完人，从各方面看都是，
我再也见不到他那样的人物了。

霍拉旭。
殿下，我想我昨天夜里看见了他。

哈姆雷特。
看见？谁？

霍拉旭。
殿下，您的父王。

哈姆雷特。
我的父王！

霍拉旭。
请您暂且压下您的惊奇，
凝神细听，容我依据这两位绅士
的见证，向您禀报
这件奇事。

哈姆雷特。
看在上帝分上，快让我听。

霍拉旭。
一连两个夜晚，这两位绅士，
马塞勒斯和伯纳多，在他们值夜时，
在死寂荒凉、深更半夜之中，
遇见了这样一件事。一个酷似您父亲的身影，
从头到脚，全副精良武装，
在他们面前出现，以庄严的步伐，
缓慢而堂皇地走过他们；他三次走过
他们惊恐万分、骇然瞪视的眼前，
近得只隔他手中一根短杖的距离；而他们，由于恐惧
几乎熬成了浆汁，
呆立在那里，一句话也不敢跟他说。他们
极度秘密地把这事告诉了我，
于是第三夜我陪他们一同守夜，
就在他们说定的时间，原原本本，分毫不爽，
无论时间、形象，一字一句全都印证，
那幽灵果然出现了。我认识您的父亲；
这两只手，也没有这般相似。

哈姆雷特。
但这发生在哪里？

马塞勒斯。
殿下，就在我们守望的平台上。

哈姆雷特。
你们没有跟它说话吗？

霍拉旭。
殿下，我说了；
但它没有回答。不过有一刻，我觉得
它抬起了头，身体微动，
好像就要开口说话了。
可就在那时，晨鸡高声啼叫，
它一听到这声音，就慌忙瑟缩，
从我们眼前消失不见。

哈姆雷特。
这真是非常奇怪。

霍拉旭。
我以生命起誓，尊贵的殿下，这是真的；
我们都觉得，禀告您这件事，
是我们分内应尽之责。

哈姆雷特。
确实，确实，诸位，只是这事令我心烦。
你们今晚还当值守夜吗？

马塞勒斯和伯纳多。
是的，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
你们说它披着铠甲？

两人。
披着铠甲，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
从头到脚？

两人。
殿下，从头到脚。

哈姆雷特。
那你们没看见它的脸吗？

霍拉旭。
哦，看见了，殿下，它把面甲掀起来了。

哈姆雷特。
怎么，它皱着眉头吗？

霍拉旭。
那神情，悲哀多于愤怒。

哈姆雷特。
脸色苍白，还是通红？

霍拉旭。
非常苍白。

哈姆雷特。
眼睛一直盯着你们？

霍拉旭。
目不转睛。

哈姆雷特。
我真希望当时我也在场。

霍拉旭。
您一定会大吃一惊。

哈姆雷特。
多半会的，多半会的。它停留了很久吗？

霍拉旭。
大概够一个人不紧不慢数到一百。

马塞勒斯与伯纳多。
还要久，还要久。

霍拉旭。
我看见的那次没那么久。

哈姆雷特。
他的胡须花白，不是吗？

霍拉旭。
正如他生前我曾见过的，
墨黑里夹着银丝。

哈姆雷特。
今夜我站岗；
也许它还会出现。

霍拉旭。
我保证它会的。

哈姆雷特。
如果它化成了我高贵父亲的模样，
我就跟它说话，哪怕地狱张开裂口，
喝令我闭嘴。我恳请各位，
既然你们至今没把这事说出去，
就让它继续封在你们的沉默里；
但凡今夜再有什么动静，
心里明白就好，嘴上什么也别说。
你们的情谊，我一定会报答。那么，别过了。
十一点到十二点之间，在露台上，
我去找你们。

众人。
愿为殿下效犬马之劳。

哈姆雷特。
是情谊，我对你们也是那样：再会。

〔霍拉旭、马塞勒斯与伯纳多下。〕

我父亲的魂灵披甲而立！此事不妙；
我疑心其中有肮脏的勾当：但愿黑夜快快降临！
在此之前，沉住气，我的灵魂：肮脏的恶行终会露头，
哪怕整个大地把它们压住，也遮不住世人的眼睛。

〔下。〕

SCENE III. A room in Polonius’s house.

Enter Laertes and Ophelia.

LAERTES.
My necessaries are embark’d. Farewell.
And, sister, as the winds give benefit
And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,
But let me hear from you.

OPHELIA.
Do you doubt that?

LAERTES.
For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour,
Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood;
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting;
The perfume and suppliance of a minute;
No more.

OPHELIA.
No more but so?

LAERTES.
Think it no more.
For nature crescent does not grow alone
In thews and bulk; but as this temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
The virtue of his will; but you must fear,
His greatness weigh’d, his will is not his own;
For he himself is subject to his birth:
He may not, as unvalu’d persons do,
Carve for himself; for on his choice depends
The sanctity and health of this whole state;
And therefore must his choice be circumscrib’d
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed; which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain
If with too credent ear you list his songs,
Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
To his unmaster’d importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister;
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
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 disclos’d,
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary then, best safety lies in fear.
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.

OPHELIA.
I shall th’effect of this good lesson keep
As watchman to my heart. But good my brother,
Do not as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whilst like a puff’d and reckless libertine
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.

LAERTES.
O, fear me not.
I stay too long. But here my father comes.

Enter Polonius.

A double blessing is a double grace;
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.

POLONIUS.
Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame.
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for. There, my blessing with you.

[Laying his hand on Laertes’s head.]

And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear’t that th’opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
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.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee.

LAERTES.
Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

POLONIUS.
The time invites you; go, your servants tend.

LAERTES.
Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well
What I have said to you.

OPHELIA.
’Tis in my memory lock’d,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

LAERTES.
Farewell.

[Exit.]

POLONIUS.
What is’t, Ophelia, he hath said to you?

OPHELIA.
So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.

POLONIUS.
Marry, well bethought:
’Tis told me he hath very oft of late
Given private time to you; and you yourself
Have of your audience been most free and bounteous.
If it be so,—as so ’tis put on me,
And that in way of caution,—I must tell you
You do not understand yourself so clearly
As it behoves my daughter and your honour.
What is between you? Give me up the truth.

OPHELIA.
He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.

POLONIUS.
Affection! Pooh! You speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?

OPHELIA.
I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

POLONIUS.
Marry, I’ll teach you; think yourself a baby;
That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly;
Or,—not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus,—you’ll tender me a fool.

OPHELIA.
My lord, he hath importun’d me with love
In honourable fashion.

POLONIUS.
Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.

OPHELIA.
And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.

POLONIUS.
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both,
Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time
Be something scanter of your maiden presence;
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him that he is young;
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
The better to beguile. This is for all:
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth
Have you so slander any moment leisure
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to’t, I charge you; come your ways.

OPHELIA.
I shall obey, my lord.

[Exeunt.]

第三场：波洛涅斯家中一室

雷欧提斯与奥菲莉娅上。

雷欧提斯。
我的行李已经上船。再会。
妹妹，风顺的时候，
只要有便船带信，你别偷懒，
务必让我知道你的消息。

奥菲莉娅。
这你还信不过吗？

雷欧提斯。
至于哈姆雷特，以及他那些轻淡的情意，
只当它是风流时尚，一时冲动；
天性初开的年纪里一朵紫罗兰，
早开而不长久，甜美却不持久；
片刻的芬芳，片刻的迎合；
仅此而已。

奥菲莉娅。
仅仅如此？

雷欧提斯。
别再想它了。
天性之生长，不单是筋腱与躯干；
随着这座殿堂日渐扩充，
内心对心智与灵魂的奉侍
也随之扩展。或许他现在爱你，
此刻既无污秽也无诡诈来玷染
他意愿的纯洁；可是你得恐惧，
掂量他的尊位，他的意愿并非他自身所有；
因为他自己也受他出身的制约：
他不能像无足轻重的人那样
为自己随意雕琢；因为他的选择
维系着整个邦国的神圣与康泰；
因此他的选择必得受到限制，
须听从那个身体的声音和首肯，
而他正是那身体的头。那么，就算他说他爱你，
你的明智也只宜于这般相信：
看他在他特殊的行事与地位上
能否让他的言语付诸行动；而这，
不能超出丹麦整体的声音所容许的范围。
然后你掂量一下，你的名誉会蒙受何等损失，
倘若你以过于轻信的耳朵去听他的歌，
或者交出了你的心，或者把你贞洁的宝藏
敞开给他那不受节制的强求。
恐惧它，奥菲莉娅，恐惧它，我亲爱的妹妹；
把你留在你的情欲的后方，
远离开欲望的射击与危险。
最矜持的少女，若是向月亮揭开她的美，
便已经够挥霍了。
美德本身也难逃诽谤的攻讦：
蛀虫侵蚀春天的嫩蕊，
往往在它们的花苞还未舒展之前，
而在青春的朝晨与莹亮的露水中，
传染的疫气最为迫近。
所以要谨慎，最好的安全就在于恐惧。
青春会反叛它自己，哪怕旁边没有旁人。

奥菲莉娅。
我会把这番良好教诲的效力，
像守望者一样守住我的心。可是，我的好哥哥，
不要像一些不良的牧师那样，
指给我通向天国的陡峭多棘的路；
自己却像一个浮夸而放浪的浪荡子，
踏上樱草花般的嬉游小径，
全不理会他自己的劝诫。

雷欧提斯。
哦，别为我担心。
我耽搁太久了。可父亲来了。

〔波洛涅斯上。〕

双重祝福便是双重恩典；
机缘对着第二次告别微笑。

波洛涅斯。
还在这儿，雷欧提斯？上船，上船，真不像话。
风正坐在你船帆的肩头，
人家都在等你。来，我的祝福与你同在。

〔把手放在雷欧提斯头上。〕

这些教诲你要铭记于心。
三思而后行，勿使言语脱口，
莫让轻率的念头化为行动。
待人随和，但绝不流于鄙俗。
既已交下朋友，经受过考验，
就要用钢箍把他们锁在心上；
但不要滥施结交来消磨手掌，
逢迎每一个新孵出、未长羽的同伴。
提防卷入争吵；可一旦卷入，
就要让对手对你心存忌惮。
多听人言，少对人言：
听人评说，但保留自家判断。
衣着要尽力置办上乘，
但不要浮华花哨；贵而不俗：
因为衣着往往能标出一个人的品性；
法国的上等人物在这一层上
最是考究，风范超群。
不向人借贷，也不借钱与人：
因为借贷常常既丢了钱又失了朋友；
借入也足以磨钝持家的锋芒。
最要紧的是：忠于你自己；
要像黑夜跟随白昼一样必然，
你才不会对任何人虚伪。
再会吧：愿我的祝福使这番话在你身上成熟。

雷欧提斯。
我恭恭敬敬地告退了，大人。

波洛涅斯。
时候催你动身了；去吧，仆人都在等候。

雷欧提斯。
再会了，奥菲莉娅，好好记住
我对你说过的话。

奥菲莉娅。
那话已锁在我的记忆里，
而钥匙由你自己保管。

雷欧提斯。
再会。

〔下。〕

波洛涅斯。
奥菲莉娅，他对你说了什么？

奥菲莉娅。
回您的话，谈到了一些关于哈姆雷特殿下的事。

波洛涅斯。
凭圣母，你提醒得好：
听说他近来常常私下与你见面；
而你也毫不吝惜地慷慨接见。
倘若果真如此——正如别人向我提醒时
所说，意含警告——那我必须告诉你，
你对自己并不像做我的女儿、做一位体面姑娘
所该有的那样明白认识。
你们之间究竟如何？把实情告诉我。

奥菲莉娅。
大人，他近来屡屡向我表白他的情意。

波洛涅斯。
情意！呸！你说起话来还像个不懂事的丫头，
全没见识过这等凶险的处境。
你相信他那些所谓“表白”吗？

奥菲莉娅。
大人，我不知道我该怎样想。

波洛涅斯。
听着，我来教你：把自己当成个婴儿；
你把那些表白当作了真金收了，
其实它们根本不是纯银。要更珍贵地“表”现你自己；
不然——别让这话白白跑断了气，
赶到这步田地——你就要把我“表”成一个傻瓜了。

奥菲莉娅。
殿下，他曾多次向我求爱，
态度倒是十分庄重。

波洛涅斯。
唉，庄重，你倒会说话；罢了，罢了。

奥菲莉娅。
而且他为了使自己的话显得诚恳，父亲，
几乎用尽了上天所有神圣的誓言。

波洛涅斯。
哼，捕捉呆鸟的罗网罢了。我知道得很，
当春心燃烧的时候，灵魂会如何慷慨
借给舌头各种誓言。这些一时的光亮，女儿，
光多热少，往往在承诺出口的同时
就已光消热散，你千万不可
把这当作真火。从今往后，
你要更加爱惜自己的闺秀之身，
把你的见面之礼定得更高一些，
免得呼之即来。至于哈姆雷特殿下，
你只须相信他还年轻，他行动的自由
远比你所能享有的更为广阔。简而言之，奥菲莉娅，
不要相信他的誓言；那不过是掮客，
外表的色泽与内里的货色并不相符，
只是替非礼的私情说合的中间人，
声气装得像圣洁虔诚的王婆，
正为了便于哄骗。总之一句话：
从今以后，我不希望你
再糟蹋片刻的闲暇时光，
去同哈姆雷特殿下搭话交谈。
留心这点，我嘱咐你；走吧。

奥菲莉娅。
我听您的就是了，父亲。

〔二人同下。〕

SCENE IV. The platform.

Enter Hamlet, Horatio and Marcellus.

HAMLET.
The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.

HORATIO.
It is a nipping and an eager air.

HAMLET.
What hour now?

HORATIO.
I think it lacks of twelve.

MARCELLUS.
No, it is struck.

HORATIO.
Indeed? I heard it not. It then draws near the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

[A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off within.]

What does this mean, my lord?

HAMLET.
The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering upspring reels;
And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.

HORATIO.
Is it a custom?

HAMLET.
Ay marry is’t;
And to my mind, though I am native here,
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour’d in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduc’d and tax’d of other nations:
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
From our achievements, though perform’d at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.
So oft it chances in particular men
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin,
By their o’ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason;
Or by some habit, that too much o’erleavens
The form of plausive manners;—that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being Nature’s livery or Fortune’s star,—
His virtues else,—be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo,
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault. The dram of evil
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.

HORATIO.
Look, my lord, it comes!

Enter Ghost.

HAMLET.
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 com’st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane. O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why thy canoniz’d bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d,
Hath op’d 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?
Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?

[Ghost beckons Hamlet.]

HORATIO.
It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.

MARCELLUS.
Look with what courteous action
It waves you to a more removed ground.
But do not go with it.

HORATIO.
No, by no means.

HAMLET.
It will not speak; then will I follow it.

HORATIO.
Do not, my lord.

HAMLET.
Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life at a pin’s fee;
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again. I’ll follow it.

HORATIO.
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o’er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,
And draw you into madness? Think of it.
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.

HAMLET.
It waves me still.
Go on, I’ll follow thee.

MARCELLUS.
You shall not go, my lord.

HAMLET.
Hold off your hands.

HORATIO.
Be rul’d; you shall not go.

HAMLET.
My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.

[Ghost beckons.]

Still am I call’d. Unhand me, gentlemen.

[Breaking free from them.]

By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me.
I say, away!—Go on, I’ll follow thee.

[Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet.]

HORATIO.
He waxes desperate with imagination.

MARCELLUS.
Let’s follow; ’tis not fit thus to obey him.

HORATIO.
Have after. To what issue will this come?

MARCELLUS.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

HORATIO.
Heaven will direct it.

MARCELLUS.
Nay, let’s follow him.

[Exeunt.]

第四场：露台

哈姆雷特、霍拉旭及马塞勒斯上。

哈姆雷特。
寒气刺骨，好冷啊。

霍拉旭。
是凛冽刺骨的寒风。

哈姆雷特。
现在什么时辰了？

霍拉旭。
我看还不到十二点。

马塞勒斯。
不，已经敲过了。

霍拉旭。
当真？我没听见。这样的话，就快到
那鬼魂惯常出来走动的时刻了。

〔内喇叭齐鸣，并鸣炮。〕

这是什么意思，殿下？

哈姆雷特。
国王今夜要通宵宴饮，
纵酒狂欢，跳那喧嚣的舞步，东倒西歪；
每当他灌下一口莱茵河的葡萄酒，
铜鼓和喇叭就这样轰然作响，
庆贺他祝酒得胜。

霍拉旭。
这是这里的风俗吗？

哈姆雷特。
唉，可不是嘛；
依我看，虽然我是本地生，
生来就习惯这风气，可这种风俗，
遵守倒不如违背更受人尊敬。
这些昏头昏脑的纵饮狂欢，东也闹西也闹，
叫我们受尽别国的指摘和责难：
他们管我们叫醉鬼，用猪狗般的秽语
玷污我们的名声；这的确会
从我们的丰功伟绩里，即便干得再出色，
抽掉精髓和核心的品德。
个人身上也常常有这样的情形：
由于他们天性中的某种丑恶的缺陷——
比如出生，这倒怪不得他们本人，
因为天性本不能选择自己的来历——
由于某种脾气的过度膨胀，
常常冲垮了理性的栅栏和堡垒；
或是由于某种积习，过分发酵了
那些本该得体的举止风度；——这些人，
我说，带着这一个缺点的烙印，
不管是天生的标记还是命运的星宿，——
他其他的德行，——哪怕纯洁如天恩，
哪怕浩荡如人力所能承受的极限，
也会在世人普遍的指责中，受这一个别缺点的
腐蚀而败坏。一小滴恶
就能使所有高贵品质受到猜疑，
落得身败名裂。

霍拉旭。
瞧，殿下，它来了！

〔鬼魂上场。〕

哈姆雷特。
愿天使和一切施恩的神灵保佑我们！
无论你是护佑的神灵，还是万劫不复的妖魔，
无论你带来的是天上的和风，还是地狱的狂飙，
无论你心怀恶念，还是慈悲为怀，
你既以这般可疑的形状到来，
我就要开口对你说话。我要叫你哈姆雷特，
君王，父亲，丹麦的至尊。哦，回答我！
别让我在无知中煎熬；告诉我
为什么你那已受封圣的骸骨，在棺木里入殓，
竟冲破了裹尸布；为什么那坟墓，
我们亲眼见你安然葬入其中，
竟张开它沉重的大理石巨口，
把你又吐了出来！这究竟是什么意思，
你这死去的尸身，重又全身披挂，
在月光下徘徊，重游此地，
使黑夜变得狰狞，叫我们这些自然的蠢物
魂不附体，心惊肉跳，
尽想些超出我们灵魂所能及的事？
说，这是为什么？什么缘故？我们该怎么办？

〔鬼魂向哈姆雷特招手。〕

霍拉旭。
它在招手，要你跟它走，
仿佛有什么讯息想要
单独告诉您一人。

马塞勒斯。
瞧，它用多么文雅的动作
招呼您到更偏僻的地方去。
但您千万别跟它去。

霍拉旭。
对，万万不可。

哈姆雷特。
它不肯说话；那我就只好跟它去。

霍拉旭。
别去，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
嘿，那有什么好怕的？
我把性命看得不值一根针；
至于我的灵魂，它又能把它怎样，
既然它跟它一样是不朽之物？
它又在招手叫我往前了。我要跟它去。

霍拉旭。
万一它把您诱向潮水呢，殿下，
或者诱向那可怕的悬崖之巅，
那崖顶俯瞰崖脚，高悬在海面上，
在那里现出另一种狰狞的形貌，
使您丧失了理性的主宰，
把您逼疯，那可怎么办？您想想。
光是那地方，就能叫每一个脑子
生出不顾死活的荒唐念头，用不着别的理由，
只消往底下看那么多寻深的海水，
又听见它在底下咆哮。

哈姆雷特。
它还一直在招手呢。
走吧，我跟你去。

马塞勒斯。
您不能去，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
放开你们的手。

霍拉旭。
听劝吧；您不能去。

哈姆雷特。
我的命运在呼叫，
叫我这周身上下每一根细小的血管
都硬得像尼米亚雄狮的筋腱。

〔鬼魂招手。〕

它还在叫我呢。放开我，诸位。

〔挣脱他们。〕

凭老天起誓，谁拦我，我就叫谁变鬼。
我说，走开！——走吧，我跟你去。

〔鬼魂与哈姆雷特下。〕

霍拉旭。
他凭着一股想象，越来越不顾死活了。

马塞勒斯。
咱们跟上去吧；这样听他的话可不对。

霍拉旭。
跟着去吧。——这事情会闹出什么结果来呢？

马塞勒斯。
丹麦国里，有些事已经发臭了。

霍拉旭。
上天自会指引。

马塞勒斯。
不，咱们跟上去吧。

〔同下。〕

SCENE V. A more remote part of the Castle.

Enter Ghost and Hamlet.

HAMLET.
Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak, I’ll go no further.

GHOST.
Mark me.

HAMLET.
I will.

GHOST.
My hour is almost come,
When I to sulph’rous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.

HAMLET.
Alas, poor ghost!

GHOST.
Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.

HAMLET.
Speak, I am bound to hear.

GHOST.
So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

HAMLET.
What?

GHOST.
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,
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 on end
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love—

HAMLET.
O God!

GHOST.
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET.
Murder!

GHOST.
Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

HAMLET.
Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love
May sweep to my revenge.

GHOST.
I find thee apt;
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear.
’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abus’d; but know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father’s life
Now wears his crown.

HAMLET.
O my prophetic soul!
Mine uncle!

GHOST.
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,—
O wicked wit, and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.
O Hamlet, what a falling off was there,
From me, whose love was of that dignity
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage; and to decline
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine. But virtue, as it never will be mov’d,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven;
So lust, though to a radiant angel link’d,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed
And prey on garbage.
But soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leperous distilment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body;
And with a sudden vigour it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine;
And a most instant tetter bark’d about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust
All my smooth body.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand,
Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatch’d:
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhous’led, disappointed, unanel’d;
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
O horrible! O horrible! most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest.
But howsoever thou pursu’st this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven,
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me.

[Exit.]

HAMLET.
O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, my heart;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, 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,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix’d with baser matter. Yes, by heaven!
O most pernicious woman!
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 am sure it may be so in Denmark.

[Writing.]

So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
It is ‘Adieu, adieu, remember me.’
I have sworn’t.

HORATIO and MARCELLUS.
[Within.] My lord, my lord.

MARCELLUS.
[Within.] Lord Hamlet.

HORATIO.
[Within.] Heaven secure him.

HAMLET.
So be it!

MARCELLUS.
[Within.] Illo, ho, ho, my lord!

HAMLET.
Hillo, ho, ho, boy! Come, bird, come.

Enter Horatio and Marcellus.

MARCELLUS.
How is’t, my noble lord?

HORATIO.
What news, my lord?

HAMLET.
O, wonderful!

HORATIO.
Good my lord, tell it.

HAMLET.
No, you’ll reveal it.

HORATIO.
Not I, my lord, by heaven.

MARCELLUS.
Nor I, my lord.

HAMLET.
How say you then, would heart of man once think it?—
But you’ll be secret?

HORATIO and MARCELLUS.
Ay, by heaven, my lord.

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

HORATIO.
There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this.

HAMLET.
Why, right; you are i’ the right;
And so, without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part:
You, as your business and desire shall point you,—
For every man hath business and desire,
Such as it is;—and for my own poor part,
Look you, I’ll go pray.

HORATIO.
These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.

HAMLET.
I’m sorry they offend you, heartily;
Yes faith, heartily.

HORATIO.
There’s no offence, my lord.

HAMLET.
Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
And much offence too. Touching this vision here,
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you.
For your desire to know what is between us,
O’ermaster’t as you may. And now, good friends,
As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,
Give me one poor request.

HORATIO.
What is’t, my lord? We will.

HAMLET.
Never make known what you have seen tonight.

HORATIO and MARCELLUS.
My lord, we will not.

HAMLET.
Nay, but swear’t.

HORATIO.
In faith, my lord, not I.

MARCELLUS.
Nor I, my lord, in faith.

HAMLET.
Upon my sword.

MARCELLUS.
We have sworn, my lord, already.

HAMLET.
Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.

GHOST.
[Cries under the stage.] Swear.

HAMLET.
Ha, ha boy, sayst thou so? Art thou there, truepenny?
Come on, you hear this fellow in the cellarage.
Consent to swear.

HORATIO.
Propose the oath, my lord.

HAMLET.
Never to speak of this that you have seen.
Swear by my sword.

GHOST.
[Beneath.] Swear.

HAMLET.
Hic et ubique? Then we’ll shift our ground.
Come hither, gentlemen,
And lay your hands again upon my sword.
Never to speak of this that you have heard.
Swear by my sword.

GHOST.
[Beneath.] Swear.

HAMLET.
Well said, old mole! Canst work i’ th’earth so fast?
A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends.

HORATIO.
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.

HAMLET.
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come,
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd soe’er I bear myself,—
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on—
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumber’d thus, or this head-shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As ‘Well, we know’, or ‘We could and if we would’,
Or ‘If we list to speak’; or ‘There be and if they might’,
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me:—this not to do.
So grace and mercy at your most need help you,
Swear.

GHOST.
[Beneath.] Swear.

HAMLET.
Rest, rest, perturbed spirit. So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you;
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do t’express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together,
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right.
Nay, come, let’s go together.

[Exeunt.]

第五场：城堡中一处更僻远的地方

鬼魂与哈姆雷特上。

哈姆雷特。
你要把我带到哪儿去？说吧，我不往前走了。

鬼魂。
你听着。

哈姆雷特。
我听着。

鬼魂。
我的时限差不多要到了，
再过片刻，我就得把我自己
交付给硫磺烈火，受那煎熬的痛苦。

哈姆雷特。
唉，可怜的鬼魂！

鬼魂。
不要可怜我，只消认真听
我要披露的事。

哈姆雷特。
说吧，我听着是理所应当。

鬼魂。
等你听完了，你报仇也是理所应当。

哈姆雷特。
什么？

鬼魂。
我是你父亲的灵魂，
被判在夜间游荡一段时日，
白昼则被囚禁在火焰中斋戒，
直至我生前所犯的秽行罪孽
被烧尽涤清。若非我被禁止
吐露我这牢狱中的秘密，
我便可讲出一段故事，它最轻微的一个字
都会叫你灵魂翻腾，冻结你年轻的血液，
使你双眼如星辰般从眼眶中迸出，
使你紧紧编结的发辫散开，
使你每一根头发直竖起来，
像暴躁的豪猪身上的尖刺。
但这永恒的秘密绝不能
向血肉之耳宣示。听着，听着，啊，听着！
你若曾爱你亲爱的父亲——

哈姆雷特。
天哪！

鬼魂。
就为他那卑劣无比、逆天背理的谋杀复仇。

哈姆雷特。
谋杀！

鬼魂。
谋杀最是卑劣，纵然谋杀无不卑劣；
但这一桩最卑劣、最离奇、最逆天背理。

哈姆雷特。
赶快告诉我，让我插上翅膀，
快如沉思遐想，或如爱情的诗思，
飞扑向我的复仇。

鬼魂。
我看你果然准备着；
你若对这事无动于衷，那你定比那
在忘川岸边安逸中朽烂的肥草还要迟钝。
现在，哈姆雷特，听好。
外面传说，我在果园里睡觉时，
被一条蛇蜇咬一口；于是全丹麦的耳朵
被一个关于我死因的捏造说法
狠狠欺骗了；可是，你要知道，高贵的少年，
那蜇了你父亲性命的蛇，
如今正戴着他的王冠。

哈姆雷特。
啊，我预知未来的灵魂！
我的叔父！

鬼魂。
正是，那乱伦的、那淫乱的畜生，
凭着他诡诈的才智，叛逆的礼物——
啊，邪恶的才智与礼物，竟有这般
蛊惑的力量！——诱使我那最端庄的王后
那貌似坚贞的意志，屈从了他可耻的淫欲。
哈姆雷特啊，那是何等的堕落！
撇下我，我的爱是何等高洁，
它堪与我当初向她缔结婚姻时
所起的誓言并驾齐驱；她竟俯身
委身一个可怜虫，他的天赋
比起我来何等贫乏。
可是，正如美德，纵使淫邪扮作天仙模样
来向它求欢，它也绝不摇动；
情欲，哪怕跟一位光芒四射的天使结合，
终会在天国般的床榻上餍足之后，
反去啃食腐尸。
且慢！我仿佛嗅到了清晨的气息；
让我简短说来。我正在我的花园里睡觉，
每天下午我照例如此，
你那叔父趁我不备之际，悄悄溜了进来，
手持一瓶受咒的乌头汁，
把那引发麻风的毒浆
灌进我的耳腔里去；
这毒液与人的血液水火不容，
快如水银一般，穿行过
身体的天然通路与管道；
以猝然之力，使那清稀健全的血
凝结起来，如同酸液滴进牛乳一般。
我的血也正是这样凝住了；
顿时一片疹疱，像麻风病人似的，
披着可憎可恶的痂皮，
布满我光滑的全身。
就这样，我在梦中被我亲兄弟的手
一下子夺去了性命、王冠和王后；
就在罪孽正盛的时候，被摧折了，
没有忏悔，没有领圣餐，没有受临终涂油；
没结清账目，便身负我一生的重重罪过，
被遣去接受审判。
啊，可怕！啊，可怕！啊，可怕之极！
你若也有为人之情，就别隐忍；
决不可让丹麦的御床
变作骄奢淫逸与万恶乱伦的卧榻。
可是，不论你如何采取行动，
不要玷污你的心志，也别让你的灵魂
谋划伤害你的母亲；把她交付给天廷，
交付给那些扎根在她胸中的荆棘，
任其刺她，螫她。就此告别吧！
那萤火虫，已露出晨光将至的微芒，
它那暗淡无力的火光渐渐褪去。
别了，别了，别了。记着我。

〔鬼魂下。〕

哈姆雷特。
啊，天上地下所有的神灵啊！还有呢？
难道还要扯上地狱吗？呸！稳住，我的心；
还有你们，我的筋肉，不要骤然衰老，
硬朗地支撑着我。记住你？
唉，你这可怜的鬼魂，只要记忆还在这错乱的
地球之上据有一席之地，我就会记住你。记住你？
是的，我要从我记忆的记事板上
擦去一切琐碎痴愚的记录，
一切书本上的格言，一切形相，一切过去的印象，
那些少年和阅历所抄录下的东西；
而你的训令将独自存留
在我头脑的书册卷帙之中，
不与任何鄙陋之物混杂。是的，指天为誓！
啊，最恶毒的女人！
啊，恶棍，恶棍，笑盈盈的该死的恶棍！
我的记事板。我该把它记下，
一个人可以微笑，微笑，然后是个恶棍；
至少在丹麦我确信这是办得到的。

〔写。〕

好了，叔叔，你在这儿了。现在记下我的暗语；
那就是“再见，再见，要记住我。”
我已经立下誓言。

霍拉旭 与 马塞勒斯。
〔自内。〕殿下，殿下。

马塞勒斯。
〔自内。〕哈姆雷特殿下。

霍拉旭。
〔自内。〕上天保佑他。

哈姆雷特。
但愿如此！

马塞勒斯。
〔自内。〕喂，嗬，嗬，殿下！

哈姆雷特。
喂，嗬，嗬，小子！来，鸟儿，来吧。

霍拉旭与马塞勒斯上。

马塞勒斯。
您可好，高贵的殿下？

霍拉旭。
殿下，有什么消息？

哈姆雷特。
啊，奇妙极了！

霍拉旭。
好殿下，告诉我们吧。

哈姆雷特。
不，你们会泄露出去。

霍拉旭。
我不会，殿下，指天为誓。

马塞勒斯。
我也不会，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
那么你们说，凡人的心可曾想到过这种事？——
但你们会保守秘密？

霍拉旭 与 马塞勒斯。
是的，指天为誓，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
在丹麦，从来不曾有一个恶棍，
而不曾是一个大坏蛋。

霍拉旭。
殿下，这何须鬼魂
从坟墓里出来告诉我们。

哈姆雷特。
唔，对；你说得完全对；
那么，就无须再多敷衍了，
我认为我们应该握手而别：
你们，各自顺着自己的事务和心愿去吧，——
因为人人都有自己的事务和心愿，
不管事情如何；——至于我这可怜的人，
瞧着吧，我要去祈祷。

霍拉旭。
殿下，您说的都是些颠三倒四的胡话。

哈姆雷特。
我很抱歉这些话冒犯了你们，真心地；
是的，真心地，真心地。

霍拉旭。
殿下，这谈不上冒犯。

哈姆雷特。 是的，凭圣帕特里克起誓，确实有，霍拉旭，
而且冒犯还不小。说起刚才这异象，
它是个诚实的鬼魂，这我可以告诉你们。
至于你们想知道我们之间的事，
就尽量克制住这份好奇吧。好了，好朋友们，
既然你们是朋友、学者，又是军人，
请答应我一个微不足道的请求。

霍拉旭。 什么请求，殿下？我们一定答应。

哈姆雷特。 永远不要说出你们今晚所见到的。

霍拉旭与马塞勒斯。 殿下，我们不说。

哈姆雷特。 不行，必须发誓。

霍拉旭。 凭信仰起誓，殿下，我不说。

马塞勒斯。 我也不说，殿下，凭信仰起誓。

哈姆雷特。 按着我的剑发誓。

马塞勒斯。 我们已经发过誓了，殿下。

哈姆雷特。 当真要按着我的剑，当真要。

鬼魂。 〔在舞台下呼喊。〕 发誓。

哈姆雷特。 哈哈，小家伙，你这么说吗？你在那儿吗，诚实的好汉？
来吧，你们听见地窖里这位朋友了。
答应发誓吧。

霍拉旭。 请您提出誓词，殿下。

哈姆雷特。 绝不谈起你们所见到的这一切。
按着我的剑发誓。

鬼魂。 〔在下方。〕 发誓。

哈姆雷特。 到处都在？那我们就换个地方。
到这儿来，两位先生，
再把你们的手放在我的剑上。
绝不谈起你们所听到的这一切。
按着我的剑发誓。

鬼魂。 〔在下方。〕 发誓。

哈姆雷特。 说得好，老田鼠！你在地下钻得这么快？
真是个能干的工兵！再挪个地方，好朋友们。

霍拉旭。 喔，白天黑夜啊，这事可真是奇怪得离奇。

哈姆雷特。 那就当它是一个异乡人，好好欢迎它吧。
霍拉旭，天地之间有许多事，
是你们的哲学做梦也想不到的。不过来吧，
在这里，就像刚才一样，愿上帝慈悲保佑你们：
无论我往后的行为显得多么古怪、离奇——
因为我今后也许会觉得需要
披上一副疯疯癫癫的外衣——
你们见到我那样的时候，绝不可这样双臂交叉，
或是这样摇摇头，
或是说些暧昧难解的话，
比如“哦，我们心里有数”，或者“只要我们愿意，我们就能说”，
或者“要是我们能开口的话”，或者“要是有人能，那就会如何如何”，
或是这类含糊其辞的暗示，
来表明你们知道我有什么隐情：——绝不能这样做。
愿上帝在他最需要时赐你们恩典与慈悲，
发誓。

鬼魂。 〔在下方。〕 发誓。

哈姆雷特。
安息吧，安息吧，不安的魂灵。好了，各位，
我怀着满腔热爱将自己托付给诸位；
一个如哈姆雷特这样贫乏的人
所能向你们表达的爱意与友睦，
上天为证，绝不会短缺。我们一同进去吧，
我请你们，还是把手指按在唇上。
这时代脱了节。啊，可诅咒的命运，
竟叫我生来去把它纠正。
不，来吧，我们一同走。

〔同下。〕

ACT II

第二幕

SCENE I. A room in Polonius’s house.

Enter Polonius and Reynaldo.

POLONIUS.
Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.

REYNALDO.
I will, my lord.

POLONIUS.
You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo,
Before you visit him, to make inquiry
Of his behaviour.

REYNALDO.
My lord, I did intend it.

POLONIUS.
Marry, well said; very well said. Look you, sir,
Enquire me first what Danskers are in Paris;
And how, and who, what means, and where they keep,
What company, at what expense; and finding
By this encompassment and drift of question,
That they do know my son, come you more nearer
Than your particular demands will touch it.
Take you as ’twere some distant knowledge of him,
As thus, ‘I know his father and his friends,
And in part him’—do you mark this, Reynaldo?

REYNALDO.
Ay, very well, my lord.

POLONIUS.
‘And in part him, but,’ you may say, ‘not well;
But if’t be he I mean, he’s very wild;
Addicted so and so;’ and there put on him
What forgeries you please; marry, none so rank
As may dishonour him; take heed of that;
But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips
As are companions noted and most known
To youth and liberty.

REYNALDO.
As gaming, my lord?

POLONIUS.
Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing,
Quarrelling, drabbing. You may go so far.

REYNALDO.
My lord, that would dishonour him.

POLONIUS.
Faith no, as you may season it in the charge.
You must not put another scandal on him,
That he is open to incontinency;
That’s not my meaning: but breathe his faults so quaintly
That they may seem the taints of liberty;
The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,
A savageness in unreclaimed blood,
Of general assault.

REYNALDO.
But my good lord—

POLONIUS.
Wherefore should you do this?

REYNALDO.
Ay, my lord, I would know that.

POLONIUS.
Marry, sir, here’s my drift,
And I believe it is a fetch of warrant.
You laying these slight sullies on my son,
As ’twere a thing a little soil’d i’ th’ working,
Mark you,
Your party in converse, him you would sound,
Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes
The youth you breathe of guilty, be assur’d
He closes with you in this consequence;
‘Good sir,’ or so; or ‘friend,’ or ‘gentleman’—
According to the phrase or the addition
Of man and country.

REYNALDO.
Very good, my lord.

POLONIUS.
And then, sir, does he this,—
He does—What was I about to say?
By the mass, I was about to say something. Where did I leave?

REYNALDO.
At ‘closes in the consequence.’
At ‘friend or so,’ and ‘gentleman.’

POLONIUS.
At ‘closes in the consequence’ ay, marry!
He closes with you thus: ‘I know the gentleman,
I saw him yesterday, or t’other day,
Or then, or then, with such and such; and, as you say,
There was he gaming, there o’ertook in’s rouse,
There falling out at tennis’: or perchance,
‘I saw him enter such a house of sale’—
Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth. See you now;
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth;
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses, and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out.
So by my former lecture and advice
Shall you my son. You have me, have you not?

REYNALDO.
My lord, I have.

POLONIUS.
God b’ wi’ you, fare you well.

REYNALDO.
Good my lord.

POLONIUS.
Observe his inclination in yourself.

REYNALDO.
I shall, my lord.

POLONIUS.
And let him ply his music.

REYNALDO.
Well, my lord.

POLONIUS.
Farewell.

[Exit Reynaldo.]

Enter Ophelia.

How now, Ophelia, what’s the matter?

OPHELIA.
Alas, my lord, I have been so affrighted.

POLONIUS.
With what, in the name of God?

OPHELIA.
My lord, as I was sewing in my chamber,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac’d,
No hat upon his head, his stockings foul’d,
Ungart’red, and down-gyved to his ankle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors, he comes before me.

POLONIUS.
Mad for thy love?

OPHELIA.
My lord, I do not know, but truly I do fear it.

POLONIUS.
What said he?

OPHELIA.
He took me by the wrist and held me hard;
Then goes he to the length of all his arm;
And with his other hand thus o’er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face
As he would draw it. Long stay’d he so,
At last,—a little shaking of mine arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He rais’d a sigh so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk
And end his being. That done, he lets me go,
And with his head over his shoulder turn’d
He seem’d to find his way without his eyes,
For out o’ doors he went without their help,
And to the last bended their light on me.

POLONIUS.
Come, go with me. I will go seek the King.
This is the very ecstasy of love,
Whose violent property fordoes itself,
And leads the will to desperate undertakings,
As oft as any passion under heaven
That does afflict our natures. I am sorry,—
What, have you given him any hard words of late?

OPHELIA.
No, my good lord; but as you did command,
I did repel his letters and denied
His access to me.

POLONIUS.
That hath made him mad.
I am sorry that with better heed and judgement
I had not quoted him. I fear’d he did but trifle,
And meant to wreck thee. But beshrew my jealousy!
It seems it is as proper to our age
To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
As it is common for the younger sort
To lack discretion. Come, go we to the King.
This must be known, which, being kept close, might move
More grief to hide than hate to utter love.

[Exeunt.]

第一场：波洛涅斯家中一室

波洛涅斯及雷纳尔多上。

波洛涅斯。
把这笔钱和这些信件交给他，雷纳尔多。

雷纳尔多。
我会的，大人。

波洛涅斯。
你要做得极其精明，好雷纳尔多，
在去见他之前，先去打听
他的行为。

雷纳尔多。
大人，我正有此意。

波洛涅斯。
好，说得好；说得很好。你听好，先生，
先替我打听清楚，巴黎有哪些丹麦人；
他们如何生活，是什么人，靠什么进项，住在何处，
与什么人交往，花销多少；这样用
迂回曲折的盘问探知
他们确实认识我儿子，你就更近一步，
比直接追问更容易触及要害。
你要装作只是对他略有所知，
比方说，“我认识他的父亲和他的朋友，
对他本人也略知一二”——你记住没有，雷纳尔多？

雷纳尔多。
是，记得很清楚，大人。

波洛涅斯。
“对他本人也略知一二，”不过你还可以说，“并不太熟；
但若他就是我说的那位，那可相当放浪；
染上了这样那样的毛病；”然后随你高兴
给他编些罪名；不过，那些罪名不可太过粗鄙，
以免玷污他的名誉；当心这一点；
但是，先生，你要拿那些放纵、野性而常见的过失，
那些人人皆知、伴随着青春和自由的
习气来说事。

雷纳尔多。
比如赌钱，大人？

波洛涅斯。
对，或者饮酒、斗剑、赌咒、
争吵、嫖妓。你可以说到这个份上。

雷纳尔多。
大人，那会玷污他的名誉。

波洛涅斯。
不，绝不会，只要你在指控时拿捏好分寸。
你不可再给他加上另一桩丑事，
说他公然耽于淫欲；
那不是我的意思：你须得把他的过错说得这般轻巧，
让它们看来不过是自由身上的斑点；
一颗暴躁心灵的火光与爆发，
未加驯服的血气中的一股野性，
谁人都会有的冲动。

雷纳尔多。
可是，好大人——

波洛涅斯。
为什么要这样做？

雷纳尔多。
是啊，大人，我很想知道。

波洛涅斯。
哎呀，先生，这就是我的打算，
我相信这是个有把握的妙计。
你把这些轻描淡写的污点加在我儿子身上，
仿佛只是做事时沾了一点脏，
你注意，
你那谈话的对象，你要试探的那个人，
要是你见过你所说的那个年轻人犯过
你提到的那些过错，你放心，
他准会用这样的话来附和你：
“好先生”也好，“朋友”也好，“绅士”也好——
全看对方那人的称呼
和他的国家习惯而定。

雷纳尔多。
很好，大人。

波洛涅斯。
然后，先生，他就会这样——
他就——我刚才想说什么来着？
凭弥撒起誓，我本来有话要说。我说到哪儿了？

雷纳尔多。
说到“用这样的话来附和”。
说到“朋友”也好，“绅士”也好。

波洛涅斯。
说到“用这样的话来附和”——对，没错！
他就会这样附和你：“我认识那位绅士，
我昨天，或是前几天，还见过他，
或是某个时候，同某某人在一起；正如你所说，
他在那儿赌钱，在那儿喝得酩酊大醉，
在那儿打网球吵了起来”：或者说不定，
“我看见他进了那么一家卖场”——
就是说，一家窑子，诸如此类。
你瞧；
你用那假话作饵，就能钓上这真话的鲤鱼；
我们这些有见识、有远虑的人，
就是这样用旁敲侧击、迂回试探的手法，
由迂回间接找出直路来。
你就照我先前教你的那番话，
去打听我儿子。你懂了吗，懂了没有？

雷纳尔多。
大人，我懂了。

波洛涅斯。
上帝保佑你，再会吧。

雷纳尔多。
告辞了，大人。

波洛涅斯。
你自己也要留心观察他的倾向。

雷纳尔多。
我会的，大人。

波洛涅斯。
叫他好好练他的音乐。

雷纳尔多。
是，大人。

波洛涅斯。
再会。

〔雷纳尔多下。〕

奥菲莉娅上。

波洛涅斯。
怎么啦，奥菲莉娅，出了什么事？

奥菲莉娅。
唉，父亲，我真是吓坏了。

波洛涅斯。
上帝在上，被什么吓坏了？

奥菲莉娅。
父亲，我正在房里做针线，
哈姆雷特殿下，他的紧身衣全敞着，
头上没戴帽子，长袜污秽不堪，
没有袜带，褪到脚踝上；
脸色苍白得像他的衬衫，两个膝盖互相碰撞，
神情那么凄惨可怜，
仿佛是刚从地狱里放出来，
要讲述那里的恐怖——他来到了我跟前。

波洛涅斯。
是因为爱慕你而疯了吗？

奥菲莉娅。
父亲，我不知道，可是我真的怕是这样。

波洛涅斯。
他说了什么？

奥菲莉娅。
他抓住我的手腕，紧紧地抓着；
然后把整条手臂伸直；
用另一只手这样按着眉头，
他死死端详着我的脸，
好像要把它描摹下来。他这样站了很久，
最后——轻轻摇了一下我的手臂，
把头这样上上下下点了三遍，
发出一声叹息，那么可怜，那么深长，
仿佛要将他的整个身体震碎，
就此结束他的生命。做完这些，他放开了我，
把头扭过肩膀往后望着，
似乎不用眼睛也能找到路，
因为他没用眼睛就迈出了房门，
直到最后都把它们的光芒投注在我身上。

波洛涅斯。
来，跟我走。我要去找国王。
这正是爱情的痴狂，
其暴烈的本性会毁掉自身，
把意志引向不顾一切的举动，
其频繁程度不亚于天底下
任何折磨我们本性的狂热。我感到遗憾，——
怎么，你最近对他说过什么重话吗？

奥菲莉娅。
没有，我的好父亲；但按照您的吩咐，
我退还了他的书信，拒绝
他接近我。

波洛涅斯。
这就把他逼疯了。
我后悔当初没有用更周全的考虑和判断
去观察他。我担心他不过是逢场作戏，
存心要毁掉你。可是，诅咒我的猜疑！
看来，像我们这般年纪的人，
在见地上自以为是、越出本分，
乃是常有的事，
就如年轻人往往缺乏审慎一样。
来，我们去找国王。
这事必须让人知道，如果秘而不宣，可能
引发更多悲伤，远不如公开吐露爱情会招致的怨恨。

〔同下。〕

SCENE II. A room in the Castle.

Enter King, Queen, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Attendants.

KING.
Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Moreover that we much did long to see you,
The need we have to use you did provoke
Our hasty sending. Something have you heard
Of Hamlet’s transformation; so I call it,
Since nor th’exterior nor the inward man
Resembles that it was. What it should be,
More than his father’s death, that thus hath put him
So much from th’understanding of himself,
I cannot dream of. I entreat you both
That, being of so young days brought up with him,
And since so neighbour’d to his youth and humour,
That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court
Some little time, so by your companies
To draw him on to pleasures and to gather,
So much as from occasion you may glean,
Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus
That, open’d, lies within our remedy.

QUEEN.
Good gentlemen, he hath much talk’d of you,
And sure I am, two men there are not living
To whom he more adheres. If it will please you
To show us so much gentry and good will
As to expend your time with us awhile,
For the supply and profit of our hope,
Your visitation shall receive such thanks
As fits a king’s remembrance.

ROSENCRANTZ.
Both your majesties
Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,
Put your dread pleasures more into command
Than to entreaty.

GUILDENSTERN.
We both obey,
And here give up ourselves, in the full bent,
To lay our service freely at your feet
To be commanded.

KING.
Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

QUEEN.
Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.
And I beseech you instantly to visit
My too much changed son. Go, some of you,
And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.

GUILDENSTERN.
Heavens make our presence and our practices
Pleasant and helpful to him.

QUEEN.
Ay, amen.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and some Attendants.]

Enter Polonius.

POLONIUS.
Th’ambassadors from Norway, my good lord,
Are joyfully return’d.

KING.
Thou still hast been the father of good news.

POLONIUS.
Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege,
I hold my duty, as I hold my soul,
Both to my God and to my gracious King:
And I do think,—or else this brain of mine
Hunts not the trail of policy so sure
As it hath us’d to do—that I have found
The very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy.

KING.
O speak of that, that do I long to hear.

POLONIUS.
Give first admittance to th’ambassadors;
My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.

KING.
Thyself do grace to them, and bring them in.

[Exit Polonius.]

He tells me, my sweet queen, that he hath found
The head and source of all your son’s distemper.

QUEEN.
I doubt it is no other but the main,
His father’s death and our o’erhasty marriage.

KING.
Well, we shall sift him.

Enter Polonius with Voltemand and Cornelius.

Welcome, my good friends!
Say, Voltemand, what from our brother Norway?

VOLTEMAND.
Most fair return of greetings and desires.
Upon our first, he sent out to suppress
His nephew’s levies, which to him appear’d
To be a preparation ’gainst the Polack;
But better look’d into, he truly found
It was against your Highness; whereat griev’d,
That so his sickness, age, and impotence
Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests
On Fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys,
Receives rebuke from Norway; and in fine,
Makes vow before his uncle never more
To give th’assay of arms against your Majesty.
Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,
Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee,
And his commission to employ those soldiers
So levied as before, against the Polack:
With an entreaty, herein further shown,
[Gives a paper.]
That it might please you to give quiet pass
Through your dominions for this enterprise,
On such regards of safety and allowance
As therein are set down.

KING.
It likes us well;
And at our more consider’d time we’ll read,
Answer, and think upon this business.
Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour.
Go to your rest, at night we’ll feast together:.
Most welcome home.

[Exeunt Voltemand and Cornelius.]

POLONIUS.
This business is well ended.
My liege and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief. Your noble son is mad.
Mad call I it; for to define true madness,
What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go.

QUEEN.
More matter, with less art.

POLONIUS.
Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
That he is mad, ’tis true: ’tis true ’tis pity;
And pity ’tis ’tis true. A foolish figure,
But farewell it, for I will use no art.
Mad let us grant him then. And now remains
That we find out the cause of this effect,
Or rather say, the cause of this defect,
For this effect defective comes by cause.
Thus it remains, and the remainder thus. Perpend,
I have a daughter—have whilst she is mine—
Who in her duty and obedience, mark,
Hath given me this. Now gather, and surmise.
[Reads.]
To the celestial, and my soul’s idol, the most beautified Ophelia—
That’s an ill phrase, a vile phrase; ‘beautified’ is a vile
phrase: but you shall hear.
[Reads.]
these; in her excellent white bosom, these, &c.

QUEEN.
Came this from Hamlet to her?

POLONIUS.
Good madam, stay awhile; I will be faithful.
[Reads.]
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers. I have not art to reckon my
groans. But that I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu.
Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him,
HAMLET.
This in obedience hath my daughter show’d me;
And more above, hath his solicitings,
As they fell out by time, by means, and place,
All given to mine ear.

KING.
But how hath she receiv’d his love?

POLONIUS.
What do you think of me?

KING.
As of a man faithful and honourable.

POLONIUS.
I would fain prove so. But what might you think,
When I had seen this hot love on the wing,
As I perceiv’d it, I must tell you that,
Before my daughter told me, what might you,
Or my dear Majesty your queen here, think,
If I had play’d the desk or table-book,
Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb,
Or look’d upon this love with idle sight,
What might you think? No, I went round to work,
And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:
‘Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star.
This must not be.’ And then I precepts gave her,
That she should lock herself from his resort,
Admit no messengers, receive no tokens.
Which done, she took the fruits of my advice,
And he, repulsed,—a short tale to make—
Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,
Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,
Into the madness wherein now he raves,
And all we wail for.

KING.
Do you think ’tis this?

QUEEN.
It may be, very likely.

POLONIUS.
Hath there been such a time, I’d fain know that,
That I have positively said ‘’Tis so,’
When it prov’d otherwise?

KING.
Not that I know.

POLONIUS.
Take this from this, if this be otherwise.
[Points to his head and shoulder.]
If circumstances lead me, I will find
Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
Within the centre.

KING.
How may we try it further?

POLONIUS.
You know sometimes he walks four hours together
Here in the lobby.

QUEEN.
So he does indeed.

POLONIUS.
At such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him.
Be you and I behind an arras then,
Mark the encounter. If he love her not,
And be not from his reason fall’n thereon,
Let me be no assistant for a state,
But keep a farm and carters.

KING.
We will try it.

Enter Hamlet, reading.

QUEEN.
But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.

POLONIUS.
Away, I do beseech you, both away
I’ll board him presently. O, give me leave.

[Exeunt King, Queen and Attendants.]

How does my good Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET.
Well, God-a-mercy.

POLONIUS.
Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET.
Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.

POLONIUS.
Not I, my lord.

HAMLET.
Then I would you were so honest a man.

POLONIUS.
Honest, my lord?

HAMLET.
Ay sir, to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out
of ten thousand.

POLONIUS.
That’s very true, my lord.

HAMLET.
For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing
carrion,—
Have you a daughter?

POLONIUS.
I have, my lord.

HAMLET.
Let her not walk i’ th’ sun. Conception is a blessing, but not as your
daughter may conceive. Friend, look to’t.

POLONIUS.
How say you by that? [Aside.] Still harping on my daughter. Yet he
knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger. He is far gone, far
gone. And truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very
near this. I’ll speak to him again.—What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET.
Words, words, words.

POLONIUS.
What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET.
Between who?

POLONIUS.
I mean the matter that you read, my lord.

HAMLET.
Slanders, sir. For the satirical slave says here that old men have grey
beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes purging thick amber
and plum-tree gum; and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together
with most weak hams. All which, sir, though I most powerfully and
potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down.
For you yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could
go backward.

POLONIUS.
[Aside.] Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.—
Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET.
Into my grave?

POLONIUS.
Indeed, that is out o’ the air. [Aside.] How pregnant sometimes his
replies are! A happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and
sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him and
suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter.
My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

HAMLET.
You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part
withal, except my life, except my life, except my life.

POLONIUS.
Fare you well, my lord.

HAMLET.
These tedious old fools.

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

POLONIUS.
You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.

ROSENCRANTZ.
[To Polonius.] God save you, sir.

[Exit Polonius.]

GUILDENSTERN.
My honoured lord!

ROSENCRANTZ.
My most dear lord!

HAMLET.
My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah,
Rosencrantz. Good lads, how do ye both?

ROSENCRANTZ.
As the indifferent children of the earth.

GUILDENSTERN.
Happy in that we are not over-happy;
On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.

HAMLET.
Nor the soles of her shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ.
Neither, my lord.

HAMLET.
Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?

GUILDENSTERN.
Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET.
In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet. What’s
the news?

ROSENCRANTZ.
None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest.

HAMLET.
Then is doomsday near. But your news is not true. Let me question more
in particular. What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of
Fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN.
Prison, my lord?

HAMLET.
Denmark’s a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ.
Then is the world one.

HAMLET.
A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons,
Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.

ROSENCRANTZ.
We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET.
Why, then ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad but
thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ.
Why, then your ambition makes it one; ’tis too narrow for your mind.

HAMLET.
O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of
infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN.
Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the
ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET.
A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ.
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is
but a shadow’s shadow.

HAMLET.
Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretch’d heroes
the beggars’ shadows. Shall we to th’ court? For, by my fay, I cannot
reason.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
We’ll wait upon you.

HAMLET.
No such matter. I will not sort you with the rest of my servants; for,
to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. But,
in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?

ROSENCRANTZ.
To visit you, my lord, no other occasion.

HAMLET.
Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you. And sure,
dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent
for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, deal
justly with me. Come, come; nay, speak.

GUILDENSTERN.
What should we say, my lord?

HAMLET.
Why, anything. But to the purpose. You were sent for; and there is a
kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties have not craft
enough to colour. I know the good King and Queen have sent for you.

ROSENCRANTZ.
To what end, my lord?

HAMLET.
That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our
fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our
ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could
charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent
for or no.

ROSENCRANTZ.
[To Guildenstern.] What say you?

HAMLET.
[Aside.] Nay, then I have an eye of you. If you love me, hold not
off.

GUILDENSTERN.
My lord, we were sent for.

HAMLET.
I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery,
and your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no feather. I have of
late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom
of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that
this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this
most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging
firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it
appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of
vapours. What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite
in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable; in action
how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a god: the beauty of the
world, the paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this
quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither,
though by your smiling you seem to say so.

ROSENCRANTZ.
My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.

HAMLET.
Why did you laugh then, when I said ‘Man delights not me’?

ROSENCRANTZ.
To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what Lenten entertainment
the players shall receive from you. We coted them on the way, and
hither are they coming to offer you service.

HAMLET.
He that plays the king shall be welcome,—his Majesty shall have tribute
of me; the adventurous knight shall use his foil and target; the lover
shall not sigh gratis, the humorous man shall end his part in peace;
the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickle o’ th’ sere;
and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt
for’t. What players are they?

ROSENCRANTZ.
Even those you were wont to take such delight in—the tragedians of the
city.

HAMLET.
How chances it they travel? Their residence, both in reputation and
profit, was better both ways.

ROSENCRANTZ.
I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late innovation.

HAMLET.
Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? Are
they so followed?

ROSENCRANTZ.
No, indeed, they are not.

HAMLET.
How comes it? Do they grow rusty?

ROSENCRANTZ.
Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace; but there is, sir, an
aerie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question,
and are most tyrannically clapped for’t. These are now the fashion, and
so berattle the common stages—so they call them—that many wearing
rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and dare scarce come thither.

HAMLET.
What, are they children? Who maintains ’em? How are they escoted? Will
they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing? Will they not say
afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players—as it is
most like, if their means are no better—their writers do them wrong to
make them exclaim against their own succession?

ROSENCRANTZ.
Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the nation holds it
no sin to tarre them to controversy. There was for a while, no money
bid for argument unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the
question.

HAMLET.
Is’t possible?

GUILDENSTERN.
O, there has been much throwing about of brains.

HAMLET.
Do the boys carry it away?

ROSENCRANTZ.
Ay, that they do, my lord. Hercules and his load too.

HAMLET.
It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, and those that
would make mouths at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty,
fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little. ’Sblood,
there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find
it out.

[Flourish of trumpets within.]

GUILDENSTERN.
There are the players.

HAMLET.
Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come. The
appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply with you
in this garb, lest my extent to the players, which I tell you must show
fairly outward, should more appear like entertainment than yours. You
are welcome. But my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.

GUILDENSTERN.
In what, my dear lord?

HAMLET.
I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a
hawk from a handsaw.

Enter Polonius.

POLONIUS.
Well be with you, gentlemen.

HAMLET.
Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too, at each ear a hearer. That great
baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts.

ROSENCRANTZ.
Happily he’s the second time come to them; for they say an old man is
twice a child.

HAMLET.
I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players. Mark it.—You say
right, sir: for a Monday morning ’twas so indeed.

POLONIUS.
My lord, I have news to tell you.

HAMLET.
My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in Rome—

POLONIUS.
The actors are come hither, my lord.

HAMLET.
Buzz, buzz.

POLONIUS.
Upon my honour.

HAMLET.
Then came each actor on his ass—

POLONIUS.
The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history,
pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical,
tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem
unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light, for the
law of writ and the liberty. These are the only men.

HAMLET.
O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!

POLONIUS.
What treasure had he, my lord?

HAMLET.
Why—
’One fair daughter, and no more,
The which he loved passing well.’

POLONIUS.
[Aside.] Still on my daughter.

HAMLET.
Am I not i’ th’ right, old Jephthah?

POLONIUS.
If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I love passing
well.

HAMLET.
Nay, that follows not.

POLONIUS.
What follows then, my lord?

HAMLET.
Why,
As by lot, God wot,
and then, you know,
It came to pass, as most like it was.
The first row of the pious chanson will show you more. For look where
my abridgement comes.

Enter four or five Players.

You are welcome, masters, welcome all. I am glad to see thee well.
Welcome, good friends. O, my old friend! Thy face is valanc’d since I
saw thee last. Com’st thou to beard me in Denmark? What, my young lady
and mistress! By’r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I
saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. Pray God your voice, like a
piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring. Masters, you
are all welcome. We’ll e’en to’t like French falconers, fly at anything
we see. We’ll have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your
quality. Come, a passionate speech.

FIRST PLAYER.
What speech, my lord?

HAMLET.
I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted, or if it
was, not above once, for the play, I remember, pleased not the million,
’twas caviare to the general. But it was—as I received it, and others,
whose judgements in such matters cried in the top of mine—an excellent
play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as
cunning. I remember one said there were no sallets in the lines to make
the matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might indite the
author of affectation, but called it an honest method, as wholesome as
sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it, I
chiefly loved. ’Twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido, and thereabout of it
especially where he speaks of Priam’s slaughter. If it live in your
memory, begin at this line, let me see, let me see:
The rugged Pyrrhus, like th’ Hyrcanian beast,—
It is not so: it begins with Pyrrhus—
The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smear’d
With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot
Now is he total gules, horridly trick’d
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Bak’d and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and a damned light
To their vile murders. Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o’ersized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.
So, proceed you.

POLONIUS.
’Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good discretion.

FIRST PLAYER.
Anon he finds him,
Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command. Unequal match’d,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
Th’unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus’ ear. For lo, his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem’d i’ th’air to stick.
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
And like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
But as we often see against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region; so after Pyrrhus’ pause,
Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work,
And never did the Cyclops’ hammers fall
On Mars’s armour, forg’d for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.
Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod, take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends.

POLONIUS.
This is too long.

HAMLET.
It shall to the barber’s, with your beard.—Prithee say on.
He’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps.
Say on; come to Hecuba.

FIRST PLAYER.
But who, O who, had seen the mobled queen,—

HAMLET.
‘The mobled queen’?

POLONIUS.
That’s good! ‘Mobled queen’ is good.

FIRST PLAYER.
Run barefoot up and down, threat’ning the flames
With bisson rheum. A clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
About her lank and all o’erteemed loins,
A blanket, in th’alarm of fear caught up—
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep’d,
’Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have pronounc’d.
But if the gods themselves did see her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made,—
Unless things mortal move them not at all,—
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods.

POLONIUS.
Look, where he has not turn’d his colour, and has tears in’s eyes. Pray
you, no more.

HAMLET.
’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 abstracts and brief chronicles of the time.
After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill
report while you live.

POLONIUS.
My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

HAMLET.
God’s bodikin, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who
should ’scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity. The
less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

POLONIUS.
Come, sirs.

HAMLET.
Follow him, friends. We’ll hear a play tomorrow.

[Exeunt Polonius with all the Players but the First.]

Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play The Murder of Gonzago?

FIRST PLAYER.
Ay, my lord.

HAMLET.
We’ll ha’t tomorrow night. You could for a need study a speech of some
dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down and insert in’t, could
you not?

FIRST PLAYER.
Ay, my lord.

HAMLET.
Very well. Follow that lord, and look you mock him not.

[Exit First Player.]

[To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern] My good friends, I’ll leave you
till night. You are welcome to Elsinore.

ROSENCRANTZ.
Good my lord.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

HAMLET.
Ay, so, God b’ wi’ ye. 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 wan’d;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba?
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing. No, not for a king
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn’d defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose, gives me the lie i’ th’ throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha! ’Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver’d, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave’s offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
Oh vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
A scullion! Fie upon’t! Foh!
About, my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene,
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim’d their malefactions.
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I’ll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks;
I’ll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil, and the devil hath power
T’assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds
More relative than this. The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.

[Exit.]

第二场：城堡中的一室

国王、王后、罗森格兰兹、吉尔登斯吞及侍从等上。

国王。
欢迎，亲爱的罗森格兰兹和吉尔登斯吞！
我们不但非常渴望见到你们，
更因为需要倚重你们，才如此
仓促派人相请。你们必定已听说
哈姆雷特的变化；我这么称呼它，
是因为他外表也好，内心也好，
都不再是原来的模样。除了他父亲的死，
究竟还有什么能把他
如此推出自我认知之外，
我实在无从猜想。我恳求二位，
既然你们自幼和他一同长大，
对他的少年性情又是如此熟谙，
请不辞在此，在我们的宫廷中
稍作逗留，借你们的陪伴，
引他转向欢乐，并且尽可能
趁合适的机会去探知，
是否有什么我们未知之事在折磨着他，
一旦查明，就属于我们补救的范围。

乔特鲁德。
两位好先生，他常常说起你们，
我敢说，这世上再没有两个人
能让他更亲近。若你们肯赏光，
对我们表示这般殷勤与美意，
陪我们消磨片刻光阴，
为我们的期盼增些助益与收获，
你们的探望必将得到恰如
国王铭记般的谢意。

罗森格兰兹。
二位陛下
凭你们对我们拥有的至上权力，
大可将你们的旨意直接吩咐下来，
不必用请。

吉尔登斯吞。
我们二人遵命，
在此全心全意，把我们的效力
自由地奉献在你们脚下，
听凭差遣。

国王。
多谢，罗森格兰兹和温良的吉尔登斯吞。

乔特鲁德。
多谢，吉尔登斯吞和温良的罗森格兰兹。
我恳请你们立刻去看看
我那变得太厉害的儿子。你们几个，
领这两位先生到哈姆雷特那儿去。

吉尔登斯吞。
愿上天使我们此行与我们的作为，
于他愉快而有益。

乔特鲁德。
嗯，阿门。

〔罗森格兰兹、吉尔登斯吞及数侍从下。〕

波洛涅斯上。

波洛涅斯。
出使挪威的使臣，我的好主公，
欣然回来了。

国王。
你从来都是好消息的父亲。

波洛涅斯。
是吗，主公？请您相信，我的好君王，
我守着我的本分，正如我守着我的灵魂，
一并对上帝、一并对我仁慈的国王：
而且我想，——否则我这副头脑
追踪韬略的路径，便不如
它从前那般精准了——我已经找到了
哈姆雷特发疯的真正根由。

国王。
哦，快说那个，我正盼着听。

波洛涅斯。
先接见使臣吧；
我的消息将是那盛宴后的佳果。

国王。
你亲自去礼遇他们，带他们进来。

〔波洛涅斯下。〕

他告诉我，我亲爱的王后，他已经找到
你儿子一切心病的总源头。

乔特鲁德。
我疑心不是别的，就是那桩主因——
他父亲的死，和我们过于仓促的婚姻。

国王。
好，我们且细细盘问他。

波洛涅斯率伏尔提曼德与科尼律斯上。

欢迎，我的好朋友！
说吧，伏尔提曼德，我们的挪威兄长有何答复？

伏尔提曼德。
敬祝洪福与心愿圆满达成。
甫一接信，他便传令制止
他侄子所征募的兵员，因在他看来，
那些军备原是针对波兰人；
然而细加查察，他方知那确乎
是对准陛下而来；痛心于自己
病弱、老迈、无能竟遭人欺罔，
便下令将福丁布拉斯拘押；他当下遵从，
领受了挪威王的训斥；最后
在他叔父面前立誓，永不再
对陛下妄动干戈。
老挪威王大喜之下，
赐他岁俸三千克朗，
并委任他将前所征募的士卒
转用于征讨波兰人；
随信附有一纸恳请，写在此处，
〔递上一纸文书。〕
伏望陛下应允大军
借道贵国疆域，以行此举，
一切安全之规与通融之约，
俱依其中所列条款。

国王。
朕甚悦之；
待更得闲时，再细读、
答复并权衡此事。
当下有劳贤卿奔走，不胜感激。
先去歇息，今晚我们共宴相庆：
欢迎归国。

〔伏尔提曼德与科尼律斯下。〕

波洛涅斯。
此事已了结得甚好。
主上，娘娘，若去细论
威仪何为，臣职何谓，
白昼何以是白昼，黑夜何以是黑夜，光阴何以是光阴，
那便是徒耗黑夜、白昼与光阴了。
故而，既然简洁乃机智之魂，
而冗长则如四肢与浮饰，
我便简短说之。你们的贤郎是疯了。
我称其为疯；因若去说清什么是真疯，
那岂不就是除了疯，别无他物？
但此事暂且按下不表。

王后。
多些实在，少些铺排。

波洛涅斯。
娘娘，我发誓我全无铺排。
他疯了，这是实话：实话便是可惜；
而可惜之处在于它是实话。一句蠢话，
随它去吧，我决不再铺排一字。
且认他疯了便是。如此，所剩之事，
便是找出此果之因，
或更当说，此失之因，
因此番缺损之果，必有起因。
这便是所剩之事，而所剩之事如此。细听，
我有一女——是说女儿尚在我所管之时，就在此刻——
她谨守孝道与顺从，听好，
给了我这个。如今请揣摩，请猜度。
〔展信念诵。〕
致天仙，我灵魂的偶像，最是清丽无双的奥菲莉娅——
那是句坏话，一句粗鄙话；“清丽无双”是句粗鄙
话：但你们且听下去。
〔续诵。〕
这些；在她洁白佳美的酥胸前，这些，等等。

乔特鲁德。
这是哈姆雷特写给她的？

波洛涅斯。
好娘娘，请稍待片刻，我定如实禀告。
〔读信。〕
纵然你怀疑星辰是火，
怀疑太阳不曾移挪，
怀疑真理惯会说谎，
切莫怀疑我的衷肠。
哦，亲爱的奥菲莉娅，我不擅长摆弄这些诗律，也没有才情去计算我的叹息。但我最爱你，哦，最最好的人，请相信这一点。再会。
永远属于你的，最亲爱的小姐，只要这副躯壳还属于他，
哈姆雷特。
这是小女出于恭顺呈与我看的；此外，她还将他如何追求、何时何地、用什么方法、说了哪些言语，都一一告诉了我。

国王。
那么她是怎么对待他的爱的？

波洛涅斯。
您看我是什么样的人？

国王。
一个忠信可敬的人。

波洛涅斯。
我正乐于证明如此。可是，您会作何感想，要是我眼见这份火热的爱情已经展翅翱翔——我确实早已察觉——并且，我必须告诉您，那是在小女禀告我之前，您，或者我恭顺的娘娘，陛下的王后，会作何感想，要是我自甘作那书桌或记事板，或是对此闭眼锁心，哑口无言，又或者是漠不关心地坐视这段恋情，您会作何感想？不，我立刻便行动起来，这样对我家年轻的小姐开了口：’哈姆雷特殿下是一位王子，绝非你的星辰。此事断不可行。‘然后我给她定下规矩，要她深锁闺中，不可再去会他，不可接待信使，不可收受礼物。她听从了我的劝诫，领受了果实。而他遭到拒绝之后，——长话短说——便坠入了忧愁，继而食不下咽，继而彻夜不眠，继而萎靡不振，继而神魂颠倒，就这样每况愈下，陷入如今我们大家都在哀叹的癫狂之中。

国王。
你以为就是这个原因？

乔特鲁德。
很可能是的，极有可能。

波洛涅斯。
我可曾有过这样的时刻，我很想知道，就是我斩钉截铁地说’事情就是这样‘，结果却证明并非如此？

国王。
据我所知，并没有。

波洛涅斯。
把这个从这个上拿掉，如果事情并非如此。
〔指自己的头和肩膀。〕
只要抓住线索，我定会找出真相所在，即便那真相真真藏在中心。

国王。
我们怎样才能再试一试？

波洛涅斯。
您知道，他有时会一连四个小时，就在这殿廊里走来走去。

乔特鲁德。
他确实如此。

波洛涅斯。
到时候我就放我女儿来见他。
你我二人且躲在挂毡后面，
细看他们相会。他若是不爱她，
若不是因此失去了理智，
那我也别做什么辅政大臣了，
不如回乡下去种地赶车。

国王。
我们就试试看。

〔哈姆雷特上，手持书卷阅读。〕

王后。
可是瞧，那可怜的人满脸愁容，读着书来了。

波洛涅斯。
请回避，我恳请二位都请回避，
我这就去跟他攀谈。哦，请容我行事。

〔国王、王后及侍从下。〕

您好吗，我的好哈姆雷特殿下？

哈姆雷特。
好，多谢上帝。

波洛涅斯。
殿下，您认得我吗？

哈姆雷特。
认得再清楚不过。你是个卖鱼的。

波洛涅斯。
我不是，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
那我倒希望你是个那么老实的人。

波洛涅斯。
老实，殿下？

哈姆雷特。
是啊，先生，在这世上，要做个老实人，一万人里头才挑得出一个来。

波洛涅斯。
这话千真万确，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
因为要是太阳在一条死狗身上养出蛆来，那可是一块好得能让人亲嘴的臭肉——
你有个女儿吧？

波洛涅斯。
有的，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
别让她在太阳底下走路。怀胎是福气，可别让你女儿怀上。朋友，当心着点。

波洛涅斯。
您这话从何说起？〔旁白。〕还在一个劲儿地提我女儿。可他起初并没有认出我来；竟说我是个卖鱼的。他病得不轻，病得不轻。说真的，我年轻的时候也为了爱情受过不少极端的苦楚，差不多也跟他这样子。我再跟他谈谈。——殿下，您读的是什么？

哈姆雷特。
字，字，字。

波洛涅斯。
我是说内容，殿下，什么内容？

哈姆雷特。
谁跟谁交手？

波洛涅斯。
我是说您读的书里讲的是什么内容，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
全是诽谤，先生。因为这个刻薄的家伙说，老年人长着灰白胡子，脸上布满皱纹，眼睛里淌出浓浓的琥珀和梅树胶，还说他们满脑子空空，外加两条腿软得不行。这些，先生，虽然我极有力量、极有把握地深信不疑，但把这些话白纸黑字写下来，我觉得终究不够体面。因为您自己，先生，总有一天也会跟我一样老——假如您能像螃蟹一样倒着走的话。

波洛涅斯。
〔旁白。〕这虽是疯狂，却有条理。——殿下，您要不要到外边去走走，透透气？

哈姆雷特。
走进我的坟墓里去？

波洛涅斯。
确实，这话倒是不着边际。〔旁白〕他的回答有时多么意味深长！那是疯狂常能碰巧撞上的妙语，而理智和清醒反倒不能这样巧妙地表达出来。我要离开他，然后立刻设法让他和我女儿见面。尊贵的大人，我谨此极谦卑地向您告辞。

哈姆雷特。
先生，您无法从我这里拿去任何我更乐意舍弃的东西了，除了我的生命，除了我的生命，除了我的生命。

波洛涅斯。
再会，大人。

哈姆雷特。
这些缠人的老傻瓜。

〔罗森格兰兹与吉尔登斯吞上。〕

波洛涅斯。
你们去找哈姆雷特大人；他就在那边。

罗森格兰兹。
〔对波洛涅斯。〕上帝保佑您，先生。

〔波洛涅斯下。〕

吉尔登斯吞。
尊贵的大人！

罗森格兰兹。
我最亲爱的大人！

哈姆雷特。
我的好朋友们！你好吗，吉尔登斯吞？啊，罗森格兰兹。好小子们，你们俩都好吗？

罗森格兰兹。
像大地上一群寻常的凡人。

吉尔登斯吞。
我们庆幸自己不过分庆幸；
在命运女神的帽子上，我们不是最顶端的那颗纽扣。

哈姆雷特。
也不是她鞋底上的东西？

罗森格兰兹。
也不是，大人。

哈姆雷特。
那么你们住在她腰部的地方，或者在她恩宠的中央？

吉尔登斯吞。
说实话，我们是她的私处。

哈姆雷特。
在命运女神的私处？啊，完全正确；她是个婊子。有什么消息？

罗森格兰兹。
没有，大人，只是世界变得诚实了。

哈姆雷特。
那么末日审判近了。可你们的消息不真实。让我更具体地问问：我的好朋友们，你们在命运女神手里犯了什么过错，让她把你们送到这监狱里来？

吉尔登斯吞。
监狱，大人？

哈姆雷特。
丹麦是个监狱。

罗森格兰兹。
那整个世界也是一个。

哈姆雷特。
不错的一个；里面有许多间牢房、监禁室和地牢，丹麦是其中最坏的一间。

罗森格兰兹。
我们不这么想，大人。

哈姆雷特。
那么对你们来说就不是了；因为世间本无所谓善恶，全凭思想所定。对我来说它是个监狱。

罗森格兰兹。
那么，是您的野心使它成了监狱；它对于您的心胸过于狭窄了。

哈姆雷特。
上帝啊，我本可以束缚在一只胡桃壳里，自命为拥有无限空间的君王，要不是我老做噩梦的话。

吉尔登斯吞。
那些梦，其实正是野心；因为野心家自身的本质，不过是一个梦的影子。

哈姆雷特。
一个梦本身也不过是一个影子。

罗森格兰兹。
确实，我觉得野心这东西，轻飘飘的空空荡荡，充其量不过是影子的影子罢了。

哈姆雷特。
那么，我们的乞丐倒是实在的身体，而我们的君王和那些趾高气扬的英雄，反倒是乞丐的影子了。我们到宫里去好吗？因为我跟你们说实在话，我没法讲道理了。

罗森格兰兹与吉尔登斯吞。
我们愿意伺候您。

哈姆雷特。
哪来的话。我不会把你们列为我其余的仆人一类；因为，跟你们说句老实人的话，我身边那帮伺候的人，真是糟糕透顶。不过，凭着我们交情的老路，你们到埃尔西诺来做什么？

罗森格兰兹。
来拜访您，殿下，没有别的事。

哈姆雷特。
我是个叫化子，连感谢的话也穷得很；但我还是谢谢你们。当然，亲爱的朋友，我这感谢恐怕连半便士都值不上。你们不是被召来的吧？是你们自己的意思吗？是出于自愿的拜访吗？来，老老实实对待我。来，来；别这样，说吧。

吉尔登斯吞。
我们该说什么呢，殿下？

哈姆雷特。
咦，随便什么，只要说到点子上。你们是被召来的；而且你们的神情里就透着一股招认的味道，你们这几分忠厚，还没本事把它遮掩过去。我知道，好国王和王后是差人把你们召来的。

罗森格兰兹。
为了什么目的呢，殿下？

哈姆雷特。
这个得由你们来告诉我。不过，我要恳求你们，凭着我们交情的本分，凭着我们青年时代意气相投，凭着我们的友情长存这点义务，凭着一个比我会说话的人所能拿来劝你们的其他更宝贵的交情，对我直截了当，明白说出来，你们究竟是被召来的，还是不是。

罗森格兰兹。
〔向吉尔登斯吞。〕你怎么说？

哈姆雷特。
〔旁白。〕嗯，那么，我可盯着你们了。你们要是还顾念我，就别闪躲。

吉尔登斯吞。
殿下，我们是奉命被召来的。

哈姆雷特。
我就告诉你为什么吧；这样我先把话挑明，你就不用费心套我的话，你们对国王和王后的保密工夫也一根羽毛都不用掉。近来——也不知是什么缘故——我失掉了一切欢乐，搁下了所有日常的锻炼；确实，我心境沉重得厉害，以至于这大好的大地，在我看来，也不过是一块荒凉的海角；这顶最卓越的苍穹，你瞧，这壮丽高悬的晴空，这镶嵌着金色火焰的庄严屋顶，哎，在我眼里，无非是一团乌烟瘴气的、叫人恶心的蒸气罢了。人是多么了不起的一件作品啊，理性多么高贵，能力多么无穷，仪态和举止多么修整端丽、令人赞叹；行动上多么像天使，智慧上多么像神明：世间的美景，万物的典范。可是，对我来说，这尘土的精华又算什么呢？人不能使我欢喜；不，女人也不能，虽然你那么笑着，好像是在说女人能。

罗森格兰兹。
殿下，我心里可没有这种念头。

哈姆雷特。
那我说“人不能使我欢喜”的时候，你为什么笑呢？

罗森格兰兹。
我是在想，殿下，要是人不讨你喜欢，那些伶人要从你这儿得到的款待可就像斋期的饮食一样寒碜了。我们在路上赶过了他们，他们这就到这儿来，要为您献艺。

哈姆雷特。
那演国王的将受到欢迎——他的陛下会从我这儿得到贡品；冒险的骑士可以挥他的剑盾；情郎不会白白叹气；脾气古怪的角色可以平平安安把他的戏份演完；小丑可以把那些肺活量浅薄的人逗得发笑；演小姐的可以痛痛快快说她的心事，要不然素体诗的韵脚可要一瘸一拐的了。他们是哪一班伶人？

罗森格兰兹。
就是您从前那么喜欢的那一班——城里的悲剧班子。

哈姆雷特。
他们怎么跑起江湖来了？在一个固定的地方待着，论名声论收益，不是都更好吗？

罗森格兰兹。
我觉得，他们被禁演，是由于最近那桩新花样的缘故。

哈姆雷特。
他们还像我当年在城里时那样受人看重吗？还有那么多人追捧他们吗？

罗森格兰兹。
不，说真的，不行了。

哈姆雷特。
怎么回事？他们生锈了吗？

罗森格兰兹。
不，他们的演出倒还保持着一贯的水准；可是，殿下，如今有一窝孩子，一群小雏鹰，扯着嗓子尖声叫嚷，专在节骨眼儿上嚎叫，反而博得最蛮横的喝彩。眼下这些正当时兴，他们把那些普通戏台——他们就这么叫——糟蹋得不成样子，害得许多佩剑的爷们都怕了鹅毛笔，几乎不敢再往那儿去。

哈姆雷特。
怎么，他们是孩子吗？谁养着他们？他们的戏份儿是怎么算的？等他们嗓子一倒，不能再唱了，他们就不干这一行了吗？日后他们自己长大成人，也当了普通戏子——要是他们没有更好的出路，十有八九会这样——那时他们会不会说，那些写戏的害了他们，让他们当年破口大骂自己将来的营生？

罗森格兰兹。
说实话，两边闹得可厉害了；全国上下都不怕煽风点火，挑着他们斗。有一段日子，没人肯出钱买剧本，除非那诗人跟戏子在台本上先干上一架。

哈姆雷特。
这怎么可能？

吉尔登斯吞。
哦，可没少绞尽脑汁呢。

哈姆雷特。
那些孩子占了上风吗？

罗森格兰兹。
是啊，殿下，他们赢了；连赫拉克勒斯和他扛着的天球一块儿都给他们搬走了。

哈姆雷特。
这也并不算太稀奇；因为我叔父如今是丹麦国王了，那些当年我父亲在世时对着他做鬼脸的人，现在肯花二十、四十、五十、一百枚金币抢着买他一幅小小的画像。该死，这里头冥冥之中自有蹊跷，要是哲学能把它找出来就好了。

〔内喇叭奏花腔。〕

吉尔登斯吞。
戏子们到了。

哈姆雷特。
两位先生，欢迎你们来到艾尔西诺。来，把手伸给我。欢迎的排场总少不了礼数和客套；让我照这规矩向你们表示一番，免得我待会儿对戏子们的款待——告诉你们，我待会儿必定要对他们格外殷勤——在外人眼里显得比待你们更隆重。你们是受欢迎的。只不过我那叔父父亲和婶母母亲却上当了。

吉尔登斯吞。
在哪方面上当了，亲爱的殿下？

哈姆雷特。
我不过是西北偏北的那一点疯。风向正南的时候，我分得清笼子里的鹰跟路边的鹭。

波洛涅斯上。

波洛涅斯。
两位先生，祝你们安好。

哈姆雷特。
听着，吉尔登斯吞，还有你，——一边一只耳朵听好了。你们在那儿看见的那个大号婴儿，还没脱掉他的襁褓呢。

罗森格兰兹。
也许他是第二回裹进襁褓里去了；因为人家说，老人是第二次做孩子。

哈姆雷特。
我敢预言，他是来告诉我戏子们到了的消息。你们瞧着吧。——您说得对，先生；星期一早上，确实是那样来着。

波洛涅斯。
大人，我有消息要禀告您。

哈姆雷特。
大人，我有消息要禀告您。当年罗歇斯在罗马做伶人时——

波洛涅斯。
那些戏子已经到这儿了，大人。

哈姆雷特。
嗡嗡，嗡嗡。

波洛涅斯。
凭我的荣誉起誓。

哈姆雷特。
于是每个戏子都骑着驴子来了——

波洛涅斯。
世上最好的戏子，无论演悲剧、喜剧、历史剧、田园剧、田园喜剧、历史田园剧、悲剧历史剧、悲剧喜剧历史田园剧，还是演那不分幕的戏，或是那不受限制的诗篇。塞内加的沉重不嫌过，普劳图斯的轻巧也不嫌过，对于规矩和自由他们都拿捏自如。只有这些人。

哈姆雷特。
啊，耶弗他，以色列的士师，你曾有过何等珍宝！

波洛涅斯。
他有什么珍宝，大人？

哈姆雷特。
怎么——
“一个美丽的女儿，别无其他，
那女儿他爱得无比深切。”

波洛涅斯。
〔旁白。〕还是惦记着我的女儿。

哈姆雷特。
我不是说得对吗，老耶弗他？

波洛涅斯。
如果您叫我耶弗他，大人，那么我确实有一个女儿，我爱她无比深切。

哈姆雷特。
不，这可不合逻辑。

波洛涅斯。
那么什么合逻辑，大人？

哈姆雷特。
怎么，
天知道，全凭运数，
然后，你也知道，
事情就这么发生了，大概就是这样。
那首圣歌的头一行会告诉你更多。瞧，我的节略过来了。

〔四五个伶人上。〕

欢迎你们，各位师傅，欢迎所有人。看到你好我真高兴。欢迎，好朋友们。啊，我的老朋友！自从上次见你，你的脸已经加了胡须。你是到丹麦来要剔我的胡子吗？怎么，我的年轻小姐和情妇！圣母在上，小姐您比上次见面时离天更近了，足有一双厚底鞋的高度。祈祷上帝您的嗓门儿别像一枚不能流通的金币，在声音的圈里裂了缝。师傅们，全都欢迎。我们立刻就像法国放鹰人一样，见什么就扑什么。我们马上来一段台词。来，让我们尝尝你们的本事。来，来一段激昂的台词。

伶人甲。
哪一段台词，大人？

哈姆雷特。
我曾听你念过一段台词，可它从没上演过，就算演过，也不超过一次，因为那出戏，我记得，并不讨大众的喜欢，对一般人来说，那是鱼子酱。可是它——照我看来，以及那些在鉴赏力上比我更有权威的人看来——是一出极好的戏，场次安排妥帖，写得既质朴又巧妙。记得有人说过，台词里没有加佐料让词句变得油腻，字句之间也没有什么东西能让人指责作者矫揉造作，却称之为一种正派的手法，既健康又甜美，远胜于精雕细琢，漂亮得多。其中有一段台词，我特别喜欢。那是埃涅阿斯对狄多讲的故事，尤其是他讲到普里阿摩斯被杀的那一段。要是你还记得，就从这一行开始，让我想想，让我想想：
狰狞的皮洛斯，像希尔卡尼亚的猛兽——
不对，不是这样；是从皮洛斯开始——
狰狞的皮洛斯，他那乌黑的臂膀，
黑得像他的居心，当他蜷伏在
那不详的木马之中时，像是黑夜，
如今又把这片可怕黝黑的面目
涂上了更悲惨的纹章。从头到脚，
他浑身赤红，溅满了
父亲、母亲、女儿、儿子的鲜血，
被干裂的街道烘烤得凝结成块，
那街道还借出它们暴虐的、该死的火光
照亮那些卑鄙的杀戮。他烘烤在怒火与烈焰中，
浑身披着凝结的血块，
两眼像红宝石一般，这地狱般的皮洛斯
直寻那老祖宗普里阿摩斯。
就这样，你往下接吧。

波洛涅斯。
当着上帝的面，殿下，您念得真是好，字正腔圆，又有分寸。

伶人甲。
转眼间，剑锋只差希腊人毫厘。他那柄古剑，
不听手臂使唤，坠落在地，
抗拒号令。强弱悬殊，
皮洛斯直扑普里阿摩斯，盛怒之下，一剑劈空；
然而那致命剑刃挟带的风声，
已叫那失魂的老王仆倒。于是，无知的伊利昂，
仿佛感应了这一击，带着燃烧的冠顶
坍向基座，随着一声骇人的轰响
攫住了皮洛斯的耳朵。看啊，他那柄剑，
正朝德高望重的普里阿摩斯
皓白的头颅落下，竟似悬在半空。
于是，皮洛斯像个画里的暴君，伫立不动，
仿佛置身事外，既无意志，也无行动，
一无所为。
可正如我们常见，一场风暴来临之前，
天穹沉默，浮云停滞，
狂风喑哑，下界的大地
死一般沉寂，霎时间，骇人的雷霆
便撕裂长空；皮洛斯的停顿也是如此，
那被激醒的复仇驱他重新动作，
昔日独眼巨人的铁锤，砸向
那铸造了永恒坚韧的战神铠甲，
也不及皮洛斯那把淌血的剑刃
此刻劈在普里阿摩斯身上那般毫不留情。
滚开，滚开，你这婊子般的命运！天上众神啊，
开一场大会，剥夺她的权柄；
砸碎她的车轮，拆去所有辐条辋圈，
把那圆圆的轮毂从天堂山上滚下，
直落恶魔中间！_

波洛涅斯。
这太长了。

哈姆雷特。
它会跟你的胡子一道送去理发铺的。——请说下去。
他只想听段淫曲小调，要么讲个下流故事，不然就睡觉。
说下去；讲到赫卡柏。

伶人甲。
可是，啊，谁要是看见了那位蒙着头的王后，——

哈姆雷特。
“蒙着头的王后”？

波洛涅斯。
这词妙！“蒙着头的王后”真是妙。

伶人甲。
赤着脚奔来跑去，用泛滥的泪眼
威胁着火焰。一块破布裹着头
昔日戴过王冠的头颅；当作长袍，
围着她那干瘦而多产过度的腰身的，
是一条在惊惶中胡乱抓起的毡毯——
谁见此景，都会用饱蘸毒液的舌头
对命运之神发出叛逆的诅咒。
可是，倘若天神们亲眼看见她，
当她看见皮洛斯恶意地嬉戏，
用剑把他的丈夫的肢体砍成碎块，
她发出的那一声突然迸发的哀号，——
除非凡尘俗事完全不能打动他们，——
也定会叫天上炽热的星眸流出泪水，
让众神心生悲悯。

波洛涅斯。
瞧，他脸色都变了，眼里还含着泪呢。请你们，别再演下去了。

哈姆雷特。
好了。我很快会让你把剩下的部分念出来。——好大人，请您好好安置这些伶人，听见了吗，务必好好款待他们；因为他们可是这个时代的缩影和简史。您死后落个糟糕的墓志铭，也强过生前被他们非议。

波洛涅斯。
大人，我会按他们应得的份儿来对待他们。

哈姆雷特。
老天爷，老兄，得更好才行！要是按每个人应得的份儿来对待，那谁能逃得过一顿鞭子？按您自己的荣誉和尊严来款待他们吧。他们越是不配，您的慷慨就越是显出美德。带他们进去吧。

波洛涅斯。
来吧，各位。

哈姆雷特。
跟他去吧，朋友们。我们明天要听一出戏。

〔波洛涅斯率众伶人下，仅留伶人甲。〕

你听见了吗，老朋友？你们能演《贡扎古之死》吗？

伶人甲。
能演，大人。

哈姆雷特。
我们明晚就来演这出。要是我写一段大概十二行或十六行的台词，需要时插进去，你能背得下来吗？

伶人甲。
能，大人。

哈姆雷特。
很好。跟上那位大人，注意别取笑他。

〔伶人甲下。〕

〔对罗森格兰兹及吉尔登斯吞。〕我的好朋友们，我们晚上再见。欢迎你们来到艾尔西诺。

罗森格兰兹。
好大人。

〔罗森格兰兹与吉尔登斯吞下。〕

哈姆雷特。
嗯，就这样，上帝保佑你们。现在只剩我一个人了。
哦，我真是个混账，是个乡愿的奴才！
这难道不怪异吗，单单这个伶人，
不过是在一段虚构中，在激情的梦幻里，
就能把自己的灵魂逼得跟他那幻想合而为一，
以致于他的整个面容都因这激情的运作而惨白；
眼里噙着泪，神色恍恍惚惚，
声音断断续续，整个人的举止
全都配合着他的幻想？而这一切全不为什么！
就为了赫卡柏？
赫卡柏于他何干，他又于赫卡柏何干，
他竟要为她哭泣？要是他有了
我这样的动机和激情的由头，他会怎么做？
他会叫泪水淹没舞台，用骇人的台词
撕裂听众的耳鼓，
叫有罪的人发疯，叫清白的人惊惶，
让无知的人迷惑，并且当真震骇了
那眼与耳的官能本身。可是我呢，
一个迟钝的、泥坯似的无赖，像那做梦的约翰一般
恍惚，于我复仇的大计毫无感应，
半句话也说不出；不，哪怕是为了一个
他的社稷和最宝贵的生命
都遭了万劫不复的毒手的君王，也是如此。我是个懦夫吗？
谁管我叫恶棍，把我的脑壳劈开？
扯下我的胡子，吹到我脸上？
拧我的鼻子，把谎言直呛进我的嗓子眼，
深得像灌进肺里？谁这样对我？
哈！天杀的，我该受着：多亏我
长了一副鸽子肝，里面少不了一点
叫欺辱感到苦涩的胆汁，不然，
我早该叫这奴才的腐肉去喂肥天上
所有的鸢鹰了。血腥的、淫秽的恶棍！
毫不悔改、奸诈、淫荡、全无人伦的恶棍！
哦，报仇啊！
嘿，我真是头蠢驴！这可真叫英雄了，
我，一个遇害了的好父亲的儿子，
上天和地狱都催着我去复仇，
却像个娼妓似的，只好用言语来掏空我的心，
又像个真正的贱妇那样咒骂起来，
一个洗碗的厨娘！呸！真可耻！哼！
转起来吧，我的脑筋！我听说过，
犯了罪的人正坐在看戏，
被那剧情本身的巧妙所触动，
竟至于当下就供出了自己的罪行。
因为，谋杀，虽然没长舌头，却会借着
最奇妙的器官来说话。我要叫这些伶人
在我叔父面前，演一出戏，戏文就跟
我父亲被害的情形相仿佛。我要观察他的神色；
我要把他探到最痛处。他只要有一丝变色，
我就知道该怎么办。我见过的那个鬼魂
也许是魔鬼，魔鬼本就有能耐
扮作讨人喜欢的样子；对，也许
趁着我这虚弱和忧郁的性子，
——因为对这样的性情，他极有法力——
他来骗我，好叫我遭天谴。我要有
比这更确凿的证据。这出戏，
便是我用来捕捉那国王的良心的一张网。

ACT III

第三幕

SCENE I. A room in the Castle.

Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING.
And can you by no drift of circumstance
Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

ROSENCRANTZ.
He does confess he feels himself distracted,
But from what cause he will by no means speak.

GUILDENSTERN.
Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
But with a crafty madness keeps aloof
When we would bring him on to some confession
Of his true state.

QUEEN.
Did he receive you well?

ROSENCRANTZ.
Most like a gentleman.

GUILDENSTERN.
But with much forcing of his disposition.

ROSENCRANTZ.
Niggard of question, but of our demands,
Most free in his reply.

QUEEN.
Did you assay him to any pastime?

ROSENCRANTZ.
Madam, it so fell out that certain players
We o’er-raught on the way. Of these we told him,
And there did seem in him a kind of joy
To hear of it. They are about the court,
And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.

POLONIUS.
’Tis most true;
And he beseech’d me to entreat your Majesties
To hear and see the matter.

KING.
With all my heart; and it doth much content me
To hear him so inclin’d.
Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
And drive his purpose on to these delights.

ROSENCRANTZ.
We shall, my lord.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

KING.
Sweet Gertrude, leave us too,
For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
That he, as ’twere by accident, may here
Affront Ophelia.
Her father and myself, lawful espials,
Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,
We may of their encounter frankly judge,
And gather by him, as he is behav’d,
If’t be th’affliction of his love or no
That thus he suffers for.

QUEEN.
I shall obey you.
And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet’s wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honours.

OPHELIA.
Madam, I wish it may.

[Exit Queen.]

POLONIUS.
Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please you,
We will bestow ourselves.—[To Ophelia.] Read on this book,
That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness.—We are oft to blame in this,
’Tis too much prov’d, that with devotion’s visage
And pious action we do sugar o’er
The devil himself.

KING.
[Aside.] O ’tis too true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word.
O heavy burden!

POLONIUS.
I hear him coming. Let’s withdraw, my lord.

[Exeunt King and Polonius.]

Enter Hamlet.

HAMLET.
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
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 wish’d. 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,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of dispriz’d 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
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, 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,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.

OPHELIA.
Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?

HAMLET.
I humbly thank you; well, well, well.

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

HAMLET.
No, not I.
I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA.
My honour’d lord, you know right well you did,
And with them words of so sweet breath compos’d
As made the things more rich; their perfume lost,
Take these again; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.

HAMLET.
Ha, ha! Are you honest?

OPHELIA.
My lord?

HAMLET.
Are you fair?

OPHELIA.
What means your lordship?

HAMLET.
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse
to your beauty.

OPHELIA.
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

HAMLET.
Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from
what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty
into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives
it proof. I did love you once.

OPHELIA.
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET.
You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old
stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.

OPHELIA.
I was the more deceived.

HAMLET.
Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am
myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things
that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud,
revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have
thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act
them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and
heaven? We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us. Go thy ways to a
nunnery. Where’s your father?

OPHELIA.
At home, my lord.

HAMLET.
Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but
in’s own house. Farewell.

OPHELIA.
O help him, you sweet heavens!

HAMLET.
If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry. Be thou
as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get
thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a
fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To
a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell.

OPHELIA.
O heavenly powers, restore him!

HAMLET.
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath given you one
face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and you
lisp, and nickname God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your
ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t, it hath made me mad. I say, we
will have no more marriages. Those that are married already, all but
one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.

[Exit.]

OPHELIA.
O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,
Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
Th’observ’d of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck’d the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh,
That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. O woe is me,
T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see.

Enter King and Polonius.

KING.
Love? His affections do not that way tend,
Nor what he spake, though it lack’d form a little,
Was not like madness. There’s something in his soul
O’er which his melancholy sits on brood,
And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
Will be some danger, which for to prevent,
I have in quick determination
Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England
For the demand of our neglected tribute:
Haply the seas and countries different,
With variable objects, shall expel
This something settled matter in his heart,
Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
From fashion of himself. What think you on’t?

POLONIUS.
It shall do well. But yet do I believe
The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia?
You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said,
We heard it all. My lord, do as you please,
But if you hold it fit, after the play,
Let his queen mother all alone entreat him
To show his grief, let her be round with him,
And I’ll be plac’d, so please you, in the ear
Of all their conference. If she find him not,
To England send him; or confine him where
Your wisdom best shall think.

KING.
It shall be so.
Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.

[Exeunt.]

第一场：城堡中的一室

国王、王后、波洛涅斯、奥菲莉娅、罗森格兰兹及吉尔登斯吞上。

国王。
难道你们就不能用任何旁敲侧击的办法，
从他嘴里探出他为何要装出这副迷乱的模样，
用这种狂暴而危险的神志不清，
如此刺耳地搅扰他所有的安宁时光？

罗森格兰兹。
他倒也承认自己觉得心神恍惚，
可究竟是什么缘故，他绝口不肯吐露。

吉尔登斯吞。
我们也没发现他乐意受人探问，
每当我们想引他说出一点
他真实状况的交代，
他就用一种狡黠的疯狂远远避开。

王后。
他接待你们的态度可好？

罗森格兰兹。
礼貌周全，十足像个绅士。

吉尔登斯吞。
可是显得十分勉强，很违逆他自己的性情。

罗森格兰兹。
他不大提问，可对我们的问话，
回答起来倒是毫无拘束。

王后。
你们可曾试着引他作什么消遣？

罗森格兰兹。
娘娘，事有凑巧，我们在路上
赶过了几个戏子。我们把这事告诉了他，
他听了之后，似乎露出了几分高兴。
他们就在这宫廷附近，
而且我想他们已经接到了吩咐，
今晚就要在他面前演一出戏。

波洛涅斯。
这话千真万确；
他还恳求我来恭请两位陛下
去听听看看这出戏呢。

国王。
我满心乐意；听到他这么有兴致，
我心里真是高兴极了。
好两位先生，再去火上浇油，
把他的心思往这些娱乐上头引。

罗森格兰兹。
遵命，陛下。

〔罗森格兰兹与吉尔登斯吞下。〕

国王。
亲爱的乔特鲁德，你也暂且离开我们，
因为我们已暗中差人去请哈姆雷特到这儿来，
好让他，仿佛是出于偶然，在这儿
撞见奥菲莉娅。
她的父亲和我，作为合情合法的密探，
自会躲到这样一个地方去，看不见他们，却能看见一切，
坦然地判明他们这次会面的情形，
并且从他的举止上断定，
他所遭受的痛苦
究竟是不是因为恋爱的折磨。

王后。
我这就听从你的吩咐。
至于你呢，奥菲莉娅，我只愿
你那娇好的容貌正是哈姆雷特癫狂的福因；
这样我就盼着你的美德
能把他引回他往日的常轨，
那对你们两人的名声都体面。

奥菲莉娅。
娘娘，但愿如此。

〔王后下。〕

波洛涅斯。
奥菲莉娅，你就在这儿走走。——国王陛下，您若不见怪，
我们就各就各位吧。——〔向奥菲莉娅。〕你念这本书，
显出一副用功的模样，这可以遮掩
你为何独自在此。——我们在这上头常该责备，
——这事早已充分证明——人们偏能用虔诚的面孔
和圣洁的行动，去给魔鬼本身
裹上一层糖衣。

国王。 〔旁白。〕
啊，这话太对了！

国王。
〔旁白。〕哦，这话太真切了！
这番话何等犀利地鞭笞着我的良心！
娼妓那施了粉黛的面颊，比起那助它妖艳的脂粉，
固然丑陋，可比起我那用浓墨重彩的词句装点的行径，
它还不算更丑。
哦，沉重的负担！

波洛涅斯。
我听见他来了。陛下，我们且退下吧。

〔国王与波洛涅斯下。〕

哈姆雷特上。

哈姆雷特。
活下去，还是不活，这是个问题：
究竟哪样更高贵，在内心忍受
那暴虐命运的投石弹弓与箭矢，
还是拿起武器，面对一片烦恼的汪洋，
用反抗将它们了结？死去——睡去，
不再有更多；而借着一场沉睡，我们说我们终结了
那心头的痛楚，以及肉体天生要承受的
千百种自然的打击：这正是
热切祈求的圆满结局。死去，睡去。
睡去，或许还有梦——唉，难就难在这里；
因为在那死亡的沉睡中，当我们摆脱了
这凡胎肉身的牵缠，究竟会有些什么梦来临，
不得不令我们踌躇。正是这个顾虑，
使苦难的生命变得如此漫长。
谁人甘愿承受时间的鞭笞与嘲弄，
压迫者的横行，傲慢者的辱蔑，
被鄙夷的爱情之痛，法律的延宕，
官吏的骄横，以及安分守己的贤德
从卑鄙小人那里领受的拳打脚踢，
如果他只消用一柄小小的匕首，
便可以让自己获得永久的解脱？谁人甘愿背着这些重担，
在烦劳的生活下呻吟流汗，
若不是因为惧怕死后的某种情形，
那无人归来的、尚未被发现的国度，
使我们的意志困惑动摇，
宁肯忍受这身已遭的灾祸，
也不愿飞向那未知的别种苦难？
就这样，瞻前顾后把我们全变成了懦夫，
就这样，决断本色的赤诚，
也被思虑的惨淡光影罩上了病容，
而那些宏大而紧要的壮举，
也因这番顾虑而扭转了流向，
丧失了行动的名号。——且慢，现在放轻声些，
美丽的奥菲莉娅来了！——仙女啊，在你的祷告里，
请记下我所有的罪孽。

奥菲莉娅。
我的好殿下，
这些天来，您贵体可安好？

哈姆雷特。
我谦卑地谢过您；好，好，好。

奥菲莉娅。
殿下，我这里有几件您的纪念品，
我早就想奉还给您的。
我请求您，此刻就收下吧。

哈姆雷特。
不，我不会收。
我从未给过你什么。

奥菲莉娅。
尊贵的殿下，您很清楚您给过，
而且伴同这些礼物，您还曾吐露甜蜜芬芳的词句，
使这些东西更显贵重；那芬芳既已消散，
请把这原物收回吧；因为对于一颗高尚的心，
一旦赠予者被证明无情无义，再贵重的礼物也会变得菲薄。
给您，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
哈，哈！你诚实吗？

奥菲莉娅。
殿下？

哈姆雷特。
你美丽吗？

奥菲莉娅。
殿下是什么意思？

哈姆雷特。
我的意思是，假如你又诚实又美丽，你的诚实就该拒绝跟你的美貌来往。

奥菲莉娅。
殿下，美貌除了跟诚实结交，还能有更好的交往吗？

哈姆雷特。
嗯，真的；因为美貌的力量很快就会把诚实从它本来的样子变成拉皮条的，而诚实的力量却没法把美貌变成它自己的模样。这话从前是个悖论，可如今这世道给它提供了证据。我从前确实爱过你。

奥菲莉娅。
真的，殿下，您让我这样相信过。

哈姆雷特。
你本不该相信我；因为美德没法那样嫁接到我们这株老树干上，让我们不带着原来的气味。我没爱过你。

奥菲莉娅。
我更是受骗了。

哈姆雷特。
你进尼姑庵去吧。干吗要做一个孽种的生育者？我自己还算是个过得去的正派人；可是我能指控自己犯下那样的过错，倒不如我母亲没把我生下来更好。我非常骄傲，记仇，野心勃勃，我随手可以犯下的罪过，比我能想到去做的、能想象出形状的、或有时间去实施的还要多。像我这样的家伙，在天堂与大地之间爬来爬去，又算什么呢？我们都是彻头彻尾的混蛋，谁也别信。走你的路，进尼姑庵去吧。你父亲在哪儿？

奥菲莉娅。
在家里，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
把门关紧了，让他除了在自己家里，别处没地方装傻吧。再会。

奥菲莉娅。
啊，帮帮他吧，仁慈的上天！

哈姆雷特。
要是你嫁人，我给你这一句诅咒当你的嫁妆吧。就算你像冰一样贞洁，像雪一样纯净，你也逃不掉诽谤。进尼姑庵去吧，去；再会。要么，要是你非嫁人不可，就嫁个傻瓜吧；因为聪明人都清清楚楚地知道，你们会把他们变成什么样的怪物。去尼姑庵吧，去；还得快点。再会。

奥菲莉娅。
天上的力量啊，恢复他的神志吧！

哈姆雷特。
我也听够了你们涂脂抹粉的事。上帝给了你们一张脸，你们又给自己另做了一张。你们扭着走，迈着碎步，咬着舌说话，给上帝的造物乱起绰号，把你们的放荡说成无知。算了吧，我懒得再说了，这些事已经把我气疯了。我说，我们再也不要什么婚姻了。那些已经结了婚的，除了一个，全都活着；剩下的人就保持现在这样吧。进尼姑庵去吧，去。

〔下。〕

奥菲莉娅。
啊，多么高贵的一颗心就这样倾覆了！
朝臣的明眸，军人的利剑，学者的舌辩，
这美好邦国的期望与娇花，
时尚的明镜，礼仪的典范，
万众瞩目的焦点，竟彻底、彻底塌陷了！
而我，在所有女子中最卑贱、最悲苦，
曾啜饮他音乐般誓言的甘蜜，
如今眼见那高贵而至尊的理性，
像甜美的钟声乱响，走了调，刺耳难听；
那风华正茂的无匹风姿与容貌
竟被迷狂摧折。啊，我好苦啊，
既见过曾经所见，又目睹今之所见。

〔国王与波洛涅斯上。〕

国王。
爱情？他的心思并不在这方面，
他刚才的话，虽然有些语无伦次，
也不像疯癫。他灵魂深处定有某种东西，
他的忧郁正坐在上面孵育，
我担心这孵化出来的，披露出来的，
将是某种危险；为了预防这一点，
我已迅速作出决定，就这样定下来：
他必须火速前去英格兰，
追索那笔久未缴纳的贡赋。
也许大海和异国的风物，
种种不同的景象，会驱除
这股郁结在他心头的无名积物，
他的脑筋不断撞击在这上面，
使他失去了常态。你对此有何看法？

波洛涅斯。
这样很好。不过我还是相信，
他悲伤的起因和源头
来自遭到冷落的爱情。——怎么样，奥菲莉娅？
你不必告诉我们哈姆雷特殿下说了什么，
我们全听见了。陛下，就按您的意思办吧。
不过您要是觉得合适，等演完戏之后，
让他的母后单独恳求他
吐露悲伤，让她直截了当地盘问他，
而我，如蒙允准，就躲在能听见
他们全部谈话的地方。要是她问不出所以然，
就送他去英格兰，或者凭您圣明，
把他拘禁在您认为最合适的地方。

国王。
就这么办。
大人物的疯癫绝不可不加监视。

〔同下。〕

SCENE II. A hall in the Castle.

Enter Hamlet and certain Players.

HAMLET.
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on
the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as
lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much
with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent,
tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and
beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the
soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to
tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for
the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and
noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant. It
out-Herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.

FIRST PLAYER.
I warrant your honour.

HAMLET.
Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor.
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special
observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything
so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature;
to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age
and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come
tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the
judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance
o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have
seen play—and heard others praise, and that highly—not to speak it
profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait
of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have
thought some of Nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made them
well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

FIRST PLAYER.
I hope we have reform’d that indifferently with us, sir.

HAMLET.
O reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no
more than is set down for them. For there be of them that will
themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh
too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then
to be considered. That’s villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition
in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.

[Exeunt Players.]

Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

How now, my lord?
Will the King hear this piece of work?

POLONIUS.
And the Queen too, and that presently.

HAMLET.
Bid the players make haste.

[Exit Polonius.]

Will you two help to hasten them?

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
We will, my lord.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

HAMLET.
What ho, Horatio!

Enter Horatio.

HORATIO.
Here, sweet lord, at your service.

HAMLET.
Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man
As e’er my conversation cop’d withal.

HORATIO.
O my dear lord.

HAMLET.
Nay, do not think I flatter;
For what advancement may I hope from thee,
That no revenue hast, but thy good spirits
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter’d?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal’d thee for herself. For thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hast ta’en with equal thanks. And blessed are those
Whose blood and judgement are so well co-mingled
That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee. Something too much of this.
There is a play tonight before the King.
One scene of it comes near the circumstance
Which I have told thee, of my father’s death.
I prithee, when thou see’st that act a-foot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe mine uncle. If his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen;
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan’s stithy. Give him heedful note;
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face;
And after we will both our judgements join
In censure of his seeming.

HORATIO.
Well, my lord.
If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,
And ’scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

HAMLET.
They are coming to the play. I must be idle.
Get you a place.

Danish march. A flourish. Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia,
Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and others.

KING.
How fares our cousin Hamlet?

HAMLET.
Excellent, i’ faith; of the chameleon’s dish: I eat the air,
promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.

KING.
I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not mine.

HAMLET.
No, nor mine now. [To Polonius.] My lord, you play’d once i’
th’university, you say?

POLONIUS.
That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.

HAMLET.
What did you enact?

POLONIUS.
I did enact Julius Caesar. I was kill’d i’ th’ Capitol. Brutus killed
me.

HAMLET.
It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there. Be the
players ready?

ROSENCRANTZ.
Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.

QUEEN.
Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

HAMLET.
No, good mother, here’s metal more attractive.

POLONIUS.
[To the King.] O ho! do you mark that?

HAMLET.
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

[Lying down at Ophelia’s feet.]

OPHELIA.
No, my lord.

HAMLET.
I mean, my head upon your lap?

OPHELIA.
Ay, my lord.

HAMLET.
Do you think I meant country matters?

OPHELIA.
I think nothing, my lord.

HAMLET.
That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.

OPHELIA.
What is, my lord?

HAMLET.
Nothing.

OPHELIA.
You are merry, my lord.

HAMLET.
Who, I?

OPHELIA.
Ay, my lord.

HAMLET.
O God, your only jig-maker! What should a man do but be merry? For look
you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within’s two
hours.

OPHELIA.
Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.

HAMLET.
So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I’ll have a suit of
sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then
there’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year. But
by’r lady, he must build churches then; or else shall he suffer not
thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is ‘For, O, for O, the
hobby-horse is forgot!’

Trumpets sound. The dumb show enters.

Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing him and he
her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her
up, and declines his head upon her neck. Lays him down upon a bank of
flowers. She, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow,
takes off his crown, kisses it, pours poison in the King’s ears, and
exits. The Queen returns, finds the King dead, and makes passionate
action. The Poisoner with some three or four Mutes, comes in again,
seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner
woos the Queen with gifts. She seems loth and unwilling awhile, but in
the end accepts his love.

[Exeunt.]

OPHELIA.
What means this, my lord?

HAMLET.
Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.

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

Enter Prologue.

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

OPHELIA.
Will they tell us what this show meant?

HAMLET.
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.

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

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

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

OPHELIA.
’Tis brief, my lord.

HAMLET.
As woman’s love.

Enter a King and a Queen.

PLAYER 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.

PLAYER 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.

PLAYER 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—

PLAYER 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.

HAMLET.
[Aside.] Wormwood, wormwood.

PLAYER 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.

PLAYER 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;
Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
This world is not for aye; nor ’tis not strange
That even our loves should with our fortunes change,
For ’tis a question left us yet to prove,
Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
The great man down, you mark his favourite flies,
The poor advanc’d makes friends of enemies;
And hitherto doth love on fortune tend:
For who not needs shall never lack a friend,
And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
Directly seasons him his enemy.
But orderly to end where I begun,
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown.
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
So think thou wilt no second husband wed,
But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

PLAYER QUEEN.
Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light,
Sport and repose lock from me day and night,
To desperation turn my trust and hope,
An anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope,
Each opposite that blanks the face of joy,
Meet what I would have well, and it destroy!
Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
If, once a widow, ever I be wife.

HAMLET.
[To Ophelia.] If she should break it now.

PLAYER KING.
’Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile.
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.
[Sleeps.]

PLAYER QUEEN.
Sleep rock thy brain,
And never come mischance between us twain.

[Exit.]

HAMLET.
Madam, how like you this play?

QUEEN.
The lady protests too much, methinks.

HAMLET.
O, but she’ll keep her word.

KING.
Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in’t?

HAMLET.
No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i’ th’ world.

KING.
What do you call the play?

HAMLET.
The Mousetrap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a
murder done in Vienna. Gonzago is the Duke’s name, his wife Baptista:
you shall see anon; ’tis a knavish piece of work: but what o’ that?
Your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. Let the
gall’d jade wince; our withers are unwrung.

Enter Lucianus.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.

OPHELIA.
You are a good chorus, my lord.

HAMLET.
I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets
dallying.

OPHELIA.
You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

HAMLET.
It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.

OPHELIA.
Still better, and worse.

HAMLET.
So you mistake your husbands.—Begin, murderer. Pox, leave thy damnable
faces, and begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.

LUCIANUS.
Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing,
Confederate season, else no creature seeing;
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
Thy natural magic and dire property
On wholesome life usurp immediately.

[Pours the poison into the sleeper’s ears.]

HAMLET.
He poisons him i’ th’garden for’s estate. His name’s Gonzago. The story
is extant, and written in very choice Italian. You shall see anon how
the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.

OPHELIA.
The King rises.

HAMLET.
What, frighted with false fire?

QUEEN.
How fares my lord?

POLONIUS.
Give o’er the play.

KING.
Give me some light. Away.

All.
Lights, lights, lights.

[Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio.]

HAMLET.
Why, let the strucken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play;
For some must watch, while some must sleep,
So runs the world away.
Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, if the rest of my
fortunes turn Turk with me; with two Provincial roses on my razed
shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?

HORATIO.
Half a share.

HAMLET.
A whole one, I.
For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself, and now reigns here
A very, very—pajock.

HORATIO.
You might have rhymed.

HAMLET.
O good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound. Didst
perceive?

HORATIO.
Very well, my lord.

HAMLET.
Upon the talk of the poisoning?

HORATIO.
I did very well note him.

HAMLET.
Ah, ha! Come, some music. Come, the recorders.
For if the king like not the comedy,
Why then, belike he likes it not, perdie.
Come, some music.

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

GUILDENSTERN.
Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

HAMLET.
Sir, a whole history.

GUILDENSTERN.
The King, sir—

HAMLET.
Ay, sir, what of him?

GUILDENSTERN.
Is in his retirement, marvellous distempered.

HAMLET.
With drink, sir?

GUILDENSTERN.
No, my lord; rather with choler.

HAMLET.
Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to the
doctor, for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him
into far more choler.

GUILDENSTERN.
Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so
wildly from my affair.

HAMLET.
I am tame, sir, pronounce.

GUILDENSTERN.
The Queen your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me
to you.

HAMLET.
You are welcome.

GUILDENSTERN.
Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. If it shall
please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother’s
commandment; if not, your pardon and my return shall be the end of my
business.

HAMLET.
Sir, I cannot.

GUILDENSTERN.
What, my lord?

HAMLET.
Make you a wholesome answer. My wit’s diseased. But, sir, such answer
as I can make, you shall command; or rather, as you say, my mother.
Therefore no more, but to the matter. My mother, you say,—

ROSENCRANTZ.
Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into amazement and
admiration.

HAMLET.
O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother! But is there no sequel
at the heels of this mother’s admiration?

ROSENCRANTZ.
She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed.

HAMLET.
We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any further
trade with us?

ROSENCRANTZ.
My lord, you once did love me.

HAMLET.
And so I do still, by these pickers and stealers.

ROSENCRANTZ.
Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do surely bar the
door upon your own liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend.

HAMLET.
Sir, I lack advancement.

ROSENCRANTZ.
How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself for your
succession in Denmark?

HAMLET.
Ay, sir, but while the grass grows—the proverb is something musty.

Re-enter the Players with recorders.

O, the recorders. Let me see one.—To withdraw with you, why do you go
about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?

GUILDENSTERN.
O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.

HAMLET.
I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?

GUILDENSTERN.
My lord, I cannot.

HAMLET.
I pray you.

GUILDENSTERN.
Believe me, I cannot.

HAMLET.
I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN.
I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET.
’Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your finger and
thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most
eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN.
But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony. I have not the
skill.

HAMLET.
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play
upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart
of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my
compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little
organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood, do you think I am easier
to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though
you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.

Enter Polonius.

God bless you, sir.

POLONIUS.
My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.

HAMLET.
Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?

POLONIUS.
By the mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.

HAMLET.
Methinks it is like a weasel.

POLONIUS.
It is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET.
Or like a whale.

POLONIUS.
Very like a whale.

HAMLET.
Then will I come to my mother by and by.—They fool me to the top of my
bent.—I will come by and by.

POLONIUS.
I will say so.

[Exit.]

HAMLET.
By and by is easily said. Leave me, friends.

[Exeunt all but Hamlet.]

’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft now, to my mother.
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:
Let me be cruel, not unnatural.
I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.
How in my words somever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my soul, consent.

[Exit.]

第二场：城堡中的厅堂

〔哈姆雷特及众伶人上。〕

哈姆雷特。
请你把这段台词，照我念给你听的样子，轻快地从舌尖上吐出来。可你要是像你们许多演员那样，扯着嗓门去嚎它，那我倒宁愿让城里的公告员来念我的词句。也别用手这样过分地锯着空气，要处处用得柔和；因为，哪怕在激情的洪流、风暴或是，我可以说，旋风之中，你也必须取得并养成一种节制，好让它显得平顺。哦，听见一个戴着假发的粗壮家伙把一段激情撕成碎片，撕成破布条子，去震裂那班只配看热闹的站客的耳朵，真叫我从灵魂里感到厌恶；这些人，大多除了莫名其妙的哑剧和嘈杂声响，什么也领会不了。我真想把这样的家伙抽一顿鞭子，因为他把特马根特演过了火。这比希律王还要希律王。我请你务必避免这一点。

伶人甲。
我向您保证，大人。

哈姆雷特。
可也别太平淡，要让你自己的鉴别力做你的老师。让动作配合台词，让台词配合动作，特别要谨守这一点：不可逾越自然的常道；因为任何过分的东西都背离了演剧的宗旨。演剧的目的，无论从前还是现在，都好比是给自然举起一面镜子；让德行看见自己的容貌，让轻蔑看见自己的形象，让所谓的时代与社会看见自己的形态与印记。要是表演得过火，或是演得拖沓无力，虽然能让外行发笑，却不能不叫明眼人伤心；而这样一个明眼人的批评，在你们的心目中，应当抵得过满场其他人的喝彩。哦，有些演员，我见过他们演戏，也听人把他们捧得极高——不是我亵渎地乱说——他们既没有基督徒说话的腔调，走起路来也不像基督徒，不像异教徒，简直不像人，只管大摇大摆，嘶声吼叫，让我几乎以为是大自然雇了些下等工匠，把人给造了出来，而且造得不成样子，他们模仿起人类来，真是恶劣到了极点。

伶人甲。
我希望我们在这方面已经改得差不多了，先生。

哈姆雷特。
哦，要彻底地改。还有，让那些演小丑的，只说给他们写定的台词。因为他们中间有些人，会自己笑起来，引得一部分无知的观众也跟着发笑，可就在那时候，戏里某个必要的关节正需要人用心琢磨。这种事情太可恶了，而且也暴露出那干这事的傻瓜，怀抱的是最可鄙的野心。去吧，你们去准备吧。

〔伶人下。〕

波洛涅斯、罗森格兰兹及吉尔登斯吞上。

好了，大人？
国王要来听这出戏吗？

波洛涅斯。
王后也要来，而且马上就到。

哈姆雷特。
叫戏子们快些准备。

〔波洛涅斯下。〕

你们两位也去催催他们，好吗？

罗森格兰兹与吉尔登斯吞。
我们这就去，大人。

〔罗森格兰兹与吉尔登斯吞下。〕

哈姆雷特。
喂，霍拉旭！

霍拉旭上。

霍拉旭。
这儿呢，亲爱的大人，听候差遣。

哈姆雷特。
霍拉旭，在我所结识的人里头，
就数你最正直。

霍拉旭。
啊，我亲爱的大人。

哈姆雷特。
别，别以为我在恭维；
我能指望从你身上图什么好处呢，
你除了一副好心肠，既无钱财
又无衣食，何须去恭维穷人？
不，让涂了蜜的舌头去舔荒唐的排场，
让膝盖的关节屈折弯转，哪里有利
就往哪里跪。你可听见？
自从我这颗心能自己作主，
能分辨人的高低，它就选中了你，
把它自己给了你。因为你这人
遭逢一切，却不为所苦，无论是命运的
打击还是奖赏，你都以同样的感谢承受。
那些血性与判断如此调和得当的人
真是有福了，他们不是命运手指底下的笛子，
随她高兴奏什么调就出什么声。
给我一个人，一个不为欲念所摆布的人，
我会把他佩在心窝，
对，心坎里，就算我待你一样。
这事已说得太多了。
今晚国王面前有一出戏。
其中有一场，情节跟我告诉你的
我父王死况非常相近。
我求你，等那一幕上演的时候，
用你整个灵魂的专注
去观察我叔父。要是他暗藏的那件丑事
听了那段台词还不肯脱窝而出，
那我们见到的就是个该死的鬼魂，
而我的想象也就跟伏尔甘的冶炉
一样肮脏。好好留神他；
我也要把眼睛盯在他的脸上；
事后再把我们的两份判断合起来，
评一评他那副神气。

霍拉旭。
好，大人。
要是这出戏演着演着，他偷了什么东西
而能躲过辩察，这失物归我来赔。

哈姆雷特。
他们来看戏了。我必须装出没事的模样。
你去找个地方坐下。

丹麦进行曲。号角齐鸣。国王、王后、波洛涅斯、奥菲莉娅、
罗森格兰兹、吉尔登斯吞及余人等上。

国王。
我们的侄子哈姆雷特近来怎样？

哈姆雷特。
再好不过了，说真的，我吃的是变色龙的食物：吃空气，塞满的都是空头许诺——你拿这个喂阉鸡可喂不肥。

国王。
这话我可没的回，哈姆雷特；这些诗句不是我的。

哈姆雷特。
不，现在也不是我的了。〔向波洛涅斯。〕大人，我听说你曾在大学里演过戏？

波洛涅斯。
我是演过，殿下，大伙儿还夸我演得好呢。

哈姆雷特。
你扮的是什么？

波洛涅斯。
我扮的是朱利乌斯·凯撒。我在神殿里被人杀了。是勃鲁托斯杀的我。

哈姆雷特。
他可真够鲁莽的，竟在神殿里杀了那么一头好牛。戏子们准备好了吗？

罗森格兰兹。
好了，殿下；就等您吩咐呢。

王后。
到这儿来，好哈姆雷特，挨着我坐。

哈姆雷特。
不，好母亲，这儿有更吸引人的铁石。

波洛涅斯。
〔向国王。〕哦嗬！您看见了吗？

哈姆雷特。
小姐，我能睡在你的膝上吗？
〔卧倒在奥菲莉娅脚边。〕

奥菲莉娅。
不能，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
我是说，把我的头枕在你的膝上？

奥菲莉娅。
嗯，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
你以为我是在想乡下人的事儿吗？

奥菲莉娅。
我什么也不想，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
睡在姑娘大腿中间，那倒是个好主意。

奥菲莉娅。
什么，殿下？

哈姆雷特。
没什么。

奥菲莉娅。
您真爱说笑，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
谁，我吗？

奥菲莉娅。
嗯，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
上帝在上，我不过是替您凑个趣儿罢了。人活着不寻开心又能做什么？您瞧我母亲，神色多么愉快，可我的父亲去世还不满两个时辰呢。

奥菲莉娅。
不，已经足足四个月了，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
那么久了？哎，要是这样，那就让魔鬼去穿丧服吧，我可要换上一身青缎子衣裳了。天哪！死了两个月，还没被人忘干净？这么说来，一位大人物死后让人记上半年，倒也还有点儿希望。可是，凭圣母起誓，他得多盖几座教堂才行；不然的话，他只好甘心被人忘得精光，就像那玩具木马，墓志铭上就那么一句：“哎，哎，玩具木马忘得精光！”

号角鸣响。哑剧登场。

〔饰国王与王后的伶人上场，状极亲昵；王后拥抱国王，国王也拥抱她。王后跪下，向他作剖白心迹之状。他将她扶起，把头垂靠在她颈侧。随后他躺倒在一片花坛上。王后见他睡熟，便离开了。随即有一人上场，摘下国王头上的王冠，吻了吻，往国王耳中灌入毒药，然后下场。王后重上，见国王已死，便做悲恸欲绝之状。那下毒者带着三四个哑角再次上场，似乎与她一同哀悼。尸体被抬下场。下毒者以礼物向王后求爱。她似乎先是推拒、不大情愿，但终究接受了他的爱。〕
〔众人下。〕

奥菲莉娅。 这是什么意思，殿下？

哈姆雷特。 嘛，这叫偷偷摸摸搞把戏；意思是恶作剧。

奥菲莉娅。 想必这出默戏点出了正戏的关目。

〔开场词上。〕

哈姆雷特。 听这家伙一说我们就明白了：戏子是守不住秘密的；他们什么都会抖落出来。

奥菲莉娅。 他会告诉我们这出默戏是什么意思吗？

哈姆雷特。 会，你给他看的任何戏他都会告诉你。你只要好意思给他看，他就好意思告诉你那是什么意思。

奥菲莉娅。 你真坏，你真坏：我要看戏了。

开场词。
为敝戏，为这出悲剧，
向诸位躬身乞垂恤，
恳请耐心听从头叙。

哈姆雷特。 这是开场词，还是刻在戒指上的短诗？

奥菲莉娅。 很短，殿下。

哈姆雷特。 像女人的爱情一样短。

〔伶王与伶后上。〕

伶王。 整整三十个春秋，福玻斯的金车
绕着涅普顿的咸浪与忒卢斯的圆廓周行，
三十打明月，借着借来的清光
绕着这世界，也已流转了十二个三十回，
自从爱情填满我们心房，许门将我们双手
凭最神圣的婚约结合成相守的一对。

伶后。 愿日与月再让我们数尽
同样多的行程，在我们的爱耗尽之前。
可是，可怜我是，你还来病体恢恢，
全没了兴致，远不似旧日风采，
叫我为你担忧。然而，我虽然担忧，
殿下，那担忧却决不可让你不安：
因为女人的担忧与爱是一般分量，
两者全无，或是两者都到极端。
如今，我爱有多少，你已亲身知晓，
我的爱有多大，我的担忧也就有多大。
爱重之处，最细小的疑虑也是恐惧；
小小恐惧长成巨忧，巨爱也随之而生。

伶王。 说真的，我得离开你了，爱妻，为时不远了：
我那管用的肌体将渐次失其功用：
你将留在这美好的人间，受着
尊敬，受人爱慕，或许还会遇上一个
同样体贴的丈夫——

伶后。 啊，堵住那话头。
那样一种爱在我胸中必是叛逆。
让我嫁第二个丈夫，就让我受尽诅咒！
再嫁的，不是为夫弑夫的人，还能有谁。

哈姆雷特。 〔旁白。〕苦艾，苦艾。

伶后。 叫人改嫁的种种因由
不过是鄙俗的盘算，全不是爱。
我杀我死去的丈夫第二遍，
要是第二个丈夫在床上吻我。

伶王。
我相信你现在说的是心中所想；
但我们定下的主意，往往自行打破。
决心不过是记忆的奴隶，
生得猛烈，却难以持久：
此刻像未熟的果子挂在枝头，
一旦成熟，不待摇动自会坠落。
最要紧的是，我们总会忘记
偿还那欠给自己的债务。
激情中我们对自己许下的愿，
待到激情消退，决心也跟着消散。
无论悲恸还是喜悦，其猛烈程度
都会在发作中将自己摧毁。
喜乐最狂之处，哀伤也最号啕；
哀伤转喜，喜乐转悲，只消纤芥之由。
这世界并非永恒；所以也不足为奇，
连我们的爱也随境遇一起变迁，
因为有个问题尚待我们去求证：
究竟是爱支配了运道，还是运道支配了爱。
大人物倒了，你看他宠信的人便纷纷散去，
穷光蛋发迹了，连仇敌也变成朋友；
至此，爱都是追逐着运道走的：
因为不缺什么的人永远不会缺少朋友，
而困顿中人若去试探那虚情假意的朋友，
立刻就会把他催化成仇敌。
但要把话头拉回到我起头的地方，
我们的意愿与命运如此背道而驰，
以至于我们的盘算总被推翻。
念头是我们的，念头的结局却不由我们作主。
所以你想，你绝不会再嫁第二个丈夫，
可等你的第一任丈夫一死，那念头也就死了。

伶后。
那就让她不给我食粮，天不给我光，
让白昼和黑夜都锁住我的嬉戏与安歇，
让我的信托与盼望都化作绝望，
让我的天地只剩牢狱中隐士的那一点慰藉，
让所有与欢颜相克的物事，
都来阻挠我愿其成功的事，把它毁掉！
无论在此处还是彼处，让永无休止的争斗追逼我，
倘若一旦做了寡妇，我又再去做妻子！

哈姆雷特。
〔对奥菲莉娅。〕她要是现在又把它打破了怎么办。

伶王。
这誓发得够重了。亲爱的，且让我在这里歇一会儿。
我的精神愈来愈倦，我倒想用睡眠
消磨这乏味的时光。
〔入睡。〕

伶后。
愿睡眠摇着你的脑海，
你我之间永远不要生出什么不幸。

〔下。〕

哈姆雷特。
母后，您觉得这出戏怎么样？

王后。
我觉得那女人表白得太过火了。

哈姆雷特。
哦，但她会说到做到的。

国王。
你听过这出戏的情节了吗？里面没有什么冒犯之处吧？

哈姆雷特。
没有，没有，他们不过是开开玩笑，毒药也是闹着玩的；半点儿冒犯也没有。

国王。
这出戏叫什么名字？

哈姆雷特。

《捕鼠机》。怎么说呢？巧喻暗合。这出戏演的是维也纳发生的一桩谋杀。公爵名叫贡扎果，他的妻子叫巴普蒂丝妲：你们马上就会看到；这是一出刁钻的戏，可那又怎样？陛下，以及我们这些问心无愧的人，看了也不会刺痛。让被擦伤的马儿闪避吧；我们的肩胛骨毫无伤痛。

〔路西安纳斯上。〕
这位是路西安纳斯，国王的侄子。

奥菲莉娅。

殿下，您真是一位好伴唱。

哈姆雷特。

倘若我能看见你们那木偶戏里的打情骂俏，我倒可以替您跟您的爱人做个通译。

奥菲莉娅。

您的舌头太利了，殿下，太利了。

哈姆雷特。

您要是想把我的锋芒磨钝，可得疼得呻吟几声。

奥菲莉娅。

妙语越发不堪了。

哈姆雷特。

你们嫁丈夫，不也正是这样以优当劣吗。——开始吧，凶手。见鬼，收起你那套可憎的嘴脸，开始吧。来呀，那聒噪的乌鸦正厉声高喊着复仇。

路西安纳斯。

心思狠毒，手段迅捷，药力精准，时机恰当，天时助虐，更无旁人在场；你由午夜的莠草熬炼而成的秽物，经赫卡忒的三重咒诅，三次侵染，你天生的魔法与可怕的效用，立刻就将健全的生命强夺了去。

〔把毒药倒入熟睡者的耳中。〕

哈姆雷特。

他在花园里毒死了他，为的是谋取他的产业。那人名叫贡扎果。故事流传至今，用的是极其精粹的意大利文写就。你们马上就能看见，那凶手是如何博得了贡扎果妻子的欢心。

奥菲莉娅。

国王站起来了。

哈姆雷特。

怎么，被空枪的虚火吓着了？

王后。

陛下怎么样了？

波洛涅斯。

停戏。

国王。

给我拿火把来。走。

众人。

火把，火把，火把。

〔除哈姆雷特与霍拉旭外，众人同下。〕

哈姆雷特。

让那受伤的鹿去哭泣吧， 未遭伤损的雄鹿自可嬉戏； 因为有人必须值守，有人不妨安睡， 世道就是这样运转。
先生，要是连这个戏，再加上一大片羽毛的装饰——倘若我的命运剩下那些全都背叛了我，跟我翻了脸——再穿上我那开了口的鞋子上缀着两枚普罗旺斯的绢花，难道还不能在一群戏班里谋个合伙的营生吗？

霍拉旭。

可以挣半份股份。

哈姆雷特。

我要整整一份。
因为你知道，亲爱的达蒙， 这国邦本来归 朱庇特亲自掌管，如今在此当政的 却是个十足，十足的——孔雀。

霍拉旭。

您本可以押上韵的。

哈姆雷特。

啊，好霍拉旭，我对鬼魂的话，哪怕拿一千镑来打赌也绝不含糊。你察觉到了吗？

霍拉旭。

看得非常清楚，殿下。

哈姆雷特。

就在提及下毒的时候？

霍拉旭。

我把他看得真切极了。

哈姆雷特。
哈，哈！来，奏乐。来，吹笛子的。
要是国王不喜欢这出喜剧，
那嘛，想必他是不喜欢，的的确确。
来，奏乐。

〔罗森格兰兹与吉尔登斯吞上。

吉尔登斯吞。
好殿下，请容我跟您说句话。

哈姆雷特。
先生，讲一整段历史都行。

吉尔登斯吞。
国王，殿下——

哈姆雷特。
嗯，先生，他怎么了？

吉尔登斯吞。
他退到内室去了，心情异常暴躁。

哈姆雷特。
喝酒喝的，先生？

吉尔登斯吞。
不，殿下，是胆汁上涌。

哈姆雷特。
你这聪明劲儿，应该更丰厚些，把这番话去告诉医生才是，要我去给他泻火，只怕反会把他激得更暴躁。

吉尔登斯吞。
好殿下，请把您的话理出个头绪来，别这么疯疯癫癫地岔开我的正事。

哈姆雷特。
我服帖了，先生，请说吧。

吉尔登斯吞。
王后，您的母亲，心中万分难过，差我来见您。

哈姆雷特。
你倒是受欢迎。

吉尔登斯吞。
不，好殿下，这份客气可不对味儿。要是您肯给我一个清醒的答复，我就去完成您母亲的差遣；要是不肯，那就请您恕罪，我这就回去，我的公事便算到此为止。

哈姆雷特。
先生，我不能。

吉尔登斯吞。
不能什么，殿下？

哈姆雷特。
给你一个清醒的答复。我的心智有病。不过，先生，我能给出的答复，你尽管吩咐，或者按你说的，我母亲的吩咐。所以别多说了，谈正事吧。你说，我母亲——

罗森格兰兹。
那她这样说：您的举动把她吓呆了，也让她惊异万分。

哈姆雷特。
哦，好一个神奇的儿子，竟能让母亲这般惊呆！不过，这位母亲的惊异之后，难道没有后续跟着来吗？

罗森格兰兹。
她希望您在上床之前到她房里去谈谈。

哈姆雷特。
我们遵命，就算她是我们十倍的母亲。你还有什么生意要跟我们做吗？

罗森格兰兹。
殿下，您从前可是爱我的。

哈姆雷特。
我现在还是，凭我这双扒儿手起誓。

罗森格兰兹。
好殿下，您心里不痛快的原因是什么？您若是把心事瞒着朋友，无异于亲手锁上自己自由的大门。

哈姆雷特。
先生，我少了进身之阶。

罗森格兰兹。
这怎么可能，您不是有国王亲口许诺，要立您为丹麦王位的继承人吗？

哈姆雷特。
唉，先生，可惜“草长马饿”——这句谚语有点发霉了。

〔众伶人持笛子上。〕

哈姆雷特。
哦，是竖笛。让我看看一支。——把你拉到一边，你为什么要绕到我的上风头，好像非要把我赶进罗网才甘心？

吉尔登斯吞。
啊，殿下，如果我太放肆，那是因为我的忠心太不知礼数了。

哈姆雷特。
这话我不大明白。你愿不愿意吹吹这管笛子？

吉尔登斯吞。
殿下，我不会。

哈姆雷特。
我求你。

吉尔登斯吞。
相信我，我真的不会。

哈姆雷特。
我恳求你。

吉尔登斯吞。
我碰都没碰过，殿下。

哈姆雷特。
这跟撒谎一样容易：用你的手指和拇指按住这些音孔，用嘴给它送气，它就会吐出最雄辩的音乐。你看，这些就是按孔。

吉尔登斯吞。
可是这些孔我无法指挥它们发出和谐的乐音。我没有这个本事。

哈姆雷特。
嘿，你现在瞧瞧，你把我看成了多么下贱的东西！你想弹弄我；你装得好像摸透了我的音孔；你想挖出我心里的秘密；你想把我从最低音到最高音都试探一遍；而在这小小的乐器里，有的是音乐，有的是绝妙的声音，可你偏让它发不出声来。天哪，你以为我比一根笛子更容易让人弹弄吗？随便你管我叫什么乐器，就算你能把我按出格子，你也弹弄不了我。

〔波洛涅斯上。〕

上帝保佑您，先生。

波洛涅斯。
殿下，王后要跟您说话，立刻就要。

哈姆雷特。
你看见那边那朵云了吗，形状差不多像一头骆驼？

波洛涅斯。
老天，真像，确实像一头骆驼。

哈姆雷特。
我觉得它像一只黄鼠狼。

波洛涅斯。
脊背拱起来，像一只黄鼠狼。

哈姆雷特。
或者像一头鲸鱼。

波洛涅斯。
真像一头鲸鱼。

哈姆雷特。
那么我这就到我母亲那儿去。——他们把我愚弄得够了。——我这就去。

波洛涅斯。
我就这么回话。

〔下。〕

哈姆雷特。
“这就去”说了也容易。走吧，朋友们。

〔除哈姆雷特外均下。〕

现在正是夜里最妖异的时刻，
坟园张口哈欠，地狱自身也朝
人间喷出毒瘴。此刻我能喝滚烫的血，
能做出那样惨厉的事，白天瞧见
都会发抖。轻些，此刻去见母亲。
心啊，别失了你本来的天性；绝不让
尼禄式的灵魂钻进这坚定的胸膛：
让我残忍，但不要丧失天伦。
我要用匕首般的话刺她，却不用真匕首；
我的舌头和灵魂在此时都得做伪君子。
无论我言语上怎样痛责她，
我的灵魂啊，绝不许把它们落印成真。

〔下。〕

SCENE III. A room in the Castle.

Enter King, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING.
I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you,
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you.
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow
Out of his lunacies.

GUILDENSTERN.
We will ourselves provide.
Most holy and religious fear it is
To keep those many many bodies safe
That live and feed upon your Majesty.

ROSENCRANTZ.
The single and peculiar life is bound
With all the strength and armour of the mind,
To keep itself from ’noyance; but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest
The lives of many. The cease of majesty
Dies not alone; but like a gulf doth draw
What’s near it with it. It is a massy wheel
Fix’d on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortis’d and adjoin’d; which when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never alone
Did the King sigh, but with a general groan.

KING.
Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage;
For we will fetters put upon this fear,
Which now goes too free-footed.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
We will haste us.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

Enter Polonius.

POLONIUS.
My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet.
Behind the arras I’ll convey myself
To hear the process. I’ll warrant she’ll tax him home,
And as you said, and wisely was it said,
’Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
Since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear
The speech of vantage. Fare you well, my liege,
I’ll call upon you ere you go to bed,
And tell you what I know.

KING.
Thanks, dear my lord.

[Exit Polonius.]

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,—
A brother’s murder! Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what’s in prayer but this twofold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up.
My fault is past. But O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder!
That cannot be; since I am still possess’d
Of those effects for which I did the murder,—
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon’d and retain th’offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compell’d
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that struggling to be free,
Art more engag’d! Help, angels! Make assay:
Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.
All may be well.

[Retires and kneels.]

Enter Hamlet.

HAMLET.
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying.
And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d:
A villain kills my father, and for that
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven. O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
’Tis heavy with him. And am I then reveng’d,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season’d for his passage? No.
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage,
Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed,
At gaming, swearing; or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in’t,
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn’d and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

[Exit.]

The King rises and advances.

KING.
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

[Exit.]

第三场：城堡中一室

〔国王、罗森格兰兹及吉尔登斯吞上。〕

国王。
我不喜欢他，由他疯癫横行，对我们也不安全。因此你们准备着，我即刻签发委任文书，他随你们同赴英格兰。我邦国的体面，不能容忍这日益逼近的危险，它时时从他的狂乱中滋长。

吉尔登斯吞。
我们会自己准备。怀着最神圣虔诚的戒惧之心，来保全那无数倚仗陛下为生的众多生灵。

罗森格兰兹。
每一个单薄的生命，都会倾尽心灵的全部力量和甲胄来保卫自身免受伤害；更何况那维系着无数人福祉与安泰的灵魂呢。君主的崩殂不独是自身的终结；它像一个深渊，会把周围的一切都卷进去。它是一只巨大的轮子，安放在最高山峰的顶峰，那巨大的辐条上榫接着千万件琐屑之物；当它坠落时，每一件微小的附庸、细碎的后果，都随之同归于轰然的毁灭。君王从不曾独自叹息，身后必有万民的悲鸣。

国王。
请你们打点起来，从速起程吧；我们要给这恐惧上脚镣，它现在未免太通行无阻了。

罗森格兰兹与吉尔登斯吞。
我们就去赶紧办理。

〔罗森格兰兹与吉尔登斯吞下。〕

〔波洛涅斯上。〕

波洛涅斯。
主上，他正到他母亲的密室里去。我要躲在挂毯后面，听他们交谈。我敢担保，她准会把他好好教训一顿。正如您所说，而且说得极是明智，单凭一个母亲还不够，女人天性偏袒，总得另有旁人从旁偷听这有利的交谈才好。再会，主上，在您就寝之前我再来谒见，把我的所闻禀告。

国王。
多谢，亲爱的御臣。

〔波洛涅斯下。〕

克劳狄斯。
啊，我的罪恶冲天，臭气熏天，
它背着那最初最古老的诅咒，——
谋害亲兄！我祷告也不能，
虽然想祷告的念头跟意志一样强烈：
我的重罪压倒了我的强愿，
就像一个人身兼两件急务，
我愣着，不知先做哪一件好，
结果一件也没做。就算这双可诅咒的手
让兄弟的血浸得比本身还厚，
难道仁慈的上天就没有足够的雨水
能把它洗得洁白如雪吗？慈悲有什么用，
不就是要直面罪恶的面孔？
祷告，不就有两重力量，
或是让我们在堕落之前就被拦住，
或是堕落之后得到赦免？那么我该举目仰望。
我的过错已成过去。可是，唉！什么样的祷告
才能算我合宜？“饶恕我凶残的杀人罪”？
那不行；因为我还占有着
诱我杀人的那些果实，──
我的王冠、我的野心，和我的王后。
人能得了饶恕而仍然保留着罪孽吗？
在这败坏的人世，
罪恶镀金的手尽可以推开正义，
常见的是凭借犯罪的利益
把法律收买。但在天上却不是这样；
那里没法推诿，那里一举一动
都得显露本相，而我们自己不得不
对着我们罪孽的牙齿和额角，
当庭出证。那怎么办？还能做什么？
试试忏悔有什么办法。有什么是它做不到的？
但如果一个人不能忏悔，它又能怎样？
啊，可怜的光景！啊，像死一样乌黑的胸膛！
啊，浸透了胶的灵魂，越想挣扎摆脱，
越粘得牢！帮我，天使们！让我试吧：
弯曲，倔强的膝盖；铁索般缠绕的心，
像初生婴孩的筋脉一般软下来吧！
也许一切还都能变好。

〔退后跪下。〕

哈姆雷特上。

哈姆雷特。
现在正好下手，他正祷告；
我现在就动手。这样他上天堂去了；
我也算报了仇。那可得斟酌：
一个恶棍杀了我父亲，为此，
我这独子，却把这恶棍送上
天堂。啊，这简直是酬劳，不是报仇。
他杀我父亲时，父亲正饱食终日，
罪孽盛放，如五月般丰腴；
除了上天，谁知道他那些罪孽怎么结算？
但按我们这世间的境况和想法，
他那些罪孽是沉重的。那么，我算是报了仇吗，
在他洗涤灵魂的时候把他干掉，
正当他准备好了、适于启程？不。
收起来，剑，去等一个更可怕的时机：
等他喝醉了睡死，或者盛怒之中，
或者在他那乱伦的床笫之乐里，
在赌博、赌咒发誓，或是在干些什么
没有半点得救指望的事情的时候，
这时绊倒他，让他脚跟朝天踢向穹苍，
让他的灵魂像地狱一样漆黑堕入地狱。
我母亲在等我。这剂药只是延长你病恹恹的日子罢了。

〔下。〕

〔国王站起，前行。〕

国王。
我的言语飞升，我的心思滞留地下；
没有心思的言语永远上不了天堂。

〔下。〕

SCENE IV. Another room in the Castle.

Enter Queen and Polonius.

POLONIUS.
He will come straight. Look you lay home to him,
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
And that your Grace hath screen’d and stood between
Much heat and him. I’ll silence me e’en here.
Pray you be round with him.

HAMLET.
[Within.] Mother, mother, mother.

QUEEN.
I’ll warrant you, Fear me not.
Withdraw, I hear him coming.

[Polonius goes behind the arras.]

Enter Hamlet.

HAMLET.
Now, mother, what’s the matter?

QUEEN.
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

HAMLET.
Mother, you have my father much offended.

QUEEN.
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

HAMLET.
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

QUEEN.
Why, how now, Hamlet?

HAMLET.
What’s the matter now?

QUEEN.
Have you forgot me?

HAMLET.
No, by the rood, not so.
You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,
And, would it were not so. You are my mother.

QUEEN.
Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.

HAMLET.
Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.

QUEEN.
What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help, ho!

POLONIUS.
[Behind.] What, ho! help, help, help!

HAMLET.
How now? A rat? [Draws.]
Dead for a ducat, dead!

[Makes a pass through the arras.]

POLONIUS.
[Behind.] O, I am slain!

[Falls and dies.]

QUEEN.
O me, what hast thou done?

HAMLET.
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?

[Draws forth Polonius.]

QUEEN.
O what a rash and bloody deed is this!

HAMLET.
A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king and marry with his brother.

QUEEN.
As kill a king?

HAMLET.
Ay, lady, ’twas my word.—
[To Polonius.] Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune,
Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.—
Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down,
And let me wring your heart, for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff;
If damned custom have not braz’d it so,
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

QUEEN.
What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?

HAMLET.
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there. Makes marriage vows
As false as dicers’ oaths. O such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face doth glow,
Yea this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.

QUEEN.
Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

HAMLET.
Look here upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See what a grace was seated on this brow,
Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command,
A station like the herald Mercury
New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill:
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man.
This was your husband. Look you now what follows.
Here is your husband, like a mildew’d ear
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
You cannot call it love; for at your age
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,
And waits upon the judgement: and what judgement
Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense
Is apoplex’d, for madness would not err
Nor sense to ecstacy was ne’er so thrall’d
But it reserv’d some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope. O shame! where is thy blush?
Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
And reason panders will.

QUEEN.
O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.

HAMLET.
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty.

QUEEN.
O speak to me no more;
These words like daggers enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet.

HAMLET.
A murderer and a villain;
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord. A vice of kings,
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
And put it in his pocket!

QUEEN.
No more.

HAMLET.
A king of shreds and patches!—

Enter Ghost.

Save me and hover o’er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

QUEEN.
Alas, he’s mad.

HAMLET.
Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go by
The important acting of your dread command?
O say!

GHOST.
Do not forget. This visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But look, amazement on thy mother sits.
O step between her and her fighting soul.
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.

HAMLET.
How is it with you, lady?

QUEEN.
Alas, how is’t with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,
And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,
Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

HAMLET.
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares,
His form and cause conjoin’d, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable.—Do not look upon me,
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects. Then what I have to do
Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.

QUEEN.
To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET.
Do you see nothing there?

QUEEN.
Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

HAMLET.
Nor did you nothing hear?

QUEEN.
No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET.
Why, look you there! look how it steals away!
My father, in his habit as he liv’d!
Look where he goes even now out at the portal.

[Exit Ghost.]

QUEEN.
This is the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.

HAMLET.
Ecstasy!
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have utter’d. Bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven,
Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

QUEEN.
O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

HAMLET.
O throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
Good night. But go not to mine uncle’s bed.
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence. The next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either curb the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night,
And when you are desirous to be bles’d,
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord
[Pointing to Polonius.]
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so,
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So again, good night.
I must be cruel, only to be kind:
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.
One word more, good lady.

QUEEN.
What shall I do?

HAMLET.
Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed,
Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
Or paddling in your neck with his damn’d fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft. ’Twere good you let him know,
For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?
No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house’s top,
Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep
And break your own neck down.

QUEEN.
Be thou assur’d, if words be made of breath,
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.

HAMLET.
I must to England, you know that?

QUEEN.
Alack,
I had forgot. ’Tis so concluded on.

HAMLET.
There’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,—
They bear the mandate, they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard, and ’t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
This man shall set me packing.
I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.
Mother, good night. Indeed, this counsellor
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Good night, mother.

[Exit Hamlet dragging out Polonius.]

第四场：城堡中另一室

〔王后与波洛涅斯上。〕

波洛涅斯。
他马上就来。您可得对他严厉，
告诉他，他那些胡闹实在太过分，难以容忍，
全靠您王后殿下给他挡着，替他隔开了
许多火头。我就在这儿不作声了。
请您务必对他直截了当。

哈姆雷特。
〔在内。〕母亲，母亲，母亲！

王后。
我向你保证，不必担心。
躲好，我听见他来了。

〔波洛涅斯躲到挂帘后面。〕

〔哈姆雷特上。〕

哈姆雷特。
好了，母亲，什么事？

王后。
哈姆雷特，你大大得罪了你的父亲。

哈姆雷特。
母亲，您大大得罪了我的父亲。

王后。
好了，好了，你用空话来搪塞。

哈姆雷特。
去吧，去吧，您用恶舌头来盘问。

王后。
咦，怎么了，哈姆雷特？

哈姆雷特。
到底什么事？

王后。
你忘记我是谁了吗？

哈姆雷特。
没有，凭十字架起誓，没有忘。
您是王后，您丈夫的弟弟的妻子；
而且——但愿不是这样——您是我的母亲。

王后。
那好，我去叫那些能跟你说话的人来。

哈姆雷特。
来，来，您给我坐下，一动也不许动。
您别想走，等我给您立一面镜子，
让您去看看自己灵魂最深处的样子。

王后。
你要干什么？你不是要杀我吧？
救命，救命，来啊！

波洛涅斯。
〔帘后。〕怎么，喂！救命，救命，救命！

哈姆雷特。
怎么？一只耗子？〔拔剑。〕
赌一个金币，死啦，死啦！

〔向挂毯刺去。〕

波洛涅斯。
〔幕后。〕啊，我完啦！
〔倒地死去。〕

王后。
哎呀，你干了什么？

哈姆雷特。
我不知道。是国王吗？
〔拖出波洛涅斯的尸体。〕

王后。
哦，多么鲁莽而血腥的行为！

哈姆雷特。
血腥的行为。差不多一样坏，好母亲，
如同杀了一位国王，又嫁给他的兄弟。

王后。
如同杀了一位国王？

哈姆雷特。
没错，夫人，这是我的原话。——
〔对波洛涅斯。〕你这可怜、鲁莽、多管闲事的傻瓜，永别了！
我把你当成了你的上司。认命吧，
你该发现爱管闲事是危险的。——
别再绞你的手了。安静，坐下来，
让我绞你的心，我就要这样做，
只要你的心是用可穿透的材料做成；
只要那该诅咒的习惯还没有把它铸成铜墙铁壁，
使它刀枪不入，对理智的穿透毫无感应。

王后。
我做了什么，你竟敢鼓起舌头
这样粗鲁地对我喧嚷？

哈姆雷特。
那样一桩行为，
它玷污了端庄的优雅和娇羞的红晕，
把美德叫作伪善，从纯洁恋情的
美丽额头上摘下玫瑰，
打上一个脓疮的烙印。使婚姻的誓言
变得像赌徒的赌咒一样虚假。哦，这样一桩行为，
它从婚约的躯壳里抽走
灵魂，让甜蜜的宗教变成
一堆胡言乱语。上天满面通红，
是的，这坚实的大块世界，
带着悲哀的面容，仿佛面对末日审判，
都因这行为而忧思成疾。

王后。
唉呀，是什么行为，
还没开场就这样咆哮雷鸣？

哈姆雷特。
你来看看这幅画像，再看看这一幅，
这是两个兄弟的肖像。
你看，这眉宇间是何等的风仪，
许珀里翁的鬈发，约夫本人的额头，
一双马尔斯般的眼睛，威震四方，令行禁止，
那身姿就像神使墨丘利
刚刚落在一座吻天的高冈上：
真是一副集大成的仪表，
仿佛每一位天神都在上面盖了印，
向世人担保这才算一个男子汉。
这是你从前的丈夫。现在你再看看后来的。
这是你现在的丈夫，像一株霉烂的穗子，
把他健旺的兄弟摧折。你有眼睛吗？
你怎能离开这座秀美的山，不再取食，
却跑到这片荒沼上来狼吞虎咽？哈！你有眼睛吗？
你不能管这个叫爱情；因为到了你这把年纪，
血液中的亢奋早已驯顺，早已卑微，
事事听候判断的差遣：可判断
又怎么会从这一个走到那一个？你当然还有知觉，
否则你就不会有行动；可这知觉
一定是瘫痪了，因为疯狂也不至于如此错乱，
知觉也从不曾被癫狂这样完全钳制，
它总会保留一点点选择的余地，
足以分辨这样大的差别。是什么魔鬼
在你捉迷藏的时候这样蒙住了你？
有眼睛而没有感觉，有感觉而没有视力，
有耳朵而没有手眼，有嗅觉而一切全无，
要不然，只要是真实感官中有一丝病弱，
也不至于这样昏聩糊涂。噢，可耻！你的羞红在哪里？
悖逆的地狱啊，
你若是能在一位妇人的骨髓里造反，
那么对于烈火似的少年，贞节只好变成蜡，
在自己所烧起的烈焰里熔化。既然霜雪本身
也会同样猛烈地燃烧，理智反倒替欲望拉纤，
那就别再谈什么羞耻了，
当那无法抑制的情欲发出号令的时候。

王后。
噢，哈姆雷特，别再说了。
你把我的眼睛转向了我的灵魂，
我在那里看见了那么多漆黑扎挣的斑点，
它们的颜色再也褪不掉了。

哈姆雷特。
不，还要说，就住在
那张油汗浸透、腻成一团的床笫里，
泡在腐臭里，在那肮脏的猪圈上
甜言蜜语，寻欢作爱——

王后。
噢，别再对我说了；
这些话像一把把匕首扎进我耳朵；
别说了，好哈姆雷特。

哈姆雷特。
一个杀人犯，一个恶棍，
一个抵不上你从前那位主人
二十分之一的十分之一的奴才；一个冒充国王的小丑，
一个从帝国和治权里扒窃的小偷，
竟从架子上偷走了那顶珍贵的王冠，
塞进了自己的口袋！

王后。
别说了。

哈姆雷特。
一个破烂布片拼凑的国王——

〔鬼魂上场。〕

哈姆雷特。
天上的守护神明啊，快用你们的翅膀庇护我，罩在我头上吧！
你这位尊贵的形体想要什么？

王后。
唉呀，他真的疯了。

哈姆雷特。
您来不是要责备您迁延的儿子吗？
他虚度了光阴和热情，任由
您那威严命令的重要关头溜走。
哦，您说！

鬼魂。
不要忘记。我此番来访
不过是要砥砺你那几乎磨钝的志向。
可是瞧，惊惶正盘踞在你母亲脸上。
哦，站到她和那挣扎的灵魂之间去。
意念在脆弱的躯体中作动最烈。
跟她说话，哈姆雷特。

哈姆雷特。
您怎么了，夫人？

王后。
唉，是你自己怎么了？
你怎么盯着虚空发愣，
对着缥缈的空气侃侃而谈？
你的狂乱眼神从你眼里野性地窥望，
就像熟睡的兵士听到了警号，
你平伏的头发，像尸骸上的余命，
骤然竖起，直挺挺地站着。哦，好儿子，
在你燥热狂乱的火焰上
洒几滴清凉的镇定吧。你在瞧什么？

哈姆雷特。
瞧他，瞧他！你看他脸色多苍白，
他的形状和他的冤情结合着，对石头说教，
石头也会动容。——不要那样看着我，
只怕你那凄楚的模样会扭转
我铁石的决定。那样我要做的事
便会失去真色；流出的也许是泪，不是血。

王后。
你这话是对谁说的？

哈姆雷特。
你什么也没看见吗？

王后。
什么也没有；然而我看见了眼前一切。

哈姆雷特。
你也什么没听见吗？

王后。
没有，除了我们自己的话，什么也没有。

哈姆雷特。
嗨，你看那儿！你看他悄然离去！
我的父亲，穿着他生前惯穿的衣裳！
你看，他此刻正从门口走出去。

〔鬼魂下。〕

王后。
这全是你脑子凭空铸造出来的。
这种虚渺的幻象，心神狂乱
最是擅长制造。

哈姆雷特。
心神狂乱！
我的脉搏跟你一样，节律平稳地跳动，
发出同样健康的乐音。我说出的
并不是疯话。你考问我好了，
我会把话重新说清；疯话只会
颠三倒四。母亲，为了恩慈的上帝，
不要用那种谄媚的膏油涂抹你的灵魂，
说这一切不是你的罪过在说话，而是我的疯狂。
那只会像一层薄皮遮盖溃烂的患处，
而内部的腐败却在四下蔓延，
无形地溃蚀。你该向天自首，
追悔过去，戒慎未来；
不要把肥料撒在野草上，
让它们越发茂盛。请原谅我这番劝诫；
因为在当今这肥腻虚浮的时代，
美德反而要向罪恶讨饶，
甚至要弯腰恳求，获准去帮他改善。

王后。
哦，哈姆雷特，你把我的心劈成两半了。

哈姆雷特。
那就把那毒疮似的东西扔弃，
守着那另一半，活得更干净。
晚安吧。可别到我叔父的床上。
你即使没有美德，也权且装出来。
那怪物似的习惯，吞噬一切知觉，
溺爱邪恶成性，却也有这点好处：
它对于美善正当的行为举止，
同样会送上一件外衣或号衣，
让人轻易穿上身。今晚你节制，
就会让你下一次的节制
来得轻松几分。再下一次更轻松；
因为习惯几乎能改换天生的印记，
它能制服魔鬼，或用惊人的力量
把他赶走。再一次，晚安，
等到你心里想要人来祝福你，
我便求你祝福我。对于这位大人，
〔指波洛涅斯。〕
我心里懊悔；可上天乐意这样，
用他来罚我，又用我来罚他，
要我既当上天的鞭子，又当使者。
我来安顿他，也必为自己
置他于死这事承担后果。再一次，晚安。
我不得不残忍，只为能仁慈。
坏事就此开头，更坏的还留在后头。
还有句话，好夫人。

王后。
我该怎么办？

哈姆雷特。
我嘱咐你做的事，你千万别这样：
别让那臃肿的国王再引你上床，
淫邪地拧你的脸，唤你做他的小鼠儿；
别让他为了一双油腻腻的亲吻，
或是用他那可咒的手指在你颈上抚弄，
就哄得你把这事全抖出来——
说我这副模样压根儿不是真疯，
只是装疯。告诉他倒也好，
因为一个王后，美丽、清醒、聪明，
又怎能对一只癞蛤蟆、蝙蝠、公猫
藏起这么要紧的秘密？谁会这么做？
不，别管什么明智和守密，
倒不如爬到屋顶上，打开篮子，
放鸟儿飞去，再像那只著名的猴子，
想试试究竟，自己钻进了篮子，
一头栽下来，折断自家的脖子。

王后。
你放心，要是话由气息捏成，
气息靠着生命，我已经没有生命
来呼出你对我说过的任何一句话。

哈姆雷特。
我得去英格兰了，你晓得吧？

王后。
哎呀，
我忘了。这事就这么定了。

哈姆雷特。
信已封好。我那两个同学，
我信任他们就像信任长了毒牙的蝰蛇——
他们身负密令，定要为我扫清道路，
引我跳进奸计。由它去吧；
好玩的是那设炮的人
反被自己的炮轰上了天，只要我不
往他们的地雷下再挖深一码，
把他们炸到月亮上去，那才叫倒霉。哦，真甜啊，
两条诡计恰好撞在一根线上。
这家伙打发我动身。
我把这堆肠子拖进隔壁房间去。
母亲，晚安。真的，这位顾问
如今最安静、最隐秘、也最庄重，
他活着时却是个愚蠢多嘴的恶棍。
来吧，先生，让我跟您把账结清。
晚安，母亲。

〔哈姆雷特拖波洛涅斯下。〕

ACT IV

第四幕

SCENE I. A room in the Castle.

Enter King, Queen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING.
There’s matter in these sighs. These profound heaves
You must translate; ’tis fit we understand them.
Where is your son?

QUEEN.
Bestow this place on us a little while.

[To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who go out.]

Ah, my good lord, what have I seen tonight!

KING.
What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

QUEEN.
Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend
Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit
Behind the arras hearing something stir,
Whips out his rapier, cries ‘A rat, a rat!’
And in this brainish apprehension kills
The unseen good old man.

KING.
O heavy deed!
It had been so with us, had we been there.
His liberty is full of threats to all;
To you yourself, to us, to everyone.
Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer’d?
It will be laid to us, whose providence
Should have kept short, restrain’d, and out of haunt
This mad young man. But so much was our love
We would not understand what was most fit,
But like the owner of a foul disease,
To keep it from divulging, let it feed
Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?

QUEEN.
To draw apart the body he hath kill’d,
O’er whom his very madness, like some ore
Among a mineral of metals base,
Shows itself pure. He weeps for what is done.

KING.
O Gertrude, come away!
The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch
But we will ship him hence, and this vile deed
We must with all our majesty and skill
Both countenance and excuse.—Ho, Guildenstern!

Re-enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Friends both, go join you with some further aid:
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
And from his mother’s closet hath he dragg’d him.
Go seek him out, speak fair, and bring the body
Into the chapel. I pray you haste in this.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

Come, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends,
And let them know both what we mean to do
And what’s untimely done, so haply slander,
Whose whisper o’er the world’s diameter,
As level as the cannon to his blank,
Transports his poison’d shot, may miss our name,
And hit the woundless air. O, come away!
My soul is full of discord and dismay.

[Exeunt.]

第一场：城堡中一室

国王、王后、罗森格兰兹及吉尔登斯吞上。

国王。
这些叹息里藏着事。这些深长的抽噎
你必须说明白；我们理当了解。
你的儿子在哪儿？

王后。
把这地方留给我们一会儿。

〔向罗森格兰兹及吉尔登斯吞，二人下。〕

啊，我的好主公，今夜我看见了什么！

国王。
怎么了，乔特鲁德？哈姆雷特怎么样？

王后。
疯得像狂风与海浪，争竞着
究竟谁更猛烈。他在无法无天的狂乱中，
听见挂毯后有什么窸窣响动，
一下抽出剑，嚷着“耗子，耗子！”
在那种脑疯发作的恐惧中，
杀死了不见身形的善良老人。

国王。
哦，沉重的罪行！
假如我们在那儿，这事就会落在我们身上。
他的自由对所有人全是威胁；
对你本人，对我们，对每一个人。
唉，这桩血案可怎么交代？
责任一定会落到我们头上，我们的明智
本应把这不祥的疯少年
严加管束，拘禁起来。可是我们太爱他，
竟不愿理解最该做的事，
倒像害了恶疾的人，
为了不使病情泄漏，反让那病
吞噬到生命的髓心。他到哪儿去了？

王后。
去把他杀死的人拖开；
他的疯癫，就像一点纯金
藏在粗劣的矿石中，
就此显出了真纯。他为自己干下的事流泪。

国王。
哦，乔特鲁德，走吧！
太阳一挨到山巅，
我们马上就用船把他送走；而这桩凶行，
我们须凭全部的威严和手腕，
既包涵，又开脱。——喂，吉尔登斯吞！

罗森格兰兹及吉尔登斯吞重上。

两位朋友，去召集更多的人来相助：
哈姆雷特在疯狂中杀死了波洛涅斯，
并将他从母亲的内室拖走了。
去找他，好好说话，把尸体
抬到礼拜堂去。请你们赶紧去办。

〔罗森格兰兹与吉尔登斯吞下。〕

来，乔特鲁德，我们要召集最明智的朋友们，
让他们知道我们打算做些什么，
也知道已发生的不幸之事，这样，那流言蜚语，
它那低语跨越世界的直径，
如同炮弹笔直射向靶心，
携带着毒弹飞驰，或许能错开我们的名字，
只击中那毫发无伤的空气。啊，走吧！
我的灵魂充满了纷乱与惊惶。

〔同下。〕

SCENE II. Another room in the Castle.

Enter Hamlet.

HAMLET.
Safely stowed.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
[Within.] Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!

HAMLET.
What noise? Who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come.

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

ROSENCRANTZ.
What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?

HAMLET.
Compounded it with dust, whereto ’tis kin.

ROSENCRANTZ.
Tell us where ’tis, that we may take it thence,
And bear it to the chapel.

HAMLET.
Do not believe it.

ROSENCRANTZ.
Believe what?

HAMLET.
That I can keep your counsel, and not mine own. Besides, to be demanded
of a sponge—what replication should be made by the son of a king?

ROSENCRANTZ.
Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

HAMLET.
Ay, sir; that soaks up the King’s countenance, his rewards, his
authorities. But such officers do the King best service in the end: he
keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be
last swallowed: when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but
squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.

ROSENCRANTZ.
I understand you not, my lord.

HAMLET.
I am glad of it. A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

ROSENCRANTZ.
My lord, you must tell us where the body is and go with us to the King.

HAMLET.
The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body. The King
is a thing—

GUILDENSTERN.
A thing, my lord!

HAMLET.
Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.

[Exeunt.]

第二场：城堡中另一室

哈姆雷特上。

哈姆雷特。
藏妥了。

罗森格兰兹与吉尔登斯吞。
〔在内。〕哈姆雷特！哈姆雷特殿下！

哈姆雷特。
什么声音？谁在叫哈姆雷特？哦，他们来了。

罗森格兰兹与吉尔登斯吞上。

罗森格兰兹。
殿下，你把那尸体怎么样了？

哈姆雷特。
让它与泥土混为一体，它本就是泥土的亲族。

罗森格兰兹。
告诉我们它在哪里，我们好把它从那儿搬走，
抬到礼拜堂去。

哈姆雷特。
别信它。

罗森格兰兹。
信什么？

哈姆雷特。
信我能保守你们的秘密，却不能保守我自己的。况且，被一块海绵盘问——一个国王的儿子该怎样回答？

罗森格兰兹。
殿下，您把我当成一块海绵吗？

哈姆雷特。
是的，先生；一块吸满了国王的恩宠、赏赐和权力的海绵。不过，这类官员最终最能为国王效力：他就像猴子一样，把你们放在嘴角里，先含弄一番，最后才吞下去。当他需要你们搜刮来的东西时，只需把你们一挤，海绵啊，你们就又干了。

罗森格兰兹。
殿下，我不懂您的意思。

哈姆雷特。
我很高兴。狡猾的话在愚蠢的耳朵里睡大觉呢。

罗森格兰兹。
殿下，您必须告诉我们尸体在哪里，然后随我们去见国王。

哈姆雷特。
尸体与国王同在，但国王并不与尸体同在。国王是一件东西——

吉尔登斯吞。
一件东西，殿下！

哈姆雷特。
什么也不是的东西。带我去见他吧。藏狐狸，大家都来追。

〔同下。〕

SCENE III. Another room in the Castle.

Enter King, attended.

KING.
I have sent to seek him and to find the body.
How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!
Yet must not we put the strong law on him:
He’s lov’d of the distracted multitude,
Who like not in their judgement, but their eyes;
And where ’tis so, th’offender’s scourge is weigh’d,
But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,
This sudden sending him away must seem
Deliberate pause. Diseases desperate grown
By desperate appliance are reliev’d,
Or not at all.

Enter Rosencrantz.

How now? What hath befall’n?

ROSENCRANTZ.
Where the dead body is bestow’d, my lord,
We cannot get from him.

KING.
But where is he?

ROSENCRANTZ.
Without, my lord, guarded, to know your pleasure.

KING.
Bring him before us.

ROSENCRANTZ.
Ho, Guildenstern! Bring in my lord.

Enter Hamlet and Guildenstern.

KING.
Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?

HAMLET.
At supper.

KING.
At supper? Where?

HAMLET.
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of
politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet.
We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.
Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service,—two dishes,
but to one table. That’s the end.

KING.
Alas, alas!

HAMLET.
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the
fish that hath fed of that worm.

KING.
What dost thou mean by this?

HAMLET.
Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts
of a beggar.

KING.
Where is Polonius?

HAMLET.
In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there,
seek him i’ th’other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him not
within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the
lobby.

KING.
[To some Attendants.] Go seek him there.

HAMLET.
He will stay till you come.

[Exeunt Attendants.]

KING.
Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,—
Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve
For that which thou hast done,—must send thee hence
With fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself;
The bark is ready, and the wind at help,
Th’associates tend, and everything is bent
For England.

HAMLET.
For England?

KING.
Ay, Hamlet.

HAMLET.
Good.

KING.
So is it, if thou knew’st our purposes.

HAMLET.
I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for England! Farewell, dear
mother.

KING.
Thy loving father, Hamlet.

HAMLET.
My mother. Father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one
flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England.

[Exit.]

KING.
Follow him at foot. Tempt him with speed aboard;
Delay it not; I’ll have him hence tonight.
Away, for everything is seal’d and done
That else leans on th’affair. Pray you make haste.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

And England, if my love thou hold’st at aught,—
As my great power thereof may give thee sense,
Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red
After the Danish sword, and thy free awe
Pays homage to us,—thou mayst not coldly set
Our sovereign process, which imports at full,
By letters conjuring to that effect,
The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England;
For like the hectic in my blood he rages,
And thou must cure me. Till I know ’tis done,
Howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.

[Exit.]

第三场：城堡中另一室

国王上，有侍从随侍。

克劳狄斯。
我已派人去找他，寻找那具尸体。
放任此人逍遥法外，何其危险！
然而我们不能对他施以严刑，
他深受那些盲目的民众爱戴，
他们不凭理智，只凭眼睛去喜欢；
在这种情况下，人们衡量的是犯人的刑罚，
而从不考量罪行本身。为了使一切平稳妥帖，
这次突然送走他，必须显得
是深思熟虑后的决断。重症须用猛药，
方能得救，否则便无可救药。

〔罗森格兰兹上。〕

克劳狄斯。
怎么？出了什么事？

罗森格兰兹。
那尸体藏在何处，陛下，
我们无法从他口中问出。

克劳狄斯。
那他在哪儿？

罗森格兰兹。
在外面，陛下，有人看守，听候您的发落。

克劳狄斯。
带他到我面前来。

罗森格兰兹。
喂，吉尔登斯吞！把殿下带进来。

〔哈姆雷特与吉尔登斯吞上。〕

克劳狄斯。
哈姆雷特，波洛涅斯在哪儿？

哈姆雷特。
在吃晚饭。

克劳狄斯。
在吃晚饭？哪儿？

哈姆雷特。
不是他吃东西的地方，是他被吃的地方。一群精明的蛆虫正在开大会对付他呢。您看那蛆虫，才是饮食界独一无二的皇帝。我们喂肥了其他所有生灵，是为了喂肥我们自己，而我们喂肥自己，又是为了喂蛆虫。肥国王和瘦乞丐，不过是两道不同的菜——两张盘子，摆上同一张桌子。这就是结局。

克劳狄斯。
哎呀，哎呀！

哈姆雷特。
一个人可以用吃过国王的蛆虫去钓鱼，然后吃掉那条吃了蛆虫的鱼。

克劳狄斯。
你这是什么意思？

哈姆雷特。
没什么，只不过是想让您看看，一个国王如何能在乞丐的肚肠里巡游一番。

克劳狄斯。
波洛涅斯在哪儿？

哈姆雷特。
在天堂。你派人去那儿瞧瞧。要是你的使者在那儿找不到他，您不妨亲自去另一个地方找找。不过说实话，如果这个月之内您还找不到他，您上楼朝门厅走的时候，准能用鼻子闻出他来。

克劳狄斯。
〔对众侍从〕去那边找找。

哈姆雷特。
他会在那儿一直等到您来的。

〔众侍从下。〕

克劳狄斯。
哈姆雷特，你干的这件事，为了你自身的安全——
我们对此痛心不已，也正因此才顾及你的安危——
必须火速送你离开此地。所以，做好准备吧；
船已备好，风向正好，
随行人员都在等候，一切都已安排妥当，
前往英格兰。

哈姆雷特。
去英格兰？

克劳狄斯。
对，哈姆雷特。

哈姆雷特。
好。

克劳狄斯。
如果你知道我们的用意，你也会觉得好。

哈姆雷特。
我看见一个能看到这用意的小天使。可是，来吧；去英格兰！再会了，亲爱的母亲。

克劳狄斯。
是爱你的父亲，哈姆雷特。

哈姆雷特。
我的母亲。父亲和母亲是夫妻；夫妻本是一体；
所以，我的母亲。来吧，去英格兰。

〔下。〕

国王。
紧跟着他，催他立刻上船；
不可拖延；我今晚就要他离开。
走吧，因为与此事相关的一切
都已盖印办妥。请你们赶快。

〔罗森格兰兹与吉尔登斯吞下。〕

至于英格兰，倘若你还看重我的情谊，——
凭我强大的权力你该能体会到，
既然你身上的伤痕至今仍殷红未愈，
是丹麦刀剑所留，你心怀畏惧
向我们臣服，——你便不可冷然搁置
我的御旨，其中明白敕令，
有联署信函为此效力，
要将哈姆雷特立即处死。照办吧，英格兰；
因为他像热病般在我血液里肆虐，
你必须为我根治。在得知事成之前，
无论我景况如何，我都不曾快乐过。

〔下。〕

SCENE IV. A plain in Denmark.

Enter Fortinbras and Forces marching.

FORTINBRAS.
Go, Captain, from me greet the Danish king.
Tell him that by his license, Fortinbras
Craves the conveyance of a promis’d march
Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.
If that his Majesty would aught with us,
We shall express our duty in his eye;
And let him know so.

CAPTAIN.
I will do’t, my lord.

FORTINBRAS.
Go softly on.

[Exeunt all but the Captain.]

Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern &c.

HAMLET.
Good sir, whose powers are these?

CAPTAIN.
They are of Norway, sir.

HAMLET.
How purpos’d, sir, I pray you?

CAPTAIN.
Against some part of Poland.

HAMLET.
Who commands them, sir?

CAPTAIN.
The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.

HAMLET.
Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
Or for some frontier?

CAPTAIN.
Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

HAMLET.
Why, then the Polack never will defend it.

CAPTAIN.
Yes, it is already garrison’d.

HAMLET.
Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw!
This is th’imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.

CAPTAIN.
God b’ wi’ you, sir.

[Exit.]

ROSENCRANTZ.
Will’t please you go, my lord?

HAMLET.
I’ll be with you straight. Go a little before.

[Exeunt all but Hamlet.]

How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge. What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unus’d. Now whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th’event,—
A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward,—I do not know
Why yet I live to say this thing’s to do,
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me,
Witness this army of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff’d,
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.

[Exit.]