Act 4, Scene 5

Elsinore. A room in the Castle.

[Enter Queen and Horatio.]
Queen Gertrude
2741 I will not speak with her.
Gentleman
2742 She is importunate; indeed distract:
2743 Her mood will needs be pitied.
Queen Gertrude
2744 What would she have?
Gentleman
2745 She speaks much of her father; says she hears
2746 There's tricks i' the world, and hems, and beats her heart;
2747 Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,
2748 That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing,
2749 Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
2750 The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
2751 And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
2752 Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures yield them,
2753 Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
2754 Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
2755 'Twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew
2756 Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
Queen Gertrude
2757 Let her come in.
[Exit Horatio.]
Queen Gertrude
2758 To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is,
2759 Each toy seems Prologue to some great amiss:
2760 So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
2761 It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
[Re-enter Horatio with Ophelia.]
Ophelia
2762 Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?
Queen Gertrude
2763 How now, Ophelia?
[Sings.]
Ophelia
2764 How should I your true love know
2765 From another one?
2766 By his cockle bat and' staff
2767 And his sandal shoon.
Queen Gertrude
2768 Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
Ophelia
2769 Say you? nay, pray you, mark.
[Sings.]
Ophelia
2770 He is dead and gone, lady,
2771 He is dead and gone;
2772 At his head a grass green turf,
2773 At his heels a stone.
Queen Gertrude
2774 Nay, but Ophelia—
Ophelia
2775 Pray you, mark.
[Sings.]
Ophelia
2776 White his shroud as the mountain snow,
[Enter King.]
Queen Gertrude
2777 Alas, look here, my lord!
[Sings.]
Ophelia
2778 Larded all with sweet flowers;
2779 Which bewept to the grave did go
2780 With true-love showers.
King Claudius
2781 How do you, pretty lady?
Ophelia
2782 Well, God dild you! They say the owl was a baker's daughter.
2783 Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at
2784 your table!
King Claudius
2785 Conceit upon her father.
Ophelia
2786 Pray you, let's have no words of this; but when they ask you what
2787 it means, say you this:
[Sings.]
Ophelia
2788 To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day
2789 All in the morning bedtime,
2790 And I a maid at your window,
2791 To be your Valentine.
Ophelia
2792 Then up he rose and donn'd his clothes,
2793 And dupp'd the chamber door,
2794 Let in the maid, that out a maid
2795 Never departed more.
King Claudius
2796 Pretty Ophelia!
Ophelia
2797 Indeed, la, without an oath, I'll make an end on't:
[Sings.]
Ophelia
2798 By Gis and by Saint Charity,
2799 Alack, and fie for shame!
2800 Young men will do't if they come to't;
2801 By cock, they are to blame.
Ophelia
2802 Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
2803 You promis'd me to wed.
2804 So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
2805 An thou hadst not come to my bed.
King Claudius
2806 How long hath she been thus?
Ophelia
2807 I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I cannot
2808 choose but weep, to think they would lay him i' the cold ground.
2809 My brother shall know of it: and so I thank you for your good
2810 counsel.—Come, my coach!—Good night, ladies; good night, sweet
2811 ladies; good night, good night.
[Exit.]
King Claudius
2812 Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.
[Exit Horatio.]
King Claudius
2813 O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
2814 All from her father's death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
2815 When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
2816 But in battalions! First, her father slain:
2817 Next, your son gone; and he most violent author
2818 Of his own just remove: the people muddied,
2819 Thick and and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers
2820 For good Polonius' death; and we have done but greenly
2821 In hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Ophelia
2822 Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
2823 Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts:
2824 Last, and as much containing as all these,
2825 Her brother is in secret come from France;
2826 Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
2827 And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
2828 With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
2829 Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
2830 Will nothing stick our person to arraign
2831 In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
2832 Like to a murdering piece, in many places
2833 Give, me superfluous death.
[A noise within.]
Queen Gertrude
2834 Alack, what noise is this?
King Claudius
2835 Where are my Switzers? let them guard the door.
[Enter a Gentleman.]
King Claudius
2836 What is the matter?
Gentleman
2837 Save yourself, my lord:
2838 The ocean, overpeering of his list,
2839 Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
2840 Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
2841 O'erbears your offices. The rabble call him lord;
2842 And, as the world were now but to begin,
2843 Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
2844 The ratifiers and props of every word,
2845 They cry 'Choose we! Laertes shall be king!'
2846 Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,
2847 'Laertes shall be king! Laertes king!'
Queen Gertrude
2848 How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
2849 O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!
[A noise within.]
King Claudius
2850 The doors are broke.
[Enter Laertes, armed; Danes following.]
Laertes
2851 Where is this king?—Sirs, stand you all without.
Danes
2852 No, let's come in.
Laertes
2853 I pray you, give me leave.
Danes
2854 We will, we will.
[They retire without the door.]
Laertes
2855 I thank you:—keep the door.—O thou vile king,
2856 Give me my father!
Queen Gertrude
2857 Calmly, good Laertes.
Laertes
2858 That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard;
2859 Cries cuckold to my father; brands the harlot
2860 Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow
2861 Of my true mother.
King Claudius
2862 What is the cause, Laertes,
2863 That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?—
2864 Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person:
2865 There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
2866 That treason can but peep to what it would,
2867 Acts little of his will.—Tell me, Laertes,
2868 Why thou art thus incens'd.—Let him go, Gertrude:—
2869 Speak, man.
Laertes
2870 Where is my father?
King Claudius
2871 Dead.
Queen Gertrude
2872 But not by him.
King Claudius
2873 Let him demand his fill.
Laertes
2874 How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
2875 To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
2876 Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
2877 I dare damnation:—to this point I stand,—
2878 That both the worlds, I give to negligence,
2879 Let come what comes; only I'll be reveng'd
2880 Most throughly for my father.
King Claudius
2881 Who shall stay you?
Laertes
2882 My will, not all the world:
2883 And for my means, I'll husband them so well,
2884 They shall go far with little.
King Claudius
2885 Good Laertes,
2886 If you desire to know the certainty
2887 Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge
2888 That, sweepstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
2889 Winner and loser?
Laertes
2890 None but his enemies.
King Claudius
2891 Will you know them then?
Laertes
2892 To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
2893 And, like the kind life-rendering pelican,
2894 Repast them with my blood.
King Claudius
2895 Why, now you speak
2896 Like a good child and a true gentleman.
2897 That I am guiltless of your father's death,
2898 And am most sensibly in grief for it,
2899 It shall as level to your judgment pierce
2900 As day does to your eye.
[Within]
Danes
2901 Let her come in.
Laertes
2902 How now! What noise is that?
[Re-enter Ophelia, fantastically dressed with straws and flowers.]
Laertes
2903 O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
2904 Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!—
2905 By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
2906 Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
2907 Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!—
2908 O heavens! is't possible a young maid's wits
2909 Should be as mortal as an old man's life?
2910 Nature is fine in love; and where 'tis fine,
2911 It sends some precious instance of itself
2912 After the thing it loves.
[Sings.]
Ophelia
2913 They bore him barefac'd on the bier
2914 Hey no nonny, nonny, hey nonny
2915 And on his grave rain'd many a tear.—
Ophelia
2916 Fare you well, my dove!
Laertes
2917 Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
2918 It could not move thus.
Ophelia
2919 You must sing 'Down a-down, an you call him a-down-a.' O,
2920 how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that stole his
2921 master's daughter.
Laertes
2922 This nothing's more than matter.
Ophelia
2923 There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love,
2924 remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.
Laertes
2925 A document in madness,—thoughts and remembrance fitted.
Ophelia
2926 There's fennel for you, and columbines:—there's rue for you;
2927 and here's some for me:—we may call it herb of grace o'
2928 Sundays:—O, you must wear your rue with a difference.—There's a
2929 daisy:—I would give you some violets, but they wither'd all when
2930 my father died:—they say he made a good end,—
[Sings.]
Ophelia
2931 For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy,—
Laertes
2932 Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
2933 She turns to favour and to prettiness.
[Sings.]
Ophelia
2934 And will he not come again?
2935 And will he not come again?
2936 No, no, he is dead,
2937 Go to thy death-bed,
2938 He never will come again.
Ophelia
2939 His beard was as white as snow,
2940 All flaxen was his poll:
2941 He is gone, he is gone,
2942 And we cast away moan:
2943 God ha' mercy on his soul!
Ophelia
2944 And of all Christian souls, I pray God.—God b' wi' ye.
[Exit.]
Laertes
2945 Do you see this, O God?
King Claudius
2946 Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
2947 Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
2948 Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
2949 And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me.
2950 If by direct or by collateral hand
2951 They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give,
2952 Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
2953 To you in satisfaction; but if not,
2954 Be you content to lend your patience to us,
2955 And we shall jointly labour with your soul
2956 To give it due content.
Laertes
2957 Let this be so;
2958 His means of death, his obscure burial,—
2959 No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
2960 No noble rite nor formal ostentation,—
2961 Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
2962 That I must call't in question.
King Claudius
2963 So you shall;
2964 And where the offence is let the great axe fall.
2965 I pray you go with me.
[Exeunt.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 2747archaic vocab
“Spurns enviously at straws”
'Spurns at' means kicks against or takes violent offense at; 'straws' means trifles, trivial things. The Gentleman is saying Ophelia flies into rage over meaningless details — a classic symptom of grief-madness as Elizabethans understood it.
TLN 2749archaic vocab
“the unshaped use of it doth move The hearers to collection”
'Unshaped use' means disordered, formless manner of speech. 'Collection' means the effort of gathering scattered fragments into meaning — listeners must piece together what Ophelia's broken words imply. The Gentleman's point is that madness can be more disturbing than clear speech because it forces hearers to complete the horrifying thought themselves.
TLN 2760rhetorical device
“So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.”
A paradox built on a pun: 'spilt' means both spilled (liquid) and exposed/ruined. Gertrude's aside says that guilt, trying to hide itself, actually gives itself away — like a nervous person who protests their innocence so loudly they look guilty. The couplet form signals a sententia (a pithy moral conclusion).
TLN 2766cultural context
“By his cockle bat and' staff And his sandal shoon.”
These are a pilgrim's identifying gear: cockle shells (worn in the hat) were badges of the Shrine of St James of Compostela in Spain, the most famous pilgrimage in Europe. A staff (walking stick) and sandals ('shoon' is an archaic plural of shoe) complete the outfit. In Renaissance love-poetry, a pilgrim journeying to his saint became a standard image for a lover seeking his beloved — giving Ophelia's song a double meaning.
TLN 2783rhetorical device
“we know what we are, but know not what we may be”
An antithesis (know/know not; are/may be) that sounds like a proverb, making it all the more unsettling coming from a madwoman. On the surface it is a general truth about human uncertainty; in context it may hint that Ophelia herself has changed (or been changed) beyond recognition — and that those around her have, too.
TLN 2788cultural context
“To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day”
The Elizabethan folk belief was that the first person of the opposite sex you saw on the morning of February 14 became your valentine — your lover for the year. Ophelia's song exploits this custom: a girl goes to her lover's window at dawn to be his valentine, but the song quickly turns into a seduction-and-abandonment story (he lets her in, and she 'never departed more' as a maid). The valentine frame makes the betrayal sharper.
TLN 2793archaic vocab
“dupp'd the chamber door”
'Dupp'd' is a contraction of 'did up' meaning opened (by lifting the latch). The phrase means he unlatched the bedroom door to let her in. The homely, domestic word makes the seduction scene feel shockingly ordinary.
TLN 2798cultural context
“By Gis and by Saint Charity”
'Gis' is a minced contraction of 'Jesus' (the sound-softening that also gives us 'gee' and 'jiminy'). 'Saint Charity' is not a named saint but a personification of the Christian virtue — a common exclamation in popular speech. Together they are a pair of mild folk oaths, which makes what follows (the story of seduction and betrayal) darkly ironic: Ophelia invokes holiness to narrate a story of broken promises.
TLN 2815rhetorical device
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions!”
A military metaphor built as an antithesis (single vs. battalions) that has become proverbial. Claudius compares grief to an invading army: a lone scout (a spy reconnoitering) might be manageable, but sorrows arrive as a full force. The irony is that Claudius himself has caused most of these sorrows.
TLN 2820archaic vocab
“we have done but greenly In hugger-mugger to inter him”
'Greenly' means naively, inexpertly (as a green, untested person would act). 'Hugger-mugger' means in secrecy and disorder — a hasty, hushed burial with no proper ceremony. Claudius is admitting that rushing Polonius into the ground quietly was a political blunder, not just a personal failing.
TLN 2832cultural context
“Like to a murdering piece, in many places Give, me superfluous death.”
A 'murdering piece' is a cannon loaded with grapeshot or case-shot — multiple small projectiles scattered from one barrel — used to kill several soldiers at once. Claudius says the accumulation of disasters hits him like a single blast that kills many times over. It is a vivid piece of Elizabethan military technology turned into a metaphor for compounding grief.
TLN 2835historical topical
“Where are my Switzers?”
Switzers are Swiss mercenary soldiers. Swiss mercenaries had guarded European monarchs since the late 15th century — the Pope's Swiss Guard continues today. Claudius calling for them tells us that Danish kings kept foreign professional bodyguards, and the detail signals real panic: he is appealing to paid soldiers rather than trusting his own court.
TLN 2838archaic vocab
“The ocean, overpeering of his list, Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste”
'Overpeering of his list' means the ocean rising above (overpeering = looking over/surpassing) its boundary or shore ('list' = limit, edge). The image is a tidal flood overwhelming flat coastal land — used to convey the unstoppable force of Laertes's mob crashing through the palace. A smart reader needs to know 'list' here does not mean a written list but a boundary.
TLN 2843cultural context
“Antiquity forgot, custom not known, The ratifiers and props of every word,”
The Gentleman argues that the crowd behind Laertes has abandoned the two pillars of legitimate authority: 'antiquity' (inherited precedent — things have always been done this way) and 'custom' (habitual practice that carries legal force). In Elizabethan political thought, the king's authority rested partly on the unbroken chain of tradition; a mob that forgets that chain can proclaim anyone king — which is precisely what they are doing.
TLN 2865historical topical
“There's such divinity doth hedge a king, That treason can but peep to what it would,”
This is the Tudor doctrine of the divine right of kings: monarchs are God's anointed deputies on earth, protected by a sacred aura ('hedge' = protective enclosure). Treason cannot act directly against them — it can only 'peep' (look through a gap in the hedge) at what it would like to do. Shakespeare's audience knew this doctrine well; Claudius's invoking it is deeply ironic, since he himself committed the ultimate treason by murdering a king.
historical The divine right of kings
TLN 2893cultural context
“like the kind life-rendering pelican, Repast them with my blood.”
A widespread medieval and Renaissance belief held that pelicans, when no other food was available, pierced their own breasts to feed their chicks with their blood — making the pelican a symbol of self-sacrificing parental love. The image was also used as a symbol of Christ feeding the Church. Laertes is claiming he would bleed himself dry for his father's true friends — the extravagance of the image marks how emotionally unhinged he is.
TLN 2923cultural context
“There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.”
Rosemary carried the meaning of remembrance in Elizabethan herbalism and custom — it was carried at both weddings and funerals. 'Pansies' comes from the French word 'pensées' (thoughts), so the flower's name literally means thoughts. Ophelia is distributing a silent accusation: she hands these to the people who have forgotten her father and her.
TLN 2926cultural context
“there's rue for you; and here's some for me:—we may call it herb of grace o' Sundays:—O, you must wear your rue with a difference.”
Rue (the plant) carried the meanings of repentance, sorrow, and pity — the word 'rue' also means to regret in English, which Shakespeare exploits. 'Herb of grace' was a nickname for rue because it was used in Catholic and Protestant ceremonies to sprinkle holy water, a rite performed especially on Sundays. Ophelia gives rue to both another character and to herself but says they must 'wear it with a difference' — a heraldic term meaning two coats-of-arms in the same family are distinguished by a small change. Their sorrows are the same flower, but differently earned.
TLN 2929cultural context
“I would give you some violets, but they wither'd all when my father died:”
Violets symbolized faithfulness and constancy in Elizabethan flower-lore. Ophelia says she has none left: faithfulness died with Polonius. The moment is quietly devastating — she cannot offer loyalty because it has been destroyed by those who were supposed to protect it.
TLN 2959cultural context
“No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones, No noble rite nor formal ostentation,—”
A 'hatchment' is a large diamond-shaped board displaying the coat of arms of a recently dead nobleman, hung over his door and later in the church. Trophies and swords hung over a soldier's tomb were further marks of honor. Laertes is saying Polonius received none of the public funeral rites that his rank demanded — no heraldic display, no sword of honor, no public ceremony ('formal ostentation'). The hasty secret burial is an insult to the family's honor that demands redress.