Page:Hamlet (1917) Yale.djvu/120
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, 48
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, 52
Even for an egg-shell. 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, 57
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, 61
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent 64
To hide the slain? O! from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
Exit.]
Scene Five
[Elsinore. A Room in the Castle]
Enter Queen and Horatio, [with a Gentleman.]
Queen. I will not speak with her.
Gent. She is importunate, indeed distract:
Her mood will needs be pitied.
45 Sith: since
47 charge: expense
50 mouths: grimaces
54 argument: cause
58 Excitements: incentives
61 trick: trifle
64 continent: receptacle
Scene V, S. d.; cf. n.
2 importunate: persistent