English Ambassador, with drum, colours,
and attendants.
Fort.
Where is this sight?
Hor.
What is it you would see?
If ought of woe or wonder, cease your search.
Fort.
This quarry cries on havock. Oh proud death!
What feast is tow'rd in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes at a shot
So bloodily hast struck?
Amb.
The sight is dismal,
And our affairs from England come too late:
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing;
To tell him his command'ment is fulfill'd,
That Rosincrosse and Guildenstern are dead:
Where should we have our thanks?
Hor.
Not from his mouth,
Had it th' ability of life to thank you:
He never gave command'ment for their death.
But since so full upon this bloody question,
You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
Are here arriv'd; give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placed to the view,
And let me speak to th' yet unknowing world,
How these things came about. So shall you hear
Of cruel, bloody, and unnatural acts,
-- 471 --
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning, and forc'd cause,
And in this upshot, purposes mistook,
Fall'n on th' inventors heads. All this can I
Truly deliver.
Fort.
Let us haste to hear it,
And call the noblest to the audience.
For me, with sorrow, I embrace my fortune,
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
Which now to claim, my vantage doth invite me.
Hor.
Of that I shall have also cause to speak,
And from his mouth whose voice will draw no more:
But let this same be presently perform'd,
Ev'n while men minds are wild, lest more mischance
On plots and errors happen.
Fort.
Let four captains
Bear Hamlet like a soldier off the stage,
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have prov'd most royally. And for his passage,
The soldiers musick, and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him—
Take up the body: such a sight as this,
Becomes the field, but here shews much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.
[Exeunt marching: after which, a peal of ordnance are shot off.
