TEXT:
HAMLET
Ecstasy!
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
That I have uttered: 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 mattering 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.
GERTRUDE
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.
NOTES:
Metre
As an exercise, try counting out the syllables in each line - you’ll find the rhythm very easily, as it is deliberately recognisable - since Hamlet is using it to calm Gertrude. dee-DUM, dee-DUM, dee-DUM, dee-DUM, dee-DUM. Five feet, ten beats or syllables. Once you get the hang of this, you have unlocked the music of every line of Shakespeare’s verse. Everything else is some kind of ornament - and in the passage below you’ll find a particularly interesting set of them. In this text Shakespeare displays his great mastery of metre. Just as Hamlet is trying to convince Gertrude that his pulse is steady and that he isn’t mad, the rhythm of the text does the same thing. It is amazingly constructed. Madness goes from a sticking point to part of the flow of conversation, and indeed it is replaced.
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness (2 extra syllables)
That I have uttered: bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness (1 extra syllable)
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that mattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks: (no extra)
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven; (1 extra syllable)
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; (1 extra syllable)
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.