Original subtitles

[church bells toll]

[crow caws]

[door rattles]

[knocks on door]

[sighs]

[mutters]

[door creaks]

[door creaks]

[door slams]

[door creaks]

[door slams]

[indistinct overlapping voices]

[tinkling]

I adore you, my love.

[thunder rumbles]

[wind whistles]

[Claudius] Though yet of 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,

have we as 'twere with a defeated joy,

taken to wife.

[applause and cheering]

Very good. Bravo, bravo.

[woman] Yay!

For all, our thanks.

[organ music]

Now my nephew Hamlet and my son,

how is it that the clouds still hang on you?

Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun.

Good Hamlet, cast your nighted colour off.

Do not for ever with your vailed lids

seek for your noble father in the dust.

You know 'tis common,

all that lives must die.

Ay, madam, it is common.

If it be, why seems it so particular with you?

Seems, madam? Nay, it is, I know not "seems".

It is not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

nor customary suits of solemn black

together with all forms, moods, shapes 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 passes show.

These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

It's sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,

to give these mourning duties to your father.

But to persever in obstinate condolement

is a course of impious stubbornness.

'Tis unmanly grief.

Fie, it is a fault to heaven, a fault to nature.

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.

Let not your mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.

I pray you, stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.

I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

[Claudius] Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply.

Be as ourself in Denmark.

Madam, come.

This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet

sits smiling to my heart.

[Hamlet] O that this too too solid flesh would melt,

thaw,

and resolve itself into a dew.

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon

against self-slaughter.

O God.

God.

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable

seem to me all the uses of this world.

Fie on it, oh, fie!

It is an unweeded garden that grows to seed.

That it should come to this! But two months dead.

Nay, not so much, not two.

So excellent a king.

So loving to my mother.

Must I remember?

My father's brother, but no more like my father

than I to Hercules, within a month, she married.

O most wicked speed.

To post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets...

[knocking at door]

Hail to your lordship!

I am glad to see you well, Horatio.

The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.

Sir, my good friend.

And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?

My lord.

-Marcellus. -My good lord.

I'm very glad to see you.

But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

A truant disposition, good my lord.

[they laugh]

I know you are no truant.

But what is your affair in Elsinore? Hmm?

We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.

My lord, I-I came to see your father's funeral.

I prithee, do not mock me, fellow student.

I think it was to see my mother's wedding.

Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.

Thrift, thrift, Horatio.

The funeral baked-meats

did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

Oh, father, my father.

He was a goodly king.

He was a man, take him for all in all.

I shall not look upon his like again.

My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

Saw? Who?

My lord, the King, your father.

The King, my father?

Two nights together has this gentleman

in the dead waste and middle of the night,

been thus encountered, a figure like your father.

Armed, appears before me with solemn march,

goes slowly and stately by.

This to me in dreadful secrecy impart he did

and I with him the third night kept the watch.

The apparition comes.

I knew your father. These hands are no more like.

But where was this?

My lord, upon the platform where we watch.

Did you not speak to it?

My lord, I did, but answer made it none.

It's very strange.

As I do live, my honoured lord, it's true.

Hold you the watch tonight?

[Marcellus] I do, my lord.

Armed, say you?

Armed.

Then saw you not his face?

O yes, my lord, he wore his visor up.

I would I had been there.

[Horatio] It would have much amazed you.

Very like, very like.

I will watch tonight.

Perchance 'twill walk again.

I warrant it will.

I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape

and bid me hold my peace.

So fare you well.

Upon the platform between eleven and twelve I'll visit you.

Your loves, as mine to you.

Farewell.

My father's spirit...

in arms!

All is not well.

I doubt some foul play.

Would the night were come!

[insects chirp]

[bird calls]

[knocks on door]

My necessaries are embarked.

Farewell.

As the winds give benefit

and convey is assistant, do not sleep,

but let me hear from you.

Do you doubt that?

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.

Sweet, not lasting.

The perfume and suppliance of a minute.

He may not, as unvalued persons do, carve for himself

for on his choice depends

the health and safety of this whole state.

Then if he says he loves you,

then weigh what loss your honour may sustain

if with too credent ear you list his songs or lose your heart.

[strums guitar]

Fear it, Ophelia...

I shall the effect of this good lesson

keep as watchman to my heart.

Yet here, Laertes?

Aboard, aboard, for shame!

The winds sits in the shoulder of your sail

and you are stay'd for.

My blessings with thee.

And these few precepts in thy memory

look thou character.

Costly thy habit as thy purse may buy

but not expressed in fancy.

Rich, not gaudy.

For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

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 your own self be true.

And then it follows, as the night the day,

you cannot then be false to any man.

Go, my blessings with thee.

Farewell, Ophelia.

And remember well what I have said to you.

'Tis in my memory locked,

and you yourself shall keep the key of it.

Farewell.

[sighs]

[Polonius] What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?

Something touching the Lord Hamlet.

What is between you?

Give me up the truth.

He hath, my lord, of late

made many tenders of his affection to me.

Affection!

You speak like a green girl!

[mutters]

Do you believe these tenders, as you call them?

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

[Polonius] Marry, I shall teach you. Think yourself a baby

that you have taken these tenders for true pay

which are not sterling.

Tender yourself more dearly

or you'll tender me a fool.

He hath importuned me with love in honourable fashion.

[Polonius laughs]

Fashion, you may call it. Go to, go to.

And has given countenance to his speech

with almost all the holy vows of heaven.

These blazes, daughter, you must not take for fire.

This is for all.

From this time forth,

I would not have spend any moment leisure

as to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.

Now, look to it, I charge you.

Come your ways.

I shall obey,

my lord.

[distant rock music]

[distant chatter]

[sighs]

The air bites shrewdly. It is very cold.

What hour now?

Uh, I think it lacks of twelve.

-No, it is struck. -I heard it not.

What does this mean, my lord?

The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse,

and, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,

the kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out

the triumph of his pledge.

My lord!

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

Bring with you airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,

be your intents wicked or charitable...

I'll call you Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane.

[quietly] What should we do?

[Horatio] It beckons you to go away with it.

It will not speak, then I will follow it.

What if it draw you into madness?

It waves me still! Go on, I'll follow you.

-You shall not go, my lord. -Hold off your hands!

Be ruled, you shall not go.

My fate cries out. Unhand me, gentlemen!

By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that stops me!

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Heaven will direct it.

Speak!

I'll go no further.

Mark me.

Speak, I am bound to hear.

So are you to revenge, when thou dost hear.

I am your father's spirit.

If you did ever your dear father love...

O God!

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

Murder?

Murder most foul, strange and unnatural.

But haste me to know it,

that I with wings as swift as meditation,

or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge.

'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,

a serpent stung me,

the serpent that did sting thy father's life

now wears his crown.

O, my prophetic soul! My uncle?

Ay.

That incestuous beast won to his shameful lust

this will of my most seeming virtuous queen.

Sleeping in my orchard,

upon my secure hour your uncle stole,

with juice of cursed hebona in a vial,

and in the porches of my ear did pour the leprous distilment

and with a sudden vigour it doth posset and curd,

like eager droppings into milk, the thin and wholesome blood.

So did it mine.

Thus was I, of life, of crown, of queen,

at once dispatched,

cut off even in the blossom of my sin.

No reckoning made, but sent to my account

with all my imperfections on my head.

Let not the royal bed of Denmark

be a couch for luxury and damned incest.

But how so ever you pursue this act,

taint not your mind,

nor let your soul contrive against your mother aught.

Leave her to heaven,

and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge

to prick and sting her.

Adieu.

Adieu.

[breathes shakily]

[ghost] Remember me.

All you host of heaven!

O earth! What else?

And shall I couple hell?

Remember you!

Yes, from the table of my memory

I'll wipe all trivial fond records,

and your commandment all alone

shall live within the book and volume of my brain.

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.

So, Uncle, there you are.

-O, heavens secure him! -So be it.

-How is it, my noble lord? -What news, my lord?

O, wonderful! Wonderful!

-Good my lord, tell it. -No, you will reveal it.

-Not I, my lord, by heaven. -Nor I, my lord.

There's never a villain dwelling in all Denmark

but he's an arrant knave.

There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave

to tell us this.

Touching this vision here,

It is an honest ghost that let me tell you,

as you are friends, scholar and soldier,

give me one poor request.

What is it, my lord? We will.

Never to speak of this that you have seen. Swear.

Swear.

Never to speak of this that you have heard.

[Horatio] This is wondrous strange.

And as a stranger, give it welcome.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

But come.

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 time seeing me not say

that you know aught of me.

This do swear.

The time is out of joint.

O, cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!

[Ophelia sobs]

[Polonius coughs]

[Ophelia sobs]

How now, Ophelia, what's the matter?

My lord...

My lord, I have been so affrighted!

With what, in the name of God?

My lord, as I was in my closet,

Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,

no hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,

ungartered, 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.

Mad for thy love?

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

O, what said he?

He took me by the wrist, and held me hard,

and with his other hand thus o'er his brow,

he falls to such perusal of my face

as he would draw it.

Long stayed he so.

At last, a shaking of mine arm,

and thrice his head thus waving up and down,

he raised 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 turned,

he seemed to find his way without his eyes,

for out of doors he went without their helps,

and, to the last, bended their light on me.

This is the very ecstasy of love!

[sighs]

What, have you given him any hard words of late?

No, my lord, but as you did command,

I did repel his letters, and denied his access to me.

Ah, that hath made him mad.

I am sorry that with better heed and judgement

I had not noticed him.

I feared he did but trifle and mean to wrack you.

Beshrew my jealousy!

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.

Come!

My liege, and madam, to expostulate what duty is,

why day is day, time, time, and night, night

were nothing but to waste night, day and time.

And since brevity is the soul of wit,

and tediousness

the outward limbs and flourishes, I will be brief.

Your noble son is mad.

Mad call I it, for to define true madness,

what is it but to be nothing else but mad?

[chuckles] Let that go.

More matter with less art.

Madam, I swear I use no art at all.

I have a daughter, have... [laughs]

while she is mine

who in her duty and obedience, mark, hath given me this.

Now gather and surmise.

[breathes shakily] I...

"To the celestial and my soul's idol,

the most beautified Ophelia." [laughs]

That's a vile phrase.

Oh, beautified is a vile phrase.

But you shall hear. Thus. [clears throat]

"In her excellent white bosom, the..." [gulps, chuckles]

et cetera.

Came this from Hamlet to her?

Uh, madam, stay awhile.

"Doubt that 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 you best,

O most best, believe it."

"Adieu, thine evermore, most dear lady, Hamlet."

This...

in obedience has my daughter shown me.

But how has she received his love?

[Polonius] My lord, I went round to work,

and to my young mistress thus I did bespeak,

"Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star."

"This cannot be."

And then I prescripts gave her,

that she should lock herself from his resort.

This done, she took the fruits of my advice.

And he, repelled, a short tale to make,

fell into a fast,

and then to a weakness,

and then to a watch.

And then into a lightness, and by this declension,

into the madness from which he now raves

and all we mourn for.

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 wished.

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,

when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin?

Hm? [clicks tongue]

Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life

but that the dread of something after death,

the undiscovered 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 over 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.

[buzzes]

...this is a good line. There's a little break here...

[Claudius] Sweet Gertrude, leave us two,

for we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,

that he, as it were by accident may here affront Ophelia.

Her father and myself, we'll so bestow ourselves

that, seeing unseen,

we may of their encounter frankly judge

if it be the affliction of his love or no

-that thus he suffers for. -I shall obey you.

And for your part, Ophelia,

I do wish that your good beauties

be the cause of Hamlet's wildness.

O, so shall I hope that your virtue

will bring him to his wonted way again,

to both your honours.

Madam, I wish it may.

Ophelia, read upon this book,

that with devotion's visage and pious action,

we sugar o'er the devil himself.

[Hamlet sings in the distance]

Withdraw, your grace.

We shall bestow ourselves.

[Hamlet sings in the distance]

Nymph.

In your orisons be all my sins remembered.

Good my lord, how does your honour for this many a day?

I humbly thank you.

Well, well, well.

My lord, I have remembrances of yours

that I have longed long to redeliver.

I pray you now receive them.

No.

Not I, I never gave you aught.

My honoured lord, you know right well you did.

And with them words of so sweet breath composed

as made these things more rich.

Their perfume lost, take these again,

for to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor

when givers prove unkind.

Are you honest?

-[Ophelia] My lord... -Are you... fair?

-What means your lordship? -I loved you not.

I was the more deceived.

Get you to a nunnery.

Why would you be a breeder of sinners?

I am myself indifferent honest,

but 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 your ways to a nunnery.

[cough]

Where's your father?

At home, my lord.

Let the doors be shut upon him,

that he may play the fool no where but in's own house.

Farewell.

O, help him, you sweet heavens!

I have heard of your paintings, too, well enough.

God has given you one face and you make yourselves another.

Go to, no more on it, it has made me mad.

I say we will have no more marriage.

Those that are married already, all but one should live,

the rest shall keep as they are.

To a nunnery, go.

Love?

His affections do not that way tend,

nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little,

was not like madness.

I do believe the origin and commencement of his grief

sprang from neglected love.

Let me alone to find the source of this.

O, what a noble mind is here overthrown.

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword,

the expectation and rose of the fair state,

the glass of fashion and the mould of form

the observed of all observers, quite, quite down.

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

that sucked the honey of his music vows,

now see that sovereign and most noble reason

like sweet bells jangled out of time, and harsh.

That unmatched form and stature of blown youth

blasted with ecstasy.

O, woe is me to have seen what I have seen,

see what I see.

[Claudius] 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 call it, since nor the exterior nor the inward man

resembles that it was.

What it should be, more than his father's death,

that thus has put him so far

from the understanding of himself, I cannot dream of.

I entreat you both

that, being of so young days brought up with him

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, opened, lies within our remedy.

Good gentlemen, he has much talked of you,

and sure I am two men there are not living

to whom he more adheres.

Your visit shall receive such thanks

as fits a king's remembrance.

Both your majesties might,

by the sovereign power you have of us,

put your dread pleasures more into command than to entreaty.

We both obey.

Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.

[they laugh]

And I beseech you instantly to visit my too much changed son.

Heavens, make our presence and our practices

pleasant and helpful to him.

O, ay, amen.

[Polonius] How does my good Lord Hamlet?

[Hamlet] Well, God-a-mercy.

Do you know me, my lord?

Excellent well.

-You're a fishmonger. -[laughs]

Not I, my lord.

Then I would you were so honest a man.

Honest, my lord?

Why, sir, to be honest, as this world goes,

is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

That's very true, my lord.

Have you a daughter?

-I have, my lord. -Let her not walk in the sun.

Conception is a blessing,

but as your daughter may conceive... [whistles]

friend, look to it.

Still harping on my daughter.

And 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 like this.

I'll question him again.

What is that that you read, my lord?

Words, words, words.

Uh, what is the matter?

Between who?

[laughs] I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

Slanders, sir. For here the satirical rogue writes

that old men have hollow eyes,

weak backs,

grey beards, pitiful weak hams, and, uh, gouty legs,

all which I most potently believe not.

For, sir, yourself shall be old, as I am,

if like a crab, you could go backward.

Though this is madness, there is method in it.

Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

-Into my grave? -That is out of the air.

Fare you well, my lord.

I will take my leave of you.

You cannot take from me anything

that I will not more willingly part withal.

Except my life.

Except my life.

Except my life!

Uh, f-fare you well, my lord!

These tedious old fools!

[Guildenstern] My honoured lord!

[Rosencrantz] My most dear lord!

My excellent good friends!

How do you, Guildenstern? Oh, Rosencrantz!

Good lads.

How do you both? What news?

None, my lord, but the world's grown honest.

Oh, then is doomsday near.

But your news is not true.

Now, what have you, my good friends,

deserved at the hands of fortune,

that she sends you to prison hither?

Prison, my lord?

Denmark is a prison.

Why then, your ambition makes it one.

It is too narrow for your mind.

I could be bounded in a nutshell,

and count myself a king of infinite space,

were it not that...

I have bad dreams.

Which dreams, indeed, are ambition.

[bell tolls]

Shall we to the court?

For, by my faith, I cannot reason.

[both] We'll wait upon you.

But in the beaten way of friendship,

what make you here at court?

To visit you, my lord, no other occasion.

Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks, but I thank you.

Were you not sent for?

Is it a free visitation?

O, come, come, speak justly with me.

-Nay, speak. -What should we say, my lord?

Anything but to the purpose.

You were sent for;

there's 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.

My lord, we were sent for.

I will tell you why.

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.

What a piece of work is a 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.

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

Why did you laugh then, when I said, "Man delights not me"?

To think, my lord, if you delight not in man,

what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you.

We passed them on the way,

and hither are they coming to offer you service.

He that plays the king shall be welcome. What players are they?

Even those you were wont to take such delight in,

the tragedians of the city.

Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore.

O, you are welcome

but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.

[Guildenstern] In what, my dear lord?

I am but mad north-north-west.

When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a hand-saw.

The actors have come hither, my lord!

The best actors in the world,

either for comedy, tragedy, history, pastoral,

pastoral-comical, pastoral-tragical,

pastoral-historical, pastoral-historical-comical,

pastoral-comical, comical-historical-pastoral,

pastoral-historical- historical... Oof!

These are the only men.

You are welcome, masters, welcome, all.

I am glad to see thee well.

O, old friend! Yes.

O, my young lady and mistress.

By our lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven

than when I saw you last.

O, masters, you are all welcome.

We'll even to it like French falconers,

fly at any thing we see, we'll have a speech straight.

Come, give us a taste of your quality.

I heard you speak me a speech once.

What speech, my good lord?

It was Aeneas's tale to Dido, and thereabout of it

especially when he speaks of Priam's slaughter.

If it live in your memory, begin at this line.

Uh, let me see.

"The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast..."

No, it's not so.

It begins with Pyrrhus.

"The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arm,

black as his purpose,

old grandsire Priam seeks." So proceed you.

Well, 'fore God, well spoken, my lord.

Unequal matched, Pyrrhus at Priam drives,

in rage strikes wide,

but with the whiff and wind of his fell sword,

the 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's ear,

for lo, his sword,

which was declining on the milky head of reverent Priam

seemed in the air to stick.

So...

as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood

and like a neutral to his will and matter,

did nothing.

So after Pyrrhus's pause,

aroused vengeance sets him new a-work

and never did the Cyclops' hammers fall with less remorse

than Pyrrhus's bleeding sword now falls on Priam!

This is too long!

Yes, well, it shall go to the barber's with your beard.

Pray you, say on.

He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps.

Say on, come to Hecuba.

But who, oh, woe, had seen the mobled queen

run barefoot up and down,

a cloth upon that head where late the diadem stood

and for a robe, about her lank and o'er-teemed loins,

a blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up.

And if the gods themselves did see her then,

when she did see Pyrrhus make malicious sport

in mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,

the instant shout of clamour that she made

would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,

and passion in the gods!

Look, where she has not turned colour

and has tears in her eyes.

-Prithee, no more. -[Hamlet] It's as well.

Now, good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed?

And do you hear, let them be well used,

for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time.

I shall use every man according to their desert.

O, God's bodkin, man, much better.

"Use every man after his desert?"

And who shall escape whipping?

[laughter]

Use them after your own honour and dignity. Take them in.

-Come, sirs. -Yes, follow him, friends.

[chuckles]

Follow that lord, and look you, mock him not.

My good friends! [chuckles]

I'll leave you till night. You are welcome to Elsinore.

Good my lord.

[bell tolls]

O, what a dunghill idiot slave am I!

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

but in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

could force her soul so to her own conceit

that from her working all her visage wanned,

tears in her eyes, distraction in her aspect,

a broken voice, and her whole function suiting

with forms to her conceit?

And all for nothing, for Hecuba!

What is Hecuba to her, or she to Hecuba,

that she should weep for her?

What would she do had she the motive

and the cue for passion that I have?

She would drown the stage with tears.

But 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 damned defeat was made.

Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across,

tweaks me by the nose.

'Swounds, I should take it, for it cannot be,

but I am pigeon-livered.

Or ere this I should have fatted all the region kites

with this slave's offal.

Bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

O vengeance!

[laughs] What an ass am I.

Ah, this is most brave,

that I, the son of a dear father murdered,

prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell

must like a whore unpack my heart with words,

about my brains.

I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play

by the very cunning of the scene been struck so to the soul

that instantly they have proclaimed their malefactions.

I'll have these players play something like

the murder of my father before my uncle.

I'll observe his looks, I'll tent him to the quick.

If he do blench, I know my course.

The spirit that I have seen may be a devil,

and the devil hath power to 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 will have sounder proofs.

The play's the thing

wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.

[Hamlet] Can you play The Murder of Gonzago?

Ay, my lord.

And you could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen lines,

which I would set down and insert them in it?

Yes, very easily, my lord.

[Claudius] There's something in his soul

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

o'er which his brain's still beating

puts him thus from fashion of himself.

"The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge..."

[Polonius] My lord, do as you please,

but if you think fit,

after the play, let his queen-mother alone entreat him

to show his grief.

Let her be round with him,

and I'll be placed, so please you,

within the ear of their conference.

If she find him not, to England send him.

No, speak the speech, I pray you,

as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue,

but if you mouth it, as many of our players do,

I'd rather hear the town bull bellow.

[they chuckle]

Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus...

I warrant your honour.

Be not too tame neither, use all gently.

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 any thing so over done is from the purpose of playing,

whose end, both at first and now,

was and is, to hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature,

to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image,

and the very age and body of the time,

his own form and pressure. Go, make you ready.

[Claudius] It shall be so.

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

What ho, Horatio!

[Horatio] Here, sweet lord, at your service.

Horatio, you are even as just a man

as e'er my conversation coped withal.

-My dear lord... -No, don't think I flatter.

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice

and could of men distinguish,

her election has sealed you for herself,

for you have been as one,

in suffering all, that suffers nothing,

Give me that man who is not passion's slave,

and I will wear him in my heart's core,

aye, in my heart of hearts, as I do you.

There is a play tonight before the King.

One scene of it comes near the circumstance

which I have told you of, my father's death.

I pray you, when you see that act afoot, observe my uncle.

I will, my lord. And not the smallest alteration

that shall appear in him but I shall note it.

They are coming to the play.

I must be idle. Go, get to place.

How now, son Hamlet, how fare you?

O, excellent, father, of the chameleon's dish.

I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet,

these words are not mine.

Nor mine now.

Be the players ready?

[Rosencrantz] Ay, my lord, they stay upon your patience.

Good Hamlet, come hither, sit by me.

Good mother, here's metal more attractive.

[Ophelia] Uh...

O ho, did you mark that?

-Lady, shall I lie in your lap? -No, my lord.

-I mean, my head on your lap? -Ay, my lord.

Do you think I meant country matters?

You are merry, my lord.

-Who, I? -Ay, my lord.

O God, your only jig-maker. Go look you.

Look you. How cheerfully my mother looks,

and my father died within these two hours.

Nay, it is twice two months, my lord.

So long? Jesus! But two months dead and not forgotten yet?

Then there's hope a great man's memory

may outlive his life half a year.

[cymbal crashes]

-Ah. -[chuckles]

[gentle music plays]

[music intensifies]

It's very, very, very curious.

[inhales deeply] Hmm.

[music fades]

-[Polonius laughs] -[Gertrude] I like this one.

What means this, my lord?

Marry, this is miching mallecho, it means mischief.

[chuckles] And this is the prologue.

For us, and for our tragedy,

we beg your hearing patiently.

'Tis brief, my lord.

As woman's love.

[player king] Full forty years are past, their date is gone,

since happy time joined both our hearts as one.

And now the blood that filled my youthful veins

runs weakly in their pipes.

To heaven must I and leave the earth with you.

O, say not so, lest that you kill my heart.

[player king] Content thyself, when ended is my date,

thou mayst perchance have a more noble mate...

O, speak no more, for then I am accursed.

None weds the second, but she kills the first.

A second time I kill my lord that's dead,

when second husband kisses me in bed.

Wormwood, wormwood!

From here and there pursue me lasting strife,

if once a widow, ever I be wife.

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 time with sleep.

Sleep, rock thy brain,

and never come mischance between us twain.

[applause]

Madam, how you like this play?

The lady does protest too much, methinks.

O, but she'll keep her word.

Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in it?

No offence in the world. O, poison in jest.

What do you call the name of the play?

Mousetrap.The play is the image of a murder

done in Vienna.

Gonzago's the duke's name, his wife's Baptista.

O, father, it is a knavish piece of work, but what of that?

O, this is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.

O, leave your damnable faces and begin.

The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.

Thoughts black, hands apt,

drugs fit, and time agreeing,

thou mixture rank of midnight weeds collected,

on wholesome life usurps immediately.

He poisons him in the garden for his estate.

His name's Gonzago.

You shall see anon

how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife.

Lights! I will to bed.

-The King rises! -What?

What, frighted with false fire?

-How fares my lord? -Give o'er the play.

[Claudius] Give me some light!

Away!

Lights! Lights!

Lights!

[Hamlet] Good Horatio.

I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pounds.

-Did you perceive? -Very well, my lord.

Upon the talk of the poisoning?

-I did very well note him. -[laughs]

For if the King likes not this tragedy,

why then belike he likes it not, by God!

Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

Sir, a whole history.

-The King, sir. -Ay, sir, what of him?

Is in his retirement marvellous distempered.

-With drink, sir? -No, my lord, with anger.

The Queen, your mother,

in most great affliction of spirit, has sent me to you.

-You are welcome. -Nay, good my lord.

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.

-Sir, I cannot. -What, my lord?

Make you a wholesome answer. My wit's diseased.

But to the matter. Um, my mother, you say...

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

We shall obey, were she ten times our mother.

Have you any further trade with us?

My lord. You once did love me.

So I do still, by these pickers and stealers.

Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper?

You do freely bar the door of your own liberty

if you deny your griefs to your friend.

I lack advancement.

How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself

for your succession in Denmark?

[Hamlet] Ay, but "while the grass grows."

[door opens]

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

Do you see that cloud?

That's almost in shape like a camel?

Oh, by the mass, it is like a camel indeed.

And now, it's like a weasel.

It is backed like a weasel.

-Or like a whale? -Yes, very like a whale.

Then I will come to my mother by and by.

-I will come by and by. -I-I will say so.

[Hamlet] "By and by" is easily said.

Leave me.

It's now the very witching time of night,

when churchyards yawn

and hell breathes out contagion to this world.

Now could I drink hot blood.

Soft now.

My mother!

O heart, lose not your nature.

Let me be cruel, not unnatural.

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

[Claudius] I like him not,

nor stands it safe with us to let his madness range.

Therefore prepare you and he to England shall along with you.

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.

Never alone did the King sigh, but with a general groan.

Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage.

We will haste us.

[Claudius sighs]

O, my offence is rank.

It smells to heaven.

It has the primal, eldest curse upon it, 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 find myself 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?

And what's in prayer but this twofold force,

to be forestalled ere we come to fall

or pardoned being down?

Then look up. My fault is past.

O, what form of prayer can serve my turn?

"Forgive me my foul murder"?

That cannot be, since I am still possessed

of those effects for which I did the murder,

my crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.

Can one be pardoned and retain the offence?

In the corrupted currents of this world

offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,

but it's not so above.

Try what repentance can.

What can it not?

Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?

O limed soul, that struggling to be free art more engaged!

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.

Now might I do it.

Pat, now he's a-praying.

And now I'll do it.

[sighs]

And shall I kill him now when he is purging of his sins

making his way to heaven?

Am I then revenged?

No.

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,

or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed,

at game, a-swearing, or about some act

that has no relish of salvation in it,

then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven

and that his soul may be as damned and black as hell,

whereto it goes.

My mother stays.

This physic but prolongs your sickly days.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear.

I'll warrant you, fear me not. Withdraw.

I'll hide me even here.

Pray you, be round with him.

How is it with you, mother?

-How is it with you? -I'll tell you.

But first, we'll make all safe.

[Gertrude] Hamlet?

You have your father much offended.

Mother,youhave my father much offended.

-[Gertrude] How now, boy? -How now, mother?

Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

O, go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

-Have you forgot me? -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.

Nay, then I will set those to you that can speak.

Now you come here 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.

What will you do? You will not murder me?

[Polonius] Help!

How now!

A rat?

-[breathes shakily] -Dead! For a ducat!

[Polonius groans]

O me, what have you done?

Nay, I know not.

Is it the King?

O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

A bloody deed, almost as bad, good mother,

as kill a king, and marry with his brother.

-As kill a king? -Ay, lady, it was my word.

[Gertrude gasps]

You wretched, rash, intruding fool.

[sighs]

Farewell!

I took you for your better.

You leave wringing of your hands.

Peace!

Sit you down.

[anxious muttering]

[Hamlet] And let me wring your heart.

What have I done that you dare to wag your tongue

so loud in noise against me?

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.

Ay me, what act?

Look here upon this picture.

And on this.

Do you see what a grace was seated on this brow?

Whose heart went hand in hand, even with the vow

he made to you in marriage, and he's dead. Murdered.

Damnably murdered.

This was your husband.

Look you now what follows.

Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear

blasting his wholesome brother.

A look fit for a murder.

And a rape.

What, have you eyes and can you look on him

who slew my father,

and your dear husband?

O shame, where is your blush?

O, Hamlet, speak no more!

You turn my eyes into my very soul,

and there I see such black and grained spots

as will not leave their tinct.

Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,

stewed in corruption,

honeying and making love over the nasty sty!

O, speak to me no more!

These words like daggers enter in my ears.

No more, sweet Hamlet!

He's a murderer and a villain!

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,

who from a shelf the precious diadem stole,

and put it in his pocket!

[she yelps]

No more!

A king of shreds and patches.

[ghost]Mark me!

Save me,

hover over me with your wings, you heavenly guards.

What would you, gracious figure?

[Gertrude] Alas, he's mad!

Do you not come your tardy son to chide?

O, say.

O, step between your mother and her fighting soul.

Speak to her, Hamlet.

How is it with you, lady?

Alas, how is it with you, that you do bend your eye on vacancy,

and with the encorporal air do hold discourse?

Gentle son, upon the heat and flame of your distemper

sprinkle cool patience.

Whereon do you look?

On him.

On him, look you.

How pale he glares.

O, 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.

To whom do you speak this?

Do you see nothing there?

-Nothing at all. -Nor did you nothing hear?

No, nothing but ourselves.

[Hamlet] Well, look you... there!

My father!

Look where he goes!

[Gertrude] Alas, it is the weakness of your brain

which makes your tongue to blazon your heart's grief.

But as I have a soul, I swear by heaven

I never knew of this most horrid murder.

Hamlet, this is only fantasy.

And for my love, forget these idle fits.

My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,

and makes as healthful music.

It is not madness that possesses Hamlet.

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.

O Hamlet, you have cleft my heart in twain.

Throw away the worser part of it,

and live the purer with the other half.

Goodnight.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

Refrain tonight,

and that will lend a kind of easiness

to the next abstinence, the next more easy.

Hmm.

Once more, good night.

And when you are desirous to be bless'd,

I'll blessing beg of you.

Be you assured, if words be made of breath,

and breath of life,

I have no life to breathe what you have said to me.

[Claudius] There's matter in these sighs,

'tis fit we understand them. Where is your son?

Bestow this place on us a while.

[quietly] Take it carefully.

O, my own lord, what have I seen tonight!

What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

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 a dagger, cries, "A rat, a rat!"

and in this brainish apprehension

kills the unseen good old man.

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 answered?

It will be laid to us, whose providence

should have kept short, restrained, and out of haunt

this mad young man. Where is he gone?

To draw apart the body he has killed.

He weeps for what is done.

Guildenstern. Hamlet in madness has Polonius slain.

Go seek him out, speak fair, and bring the body Into the chapel.

I pray you, haste in this.

O Gertrude, this vile deed

we must with all our majesty and skill

both countenance and excuse. O, come away!

My soul is full of discord and dismay.

How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!

Yet must not we put the strong law on him,

he's loved of the distracted multitude.

How now, what hath befallen?

Where the dead body is bestowed, my lord, we cannot get from him.

Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?

-At supper. -At supper? Where?

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 fatten all creatures else to fat us,

and fatten ourselves for maggots.

Your fat king and your lean beggar are but variable service,

two dishes, but to one table.

That's the end.

Alas, alas!

[Hamlet] A man may fish with the worm that has eaten of a king,

and eat of the fish that has fed of that worm.

-What do you mean by this? -Nothing.

Only to show you how a king may go a progress

through the guts of a beggar.

Where is Polonius?

In heaven, send thither to see.

If your messenger find him not there,

seek him in the 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.

Go seek him there.

He will stay till you come, Marcellus.

[Claudius] Hamlet, this deed, for your especial safety,

which we do tender, as we dearly grieve

for that which you have done, must send you hence.

Therefore prepare yourself.

The ship is ready, and the wind at help,

the associates tend, and everything is bent for England.

-For England? -Ay, Hamlet.

Good.

So is it, if you knew our purposes.

I see a cherub that sees them.

But come, for England.

Farewell, dear mother.

-Thy loving father, Hamlet. -My mother.

Father and mother is man and wife,

man and wife is one flesh.

And so, my mother. Hmm.

Come, for England!

Follow him at foot, tempt him with speed aboard.

Delay it not, I'll have him hence tonight.

Away, for everything is sealed and done

that else leans on the affair. Pray you, make haste.

And, England, if my love you hold at aught,

you may not coldly set our sovereign process,

which imports at full

the present death of Hamlet.

Do it, England, for like the hectic in my blood, he rages,

and you must cure me.

She speaks much of her father,

says she thinks there's tricks in the world, and hums.

[sighs] It were good she were spoken with,

for she may strew dangerous conjectures

in ill-breeding minds.

[strummed chords on guitar]

Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?

How now, Ophelia?

♪ Ah-ha-aa

♪ How should I your true-love know

♪ From another one?

♪ By his cockle hat and staff

♪ And his sandal shoon...

Alas, what imports this song, sweet lady?

Say you? Nay, pray you, mark.

♪ He is dead and gone, lady

♪ He is dead and gone

♪ At his head a grass-green turf

♪ At his heels a stone

-Nay, but, Ophelia... -Pray you, mark.

♪ White his shroud as the mountain snow

Alas, my good lord, look here.

♪ Larded all with sweet flowers

♪ Which bewept to the ground did not go

♪ With true-love showers

How do you, pretty lady?

Well, God 'ild you.

They say the owl was a baker's daughter.

Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.

-God be at your table! -Conceit upon her father.

Pray, let's have no words of this!

But when they ask you what it means, say you this.

♪ Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day

♪ All in the morning betime

♪ And I a maid at your window

♪ To be your Valentine

♪ Then up he rose and donned his clothes

♪ And dupped the chamber-door

♪ Let in the maid that out a maid

♪ Never departed more

Pretty Ophelia!

Indeed, without an oath, I'll make an end on't.

♪ By Gis and by Saint Charity

♪ Alack, and fie for shame!

♪ Young men will do it if they come to it

♪ By cock, they are to blame

♪ Quoth she before you tumbled me

♪ You promised me to wed

♪ So would I have done by yonder sun

♪ And thou hast not come to my bed

♪ My bed

How long has she been thus?

I hope all will be well. We must be patient.

But I cannot choose but weep

to think they would lay him in the cold ground.

My brother shall know of it.

And so, I thank you for your good counsel.

Good sir, whose powers are these?

-They are of Norway, sir. -How purposed, sir?

Against some part of Poland.

Who commands them, sir?

The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.

Goes it against the main of Poland?

We go to gain a little patch of ground

that has in it no profit but the name.

To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it.

Why then, the Poles never will defend it.

Yes, it is already garrisoned.

I humbly thank you, sir.

God bye you, sir.

Will it please you go, my lord?

I'll be with you straight.

How all occasions do inform against me

and spur my dull revenge!

Witness this army of such mass and charge,

led by a delicate and tender prince,

exposing what is mortal and unsure

to all that fortune, death and danger dare,

even for an egg-shell.

How stand I then, that have a father killed, a mother stained,

and let all sleep, whilst to my shame,

I see the imminent death of 20,000 men,

who, for a fantasy and trick of fame,

go to their graves like beds.

From this time forth,

my thoughts be bloody,

or be nothing worth!

Where is this king?

Alack, what noise is this?

O, you vile king!

Give me my father!

Calmly, good Laertes.

What is the cause, Laertes,

that your rebellion looks so giant-like?

Let him go, Gertrude, do not fear our person.

There's such divinity does hedge a king

that treason can but peep to what it would,

acts little of his will.

Tell me, Laertes, why you are thus incensed? Speak, man.

Where is my father?

-Dead. -But not by him.

Let him demand his fill.

How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with!

I'll be revenged most thoroughly for my father.

-Who shall stay you? -My will, not all the world's.

Good Laertes, you will draw both friend and foe,

winner and loser?

-None but his enemies. -Will you know them then?

To his good friends thus wide I'll open my arms.

Why, now you speak like a good child and a true gentleman.

I am guiltless of your father's death,

and am most sensibly in grief for it.

[Ophelia, tearfully] Fare you well, my dove!

You must sing a-down, a-down.

And you call him a-down-a.

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance.

Pray you, love, remember.

And there's pansies.

That's for thoughts.

There's fennel for you,

and columbines.

There's rue for you and here's some for me.

There's a daisy.

I would give you some violets,

but they withered all when my father died.

[sniffles] They say he made a good end.

♪ For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy

Thought and afflictions, passion, hell itself,

she turns to favour.

♪ And will he not come again?

♪ And will he not come again?

♪ No, no, he is dead

♪ Go to thy death bed

♪ He never will come again

♪ His beard was as white as snow

♪ All flaxen was his pole

♪ He is gone

♪ He is gone

♪ And we cast away moan

♪ God have mercy on his soul

And of all Christian souls, I pray God.

God bye you.

[Ophelia sobs]

Laertes, be you content to lend your patience to us,

and we will jointly labour with your soul

to give it due content.

And where the offence is, let the great axe fall.

-God bless you, sir. -Let him bless you too.

There's a letter for you, sir.

It came from the ambassador that was bound for England.

[Horatio] "Ere we were two days old at sea,

a pirate ship of very warlike appointment gave us chase..."

[Hamlet]"Finding ourselves too slow of sail,

we put on a compelled valour,

and in the grapple, I boarded them."

"On the instant they got clear of our ship,

so I alone became their prisoner."

"They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy,

but they knew what they did."

"I am to do a good turn for them."

"I have words to speak in your ear will make you dumb."

"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England:

of them I have much to tell you."

[screaming]

One woe does tread upon another's heel,

so fast they follow.

Your sister's drowned, Laertes.

Drowned?

Oh? Where?

[Gertrude] There is a willow grows aslant a brook,

that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,

there with fantastic garlands did she come

of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies.

There on the pendent boughs, her coronet weeds

clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,

when down her weedy trophies and herself

fell in the weeping brook.

Her clothes spread wide,

and mermaid-like awhile they bore her up,

which time she chanted snatches of old songs.

But long it could not be, till that her garments,

heavy with their drink,

pulled the poor wretch

from her melodious lay, muddy death.

[cries]

Alas, then, she is drowned?

Drowned.

Drowned.

Too much of water hast you, poor Ophelia,

and therefore, I forbid my tears.

[Gertrude sobs]

When these are gone, the woman will be out.

Up from my cabin, in the dark

groped I to find out them, had my desire,

to mine own room again, making so bold,

my fears forgetting manners, to unseal their grand commission

where I found, Horatio,

O, royal knavery,

an exact command my head should be struck off.

-Is it possible? -Here is the commission.

Will you hear now how I did proceed?

-[bell chimes] -I do beseech you.

Being thus be-netted round with villanies, I sat me down,

devised a new commission, wrote it fair.

An earnest conjuration to the King of England,

he should those bearers put to sudden death.

I had my father's signet in my purse,

folded the writ up in the form of the other,

subscribed it, gave it the impression, placed it safely.

The changeling never known.

[voice in the distance]

So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to it.

Why, man, they did make love to this employment.

They are not near my conscience.

♪ For and a shrouding sheet

♪ O, a pit of clay for to be made...

Has she no feeling for her business?

She sings at grave-making.

Custom has made it in her a property of easiness.

'Tis even so.

The hand of little employment has the daintier sense.

That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once.

How she jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jaw-bone,

that did the first murder!

[Horatio chuckles]

-Whose grave is this? -Mine, sir.

No, what man do you dig it for?

For no man, sir.

[Hamlet] O, for what woman then?

For none neither.

Who is to be buried in it?

One that was a woman, sir, but, rest her soul, she's dead.

How long have you been a grave-maker?

Of all the days in the year, I came to it that day

that our last king, Hamlet, overcame Fortinbras.

How long ago is that?

Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that.

It was that very day that young Hamlet was born,

he that is mad, and sent into England.

Ah, now, why was he sent into England?

Why, because he was mad.

He shall recover his wits there,

or if he do not, it's no great matter there.

[Hamlet] Why?

'Twill not be seen in him there, there the men are as mad as he.

[they laugh]

How long will a man lie in the earth ere he rot?

Here's a skull now hath lain you in the earth

three and twenty years.

Whose skull was it?

A whoreson mad fellow's it was. Whose do you think it was?

Nay, I know not.

A pestilence on him for a mad rogue!

He poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once.

This same skull, sir, was, sir,

Yorick's skull, the King's jester.

That?

Let me see.

Even that.

O, alas, poor Yorick!

I knew him, Horatio.

A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

He has bore me on his back a thousand times,

and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!

My gorge rises at it.

Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.

Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs,

your flashes of merriment,

that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Not one now to mock your own grinning,

quite chop-fallen.

Go you to my lady's chamber,

tell her, let her paint an inch thick,

to this favour she must come.

-Make her laugh at that. -[bell tolls]

-Soft. -[distant clang]

Soft awhile.

[bell tolls]

-What ceremony else? -Laertes?

What ceremony else?

Her obsequies have been as far enlarged

as we have warranty. Her death was... doubtful.

She should in ground unsanctified be lodged

till the last trumpet.

-Must there no more be done? -No more be done!

We should profane the service of the dead

to sing a requiem and such rest to her as to peace-parted souls.

I tell you, churlish priest,

a ministering angel will my sister be when you lie howling.

What? The fair Ophelia!

Sweets to the sweet, farewell.

I hoped you should have been my Hamlet's wife.

I thought your bridal bed to have decked, sweet maid,

and not have strewed your grave.

Treble woe fall ten times treble on that cursed head

whose wicked deed your most ingenious sense

deprived you of!

Hold off the earth awhile,

till I have caught her once more in my arms.

Now, pile your dust upon the quick and dead.

What is he whose grief bears such an emphasis?

This is I, Hamlet the Dane!

[Laertes] The devil take your soul!

You pray not well.

[Laertes yells]

-Hold off your hand! -Pluck them asunder!

Hamlet, Hamlet!

By heavens, I'll fight with him upon this theme.

O my son, which theme?

I loved Ophelia!

Forty thousand brothers

could not with all their quantity of love

make up my sum. What would you do for her?

-O, he is mad, Laertes. -For love of God, forbear him.

[Hamlet] 'Swounds, show me what you'd do.

Would you weep, would you fight, would fast, would tear yourself?

I'll do it.

Do you come here to whine?

To outface me with leaping in her grave?

Be buried quick with her, and so will I.

This is mere madness!

Hear you, sir, what is the reason that you use me thus?

I loved you ever.

But it is no matter.

I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon him.

Strengthen your patience, Laertes.

We'll put the matter to the present push.

Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.

This grave shall have a living monument.

An hour of quiet shortly shall we see.

Till then, in patience our proceeding be.

Now must your conscience my acquaintance seal,

and you must put me in your heart for friend,

since you have heard, and with a knowing ear,

that he who has your noble father slain pursued my life.

It well appears.

But tell me why you proceeded not against these feats,

so criminal and so capital in nature.

O, for two special reasons.

The Queen, his mother, lives almost by his looks.

And for myself, she's so conjunctive to my life and soul,

I could not but by her.

The other motive, is the great love

the general gender bear him.

And so have I a noble father lost,

a sister driven into desperate terms.

But my revenge will come.

Laertes...

was your father dear to you?

Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,

-a face without a heart? -Why ask you this?

What would you undertake to show yourself indeed

your father's son more than in words?

To cut his throat in the church.

No place indeed should murder sanctuarise.

Revenge should have no bounds.

I have heard him often with a greedy wish,

upon some praise that he has heard of you

touching your weapon, which with all his heart

he might be once tasked for, to try your cunning.

We'll make a wager o'er your heads.

He, being remiss, most generous, and free from all contriving,

will not peruse the foils,

so that with ease, or with a little shuffling

you may choose a sword unblunted,

and in a pass of practice requite him for your father.

I will do it.

And, for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword.

I bought an unction of a mountebank,

so mortal that, but dip a knife in it,

where it draws blood, no cataplasm so rare,

can save the thing from death.

I'll touch my point with this contagion,

that if I gall him slightly, it may be death.

Our purpose may hold there.

[bell tolls]

[Horatio] Why, what a king is this!

Does it not, think you, stand me now

upon he that has killed my king, whored my mother,

popped in between the election and my hopes,

is it not perfect conscience to quit him with this arm?

Is it not to be damned

to let this canker of our nature come in further evil?

It must be shortly known to him from England

what is the issue of the business there.

It will be short.

The interim is mine

and a man's life no more than to say "one."

But I'm very sorry, good Horatio,

that to Laertes, I forgot myself,

for in image of my cause I see the portraiture of his.

[knocking at door]

Do you know this water-fly?

[Horatio] No, my good lord.

Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.

Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure,

I should impart a thing to you from his majesty.

I shall receive it, sir, with all diligence of spirit.

My lord, his majesty bade me signify to you

that he has laid a great wager on your head.

Sir, you are not ignorant

at what excellence Laertes is with his weapon.

-What is his weapon, sir? -Rapier and dagger.

That's two of his weapons, but well.

The King, sir, hath laid, sir,

that in a dozen passes between yourself and him,

he shall not exceed you three hits.

If the King will venture his wager, I will venture my skill.

Let the foils be brought, the gentleman willing,

the King hold his purposes, I will win for him if I can.

[sighs]

You will lose this wager, my lord.

I do not think so.

Since he went into France,

I have been in continual practice.

I shall win at the odds.

You would not think how ill all's here about my heart,

but it's no matter.

-Nay, good my lord... -It is but foolery.

I will forestall them, say you are not fit.

Not a whit!

We defy augury.

There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

If it be now, 'tis not to come.

If it be not to come, it will be now.

If it be not now, yet it will come.

The readiness is all.

Since no man has aught of what he leaves,

what is it to leave betimes?

Let be.

[Claudius] Hamlet, come.

And take this hand from me.

Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong.

I do receive your offered love like love,

-and will not wrong it. -I embrace it freely;

and shall this brothers' wager frankly play.

Give us the foils. Come on.

[Laertes] Come, one for me.

Cousin Hamlet, you know the wager?

O, very well, my lord.

Your grace has laid the odds on the weaker side.

I do not fear it, I have seen you both.

This one is too heavy. Let me see another.

Yes, this likes me well. These foils have all a length?

-[Osric] Ay, my good lord. -[laughs]

If Hamlet give the first or second hit,

the King shall drink to Hamlet's better breath,

and in the cup a pearl shall he throw,

richer than that which four successive kings

in Denmark's crown have worn.

Come, begin.

And you, the judge, bear a wary eye.

-Come, sir. -Come, my lord.

-One! -No!

-Judgement? -No!

[Osric] A hit, a very palpable hit.

-[laughs] -Well, again.

Stay. The King drinks to Hamlet.

Hamlet, this pearl is yours.

Here's to your health! Give him the cup.

I'll play this bout first, set it by awhile.

Come! Come!

Come.

Another hit, what say you?

A touch, a touch. I do confess it.

-[laughs] -[applause]

Our son shall win.

Here, Hamlet, take this, rub your brow.

The Queen carouses to your fortune, Hamlet.

Gertrude, do not drink.

I will, my lord, I pray you, pardon me.

No, I dare not drink yet, madam, by and by.

Come, let me wipe your face.

-My lord, I'll hit him now. -I do not think it.

[Hamlet] Come, for the third.

Laertes, you do but dally.

I pray you, pass with your best violence.

-You make a wanton of me. -Say you so?

[laughs]

Come on! [grunts]

Nothing either way!

[exhales]

Have at you now!

[spectators gasp]

Hmm!

[Hamlet yells]

[they grunt]

-Part them, they are incensed! -[swords clang]

-[yelps] -Nay, come again!

[Laertes yells]

[Osric] Look to the Queen there!

Oh!

They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?

[Osric] How is it, Laertes?

Why, I am justly killed with my own treachery.

How does the Queen?

[splutters]

Drink.

The drink.

O, my dear Hamlet.

I am poisoned.

[Gertrude gasps]

O, villainy!

Let the doors be locked!

[man] Doors!

Treachery!

Seek it out!

It is here, Hamlet.

Hamlet, you are slain.

No medicine in the world can do you good.

In you there is not half an hour's life.

The treacherous instrument is in your hand,

unblunted and envenomed.

The foul practice hath turned itself on me.

[wails]

Here I lie, never to rise again.

Your mother's poisoned.

I can no more.

The King.

The King's to blame.

The point envenomed too!

Then, venom, do your work!

[Claudius grunts]

[all] Treason!

Here, thou incestuous, murderous,

damned Dane,

drink of this potion.

O, is your pearl there?

[splutters]

Follow my mother!

Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.

Mine and my father's death come not upon you,

nor yours on me.

I am dead, Horatio.

Wretched queen, adieu!

Horatio, I am dead, you live.

Report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied.

Never believe it.

I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.

Here's yet some liquor left.

As you are a man, give me the cup.

Now, let go.

By heavens, I'll have it!

O good Horatio,

what a wounded name,

things standing thus unknown, shall I leave behind me.

And if you did ever hold me in your heart

absent you from felicity awhile,

and in this harsh world draw your breath in pain

to tell my story.

I die, Horatio.

The rest is silence.

Now cracks a noble heart.

Good night, sweet prince,

and flights of angels sing you to your rest.