Original subtitles

MUSIC: One More Cup Of Coffee by Bob Dylan

# Your breath is sweet

# Your eyes are like two jewels in the sky

# Your back is straight, your hair is smooth

# On the pillow where you lie

# But I don't sense affection

# No gratitude or love

# Your loyalty is not to me

# But to the stars above. #

BUZZER BLARES

Who's there?

BUZZER BLARES

Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

VIA INTERCOM: Long live the King!

Bernardo?

He.

INTERCOM BEEPS DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES

You come most carefully upon your hour.

'Tis now struck twelve.

Get thee to bed, Francisco.

For this relief much thanks.

'Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart.

Have you had quiet guard?

Not a mouse stirring.

Well, goodnight.

If you do see Horatio and Marcellus, the rival of my watch,

bid them make haste.

BUZZER BLARES

I think I hear them.

Stand, ho! Who is there?

VIA INTERCOM: Friends to this ground. And liegemen to the king.

INTERCOM BEEPS DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES

Give you good night.

Farewell, honest soldier. Holla, Bernardo!

Say - what, is Horatio there?

A piece of him.

Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.

What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?

I have seen nothing.

Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,

and will not let belief take hold of him.

Therefore I have entreated him along with us

to watch the minutes of this night,

that, if again this apparition come,

he may approve our eyes and speak to it.

It will not appear.

HE CHUCKLES Sit down awhile.

And let us once again assail your ears,

that are so fortified against our story,

what we have two nights seen.

Last night of all,

when yond same star that's westward from the pole

had made his course to illume that part of heaven

where now it burns...

EERIE CREAKING ..Marcellus and myself,

the bell then beating... Break thee off!

Look where it comes again!

In the same figure, like the King that's dead.

Thou art a scholar. Speak to it, Horatio.

Looks it not like the King?

Mark it, Horatio. Most like.

It would be spoke to.

Question it, Horatio!

What art thou

that usurp'st this time of night

together with that fair and warlike form

in which the majesty of buried Denmark did sometimes march?

By heaven I charge thee, speak!

PIERCING STATIC WHISTLE It is offended! Stay! Speak, speak!

I charge thee, speak! THUD

'Tis gone.

How now, Horatio?

Is not this something more than fantasy? What think you on't?

Before my God, I might not this believe without the sensible and true avouch of my own eyes.

Is it not like the King? As thou art to thyself.

Such was the very clothing he had on

when he the ambitious Norway combated. 'Tis strange!

Thus twice before, and just at this dead hour.

In what particular thought to work I know not, but in the gross and scope of my opinion,

this bodes some strange eruption to our state!

Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,

why this same strict and most observant watch

so nightly toils the subject of the land,

and why such daily cast of brazen weapons

and foreign trade for implements of war?

What might be toward, in this sweaty haste

that make night joint labourer with the day?

Who is't can inform me? That can I.

At least, the whisper goes so.

Our last king,

whose image even but now appear'd to us,

was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,

dar'd to the combat, in which our valiant Hamlet,

for so this side of our known world esteem'd him,

did slay this Fortinbras,

who, by a seal'd contract,

well ratified by law and heraldry,

did forfeit, with his life, all of his lands to King Hamlet.

And now, sirs, young Fortinbras,

of unimproved mettle hot and full,

hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,

shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,

so to recover from us, by strong hand

and terms compulsatory,

those foresaid lands so by his father lost.

And this, I take it,

is the main motive of our preparations.

I think it be no other, but e'en so.

But soft!

Look, where it comes again!

EERIE CREAKING

I'll cross it, though it blast me.

Stay, illusion!

If thou hast any sound,

or use of voice, speak to me.

If thou art privy to our country's fate,

which happily foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!

CRASH, STATIC FEEDBACK

'Tis gone!

Break we our watch up, and by my advice

let us impart what we have seen tonight unto young Hamlet,

for, upon my life, this spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.

Let's do't, I pray, and I tomorrow know where we shall find him,

most conveniently.

MUSIC: Spirit On The Water by Bob Dylan

# Spirit on the water

# Darkness on the face of the deep

# I keep thinking about you, baby

# I can't hardly sleep

# I'm travelling by land

# Travelling through the dawn of day

# You're always on my mind

# I can't stay away

# I'd forgotten about you... #

MUSIC FADES TO BACKGROUND

Though yet of Hamlet 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,

the imperial jointress to this warlike state,

have we, as it were with a defeated joy,

with one auspicious, and one dropping eye,

with mirth in funeral

and with dirge in marriage,

in equal scale weighing delight and dole,

taken to wife.

Nor have we herein barr'd your better wisdoms,

which have freely gone with this...affair along.

For all, our thanks.

Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,

holding a weak supposal of our worth,

or thinking by our late dear brother's death

our state to be disjoint and out of frame,

colleagued with this dream of his advantage.

He hath not fail'd to pester us with message

importing the surrender of those lands

lost by his father, with all bonds of law,

to our most valiant brother.

So much for him.

Now for ourself and for this time of meeting.

Thus much the business is.

Our envoy Voltemand has gone to the King of Norway,

the uncle of young Fortinbras -

who, impotent and bedrid,

scarcely hears of this, his nephew's purpose -

to suppress his further threat or action in this case.

And now.

Laertes, what's the news with you?

You told us of some suit. What is it, Laertes?

You cannot speak of reason to the King and lose your voice.

What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,

that shall not be my offer, not thy asking?

The head is not more native to the heart,

the hand more instrumental to the mouth,

than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.

What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

My dread lord,

your leave and favour to return to France,

from whence though willingly I came to Denmark

to show my duty in your coronation, yet I must confess, that duty done,

my thoughts and wishes bend again toward France.

And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

Have you your father's leave? What says Polonius?

He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave

by laboursome petition. SHE LAUGHS

And at last upon his will, I seal'd my hard consent.

I do beseech you, give him leave to go.

Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine,

and thy best graces spend it at thy will!

But now, my cousin Hamlet,

and my son.

A little more than kin, and less than kind!

How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

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

Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,

and let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.

Do not for ever with thy vailed lids

seek for thy noble father in the dust.

Thou know'st 'tis common.

All that lives must die,

passing through nature to eternity.

Ay, madam, it is common.

If it be,

why seems it so particular with thee?

Seems, madam?

Nay, it is.

I know not 'seems.'

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

nor customary suits of solemn black,

nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath,

no, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

nor the dejected havior in the visage,

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 passeth show these

but the trappings and the suits of woe.

It is sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,

to give these mourning duties to your father.

But you must know, your father lost a father,

that father lost, lost his,

and the survivor bound in filial obligation for some term

to do obsequious sorrow.

But to persevere in obstinate condolement

is a course of impious stubbornness.

It is unmanly grief.

For what we know must be,

and is as common as any the most vulgar thing to sense,

why should we in our peevish opposition take it to heart?

Fie! It is a fault to heaven,

a fault against the dead,

a fault to nature, to reason most absurd,

whose common theme is death of fathers,

and who still hath cried,

from the first corpse till he that died today, "This must be so."

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 quite contrary to our desire

and we beseech you, bend you to remain

here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,

our chiefest courtier, Hamlet, and our son.

Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.

I pray thee stay with us.

Go not to Wittenberg.

I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

Why, it is a loving and a fair reply.

Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come.

This gentle and unforc'd accord of Hamlet

sits smiling to my heart.

In grace whereof,

no jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day

but the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,

and the King's rouse the heavens proclaim again,

respeaking earthly thunder.

THUNDER ROLLS

Come away.

MUSIC PLAYS IN BACKGROUND

MUSIC FADES

O that this...

..too, too solid flesh would melt...

..thaw,

and resolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon

against self-slaughter!

O God!

God!

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

seem to me all the uses of the world!

Fie upon it!

FIE!

'Tis an unweeded garden grown to seed.

Things rank and gross in nature

possess it merely.

That it should come to this!

But two months dead!

Nay, not so much, not two.

So excellent a king,

that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr.

So loving to my mother that he might not beteem

the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly.

Heaven and earth!

Must I remember?

Why, she would hang on him as if increase of appetite

had grown by what it fed on.

And yet, within a month...

Let me not think on't!

Frailty,

thy name is woman!

A little month, or ere those shoes were old

with which she followed my poor father's body,

like Niobe, all tears. Why, she...

O God! A beast that wants discourse of reason

would have mourn'd longer.

Married with my uncle.

My father's brother...

..but no more like my father

than I to Hercules.

A little month. HE SNIFFS

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears

had left the flushing in her galled eyes,

she married.

O, most wicked speed,

to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

It is not, nor it cannot come to good.

But break...

..my heart.

For I must hold my tongue!

MUSIC PLAYS IN BACKGROUND

HE SOBS QUIETLY

THROAT CLEARING

My necessaries are embark'd. Farewell.

And, sister, as convoy's 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.

The perfume and suppliance of a minute, no more.

No more but so?

Think it no more.

Perhaps he loves you now,

and now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch

the virtue of his will, but...

You must fear

his greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own.

For he himself is subject to his birth.

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

for on his choice depends the safety and health of this whole state.

Then if he says he loves you...

It fits your wisdom so far to believe it,

as he in his particular act and place may give his saying deed,

which is no further than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.

Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain

if with too credent ear you hear his songs,

or lose your heart, or...your...

..ah...

..chaste treasure open to his unmast'red importunity.

LAUGHTER

Fear it, Ophelia.

HE EXHALES RUEFULLY

Fear it, my dear sister.

Best safety lies in... BOTH: ..fear.

Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.

I shall the effect of this...good lesson

keep as watchman to my heart.

But, good my brother, do not as some ungracious pastors do,

show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,

while, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,

himself the primrose path of dalliance treads

and ignores his own advice.

O, fear me not!

I stay too long.

But here my father comes.

A double blessing is a double grace.

Occasion smiles upon a second leave.

Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!

You must be stay'd for.

There, my blessing with thee!

And these few precepts in thy memory see thou character.

Give thy thoughts no tongue,

nor any unproportion'd thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.

Beware of entrance to a quarrel,

but being in it, bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

but not express'd in fancy. Rich, not gaudy!

For the apparel... ALL: ..oft proclaims the man!

And they in France of the best rank and station

are most select and generous, chief in that.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

And this above all.

To thine own self be true,

and it must follow, as the night the day,

thou canst not then be false to any man.

Farewell.

My blessing season this in thee!

Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

The time invites you. Go, your servant tends.

Farewell, Ophelia,

and remember well what I have said to you.

'Tis in my memory lock'd, and you yourself shall keep the key of it.

Farewell.

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

So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.

Marry, well bethought!

'Tis told me he hath very oft of late given private time to you,

and you yourself have of your audience

been most free and bounteous.

If it be so, as so 'tis put on me, and that in way of caution,

I must tell you, you do not understand yourself so clearly

as it behooves my daughter and your honour.

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,

unsifted in such perilous circumstance.

Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?

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

Marry, I will teach you!

Think yourself a baby that you have taken these tenders for true pay,

which are not sterling.

Tender yourself more dearly, or,

not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, running it thus,

you'll tender me a fool.

My lord,

he hath importun'd me with love in honourable fashion.

Ay, fashion you may call it.

Go to, go to!

And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,

with almost all the holy vows of heaven.

Ay, springes to catch woodcocks!

I do know, when the blood burns,

how prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows.

These blazes, daughter, giving more light than heat,

extinct in both even in their promise as it is a-making,

you must not take for fire.

From this time,

be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence.

Set your entreatments at a higher rate.

For Lord Hamlet, believe so much in him,

he is young,

and with a larger tether may he walk than may be given you.

In few, Ophelia, do not believe his vows.

LOUDLY: This is for all.

I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth

have you so slander any moment's leisure

as to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.

Look to it, I charge you. Come your ways.

I shall obey, my lord.

MUSIC PLAYS IN BACKGROUND

LOUDLY: Hail to Your Lordship!

I am very glad to see you.

THEY LAUGH

Horatio!

Or I do forget myself. The same, my lord!

And your poor servant ever.

Sir, my good friend - I'll change that name with you.

But what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?

Marcellus? My good lord!

I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir.

LAUGHTER

But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?

A truant disposition, good my lord.

I would not hear your enemy say so. I know you are no truant.

But what is your affair in Elsinore?

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

My lord, 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 bak'd meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven

or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!

My father.

Methinks I see my father.

Where, my lord?

In my mind's eye, Horatio.

I saw him.

Once.

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?

Season your admiration for a while with an attent ear,

till I may deliver upon the witness of these gentlemen,

this marvel to you. For God's love, let me hear!

Two nights together had these gentlemen been thus encount'red.

A figure...

..like your father, appears before them.

This to me in dreadful secrecy impart they did,

and I with them the third night kept the watch, where...

..as they had deliver'd, both in time,

form of the thing, each word made true and good, the apparition comes.

I knew your father. These hands are not more like.

But where was this?

My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd.

Did you not speak to it?

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

'Tis very strange.

As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true.

This troubles me.

Hold you the watch to-night? We do, my lord.

Saw you his face?

Yes, my lord.

What, look'd he frowningly?

A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

I would I had been there.

It would have much amaz'd you.

Very like.

Very like.

Stay'd it long?

While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred...

Longer, longer. Not when I saw't.

I will watch to-night.

Perchance 'twill walk again.

I warr'nt it will.

If it assume my noble father's person...

..I'll speak to it,

though hell itself should gape and bid me hold my peace.

I pray thee, if you have hitherto conceal'd this sight,

let it be tenable in your silence still.

I will requite your love.

Come, go your ways.

Oh!

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 hath put him so much from the understanding of himself,

I cannot dream of. I entreat you both,

that, being of so young days brought up with him,

and since so neighbour'd to his youth and behaviour,

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, open'd, lies within our remedy.

Good Guildenstern, he hath much talk'd of you,

and sure I am two friends there are not living to whom he more adheres.

If it will please you to show us so much gentry and good will

as to expend your time with us awhile,

for the supply and profit of our hope,

your visitation 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.

SHE LAUGHS NERVOUSLY

But...but we both obey!

And here give up ourselves, in the full bent

to lay our service freely at your feet, to be commanded.

Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

No, thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.

LAUGHTER

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

Heavens make our presence and our practices

pleasant and helpful to him!

Ay, amen!

# I'm as pale as a ghost

# Holding a blossom on a stem

# You ever seen a ghost?

# No

# But you have heard of them. #

BUZZER BLARES

INTERCOM BEEPS DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES

What hour now? I think it lacks of twelve.

No, it is struck. Indeed?

Then it draws near the season in which the spirit

held his wont to walk.

BANG Ah!

What does this mean, my lord?

The King doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,

and, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,

the soldier's music and rites of war bray out

the triumph of his pledge. Is it a custom?

Ay, marry, it is!

But to my mind, though I am native here

and to the manner born, it is a custom

more honour'd in the breach than the observance.

This heavy-headed revel east and west

makes us traduc'd and tax'd of other nations.

They call us drunkards

and indeed it takes from our achievements,

though perform'd at height.

So oft it chances in particular men

that, for a vicious mole of nature in them,

their virtues else - be they as pure as grace,

as infinite as man may undergo -

shall in the general censure take corruption

from that particular fault.

Look, my lord.

EERIE CREAKING

It comes.

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

thou com'st in such a questionable shape I'll speak to thee.

I'll call thee Hamlet,

royal Dane, King...

VOICE CATCHING: ..Father.

Answer me why thou, dead corpse,

again revisits thus the glimpses of the moon.

Say, why is this?

Wherefore? What should we do?

BANG Ah!

STATIC FEEDBACK

It beckons you to go away with it! Do not go to it! Do not, my lord!

Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee!

It waves me forth. I'll go to it. What if it tempt you

towards the flood, my lord, or to the dreadful summit of a cliff,

and there assume some other, horrible form which might

deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness?

It waves me forth again! You shall not go, my lord.

Hold off your hands! Be rul'd. You shall not go!

My fate cries out

and makes each petty artery in this body

as hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.

Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen.

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

Ah!

Mark me.

I will.

I am thy father's spirit,

doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,

and for the day confined to fast in fires

till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away.

HE SOBS

Pity me not!

But lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold.

Speak, I am bound to hear.

So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

What? My hour is almost come.

List, list, O, list!

If thou didst ever thy dear father love...

O God!

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

Murder?

Murder most foul, as in the best it is,

but this most foul, strange and unnatural.

Haste me to know it,

that I, with wings as swift as meditation

and thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge.

Now, Hamlet, hear,

'tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, a serpent stung me.

So the whole ear of Denmark is by a forged process of my death

rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth,

the serpent that did sting thy father's life

now wears his crown.

O my prophetic soul!

My uncle? Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,

with witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts -

O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power so to seduce! -

won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.

O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!

From me, whose love was of that dignity

that it went hand in hand even with the vow

I made to her in marriage,

and to decline upon a wretch whose natural gifts

were poor to those of mine!

But brief let me be.

Sleeping within my orchard, my custom always of the afternoon,

upon my secret hour thy uncle stole,

with juice of cursed poison in a vial,

and in the porches of my ears did pour the leperous distilment,

whose effect holds such an enmity with the state of man

that swift as quicksilver it courses through the natural gates

and alleys of the body, and with a sudden vigour doth posset

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

So did it mine. And a most instant tetter bark'd about,

most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust, all my smooth body.

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand,

of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd,

cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, unhousel'd, disappointed,

unanel'd, without confession made,

sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head!

If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not!

Let not the royal bed of Denmark

be a couch for luxury and damned incest.

But, howsoever you pursue this act,

taint not thy mind,

nor let thy soul proceed against thy mother aught.

Leave her to heaven and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge.

Fare thee well at once!

The morning comes.

Hamlet.

EERIE CREAKING

Remember me.

Hold!

Hold, my heart!

And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,

but bear me stiffly up.

Remember thee?

Ay, thy poor ghost, remember thee?

Yea, from the table of my memory

I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,

all quotes of books, all forms, all pressures past

that youth and observation copied there,

and thy commandment all alone

shall live within the book and volume of my brain,

unmix'd with baser matter.

Yes, by heaven!

O most pernicious woman!

O villain!

Villain!

Smiling, damned villain!

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.

Now to my word!

INTERCOM BEEPS DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES

How is't, my noble lord? What news, my lord?

O, wonderful! Good my lord, tell it.

No, you will reveal it.

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

But you'll be secret? Ay, by heaven, my lord.

There's ne'er 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.

Why, right! You are in the right!

And so, without more circumstance at all,

I hold it fit that we shake hands and part.

You, as your business and desires shall point you,

for every man hath business and desire, such as it is.

These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.

I am sorry they offend you, heartily!

There's no offence, my lord.

Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is! And much offence, too.

Touching this vision here, it is an honest ghost, that let me tell you.

For your desire to know what is between us, overcome it as you may.

And now, good friends,

as you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,

give me one poor request. What is't, my lord?

Never make known what you have seen to-night.

Never to speak of this that you have seen.

Never to speak of this that you have heard.

O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

But come!

Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,

how strange or odd I bear myself -

as I perchance hereafter shall think it meet

to put an antic disposition on -

that you, at such times seeing me, never shall,

with arms encumb'red thus, or this head-shake,

or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,

as "Well, well, we know," or "We could, an if we would,"

or such ambiguous giving out, to note that you know aught of me -

this is not to do,

so grace and mercy at their most need help you, swear.

I swear. I swear.

With all my love I do commend me to you.

The time...

..is...

..out of joint.

O, cursed spite

that ever I was born to set it right.

He waxes desperate with imagination.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

MUSIC: Up To Me by Bob Dylan

# Everything went from bad to worse

# Money never changed a thing

# Death kept followin' trackin' us down

# At least I heard your bluebird sing

# Now somebody's got to show their hand

# Time is an enemy

# I know you're long gone

# I guess it must be up to me

# If I'd have thought about it

# I never would've done it

# I guess I would've let it slide

# If I'd have paid attention to what others were thinkin'

# The heart inside me would have died

# But I was just too stubborn to ever be governed

# By enforced insanity

# Someone had to reach for the risin' star

# I guess it was up to me... #

You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo,

before you visit Laertes in France,

to make inquire of his behaviour.

My lord, I did intend it.

Marry, well said, very well said.

Take you, as 'twere, some distant knowledge of him;

as thus,

"I know his father and his friends, and in part him."

Do you mark this, Reynaldo?

Ay, very well, my lord.

"And in part him, but..." you may say,

"..not well, but if it be he I mean, he's very wild, addicted,

"and so and so,"

and there put on him what forgeries you please.

As gaming, my lord.

Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling,

whoring, you may go so far.

But, my good lord... Wherefore should you do this?

Ay, my lord, I would know that.

Marry, sir, here's my drift.

You laying these slight sullies on my son,

your French party in converse, him you would sound,

having ever seen in the prenominate crimes

the youth you breathe of guilty.

Be assur'd, he closes with you in this consequence.

IN FRENCH ACCENT: "Good sir," or "friend," or "gentleman,"

according to the phrase and the addition of man and country...

Yes, very good, my lord.

And then, sir, does he this...

He... He does...

What was I about to say?

I was about to say something! Where did I leave?

At "closes in the consequence", at "friend or so", and "gentleman".

"Closes in the consequence".

Ay, marry!

He closes thus:

IN FRENCH ACCENT: "I know the gentleman.

"I saw him yesterday, or the other day,

"and, as you say, there was he gaming;

"there o'ertook in's rouse; there falling out at tennis."

Or perchance, "I saw him enter a brothel."

See you now?

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth;

and thus do we of wisdom and of reach,

by indirections find directions out.

So, by my former lecture and advice, shall you, my son.

You have me, have you not? My lord, I have.

God be with you. Fare ye well! Good, my lord!

Observe his inclination in yourself.

I shall, my lord.

Farewell!

How now, Ophelia? What's the matter?

Lord Hamlet,

with his doublet all unbrac'd,

pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,

with a look so piteous in purport as if he'd 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.

What said he?

He took me by the wrist and held me hard;

then goes he to the length of all his arm,

and, with his other hand thus over his brow,

he falls to such perusal of my face as he would draw it.

Long stay'd he so.

And at last, a little shaking of mine arm, and thrice his head thus

waving up and down, he rais'd 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 turn'd.

He seem'd to find his way without his eyes,

for out o' doors he went without their help,

and to the last bended their light on me.

Go with me.

I will go seek the King.

This is the very ecstasy of love,

whose violent property fordoes itself

and leads the will to desperate undertakings,

as oft as any passion under heaven that does afflict our natures.

I am sorry.

Come.

This must be known; which, being kept close,

might move more grief to hide than hate to utter love.

MUSIC PLAYS

Oh!

Oh.

LAUGHTER

The ambassador from Norway, my good lord, is presently at hand.

CLAUDIUS TAKES A DEEP BREATH

Thou still hast been the father of good news.

Have I, my lord?

I assure, my good liege, I hold my duty as I hold my soul,

both to my God and to my gracious king;

and I do think, or else this brain of mine hunts not

the trail of policy so sure as it hath us'd to do,

that I have found the very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.

O, speak of that! That do I long to hear.

Give first admittance to the ambassador.

My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.

Oh...

GERTRUDE CHUCKLES

He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found the head

and source of all your son's distemper.

Well, I doubt it is no other but the main,

his father's death and our over-hasty marriage.

Well, we shall sift him.

GERTRUDE SIGHS Could you...?

COMPUTER CHIMES

Welcome, my good friend.

Say, Voltemand, what from the King of Norway?

Most fair return of greetings and desires.

Upon our first, he sent out to suppress his nephew's armies;

which to him appear'd to be a preparation against the Polish,

but better look'd into, he truly found it was against your Highness;

whereat griev'd, that so his sickness, age, and impotence

was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests on Fortinbras;

which he, in brief, obeys,

makes vow before his uncle never more to give the assay of arms

against Your Majesty.

Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,

gives him commission to employ those soldiers,

so levied as before, against the Polish.

It likes us well;

and at our more consider'd time we'll read, answer,

and think upon this business.

Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour.

COMPUTER CHIMES This business is well ended.

My liege, and madam, to expostulate what majesty should be,

what duty is, why day is day, night is night, and time is time.

Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time.

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,

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?

LAUGHTER

But let that go.

More matter, with less art.

Madam, I swear I use no art at all.

Mad let us grant him, then,

and now remains that we find out the cause of this effect -

or rather say, the cause of this defect,

for this effect defective comes by cause.

Thus it remains, and the remainder thus. Perpend.

LAUGHTER

I have a daughter - have while she is mine -

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

Now, gather and surmise.

"To the celestial, and my soul's idol,

"the most beautified Ophelia..."

That's an ill phrase, a vile phrase; "beautified" is a vile phrase.

But you shall hear. Thus:

"In her excellent white bosom..."

Came this from Hamlet to her?

Good madam, stay awhile. I will be faithful.

LAUGHTER

"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 thee best, most best, believe it.

"Adieu. Thine evermore, most dear lady,

"whilst this machine is to him, Hamlet." Hamlet...

This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me;

and more above, hath his solicitings,

as they fell out by time, by means, and place, all given to mine ear.

But how hath she receiv'd his love?

Ah...

What...? What do you think of me?

As of a man faithful and honourable.

I would fain prove so.

But what might you think, if I had seen this hot love on the wing -

as I perceiv'd it, I must tell you that, before my daughter told me -

what might you, or my dear Majesty your queen here, think,

if I had given my heart a winking, mute and dumb,

or look'd upon this love with idle sight?

What might you think?

No, I went around to work and my young mistress thus

I did bespeak:

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

"This must not be."

She took my advice, and he, repulsed,

a short tale to make, fell into the madness wherein now he raves,

and all we mourn for.

Do you think it is this?

It may be, very likely.

Hath there been such a time - I would fain know that -

that I have positively said "Tis so," when it prov'd otherwise?

Not that I know.

Take this from this, if this be otherwise.

GERTRUDE CHUCKLES

If circumstances lead me, I will find where truth is hid,

though it were hid indeed within the centre.

And how may we try it further?

You know sometimes he walks four hours together, here in the lobby.

Oh, yes, so he does indeed.

At such a time, I'll loose my daughter to him.

Be you and I behind an arras then.

Mark the encounter.

LAUGHTER Oh...

If he love her not, and be not from his reason fall'n thereon,

let me be no assistant for a state, but keep a farm and carters.

We will try it.

Oh, but look where sadly the poor wretch comes.

Away, I do beseech you, both away.

I'll board him presently.

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 wish'd.

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,

the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

the pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,

the insolence of office

and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes,

when he himself might his quietus make

with a bare bodkin?

Who would fardels bear,

to grunt and sweat under a weary life,

but that the dread of

something after death,

the undiscover'd country

from whose bourn no traveller returns,

puzzles the will

and makes us rather bear those ills we have

than fly to others we know not of?

Thus conscience

does make cowards of us all;

and thus the native hue of resolution

is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought...

..and enterprises of great pitch and moment

with this regard

their currents turn awry...

..and lose the name of action.

How does my good Lord Hamlet?

Well, God-a-mercy.

Do you know me, my lord?

Excellent well.

You are a fishmonger.

LAUGHTER Not I, my lord.

Then I would you were so honest a man.

Honest, my lord?

Ay, sir, for, to be honest, as this world goes,

is to be one man pick'd out of 10,000.

That's very true, my lord.

For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog,

being a god kissing carrion...

Have you a daughter?

I have, my lord.

Let her not walk in the sun.

Conception is a blessing,

but not as your daughter may conceive.

Friend, look to't.

How say you by that?

LAUGHTER

Still harping on my daughter.

Yet he knew me not at first. He said I was a fishmonger.

LAUGHTER

He's far gone, far gone!

And truly in my youth I suff'red much extremity for love,

very near this.

I'll speak to him again.

What do you read, my lord?

Words...

LAUGHTER

..words, words.

What is the matter, my lord?

Between who?

I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old men

have grey hair; their faces are wrinkled;

their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum;

and that they have a plentiful lack of wit,

together with most weak hams.

LAUGHTER

All which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe,

yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down;

for yourself, sir, could be as old as I am

if, like a crab, you could go backwards.

LAUGHTER

Though this be madness, yet there's method in't.

LAUGHTER

Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

Into my grave?

Indeed, that is out of the air.

How pregnant sometimes his replies are!

I'll leave him now and contrive the means of meeting

between him and my daughter.

My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more

willingly part withal...

LAUGHTER

..except my life,

except my life,

except my life!

LAUGHTER

Farewell, my lord.

These tedious old fools!

You go to seek the Lord Hamlet. There he is.

God save you, sir!

My honour'd lord!

THEY LAUGH

My excellent good friends!

How dost thou, Guildenstern?

Ah, Rosencrantz! LAUGHTER

I am very glad to see you. How do ye both?

As the indifferent children of the earth.

We're happy in that we're not over-happy.

On Fortune's cap we're not the very button.

Nor the soles of her shoe? Neither, my lord.

Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?

Faith, her privates we.

Ooh, in the secret parts of Fortune?

It is most true! She is a strumpet.

What's the news?

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

Then is doomsday near, for your news is not true.

But let me question more in particular.

What have you, my good friends,

deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?

Prison, my lord?

Denmark's a prison.

Then is the world one.

A goodly one; in which there are many wards, confines,

dungeons, Denmark being one o' th' worst.

We think not so, my lord.

Why, then 'tis none to you;

for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

To me it is a prison.

Why, then your ambition makes it one.

'Tis too narrow for your mind.

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself

a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

But in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?

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?

LAUGHTER

Is it a free visitation?

Is it your own inclining?

Come, deal justly with me.

Come, come! Nay, speak.

What should we say, my lord? Why, anything, but to th' purpose.

You were sent for; and there is 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.

To what end, my lord?

That you must teach me.

But let me conjure you by the rights of our fellowship,

by the consonancy of our youth,

by the obligation of our ever-preserved love,

be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for or no.

So, what say you?

I have an eye of you.

If you love me, hold not off.

My lord, we were sent for.

I will tell you why.

So shall my anticipation prevent your discovery,

and your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no feather.

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;

this most excellent canopy, the air,

look you,

this brave overhanging firmament,

this majestical roof fretted with golden fire -

why, it appears no other thing to me

than a foul and pestilent

congregation of vapours.

What a piece of work is a man...

..how noble in reason,

how infinite in faculty,

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,

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.

What? How chances it they travel?

Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city?

Are they so follow'd?

No, indeed are they not. HAMLET LAUGHS

It is not very strange; for my uncle is the King of Denmark,

and those that would make mouths at him while my father lived

now pay 20, 40, 50, 100 ducats apiece for his picture in little.

You are welcome to Elsinore.

HAMLET CHUCKLES

Your hands...

You are welcome,

but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceiv'd.

LAUGHTER In what, my dear lord?

I am but mad north-north-west.

When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

POLONIUS: Well, be with you, gentlemen!

Hark you, Guildenstern - and you too - at each ear a hearer!

That great baby you see there -

I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the actors. Mark it.

My lord, I have news to tell you.

"My lord, I have news to tell you."

The actors are come hither, my lord.

Buzz, buzz!

The best actors in the world, for either tragedy, comedy,

history, pastoral,

erm, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral,

tragical-historical,

tragical-comical-historical-pastoral or...

You are welcome, masters! Woohoo!

Welcome, all!

What, my young lady and mistress? Oh...

Oh! I am very glad to see you.

What? My old friend...

Come, we'll have a speech straight.

Come, give us a taste of your quality.

Come, a passionate speech. What speech, my lord?

I heard thee speak me a speech to me once, but it was never acted;

or if it was, not above once;

for the play, I remember, pleas'd not the million,

'twas caviar to the general;

but it was - as I receiv'd it, and others in whose judgments

in such matters cried in the top of mine - an excellent play.

One speech in't I chiefly lov'd.

'Twas Aeneas' tale to Dido,

especially where he speaks of Priam's slaughter.

If it live within your memory, begin at this line -

"The rugged Pyrrhus, like th' Hyrcanian..."

'Tis not so.

It begins with Pyrrhus:

"The rugged Pyrrhus,

"he whose sable arms,

"black as his purpose,

"did the night resemble,

"when he lay couched in the ominous horse,

"hath now his fear and black complexion smear'd

"with heraldry more dismal.

"Head to foot now is he total gules,

"horridly trick'd with blood of fathers..."

"..mothers, daughters, sons,

"bak'd and impasted with the parching streets,

"that lend a tyrannous and damned light to their lord's murder.

"With eyes like carbuncles,

"the hellish Pyrrhus old grandsire Priam seeks."

And so, proceed you.

Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good discretion.

Anon he finds him, striking too short at Greeks.

Unequal match'd, Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide;

but with the whiff and wind of his fell sword

th' unnerved father falls.

But now his sword, which was declining on the milky head

of reverend Priam, seems i' th' air to stick.

So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,

and, like a neutral to his will and matter,

did nothing.

But, as we often see before some storm

a silence in the heavens,

the rack stand still,

the bold winds speechless,

and the orb below as hush as death -

anon the dreadful thunder doth rend the region;

so, after Pyrrhus' pause,

aroused vengeance sets him new at work;

and never did the Cyclops' hammers fall on Mars's armour,

forg'd for proof eterne,

with less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword now falls on Priam.

Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune!

All you gods, in general synod take away her power;

break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,

and bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,

as low as to the fiends!

This is too long.

LAUGHTER

It shall be to the barber's with your hair.

Prithee say on.

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

Come to Hecuba.

But who, O who, had seen the mobled queen...

"The mobled queen"?

That's good! "Mobled queen" is good.

LAUGHTER

Run barefoot up and down,

threat'ning the flames with bisson rheum;

a cloth upon that head where late the diadem stood,

and for a robe,

about her lank and all o'erteemed loins, a blanket,

in the alarm of fear caught up -

who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd

'gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounc'd.

But if the gods themselves did see her now,

as she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport in mincing

with his sword her husband's limbs,

the instant burst of clamour that she made -

unless things mortal move them not at all -

would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven

and passion in the gods.

Look, whe'r he has not turn'd his colour. There's tears in's eyes.

I pray you, no more! 'Tis well.

HAMLET CHUCKLES

We'll have thee speak the rest out soon.

Good my lord, will you see the players well bestow'd?

Do you hear?

Let them be well us'd;

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

After your death, it would be better you had a bad epitaph

than their ill report while you live.

My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Oh, God, man, much better!

Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping?!

Use them after your own honour and dignity!

The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty!

Take them in!

Come, sirs.

Friends, I'll leave you till night.

You are welcome to Elsinore.

Good, my lord.

Ay, so, God be with you.

Dost thou hear me, old friend?

Can you play The Murder Of Gonzago?

Ay, my lord.

You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen lines

or 16 lines, which I would set down and insert in't, could you not?

Ay, my lord.

We'll have it tomorrow night.

Follow that lord, and look you mock him not.

THEY LAUGH

Now I am alone.

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

but in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

could force his soul so to his own conceit

that from her working all his visage wann'd,

tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,

a broken voice,

and his whole function suiting with forms to his conceit?

And all for nothing!

For Hecuba.

What's Hecuba to him...

LAUGHTER ..or he to Hecuba,

that he should weep for her?

What would he do,

had he the motive and cue for passion that I have?

He would drown the stage with tears

and cleave the general ear with horrid speech,

make mad the guilty and appal the free,

confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed

the very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet 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 damn'd defeat was made.

Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain?

Breaks my pate across?

Tweaks me by th' nose?

Gives me the lie i' th' throat as deep as to the lungs?

Who does me this? Sure, I should take it,

for it cannot be but I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall

to make oppression bitter,

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!

Why, what an ass am I!

LAUGHTER

This is most brave,

that I...

..the son of a dear father murder'd,

must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,

and fall a-cursing, like a very drab, a stallion!

Fie upon't! Fie!

About, my brains!

I have heard that guilty creatures,

sitting at a play...

..have by the very cunning of the scene

been so struck to the soul that suddenly

they have proclaim'd 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 but blench...

..I know my course.

The spirit that I have seen may be the devil:

and the devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape;

yea,

and perhaps out of my melancholy and my weakness,

as he is very potent with such spirits,

abuses me to damn me:

I'll have grounds more relative than this.

The play's the thing

wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King!

And can you by no drift of conference

get from him why he puts on this confusion,

grating so harshly all his days of quiet

with turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

He does confess he feels himself distracted,

but from what cause he will by no means speak.

Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,

but with a crafty madness keeps aloof

when we would bring him on to some confession of his true state.

Well, did he receive you well?

Most like a gentleman.

But with much forcing of his disposition.

He asked no questions, and of our demands was most free in his reply.

And did you assay him to any pastime?

Madam, we told him of the players

and there did seem in him a kind of joy to hear of it.

They're about the court, and they have...

Well, as I think, they have already order this night to play before him.

'Tis most true; and he beseech'd me

to entreat Your Majesties to hear and see the matter.

With all my heart, and it doth much content me to hear him so inclin'd.

Good friends, give him a further edge

and drive his purpose on to these delights.

We shall, my lord.

Sweet Gertrude, leave us too;

for we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,

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

Her father and myself - lawful espials -

will so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,

we may of their encounter frankly judge and gather by him,

as he is behav'd, if't be th' affliction of his love, or no,

that thus he suffers for.

I shall obey you;

and for your part, Ophelia,

I do hope that your good beauties be the happy cause

of Hamlet's wildness.

So shall I hope your virtues shall bring him to his wonted ways again,

to both your honours.

Madam, I wish it may.

Ophelia, walk you here.

Gracious, so please you, we will bestow ourselves.

POLONIUS ON SPEAKER: Ophelia, read on this book,

that show of such an exercise may colour your loneliness.

The fair Ophelia!

Nymph... THEY LAUGH

..in thy orisons be all my sins rememb'red.

Good my lord,

how does your honour for this many a day?

Well...

HAMLET GIGGLES

..well...

HE LAUGHS

..well.

HE LAUGHS

My lord, I have remembrances of yours

that I have long longed to redeliver.

I pray you, now receive them.

No, not I! I never gave you aught.

My honour'd lord, you know right well you did,

and with them words of so sweet breath compos'd

as made the things more rich.

Their perfume lost,

take these again;

for to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

There, my lord!

Are you honest?

My lord?

Are you fair?

What means my lordship?

That if you be honest and fair,

your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty

from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can

translate beauty into his likeness.

This was sometime a paradox...

..but the time gives it proof.

I did love you...

..once.

Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

You should not have believ'd me;

I loved you not.

I was the more deceived.

Get thee to a nunnery!

Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?

I am myself indifferent honest,

yet I could accuse me of such things it would be 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.

We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us.

Go thy ways to a nunnery, and quickly too.

Where's your father?

At home, my lord.

Well, let the doors be shut upon him,

that he may act the fool nowhere but in his own house.

HE CHUCKLES

Farewell.

HE YELPS

If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry:

be thou as chaste as ice,

as pure as snow,

thou shalt not escape calumny.

Get thee to a nunnery.

Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool;

for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them.

Farewell.

Heavenly powers, restore him!

Can you just stop it now, please?!

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

God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another!

You jig, you amble, and you lisp;

you nickname God's creatures

and make your wantonness your ignorance.

Go to, I'll no more of it!

It's made me mad.

I say, there's to be no more marriages!

Those that are married already -

all but one -

shall live;

the rest shall keep as they are.

To a nunnery, go!

O, what a noble mind is here overthrown!

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

the expectation and the rose of the fair state,

the glass of fashion,

the mould of form,

the observ'd of all observers,

quite, quite down!

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

that suck'd the honey of his music vows,

now see that noble and most sovereign reason,

like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh;

that unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth

blasted with ecstasy.

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

see what I see.

Love?

His affections do not that way tend;

nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little, was not like madness.

There is something in his soul over which his melancholy sits on brood;

and I do fear 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.

Haply the seas, and countries different, with variable objects,

shall expel this something-settled matter in his heart,

whereon his brains still beating puts him thus

from fashion of himself.

What think you on't?

It shall do well.

But yet do I believe the origin and commencement of his grief

sprung from neglected love.

How now, Ophelia?

You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said.

We heard it all.

My lord, do as you please;

but if you hold it fit, after the play let his queen mother

all alone entreat him to show his grief.

Let her be round with him;

and I'll be plac'd, so please you, in the ear of all their conference.

If she find him not, to England send him;

or confine him where your wisdom best shall think.

It shall be so.

Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.

Speak the speech, I pray you,

as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue.

But if you mouth it, as many of your players do,

I had as lief the town crier spoke the lines.

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

but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest,

and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion,

you must acquire and beget a temperance

that may give it smoothness.

O, it offends me to the soul to hear some robustious periwig-pated

fellow tear a passion to tatters,

to very rags,

to split the ears of the groundlings,

who, for the most part,

are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows...

LAUGHTER ..and noise.

Pray you avoid it.

I warrant your honour.

Be not too tame neither,

but let your own discretion be your tutor:

suit the action to the word, the word to the action;

with this special observance,

that you overstep not the modesty of nature:

for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing,

whose end, both at the first and now,

was and is, to hold,

as 'twere, the mirror up to nature;

to show Virtue her feature,

Scorn her image,

and the very age and body of the time

his form and pressure.

Now, this overdone, or come tardy off,

though it make the unskilful laugh,

cannot but make the judicious grieve;

the censure of the which one must in your allowance

overweigh a whole theatre of others.

O, go, make you ready.

Sir, will the King hear this piece of work?

And the Queen too, and that presently.

Well, bid the players make haste.

Horatio! Here, my lord.

Horatio, thou art even as just a man

as e'er my conversation cop'd withal.

O, my dear lord!

Nay, do not think I flatter;

for what advancement may I hope from thee,

that no revenue hast but thy good spirits

to feed and clothe thee?

HORATIO CHUCKLES

Dost thou hear?

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice

and could of men distinguish,

her election she hath seal'd thee for herself.

For thou hast been as one,

in suff'ring all,

that suffers nothing;

a man who Fortune's buffets and rewards

hast ta'en with equal thanks;

and blest are those whose blood and judgment

are so well commingled

that they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger

to sound what stop she please.

Give me the man that is not passion's slave, and...

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

ay, in my heart of hearts,

as I do thee.

Something too much of this.

The King is coming to the play.

One speech in it comes near the circumstance,

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

I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot...

FOOTSTEPS THUMP

..even with the very comment of thy soul, observe my uncle.

If his occulted guilt do not itself unkennel in one speech,

it is a damned ghost that we have seen,

and my imaginations are as hellish as foul black night.

Give him heedful note;

for I mine eyes will rivet to his face,

and after we will both our judgments join in censure of his seeming.

My lord, if he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,

and scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

So, they're coming to the play.

I must be idle.

Get thee a place.

APPLAUSE

How fares our cousin Hamlet?

Excellent, i' faith, of the chameleon's dish.

I eat the air, promise-crammed.

You would not feed capons so.

I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet.

These words are not mine.

No, nor mine now.

My lord, you once played in the university, you say?

That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.

What did you enact?

I did enact Julius Caesar.

I was killed at the Capitol.

Brutus killed me.

Et tu, Brute?!

Then fall, Caesar.

HE GROANS

LAUGHTER

Are the players ready?

Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

No, good madam.

LAUGHTER

Here's metal more attractive.

Do you mark that?

Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

No, my lord.

I mean, my head upon your lap?

Ay, my lord.

Did you think I meant country matters?

I think nothing, my lord.

That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.

What is, my lord?

Nothing.

You are merry, my lord.

Who, I? Ay, my lord.

What should a man do but be merry?

For, look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, huh?

And my father died within these two hours.

Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.

So long? Died two months and not forgotten yet?

LAUGHTER

Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life

half a year.

What means Your Lordship?

APPLAUSE

MUSIC: One Too Many Mornings by Bob Dylan

HE PLAYS ALONG WITH THE MUSIC

# Down the street the dogs are barkin'

# And the day is a-gettin' dark

# As the night comes in a-fallin'

# The dogs lose their bark

# And the silent night will shatter

INSTRUMENT TOOTS # From the sounds inside my mind

# Yes, I'm one too many mornings

# And a thousand miles behind

# From the crossroads of my doorstep

# My eyes start to fade

# And I turn my head back to the room

# Where my love and I have laid

# And I gaze back to the street

# The sidewalk and the sign

# And I'm one too many mornings

# And a thousand miles behind

# It's a restless hungry feeling

# That don't mean no-one no good

# When everything I'm a-sayin'

# You can say it just as good

# You're right from your side

# And I'm right from mine

# We're both just one too many mornings

# And a thousand miles behind... #

Full thirty years have passed and summers green,

and thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen,

since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands

unite commutual in most sacred bands.

So many journeys may the sun and moon make us again

count o'er, ere love be done.

But woe is me, you are so sick of late,

so far from cheer and from your former state that I distrust you.

Yet though I distrust,

discomfort you, my lord, you nothing must.

For women's fear and love hold quantity,

in neither aught, or in extremity.

Now what my love is, proof hath made you know,

and as my love is sized, my fear is so:

where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear.

Where little fears grow great,

great love grows there.

Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too.

My operant powers their functions cease to do.

And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,

honoured, beloved, and haply one as kind,

for husband shalt thou... O, confound the rest!

Such love must needs be treason in my breast.

In second husband let me be accursed!

None wed the second but who killed the first.

That's wormwood.

The instances that second marriage move

are base respects of thrift,

but none of love.

A second time I kill my husband dead

when second husband kisses me in bed.

I do believe you think what now you speak,

but what we do determine oft we break.

Purpose is but the slave to memory,

of violent birth, but poor validity,

which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,

but fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.

What to ourselves in passion we propose,

the passion ending, doth the purpose lose.

The violence of either grief or joy

their own enactures with themselves destroy.

This world is not forever.

'Tis not strange that even our loves should with our fortunes change.

The great man down, you mark his favourite flies.

The poor advanced makes friends of enemies.

And who in want a hollow friend doth try, directly seasons him his enemy.

But, orderly to end where I begun,

our wills and fates do so contrary run

that our devices still are overthrown.

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

So think thou wilt no second husband wed,

but die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light.

Sport and repose lock from me day and night.

To desperation turn my trust and hope.

A hermit's cheer in prison be my scope.

Each opposite that blanks the face of joy

meet what I would have well and it destroy.

Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife

if, once a widow, ever I be wife!

'Tis deeply sworn.

Sweet, leave me here awhile.

My spirits grow dull,

and fain I would beguile the tedious day with sleep.

Sleep rock thy brain,

and never come mischance between us twain.

Madam, how like you the play?

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Oh, but she'll keep her word.

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

No, they do but jest.

Poison in jest.

No offence in the world. What do you call the play?

The Mousetrap.

LAUGHTER How? Metaphorically.

'Tis the image of a murder done in Vienna.

'Tis a knavish piece of work, but what of that?

Your Majesty and we that have free souls,

it touches us not.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.

You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of the old man's wife.

Thoughts black,

hands apt,

drugs fit,

and time agreeing,

Confederate season, else no creature seeing,

thou mixture rank,

of midnight weeds collected,

with Hecate's ban thrice blasted,

thrice infected...

..thy natural magic and dire property

on wholesome life usurp.

STATIC HISSES

STATIC HISSES

Didst perceive? Very well, my lord.

Upon the talk of poison? I did very well note him.

Would this not get me a share in a fellowship of actors?

Half a share.

A whole one.

I'll take the ghost's word for £1,000.

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, rather with anger.

Your wisdom should show itself more richer

to signify this to his doctor.

My lord, put your discourse into some frame,

start not so wildly from my affair. I am tame, sir. Pronounce!

The Queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit

have sent me to you. You are welcome.

Nay, my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed.

If it will 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.

Well, I cannot. What?

Make you a wholesome answer, my wit's diseased

but such answer as I can make, you shall command or, as you say,

my mother. Therefore no more but to the matter, my mother, you say.

Then thus she says your behaviour have struck her into amazement,

admiration. Oh, wonderful son that can so astonish a mother,

but is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's admiration?

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

We shall we 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.

My lord, what is your cause of distemper?

You do surely bar the door to your own liberty

if you deny your griefs to your friend.

Sir...

..I lack advancement.

How can that be? You have the voice of the king himself

for your succession in Denmark.

Aye, sir, but while the grass grows...

The proverb is something musty.

Why do you go about to recover the wind of me

as if you would drive me into a toil?

Oh, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.

I do not well understand that.

Will you play upon this pipe?

My lord, I cannot. I pray you.

Believe me, I cannot. I do beseech you.

I know no touch of it, my lord.

'Tis as easy as lying.

Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb,

give it breath with your mouth and it will discourse

most eloquent music. Look, you, these are the stops.

But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony.

I have not the skill.

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me.

You would play upon me.

You would seem to know my stops.

You would pluck out the heart of my mystery.

You would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass

and there is much music,

excellent voice in this little organ,

yet cannot you make it speak.

Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?

Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me,

you cannot play upon me. God bless you, sir.

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

Do you see yonder cloud

that's almost in the shape of a camel?

The mast is like a camel indeed.

Me thinks it is like a weasel.

Yeah, 'tis backed like a weasel.

Or like a whale.

Yep, very like a whale.

And I will come to my mother by and by.

They fool me to the top of my bent.

I WILL COME BY AND BY!

I will say so.

LEAVE ME!

Friends...

It is now the very witching time of night when churchyards yawn

and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.

Now could I drink hot blood

and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on!

Soft, now, to my mother, heart...

..lose not thy nature.

Let me be cruel, not unnatural.

I will speak daggers to her but use none.

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us

to let his madness range therefore prepare you,

I your commission will forthwith dispatch

and he to England shall along with you.

The terms of our estate may not endure hazard so dangerous

as to hourly grow out of his lunacies.

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.

The single and peculiar life is bound with all the strength

and armour of the mind to keep itself from noyance,

but much more that spirit upon whose wheel depend

and rest the lives of many. Arm you, I pray you, for this speedy voyage.

For we will fetters put upon this fear

which now goes too free-footed. And we will haste thus.

My lord, he's going to his mother's closet.

Behind the arras I'll convey myself to hear the process.

I'll warrant she'll tax him home.

Fare you well, my liege.

I'll call upon you where you go to bed and tell you what I know.

Thanks, dear my lord.

Oh...

My offence is rank.

It smells to heaven,

it hath the primal eldest curse upon it.

A brother's murder.

COCKS GUN

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 stand 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?

Whereto serves mercy but to confront the visage of offence?

And what's in prayer but this twofold force,

to be forestalled before we come to fall or pardoned being down?

And I'll look up, my fault is past.

But, 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, my own ambition and...

..my queen.

May one be pardoned and retain the offence?

In the corrupted currents of this world offence's gilded hand

may shove by justice and often it's seen the wicked prize itself

buys out the law, but it is not so above.

There is no...

shuffling there, the action lies in his true nature

and we ourselves compelled, even to the teeth

and forehead of our faults, to give in evidence.

So, what then? What rests?

Try what repentance can. What can it not?

Yet what can it when one cannot repent?

O, wretched state!

O, bosom black as death!

O, limed soul, that, struggling to be free, art more ensnared.

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 is praying

and now I'll do it

and so he goes to heaven, and so am I revenged.

That would be scanned.

A villain kills my father and for that, I, his sole son,

do this same villain send to heaven.

Why...

..this is hire and salary...

..not revenge.

He took my father grossly, full of bread; with all his crimes

broad blown, as flush as May;

and am I then revenged, to take him in the purging of his soul,

when he is fit and seasoned for his passage?

No. When he's drunk, asleep or in his rage,

or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;

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 thy sickly days.

My words fly up,

my thoughts remain below.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

DRAMATIC MUSIC

He will come straight.

Look you lay home to him.

Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,

and that your grace hath screened and stood between much heat and him.

I'll silence me even here. Pray you be round with him.

I'll warrant you, fear me not.

Withdraw, I hear him coming.

Now, Mother, what's the matter?

Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

Mother, you have my father much offended.

Oh, come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

Why, how now, Hamlet? What's the matter now?

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.

No, then I'll set those to you that can speak.

Go, go, sit you down!

You shall not budge!

Till I set you up a glass where you may see the inmost part of you.

Why, what will you do?

COCKS GUN

No. You will not murder me?

Help! Help! HELP!

What? How now, a rat?

No!

What have you done?

Nay, I know not.

Is it the King? Oh, 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? Aye, lady, 'twas my word.

Oh...

Thou wretched, rash,

intruding fool, farewell!

I took thee for thy better.

Leave wringing of your hands. Peace!

Sit down!

Let me wring your heart, for so I shall

if it be made of penetrable stuff.

What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue

in noise so rude against me?

Such an act that blurs the grace and blush of modesty,

calls virtue hypocrite,

takes off the rose off the fair forehead of an innocent love

and sets a blister there, makes marriage vows

as false as dicers' oaths.

Heaven's face doth glow, yeah, this solidity and compound mass

with tristful visage is thought-sick at the act.

Aye, me, what act that roars so loud and thunders in the index?

Look here...

..upon this picture and on this.

The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.

See what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion's curls,

the front of Jove himself,

an eye like Mars to threaten and command,

a combination and a form indeed,

where every god did seem to set his seal

to give the world assurance of a man.

This was your husband.

Look you now, what follows.

Here is your husband;

like a mildewed ear,

blasting his wholesome brother.

Have you eyes?

Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed

and batten on this moor?

Have you eyes? You cannot call it love; for at your age

the heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble, and waits upon

the judgment, and what judgment would step from this to this?

Sense, sure you have, or you would not have motion,

but sure, that sense is apoplexed; for madness would not err,

nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thralled

but it reserved some quantity of choice,

to serve in such a difference.

What devil was it that thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?

Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight

or but a sickly part of one true sense could not so mope.

Shame, where is thy blush? Hamlet, speak no more!

Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul.

And there I see such black and grained spots

as will not leave their tinct.

Nay! Oh! But to live in the

rank sweat of an enseamed bed,

honeying and making love

over the nasty sty!

Oh, speak to me no more!

These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears.

No more, sweet Hamlet! A murderer!

And a villain!

Not twentieth part the tithe of thy precedent lord,

a vice of kings, a cutpurse of the empire

that from a shelf the precious diadem stole,

and put it in his pocket! No more!

A king of shreds and patches!

Save me and hover over me with your wings, you heavenly guards.

What would your gracious figure? Alas, he is mad!

Do you not come your tardy son to chide, that lapsed in time

and passion lets go by the important acting of your dread command?

Say! Do not forget:

this visitation is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

But, look, amazement on thy mother sits.

Speak to her, Hamlet.

How is it with you, lady?

Alas, how is it with you?

You do bend your eye on vacancy...

..and with the encorporal air do hold discourse?

Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep.

Gentle son, upon the heat and flame of thy distemper

sprinkle cool patience.

Whereon do you look? On him, on him!

Look you, how pale he glares.

His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,

would make them capable. 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?

No.

Nothing at all.

But all there is I see.

Nor nothing do you hear?

No.

Nothing but ourselves. Why, look you there!

CRYING: My father.

In his habit as he lived!

Look, you, how he goes even now.

Oh...

This is the very coinage of your brain.

This bodiless creation ecstasy is very cunning in.

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 reword which madness would gambol from.

Mother, for love of grace, lay not that flattering 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.

Repent what's past,

avoid what is to come

and do not spread the compost on the weeds to make them ranker.

O, Hamlet,

thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

Well, throw away the worser part of it,

and live the purer with the other half.

Good night, Mother. No... But go not to my uncle's bed.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat of habits devil,

is angel yet in this and to the use of actions fair and good

he likewise gives a frock and livery that aptly is put on.

Refrain tonight,

and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence:

the next more easy;

for use can almost change the stamp of nature,

and either shame the devil,

or throw him out with wondrous potency.

So, again, goodnight, Mother.

And when you are desirous to be bless'd...

..I'll blessing beg of you.

Oh.

For this same lord, I do repent...

..but heaven hath pleased it so,

to punish me with this and this with me,

that I must be their scourge and minister.

I will bestow him, and will answer well

the death I gave him.

So, again, good night, Mother.

I must be cruel only to be kind...

..thus bad begins

and worse remains behind.

One word more, good lady. What should I do?

Not this, by no means, as I bid you do,

let the blunt King tempt you again to bed,

call you his mouse, pinch wanton on your cheeks and let him

for a pair of reechy kisses or paddling in your neck

with his damned fingers,

make you to ravel all this matter out,

that I essentially...

..am not in madness...

..but mad in craft.

Be thou assured...

..if words be made of breath, and breath of life...

..I have no life to breathe

what thou have said to me.

I must to England.

Oh. You know that?

Alas, I'd forgot! 'Tis so concluded on.

There's letters sealed

and my two schoolfellows...

..whom I will trust as I will adders fanged,

they bear the mandate.

Let it work.

For 'tis the sport to have the engineer

hoist with his own petard.

This man shall send me packing.

HE LAUGHS

I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.

Indeed, this counsellor is now most still,

most secret and most grave,

who was, in life...

..a foolish prating knave.

Come, sir.

To draw toward an end with you.

Good night...

..Mother.

Oh...

Oh, G...

Oh...

No, no...

You...

There's matter in these sighs. I can't, I can't...

These profound heaves you must translate,

'tis fit we understand. Where is your son?

Bestow this place on us a little while.

Oh, my good 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,

pulls out his weapon, 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.

Where is he gone?

To draw apart the body he hath slain over whom his very madness,

like some ore among a mineral of metals base, shows itself pure.

He weeps for what he's done. Oh, Gertrude, come away!

The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch,

but we will ship him hence.

This vile deed we must,

with all our majesty and skill,

both countenance...

..and excuse. Ho, Guildenstern!

Friends both, go join you with some further aid.

Hamlet, in madness, hath Polonius slain,

and from his mother's closet hath he dragged him. Go seek him out,

speak fair, bring the body into the chapel. I pray you haste in this!

Come, Gertrude,

we'll call up our wisest friends and let them know both

what we mean to do and what's untimely done.

Come away!

My soul is full of discord and dismay.

DRAMATIC MUSIC

Safely stowed.

What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?

Compounded it with dust...

..whereto 'tis kin.

Tell us where it is, that we may take it and bear it to the chapel.

Do not believe it. Believe what? That I can keep your counsel

and not mine own.

Besides, to be demanded of a sponge,

what reply should be made by the son of a king?

Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

Aye, sir, that soaks up the King's countenance, his rewards,

his authorities.

But such officers do the King best service in the end:

he keeps them, like an ape doth nuts,

in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be last swallowed.

When he needs what you have gleaned for him,

it is but squeezing...

..and, sponge,

you shall be dry...

..again.

I understand you not. I am glad of it.

My lord, you must tell us where the body is and go with us to the King.

The body is with the King,

but the King is not with the body.

The King is a thing...

A thing, my lord? ..of nothing.

No!

SCREAMING

HAMLET LAUGHS

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

who like not in their judgment, but their eyes

and where it is so the penalty is weighed but never the offence.

To bear all smooth and even, this sudden sending him away

must seem deliberate pause. 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's eaten.

A certain convocation of politic worms are at him.

Your worm is your only emperor for diet.

We fat all creatures else to fat us,

and we fat ourselves for maggots.

That's the end. Alas, alas!

A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king

and eat of the fish

that hath fed off that worm. What do you mean by this?

Nothing but 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.

But if your messenger find him not there...

..seek him in the other place...

..yourself.

But if you find him not within a month,

you shall nose him as you go upstairs, into the lobby.

Go seek him there. Oh...

He will stay until you come.

Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,

which we do tender, as we dearly grieve for that

which thou hast done, must send thee hence with fiery quickness,

therefore prepare thyself...

..for England. For England?

Aye, Hamlet. Good.

So is it, if thou knewest our purposes.

I see an angel...

that sees them.

But...

..come...

..for England!

Farewell, dear Mother.

Thy loving father, Hamlet. Mother!

Mother and father is man and wife,

man and wife is one flesh, so...

..Mother.

But come...

HIGH-PITCHED VOICE: ..for England!

Follow him at foot, tempt him with speed aboard.

Delay it not, I'll have him hence tonight. Your Majesty... Away!

Everything is sealed and done that else leans on the affair.

Pray you, make haste.

And, England, if my love thou hold'st at aught

as my great power thereof may give thee sense,

thou mayst not coldly set our sovereign process,

which imports at full, by letters congruing to that effect,

the present death...

..of Hamlet.

Do it, England.

For like the hectic in my blood he rages

and thou must cure me.

Till I know it is done,

what err my chance, my joys were never begun.

I greet the Danish king, King Claudius.

Tell him that by his licence, Fortinbras claims

the conveyance of a promised march over his kingdom.

You know the rendezvous.

If that His Majesty would aught with us,

we shall express our duty in his eye and let him know so.

Whose soldiers are these?

They are of Norway, sir. How purposed?

Against some part of Poland. Who commands them?

The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.

Go they against the main of Poland, or by some frontier?

Truly to speak, and with no addition,

they go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it

no more profit but the name.

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

Why, then, they never will defend it. Yeah, it is already garrisoned.

2,000 souls and 20,000 ducats will not debate the question

of this straw.

Thank you, sir.

God be with 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!

What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time

be but to sleep and feed?

A beast...

..no more.

Sure he that made us with such large discourse,

looking before and after...

..gave us not that capability and godlike reason

to fust in us unused.

Now, whether it be bestial oblivion

or some craven scruple of thinking

too precisely on the event,

a thought which quartered hath but one part wisdom

and ever three parts coward...

..I do not know...

..why yet I live to say "this thing's to do,"

since I have cause

and will and strength

and means to do it.

Examples gross as earth exhort me.

Witness this army of such mass and charge

led by a delicate and tender prince,

whose spirit with divine ambition puffed

makes mouths at the invisible event,

exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune,

death and danger dare, even for an eggshell.

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 killed, a mother stained,

excitements of my reason and my blood and let all sleep,

while 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,

fight for a plot

wherein the numbers cannot try the cause,

which is not tomb enough and continent

to hide the slain?

O, from this time forth...

MY THOUGHTS BE BLOODY, OR BE NOTHING WORTH!

I will not speak with her.

She is importunate,

indeed distract.

Her mood will needs be pitied. What would she have?

'Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew

dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.

Let her come in.

To my sick soul...

..as sin's true nature is,

each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.

So full of artless jealousy is guilt,

it spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?

Why...

..how now, Ophelia?

# How should I your true-love know

# From another one? #

Alas, sweet lady...

..what imports this song? 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 stone. #

Nay, but Ophelia...

Pray you mark.

She speaks much of her father.

Says she hears there's tricks in the world and coughs

and beats her heart. Alas, look here, my lord!

How do you, pretty lady?

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

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 St Valentine's Day

# All the morn' bedtime

# And I a maid at your window

# To be your Valentine

# Then up he rose put on his clothes

# And shut the chamber door

# Let in the maid that out the maid

# Never departed more. #

Pretty Ophelia... I will make an end on it!

# She said before you tumbled me

# You promised me to wed

# So I would've done by yonder sun

# If you'd not come to my bed. #

How long hath she been thus?

I hope all will be well.

We must be patient.

But I cannot choose but weep to think they should lay him

in the cold ground.

My brother will know of it...

..so I thank you for your good counsel.

Come, my coach.

Goodnight, ladies. Goodnight, sweet ladies.

Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight, goodnight, goodnight...!

This is the poison of deep grief.

It springs all from her father's death.

Gertrude, Gertrude, when sorrows come, they come not single spies,

but in battalions!

First, her father slain, next, your son gone

and he most violent author of his own just remove,

the people muddied, thick and unwholesome in their thoughts

and whispers for good Polonius' death and

we have done but greenly to bury him in secret.

Poor Ophelia divided from herself and her fair judgment,

without the which we are pictures or mere beasts.

Hide yourself, my lord. The ocean, overpeering of his list,

eats not the flats with more impetuous haste

than young Laertes, in a riotous head, overbears your offices.

Where is this king?

Give me my father! Calmy, good Laertes.

That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,

cries "Cuckold!" to my father, brands the harlot even here

between the chaste unsmirched brows of my true mother.

What is the cause, Laertes, that thy rebellion look so giant-like?

Let him go, Gertrude. Tell me, Laertes, why thou art thus incensed.

Let him go, Gertrude! Speak, man.

Where's my father?

Dead. But not by him! Let him demand his fill.

How came he dead?

I'll not be juggled with!

To hell, allegiance!

Vows to the blackest devil!

I dare damnation to this point I stand, let come what comes,

only I'll be revenged most thoroughly for my father.

And who shall stop you? Not all the world. Good Laertes,

if you desire to know the certainty of your dear father's death,

is it writ in your revenge that, swoopstake, you will draw

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 that I am guiltless of your father's death

and am most sensibly in grief for it.

It shall as level to your judgment pierce as day does to your eye.

BANGING

Let her come in.

Oh, heat, dry up my brains!

Tears seven times salt,

burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!

Dear maid...

..kind sister...

..sweet Ophelia!

O heavens, is it possible?

Fare you well, my dove.

There's rosemary...

..that's for remembrance. Pray, love, remember.

There's pansies, that's for thoughts.

There's fennel for you and columbines...

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

We may call it herb-grace on Sundays.

You must wear your rue with a difference.

There's a daisy.

I would give you some violets,

but they withered all when my father died.

Shh, shh, shh.

Shh, shh, shh.

They say he made a good end.

Will he not come again?

Will he not come again?

No, no, he is dead, go to thy deathbed, he never will come again,

he is gone.

He is gone.

He is gone, he is gone.

And we cast away moan.

Do you see this?

O, God. Laertes, I must commune with your grief

or you deny me right. Go but apart,

if by direct or by collateral hand you find us touched,

we will our kingdom give, our crown, our life, all that we call ours,

to you in satisfaction; but if not,

be you content to lend your patience to us,

and we shall jointly labour with your soul to give it due content.

Let this be so. His means of death, his obscure funeral.

No noble rite nor formal ostentation, cry to be heard,

as 'twere from heaven to earth that I must call it in question.

So you shall, where the offence is let the great axe fall.

I pray you, come with me.

Madam, madam, your son is safe arrived in Denmark.

This letter I even now received of him where in he writes how

he escaped the danger and the subtle treason that the King had plotted.

He found a packet sent to the King of England where in he saw

himself betrayed to death.

So truly...

..there is treason in the kingdom.

He seemed to sugar over his villainy.

But I must soothe and please him for a while,

for murderous minds are always jealous.

But know you not, Horatio, where Hamlet is?

Yes, madam, and he has appointed me to meet him on the east side

of the city tomorrow morning. Oh, fail not, good Horatio.

And will thou commend me a mother's love to him,

but bid him be wary of his presence,

lest he fail in that he goes about.

I think by this the news become to court Hamlet returns.

Observe the King

and you shall quickly find Hamlet being here

things fell not to his plan.

Thanks be to heaven for blessing of the Prince.

Once more, Horatio, I take my leave,

but with a thousand mother's blessings to my son!

Madam, adieu.

Now must your conscience my acquittance seal

and you must put me in your heart for friend,

since he who hath your noble father slain pursued my life.

It well appears, nut tell me why you proceeded not against these feats

so crimeful and so capital in nature, as by your safety,

wisdom, all things else, you mainly were stirred up.

O, for two special reasons,

which may perhaps to you seem much unsinewed...

..yet to me they're strong.

The Queen, his mother,

lives almost by his looks.

And for myself, my virtue or my plague, be it either which...

..she's so conjunctive to my life and soul...

..that as the star moves not but in his sphere, I could not...

..but by her.

The other motive, why to a public court I might not go,

is the great love the general public bear him.

And so have I a noble father lost.

A sister driven into desperate terms.

But my revenge will come.

You must not think that we are made of stuff so flat and dull.

I loved your father.

And we love ourself and that, I hope, may teach you to imagine...

How now? What news?

Letters, my lord,

from Hamlet.

From Hamlet?

This to Your Majesty, this to the Queen.

Leave us.

"High and Mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your kingdom.

"Tomorrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes,

"when I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto,

"recount the occasion of my sudden and more strange return. Hamlet."

Know you the hand? It's Hamlet's character.

Well, I'm lost in it, my lord. But let him come!

It warms the very sickness in my heart that I may live

and tell him to his teeth, "Thus diest thou."

Laertes, if this be so, how should it be so...

..how otherwise, will you be ruled by me?

Aye, my lord, so you will not overrule me to a peace.

To thine own peace. Laertes, was your father dear to you?

Why ask you this? What would you undertake to show yourself

your father's son in deed more than in words?

To cut his throat in the church!

Revenge should have no bounds.

But, good Laertes, will you do this? Keep close within your chamber.

Hamlet returned shall know you are come home.

We'll put on those shall praise your excellence in fencing,

bring you in sport together and wager on your heads.

He, being remiss, will not peruse the foils,

so 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.

There is a poison that I bought in France so mortal that,

but dip a knife in it, where it draws blood

no antidote exists under the moon can save the thing from death

that is but scratched withal. Yes, but if this should fail,

and that our plan is seen through our performance

'twere better not assayed,

therefore this project should have a back or second,

that might hold if this should blast in proof.

Soft, let me see.

When in your motion you are hot and dry, as make your bouts

more violent to that end and that he calls for drink,

I'll have prepared him a chalice for his use whereon but sipping,

if he by chance escape your venomed sword, our purpose...

How now, sweet queen? DOOR CLOSES

One woe doth tread upon another's heel...

..so fast they follow.

Your sister's drowned...

..Laertes.

Drowned!

Oh.

Where?

There is a willow grows aslant the brook...

..that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.

There...

with fantastic garlands did she come

of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies...

..and long purples that liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

but our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.

There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds clambering to hang,

an envious sliver...

..broke.

And 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 tunes,

as one insensible of her own distress,

or like some creature native and indued unto that element.

But long it could not be before her garments,

heavy with their drink...

..pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay...

..to muddy death.

Alas, then she is drowned?

Drowned.

Drowned.

Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,

and therefore I forbid my tears.

HE SNIFFS

But yet it is our trick.

CRYING: When these are done,

I have a speech of fire,

that fain would blaze.

Let's follow, Gertrude.

How much I had to do to calm his rage,

I now fear I this will give it start again, therefore let's follow.

MUSIC: Sugar Baby by Bob Dylan

Has this fellow no feeling of his business

that he sings at grave-making?

Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

'Tis even so.

That skull had a tongue once

and could sing.

How the knave jowls it to the ground.

It might be the pate

of a politician, might it not?

It might, my lord. Or of a servant who could say

"Good morrow, sweet lord!

"How dost thou, sweet lord?" Aye, my lord.

And now here's fine revolution if we had the trick to see it.

There's another.

Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer?

Why does he suffer this mad knave to knock him about the sconce

and will not tell him of his action of battery?

Whose grave's this, sir?

TURNS MUSIC OFF Mine, sir.

Me thinks 'tis thine indeed, for thou liest in it.

You lie out on it, sir, therefore it is not yours.

For my part,

I do not lie in it,

yet it is mine.

Thou dost lie in it, to be in it and say it is thine.

'Tis for the dead, not for the quick, therefore thou liest.

'Tis a quick lie, sir, 'twill away again from me to you.

What man do you dig it for? For no man, sir.

What woman, then? For none, neither. Who's to be buried in it?

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

How absolute this knave is!

How long hast thou been a grave-maker?

Of all the days in the year,

I came to it that very day that our last king, Hamlet...

..overcame Fortinbras.

How long is that since?

Cannot you tell that?

Every fool can tell that.

It was the very day that young Hamlet was born.

He that is mad...

..and sent into England.

Aye, marry...

Why was he sent into England? Why, because he was mad.

He shall recover his wits there or, if he do not,

'tis no great matter there.

Why? 'Twill not be seen in him there.

There the men are as mad as he.

How came he mad?

Very strangely, they say. How strangely?

Faith, even with losing his wits. Upon what ground?

Why, here in Denmark.

I have been sexton here,

man and boy.

Thirty years.

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

In faith...

..well, he be not rotten before he die,

as we have many pocky corpses now-a-days that will scarce

hold the laying in, he will last you some eight year or nine year.

A tanner will last you nine year.

He will hold out water a great while,

and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.

Here's a skull now

that lain in the earth three-and-twenty years.

Whose 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 Yorick's skull,

the King's jester. This?

Even that. Let me see.

Alas, poor Yorick!

I knew him...

..Horatio.

A fellow of infinite jest...

HE LAUGHS

..of most excellent fancy.

He hath borne 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 songs?

Your gambols?

Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Not one now,

to mock your own grinning?

Get thee to my lady's chamber,

and tell her to her paint an inch thick,

to this favour she must come.

Horatio, tell me one thing.

What's that, my lord?

Dost thou think Alexander the Great

looked in this fashion in the earth?

Even so, my lord. And smelt so too. Even so.

To what base uses we may return, Horatio.

Imperious Caesar...

..dead and turned to clay...

..might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

Oh, that, that earth which kept the world in awe...

..should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw.

Soft! Soft! Awhile!

The King, The Queen

Hold. What ceremony else?

What ceremony else?

Her obsequies have been as far enlarg'd

as we have warranties: her death was doubtful;

and, but that great command o'ersways the order,

she should in ground unsanctified have lodg'd

shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her,

yet here she is.

Must there no more be done?

No more be done.

We should profane the service of the dead to sing a requiem.

Lay her i' th' earth;

and from her fair

and unpolluted flesh

may violets spring!

I tell thee, churlish priest...

a minist'ring angel shall my sister be

when thou liest howling.

Sweets to the sweet!

Farewell.

I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;

I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid...

..and not have strew'd thy grave.

O, treble woe

fall ten times treble on that cursed head

whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense

depriv'd thee of!

Hold off the earth awhile,

till I have caught her once more in mine arms.

HE SOBS

Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,

till of this flat a mountain you have made,

to o'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head

Of blue Olympus.

What is he whose grief

bears such an emphasis?

Whose phrase of sorrow conjures the wand'ring stars.

It is I, Hamlet the Dane.

The devil take thy soul!

I prithee take thy fingers from my throat;

for, though I am not splenitive and rash,

yet have I in me something dangerous,

which let thy wisdom fear.

Hold off thy hand!

Hamlet!

Why, I will fight with him upon this theme

until my eyelids will no longer wag.

O my son, what theme? I lov'd Ophelia.

Forty thousand brothers

could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.

What wilt thou do?

O, he is mad, Laertes.

For love of God, forbear him!

Show me what would thou do. Woo't weep? Woo't fight? Woo't fast?

Woo't tear thyself? Drink up poison? Eat a crocodile? I'll do't.

Dost thou come here to whine?

To outface me by jumping in her grave?

Be buried live with her, and so will I.

And if thou speak of mountains, let them pour

millions of acres on us, till our ground

singes his head against the burning sun

This is mere madness;

and thus awhile the fit will work in him.

Hear me, sir!

What is the reason you use me thus?

I lov'd you...ever.

But it is no matter.

Horatio, strengthen your patience in our last night's speech.

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.

So much for this, sir...

..now you will hear the other.

You do remember all the circumstance?

Remember it, my lord?

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting,

which would not let me sleep.

Let us know,

Our intuition sometime serves us well

when our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us

there's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will...

That is most certain.

Up from my cabin,

my sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark

grop'd I to find

Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio, an exact command,

that, on the supervise, no leisure bated,

my head should be struck off. Is't possible?

Wilt thou hear how I did proceed? I beseech you.

They had begun the play.

I sat me down,

devis'd a new commission; wrote it fair.

An earnest conjuration from the King,

that, on the view and knowing of these contents,

they should the bearers put to sudden death,

Folded the writ up in the form of th' other, plac'd it safely,

the changeling never known.

So...

Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to't.

They are not near my conscience;

their defeat does by their own insinuation grow.

But I am very sorry that to Laertes...

..I forgot myself,

for, by the image of my cause, I see the portraiture of his.

Your Lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.

I humbly thank you, sir.

I come with an embassage from His Majesty to you

I shall, sir, give you attention.

His Majesty bade me

signify to you that he has laid a great wager on your head.

Sir, this is the matter -

here is newly come to court Laertes; believe me,

an absolute gentleman, of very soft society and great showing.

What imports the nomination of this gentleman?

Of Laertes? Of him, sir.

I know you are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is at his weapon.

What's his weapon? Rapier and dagger.

That's two of his weapons: but, well.

The King, sir, hath laid a wager that, in a five rounds of fencing

between yourself and Laertes, he shall not exceed you;

it would come to immediate trial

if Your Lordship would vouchsafe an answer.

How if I answer no?

I mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in trial.

Sir, I walk here in the halls.

If it please His Majesty, it is the breathing time of day with me.

Let the foils be brought, the gentleman willing,

and the King hold his purpose, I will win for him if I can;

if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.

My lord, His Majesty sends to know

if your pleasure hold to play with Laertes,

or if you will take longer time.

I am constant to my purpose; they follow the King's pleasure.

If his fitness speaks, mine is ready; now or whensoever.

The King and Queen and all are coming down.

In happy time.

The Queen desires you to use some gentle entertainment to Laertes

before you fall to play.

She well instructs me.

You will lose, my lord.

I do not think so.

Since he went to France I have been in continual practice.

HAMLET LAUGHS

But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart.

But it is no matter. Nay, my lord...

It is but foolery.

If your mind dislike anything, obey it.

I will forestall their repair hither and say you are not fit.

Not a whit, we defy augury...

..there's 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.

And since no man knows aught of what he leaves,

what is't to leave betimes?

Let be.

MUSIC: Not Dark Yet by Bob Dylan

Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.

Give me your pardon, sir.

I have done you wrong.

But pardon't, as you are a gentleman.

This presence knows,

And you must needs have heard, how I am punish'd

with sore distraction.

What I have done...

..that might your honour, nature and exception roughly awake,

I here proclaim was madness.

Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet.

If Hamlet from himself be taken away,

and when he's not himself does wrong Laertes,

Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.

Who does it, then?

His madness.

If't be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd.

Sir, in this audience,

let my disclaiming from a purpos'd evil

free me so far in your most generous thoughts

that I have shot my arrow o'er the house

and hurt my brother.

I am satisfied in nature...

..whose motive in this case should stir me most to my revenge.

But in my terms of honour,

I do receive your offer'd love like love,

and will not wrong it.

I embrace it freely,

and will this brother's wager frankly play.

Come, the foils. Come, one for me.

I'll be your foil, Laertes.

And in mine ignorance

your skill shall, like a star i' th' darkest night,

stick fiery off indeed.

You mock me, sir.

No, by this hand.

Give them the foils, Reynaldo. Cousin Hamlet, you know the wager?

Very well, Your Grace.

Your Lordship has laid the odds on th' weaker side.

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

This is too heavy.

Let me see another.

This likes me well. These foils have all a length?

Ay, my good lord.

Set me the cup of wine upon the table.

If Hamlet give the first or second hit,

or quit in answer of the third exchange,

let all the battlements their ordnance fire;

the King shall drink to Hamlet's better breath,

and in the cup an union shall he throw

richer than that which four successive kings

in Denmark's crown have worn.

Give me the cup.

'Now the King drinks to Hamlet.'

Come, begin. And you the judges, bear a wary eye.

HOOTER SOUNDS

Come, sir. Come, my lord.

# Shadows are falling and I've been here all day...#

BUZZER One.

# It's too hot to sleep and time is running away...#

INAUDIBLE

# Feel like my soul has turned into steel

# I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal

# There's not even room enough to be anywhere

# It's not dark yet but it's getting there... #

INAUDIBLE

# My sense of humanity has down the drain... #

INAUDIBLE

# Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain

# She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind

# She put down in writin' what was in her mind

# I just don't see why I should even care

# It's not dark yet but it's getting there

# Well, I've been to London And I've been to gay Paris. #

HAMLET SCREAMS MUSIC STOPS ABRUPTLY

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

How is't, Laertes?

Look to the Queen?

She swoons to see them bleed.

No, no! The drink, the drink! O my dear Hamlet!

The drink, the drink! I am poison'd.

Villany! Villany! Lock the doors!

Villany! Villany!

It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain;

no medicine in the world can do thee good.

In thee there is not half an hour of life.

The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,

unblunted and envenom'd.

The foul practice hath turn'd itself on me.

Thy mother's poison'd.

I can no more. The King, the King's to blame.

The point envenom'd too?

Then, venom...

..to thy work.

Here, thou incestuous, murd'rous, damned Dane.

Follow my mother.

Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.

Mine and my father's death come not upon thee.

Nor thine on me!

Heaven make thee free of it!

FAINT MUSIC ECHOES

Wretched queen...

..adieu!

I am dead, Horatio.

You that look pale and tremble at this chance...

..that are but mute and audience to this act,

had I but time...

..as this fell sergeant, Death,

is strict in his arrest...

..O, I could tell you...

But let it be.

Horatio, I am dead.

Thou liv'st; report me and my cause aright

to the unsatisfied.

Never believe it.

There's yet some liquor left.

As thou art a man...

..let go!

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

absent thee from felicity awhile,

and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,

to tell my story.

I cannot live to hear the news from England,

but I do prophesy the election lights on Fortinbras.

He has my dying voice.

So tell him,

with the occurrents,

more and less,

which have solicited.

The rest is silence.

Good night sweet prince.

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Give order that these bodies

High on a stage be placed to the view;

and let me speak to the yet unknowing world

how these things came about.

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.

Let four captains bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage;

For he was likely, had he been put on,

to have prov'd most royal; and for his passage

the soldiers' music and the rites of war

speak loudly for him.

Such a sight as this becomes the field,

but here shows much amiss.

MUSIC: One More Cup Of Coffee by Bob Dylan

# One more cup of coffee for the road

# One more cup of coffee 'fore I go

# To the valley below

# Your daddy, he's an outlaw And a wanderer by trade

# He'll teach you how to pick and choose

# And how to throw the blade

# He oversees his kingdom So no stranger does intrude

# His voice, it trembles as he calls out

# For another plate of food...#