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Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

- Who's there? - Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself

- Long live the King - Barnardo?

- He - You come most carefully upon your hour

- 'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisca - For this relief much thanks

- Have you had quiet guard? - Not a mouse stirring

Well, goodnight. If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus...

...the rivals of my watch, bid them make haste

I think I hear them. Stand ho, who is there?

- Friends to this ground - And liegemen to the Dane

Give you goodnight

- O farewell, honest soldier. Who hath relieved you? - Barnardo hath my place. Give you goodnight

- Holla, Barnardo - Say, what, is Horatio there?

- A piece of him - Welcome Horatio, welcome good Marcellus

- What, has this thing appeared again tonight? - I have seen nothing

Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy...

...and will not let belief take hold of him touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us

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

- Tush, tush, 'twill not appear - Pause we awhile

And let us once again assail your ears...

...that are so fortified against our story what we have two nights seen

Well, let us hear what Barnardo has to say of this

Last night, when yond same star that's westward from the pole had made his course...

...to illume that part of heaven where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, the bell then beating one...

Peace, 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 he not like the King? Mark it, Horatio - Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder

- It would be spoke to - Speak to it, Horatio

What art thou that usurpest 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

- It is offended - See, it stalks away

Stay, speak, speak, I charge thee speak

'Tis gone and will not answer

How now, Horatio, you tremble and look pale

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

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

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

Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour, with martial stalk hath he gone by our watch

In what particular thought to work, I know not

But in the gross and scope of mine opinion this bodes some strange eruption to our state

Good now, tell me he that knows...

...why this same strict and most observant watch so nightly toils the subject of the land

- Who is it that can inform me? - That can I. At least the whisper goes so

Our last King, whose image even now but appeared to us

...was as you know by Fortinbras of Norway...

...thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride, dared to the combat

In which our old King Hamlet...

...did slay this Fortinbras, who by a sealed compact well ratified by law and heraldry...

...did forfeit with his life all those his lands which he stood seized of to the conqueror

Now, sir, young Fortinbras, of unimproved mettle, hot and full...

...hath sharked up a list of lawless resolutes

To recover of us by strong hand those foresaid lands so by his father lost

And this, I take it, is the main motive of our preparations

The source of this our watch, and the chief head of this post-haste and rummage in the land

I think it be no other but even so

But soft, behold, lo where it comes again. 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 thy country's fate which happily foreknowing may avoid, O speak

Speak of it, stay and speak

- 'Tis here - 'Tis here

'Tis gone

We do it wrong, being so majestical, to offer it the show of violence

For it is as the air, invulnerable, and our vain blows malicious mockery

It was about to speak when the cock crew

And then it started like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons

It faded on the crowing of the cock

But look, the morn in russet mantle clad walks over the dew of yon high eastward hill

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

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, with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage...

...in equal scale weighing delight and dole, taken to wife

Nor have we herein barred 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...

...hath not failed to pester us with message importing the surrender of those lands...

...lost by his father, with all bands 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

We have here writ to Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras

Who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears of this his nephew's purpose...

...to suppress his further gait herein. And we here dispatch you good Cornelia...

...and you, Voltemand, for bearers of this greeting to old Norway

Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty

- In that and all things... - ...will we show our duty

We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell

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 Dane 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 now 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

And at last upon his will I sealed 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 much, 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 knowst, '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 forced breath, no, nor the fruitful river in the eye...

Nor the dejected haviour of 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 passes show, these but the trappings and the suit of woe

'Tis 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, 'tis unmanly grief 128 10:12:44,607 --> 10:11:06,480 It shows a will most incorrect to heaven, a heart unfortified, or mind impatient...

...an understanding simple and unschooled

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, 'tis 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 most retrograde to our desire

And we beseech you, bend you to remain here in the cheer and comfort of our eye

Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son

Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet. I pray you stay with us, go not to Wittenberg

I shall in all my best obey you, madam

Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply

Madam, come. This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet sits smiling to my heart. Come away

O that this too too sullied flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew...

...or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter

O God, God, how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world

Fie on it, ah, fie, 'tis an unweeded garden that grows 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 it - 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 mourned longer

...married with mine uncle, my father's brother, but no more like my father than I to Hercules

Within a month, 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

- Hail to your lordship - I am glad to see thee well

- 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

And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?

- Marcellus! - My good lord

I am glad to see thee well. Good even, sir

- But what in faith make you from Wittenberg? - A truant disposition, good my lord

I know you are no truant. But what is your affair in Elsinore?

- 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, it followed hard upon

Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral baked 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, me thinks I saw him yesternight - Saw, who?

- 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, Marcellus and Barnardo...

...on their watch in the dead waste and middle of the night been thus encountered

A figure like your father appears before them...

...and with solemn march moves slow and stately by them

This to me in dreadful secrecy impart they did, and I with them the third night kept the watch

Where, as they had delivered, both in time...

...and 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

- Did you not speak to it? - My lord I did, but answer made it none

Though once methought it lifted up its head and did address itself to motion like as it would speak

But even then the morning cock crew loud

And at the sound it shrunk in haste away and vanished from our sight

- 'Tis very strange - As I do live, my honoured lord, 'tis true

And we did think it writ down in our duty to let you know of it

Indeed, sirs, but this troubles me

- Hold you the watch tonight? - We do, my lord

- What looked he, frowningly? - A countenance more in sorrow than in anger

- Pale, or red? - Nay, very pale

- And fixed his eyes upon you? - Most constantly

- I would I had been there - It would have much amazed you

Very like. Stayed it long?

While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred

- Longer, longer - Not when I saw it

- I will watch tonight. Perchance it will walk again - I warrant it will

If it assume my noble father's person I'll speak to it...

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

I pray you all, if you have hitherto concealed this sight let it be tenable in your silence still

And whatsoever else shall hap tonight give it an understanding but no tongue

I will requite your loves. So, fare you well

Upon the platform 'twixt eleven and twelve I'll visit you

- Our duty to your honour - Your loves, as mine to you, farewell

My father's spirit - in arms! All is not well

I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come

Till then sit still my soul. Foul deeds will rise...

...though all the earth overwhelm them, to men's eyes

My necessaries are embarked. Farewell

And sister, as the winds give benefit and convey is assistant...

- ...do not sleep, but let me hear from you - Do you doubt that?

For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour, hold it a fashion and a toy in blood...

A violet in the youth of primy nature, forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting...

...the perfume and suppliance of a minute, no more

- No more but so? - Think it no more

Perhaps he loves you now, but you must fear, his greatness weighed, his will is not his own

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

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

And therefore must his choice be circumscribed...

...unto the voice and yielding of that body whereof he is the head

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 list his songs...

...or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open to his unmastered importunity

Fear it, Ophelia, fear it my dear sister

And keep you in the rear of your affections out of the shot and danger of desire

Be wary then: best safety lies in 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 whiles, a puffed and reckless libertine...

...himself the primrose path of dalliance treads and recks not his own rede

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

The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail and you are stayed for

There, my blessing with thee...

...and these few precepts in thy memory look thou character

Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment of each new-hatched, unfledged courage

Beware of entrance to a quarrel but, being in, bear it that the opposed may beware of thee

Give every man thine ear but few thy voice

Take each man's censure but reserve thy judgement

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not expressed in fancy

Rich, not gaudy, for the apparel oft proclaim the man...

...and they in France of the best rank and station are of all most select and generous chief in that

Neither a borrower nor a lender be

For loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulleth the edge of husbandry

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 invests you. Go

Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well what I have said to you

'Tis in my memory locked and you yourself shall keep the key of it

Farewell

What is it, 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

What is between you? Give me up the truth

He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders of his affection to me

Affection? Pooh, 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, wronging it thus, you'll tender me a fool

My lord, he hath importuned 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

Aye, 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, you must not take for fire

From this time be something scanter of your maiden presence

For the Lord Hamlet, believe so much in him that he is young...

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

In few, Ophelia, do not believe his vows. This is for all

I would not in plain terms from this time forth have you so slander any moment 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

- What hour now? - I think it lacks of twelve

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

It then draws near the season wherein the spirit held his wont to walk

- What does this mean, my lord? - The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse...

Keeps wassail and the swaggering upspring reels, and as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down...

...the kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out the triumph of his pledge

- Is it a custom? - Aye, marry is't

But to my mind, though I am native here and to the manner born...

...it is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance

Look, my lord, it comes

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned...

Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, be thy intents wicked or charitable...

...thou comest in such a questionable shape that I will speak to thee

I'll call thee Hamlet, king, father, royal Dane. O answer me

It beckons you to go away with it as if it some impartment did desire to you alone

Look with what courteous action it waves you to a more removed ground

- But do not go with it - No, by no means

- It will not speak. Then I will follow it - Do not, my lord

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

And for my soul, what can it do to that, being a thing immortal as itself?

It waves me forth again. I'll follow it

What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, or to the dreadful summit of the cliff?

And there assume some other horrible form...

...which might deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness?

- It waves me still. Go on, I'll follow thee - You shall not go, my lord

- Hold off your hands - Be ruled, 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 called. Unhand me, gentlemen. By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me

I say away! Go on, I'll follow

- He waxes desperate with imagination - Let's follow. Tis not fit thus to obey him

- Have after. To what issue will this come? - Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

- Heaven will direct it - Nay, let's follow him

Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak, I'll go no further

- Mark me - I will

My hour is almost come when I to sulphurous and tormenting flames must render up myself

Alas, poor ghost

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?

I am thy father's spirit, doomed for a certain term to walk the night

And for the day confined to fast in fires... 337 10:32:10,227 --> 10:32:15,1000 ...till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away

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 or the thoughts of love...

- ...may sweep to my revenge - I find thee apt. 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

But soft, methinks I scent the morning air. Brief let me be

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

...upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, with juice of cursed hebenon in a vial

And in the porches of my ears did pour the leperous distilment

Whose effect holds such an enmity with blood of man...

...that, swift as quicksilver, it courses through the natural gates and alleys of the body

And with a sudden vigour it doth possess and curd, like eager droppings into milk...

...the thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand, of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatched

Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, unhouseled, disappointed, unanealed

No reckoning made, but sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head

- O, horrible! O, horrible, most horrible! - 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 thou pursuest this act, taint not thy mind

Nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother aught

Leave her to heaven, and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her

Fare thee well at once

The glowworm shows the matin to be near, and 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire

Adieu, adieu, adieu

Remember me

O all you host of heaven, O earth... what else? And shall I couple hell? O fie!

Hold, hold my heart, and you, my sinews, grow not instant old but bear me swiftly up

Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat in this distracted globe

Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records...

...all saws 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 unmixed with baser matter

Yes, by heaven

O most pernicious woman, O villain, villain, smiling damned villain

My tables! Meet it is I set it down that one may smile and smile and be a villain

At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark

So, uncle, there you are

Now to my word. It is 'Adieu, adieu, remember me'. I have sworn it

- My lord, my lord! - Lord Hamlet!

- Heavens secure him - So be it

- Illo, ho, ho, my lord! - Hillo, ho, ho, boy come and come

- 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

How say you then, would heart of man once think it?

- But you'll be secret? - Ay, by heaven

There's never a villain dwelling in all Denmark but he's an arrant knave

There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave to tell us this

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 desire shall point you...

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

- And for my own poor part I will go pray - These are but wild and whirling words, my lord

I am sorry they offend you, heartily. Yes, faith, heartily

There's no offence, my lord

By Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio, 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, overmaster it as you may

And now, good friends, as you are friends, scholars and soldiers, give me one poor request

- What is it, my lord? We will - Never make known what you have seen tonight

- My lord, we will not - Nay, but swear it

- In faith, my lord, not I - Nor I, my lord

- In faith - Swear

Ha, ha, sayst thou so, boy? Art thou there, truepenny?

Come on, you hear this fellow in the cellarage? Consent to swear

- Propose the oath, my lord - Never to speak of this that you have seen, swear

Swear

Hic et ubique? Then we'll shift our ground

Come hither, gentlemen, swear never to speak of this that you have heard

Well said, old mole, canst work in the earth so fast?

A worthy pioneer! Once more remove, good friends

- 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 your philosophy

But come: here, as before

Never, so help you mercy, how strange or odd somever I bear myself...

As I perchance hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on

That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, with arms encumbered thus, or this headshake...

Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, as 'Well, well, we know'

Or 'We could, an if we would', or 'If we list to speak', or 'There be an if they might'...

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

This do swear, so grace and mercy at your most need help you

Rest, rest, perturbed spirit

So, gentlemen, with all my love I do commend me to you

And what so poor a man as Hamlet is may do to express his love and friending to you...

...God willing, shall not lack

Let us go in together. And still your fingers on your lips, I pray

The time is out of joint. O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right

Nay, come, let's go together

- Give him this money and these notes - I will my lord

You shall do marvellously wisely, before you visit my son in France to make inquire of his behaviour

- My lord, I did intend it - Marry, well said

Very well said

Ay, very well said. Well, God buy ye, fare ye well

Farewell

How now, Ophelia, what's the matter?

- O my lord, I have been so affrighted - With what, in the name of God?

My lord, as I was sewing in my closet Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced...

No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled, ungartered and down-gyved to his ankle...

Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, and with a look so piteous in purport...

...as if he had been loosed out of hell to speak of horrors, he comes before me

- Mad for thy love? - My lord, I do not know, but truly I do fear it

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 o'er his brow...

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

Long stayed he so. At last, a little shaking of mine arm...

...and thrice his head thus waving up and down, he raised a sigh so piteous and profound...

...as it did seem to shatter all his bulk and end his being

That done, he lets me go

And with his head over his shoulder turned he seemed to find his way without his eyes

For out of doors he went without their helps and to the last bended their light on me

Come, 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 do afflict our natures

I am sorry... What, have you given him any hard words of late?

No, my good lord, but as you did command I did repel his letters and denied his access to me

That hath made him mad. Come, go we to the King

This must be known which, being kept close...

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

Come

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, sith 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...

...you vouchsafe your rest here in our court some little time

So by your companies to draw him on to pleasures

And to gather, so much as from occasion you may glean...

...whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus that, opened, lies within our remedy

Good faithful friends, he hath much talked of you

And sure I am, two ones 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 a while 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

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

Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz

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

The ambassadors from Norway, my good lord, are joyfully returned

- Thou still hast been the father of good news - Have I, my lord?

I assure my liege I hold my duty as I hold my soul, both to my God and to my gracious King

And I do think 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 ambassadors, my news shall be the fruit to that great feast

Thyself do grace to them and bring them in

He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found the head and source of all your son's distemper

I doubt it is no other but the main, his father's death and our over hasty marriage

Well, we shall sift him

Welcome, my good friends. Say, Voltemand, what from our brother Norway?

Upon our first he sent out to suppress his nephew's levies, sends out arrests on Fortinbras...

...which he in brief obeys, receives rebuke from Norway and, in fine...

...makes vow before his uncle never more to give the essay of arms against your majesty

We thank you for your well-took labour. Go to your rest. Most welcome home

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, brevity is the soul of wit...

...and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief

Your noble son is mad

Mad call I it, for to define true madness, what is it but to be nothing else but mad?

- But let that go - More matter, with less art

Madam, I swear I use no art at all. That he is mad, 'tis true, 'tis true 'tis pity

And pity 'tis 'tis true. A foolish figure, but farewell it, for I will use no art

Mad let us grant him then, and thus 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

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, these, etc

- Came this from Hamlet to her? - Good madam, stay awhile, I will be faithful

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, O most best, believe it. Adieu

Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him. Hamlet

This in obedience hath my daughter shown me

- But how hath she received his love? - What do you think of me?

- As of a man faithful and honourable - I would fain prove so

I went round to work and my young mistress thus I did bespeak

'Lord Hamlet is a prince out of thy star. This must not be'

And then I prescripts gave her that she should lock herself from his resorts...

...admit no messengers, receive no tokens. Which done, she took the fruits of my advice

And he, repelled, a short tale to make, fell into a sadness, then to a fast...

Thence to a weakness, thence to a watch, thence to a lightness, and by this declension...

...into the madness wherein now he raves and all we mourn for

- Do you think this? - It may be, very like

May we try it further?

You know sometimes he walks four hours together...

- ...there in the lobby? - 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

If he love her not and be not from his reason fallen thereon...

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

We will try it

But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading

Away, I do beseech you both, away. I'll board him presently. O, give me leave

How does my good lord Hamlet?

- Well, God-a-mercy - Do you know me, my lord?

- Excellent well, you are a fishmonger - Not I, my lord

- Then I would you were so honest a man - Honest, my lord?

Ay, sir, to be honest as this world goes is to be one man picked out of ten thousand

That's very true, my lord

For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion...

- Have you a daughter? - I have, my lord

Let her not walk in the sun

Conception is a blessing, but as your daughter may conceive... friend, look to it

How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter

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

He is far gone. And truly, in my youth I suffered much extremity for love, very near this

I'll speak to him again. What do you read, my lord?

Words, 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's faces are wrinkled...

Their eyes purging thick amber and plumtree gum...

...and that they have a plentiful lack of wit together with most weak hams. 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, shall grow old as I am if, like a crab, you could go backward

Though this be madness yet there is method in it

- Will you walk out of the air, my lord? - Into my grave

Indeed, that's out of the air. How pregnant sometimes his replies are

My lord, I will take my leave of you

You cannot take from me anything that I will not more willingly part withal

Except my life, except my life, except my life

- Fare you well, my lord - These tedious old fools

You go to seek the Lord Hamlet? There he is

God save you, sir

- My honoured lord - My most dear lord

My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern?

Ah, Rosencrantz! How do you both?

- As the indifferent children of the earth - Happy, in that we are not over happy

- On Fortune's cap, we are 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

In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true, she is a strumpet

- What news? - None, my lord, but the world's grown honest

Then is doomsday near. But your news is not true

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

- To visit you, my lord, no other occasion - Were you not sent for?

Is it a free visitation? Is it your own inclining? Come, come, deal justly with me

Come, come, nay speak

- What should we say, my lord? - Anything but to the 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. Be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for or no

- What say you? - Nay then, 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 exercise

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 appeareth nothing to me but 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

Nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so

My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts

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

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

what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you

We passed them on the way, and hither are they coming to offer you service

- What players are they? - Even those you were wont to take such delight in

Here are the players!

You are welcome to Elsinore. Come, then, your hands

- But my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived - In what, my dear lord?

I am but mad north-north-west.

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

Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too. At each ear a hearer

That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts

Happily he is the second time come to them, for they say an old man is twice a child

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

On Sunday morning, you say right, sir, 'twas then indeed

My lord, I have news to tell you

My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in Rome...

- The actors are come hither, my lord - Buzz, buzz

- Upon my honour - ...then came each actor on his ass

The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral...

...pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene individable or poem unlimited

Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. These are the only men

You are welcome, masters, welcome all. I am glad to see thee well. Welcome, good friends

We'll have a speech straight. Come on, give us a taste of your quality. Come, a passionate speech

- What speech, my good lord? - I heard thee speak me a speech once

But it was never acted, or, if it was, not above once

For the play I remember pleased not the million, 'twas caviar to the general

One speech in it I chiefly loved, 'twas Aeneas' talk to Dido

And thereabout of it especially when he speaks of Priam's slaughter

If it live in your memory begin at this line. Let me see, let me see...

The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast...

'Tis not so. It begins with Pyrrhus

The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms, black as his purpose...

...did the night resemble as he lay couched in the ominous horse...

...hath now this dread and black complexion smeared with heraldry more dismal, head to foot

Now is he total gules, horridly tricked with blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons

Baked and impasted with the parching streets...

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

Roasted in wrath and fire, and thus o'ersized with coagulate gore, with eyes like carbuncles...

...the hellish Pyrrhus old grandsire Priam seeks

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

So proceed you

Anon he finds him striking too short at Greeks

His antique sword, rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls, repugnant to command

Unequal matched, Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide

But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword the unnerved father falls

Then senseless Ilium, seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top stoops to his base...

...and with a hideous crash takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear

For, lo, his sword, which was declining on the milky head of reverend Priam seemed in the air to stick

So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood, like a neutral to his will and matter, did nothing

But, as we often see against 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, a roused vengeance sets him new a-work

And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall on Mars's armour, forged for proof eterne...

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

This is too long

Say on, come to Hecuba

But who, ah woe, had seen the mobled queen...

- 'The mobled queen' - That's good

...run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames with bisson rheum

A clout 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

But if the gods themselves did see her then... 688 11:05:41,492 --> 11:05:48,1000 ...when 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 where he has not turned his colour and has tears in his eyes. Prithee no more

'Tis well, I'll have thee speak out the rest of this anon

Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed?

Do you hear, let them be well used...

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

After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live

- My lord, I will use them according to their desert - God's bodkin, 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. We'll hear a play tomorrow

Come, sirs

Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play The Murder of Gonzago?

- Ay, my lord - We'll have it tomorrow night

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

...or sixteen lines, which I would set down...

- ...and insert in it, could you not? - Ay, my lord

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

My good friends, I'll leave you till night. You are welcome to Elsinore

- Good my lord - Ay, so God buy to you

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 wanned

Tears in his eyes, distraction in his 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, or he to her, that he should weep for her?

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

Why 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 damned defeat was made

Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across...

...tweaks me by the nose, gives me the lie in the throat as deep as to the lungs?

Who does me this, ha? 'Swounds, I should take it

For it cannot be but I am pigeon-livered 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!

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave

That I, the son of a dear father murdered, prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell...

...must like a whore unpack my heart with words and fall a-cursing like a very drab, a stallion

Fie upon it, foh! About my brains

Hum, I have heard that guilty creatures at a play...

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

...that presently they have proclaimed their malefactions

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ

I'll have these players here, play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle

I'll observe his looks, I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blench I know my course

This 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

- Did he receive you well? - Most like a gentleman

But with much forcing of his disposition

Niggard of question, but of our demands most free in his reply

Did you assay him to any pastime?

Madam, it so fell out that certain players we overraught on the way

Of these we told him, and there did seem in him a kind of joy to hear of it

They are here about the court and, as I think...

...they have already order this night to play before him

'Tis most true, and he beseeched 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 inclined

Faithful friends, give him a further edge and drive his purpose into these delights

We shall, my lord

Sweet Gertrude, leave us too

For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither that he...

...as 'twere by accident, may here affront Ophelia

Her father and myself, we'll so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen...

...we may of their encounter frankly judge

And gather by him as he is behaved if it be the affliction of his love or no that thus he suffers for

I shall obey you

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish that your good beauties...

...be the happy cause of Hamlet's wildness

So shall I hope your virtues will bring him to his wonted way again, to both your honours

Madam, I wish it may

I hear him coming, withdraw, my lord

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 heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to

'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished

To die, to sleep

To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come...

...when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause

There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time...

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

The pangs of despised 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 undiscovered country...

...from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all

And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied 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

Soft you now, the fair Ophelia

Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered

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

I humbly thank you, well

My lord, I have remembrances of yours that I have longed long to redeliver

- I pray you now receive them - No, not I. I never gave you aught

My honoured lord, you know right well you did

And with them words of so sweet breath composed as made these things more rich

Their perfume lost, take these again

For to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. There, my lord

- Are you honest? - My lord?

- Are you fair? - What means your lordship?

That if you be honest and fair you 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 now the time gives it proof

- I did love you once - Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so

- You should not have believed 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...

...but yet I could accuse myself of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me

I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck...

...than I have thoughts to put them in...

...imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in

What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?

We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery

- Where's your father? - At home, my lord

Let the doors be shut on him that he may play the fool nowhere but in his own house

- Farewell - O help him, you sweet heavens

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. Farewell

Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool...

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

Go thy ways to a nunnery, and quickly too. Farewell

Heavenly powers restore him

I have heard too of your paintings well enough

God hath given you one face and you make yourself another

You jig, you amble, you lisp...

...you nickname God's creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance

Go to, I'll no more on't. It hath made me mad

I say we will have 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 o'erthrown!

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

...the expectancy and rose of the fair state...

...the glass of fashion and the mould of form, the observed of all observers, quite, quite down

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, that sucked the honey of his musicked vows...

...now see what noble and most sovereign reason like sweet bells jangled out of time and harsh

That unmatched form and stature of blown youth blasted with ecstasy

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

Love? His affections do not that way tend

Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little, was not like madness

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

And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose will be some danger

Which for to prevent I have in quick determination thus set it down:

He shall with speed to England

- 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 placed, 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 unwatched go

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue

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...

...and to show the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure

Go, make you ready

How now, my lord, will the King hear this piece of work?

And the Queen too, and that presently

Bid the players make haste

- Will you two help to hasten them? - Ay, my lord

- What ho, Horatio! - Here, sweet lord, at your service

Thou art even as just a man as ever my conversation coped withal

- O my lord - Nay, do not think I flatter

For thou hast been as one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing

A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards hast taken with equal thanks

Give me that man that is not passion's slave and I will wear him in my heart's core

Ay, in my heart of heart, as I do thee

Something too much of this. There is a play tonight before the King

One scene of it comes near the circumstance which I have told thee of my father's death

I prithee when thou seest that act afoot, even with the very comment of thy soul...

...observe mine 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 foul as Vulcan's stithy

Give him heedful note, for I mine eyes will rivet to his face

And after we will both our judgements join in censure of his seeming

- Well, my lord - They are coming to the play

I must be idle. Get you a place

- How fares our cousin Hamlet? - Excellent, in faith

Of the chameleon's dish, I eat the air, promise-crammed

- You cannot feed capons so - I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet

- These words are not mine - No, nor mine now, my lord

You played once in the university, you said?

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

- What did you enact? - I did enact Julius Caesar

I was killed in the Capitol. Brutus killed me

It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there

- Be the players ready? - Ay, my lord, they stay upon your patience

- Come hither my dear Hamlet, sit by me - No, good mother, here's metal more attractive

O ho, do you mark that?

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

- Do 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

O God, your only jig-maker!

What should a man do but be merry, for look you how cheerfully my mother looks...

- ...and my father died within's two hours - Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord

So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables

For us and for our tragedy, Here stooping to your clemency...

- ...We beg your hearing patiently - Is this a prologue or the posy of a ring?

- 'Tis brief, my lord - As woman's love

Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round...

...Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground

And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen

About the world have times twelve thirties been

- 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

Woe is me, you are so sick of late, So far from cheer and from our former state

Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too, My operant powers their functions leave 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 accurst. 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

So think thou wilt no second husband wed But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead

Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife If once I be a widow ever I be a wife

If she should break it now!

'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 this play?

- The lady doth protest too much, methinks - O, but she'll keep her word

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

No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest. No offence in the world

- What do you call the play? - The Mousetrap

You shall see anon '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

Begin, murderer. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge

Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing

Considerate 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 usurps immediately

He poisons him in the garden for his estate. His name is Gonzago

You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife

- The King rises - How fares my lord?

- Give o'er the play - Give me some light, away

Lights! Lights! Lights!

O good Horatio, I'll take the Ghost's word for a thousand pound

- Didst perceive? - Very well, my lord

- Upon the talk of the poisoning - I did very well note him

Ah ha! Come, some music! Come, the recorders

Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you

- Sir, a whole history - The King, sir...

- Ay, sir, what of him? - ...is in his retirement marvelous distempered

- With drink, sir? - No, my lord, with choler

Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to the doctor

For me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into more choler

Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame and start not so wildly from my affair

I am tame, sir, pronounce

The Queen your mother in most great affliction of spirit hath sent me to you

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

...this courtesy is not of the right breed

If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer...

...I will do your mother's commandment

If not, your pardon and my return shall be the end of business

My mother, you said?

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

We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any further trade with us?

- My lord, you once did love me - And do still, by these pickers and stealers

Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper?

You do surely bar the door upon your own liberty if you deny your grievances to your friend

- Sir, I lack advancement - How can that be...

O, the recorders! Let me see one

- 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 991 11:37:02,1000 --> 11:37:04,769 It is 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 would 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

'Sblood! Do you think I am easier to be played upon than a pipe?

Call me what instrument you will, though you fret me you cannot play upon me

God bless you, sir

My lord, the Queen would speak with you, presently

Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?

- By the mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed - Methinks it is like a weasel

- It is backed like a weasel - Or like a whale

- Very like a whale - Then I will come to my mother, by and by

They fool me to the top of my bent

I will come by and by. Leave me, friends. I will, say so. 'By and by' is easily said

'Tis 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

O heart, lose not thy nature. Let not ever the soul of Nero enter this firm bosom

Let me be cruel, not unnatural. I will speak daggers to her, but use none

My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites

How in my words soever she be shent to give them seals never my soul consent

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 near us as doth hourly grow out of his brows

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 weal depends and rests the lives of many

The cease of majesty dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw what's near it with it

Or it is a massy wheel fixed on the summit of the highest mount...

...to whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things are mortised and adjoined

Which when it falls, each small annexment, petty consequence, attends the boisterous ruin

Never alone did the King sigh but with a general groan

- Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage - We will haste us

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

I'll warrant she'll tax him home and wisely since nature makes them partial

Fare you well, my liege, I'll call upon you ere you go to bed and tell you what I know

Thanks, dear my lord

O my offence is rank, it smells to heaven

It hath the primal eldest curse upon it, a brother's murder

Pray can I not

Though inclination be as sharp as will, my stronger guilt defeats my strong intent

And like a man to double business bound, I 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 ere we come to fall or pardoned, being down?

Then 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, mine 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 oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself buys out the law. But 'tis 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

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 engaged

Help, angels, make assay. Bow, stubborn knees

And heart with strings of steel be soft as sinews of the new-born babe

All may be well

Now might I do it. But now he is a-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

No. Up, away, and know thou a more horrid hent

When he is drunk, asleep or in his rage, or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed...

...at game a-swearing, or about some act that has no relish of salvation in it

Then trip him that his heels may kick at heaven

And that his soul may be as damned and black as hell whereto it goes

My mother stays. This physic but prolongs thy sickly days

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go

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 will silence me even here. Pray you be round

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

- 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

Nay then, I'll set those to you that can speak

Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge

You go not till I set you up a glass where you may see the inmost part of you

What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me... Help, ho!

- What ho! Help! - How now! A rat! Dead for a ducat, dead!

O, I am slain

- O me, what hast thou done? - Nay, I know not. Is it the King?

- O, what a rash and bloody deed is this - A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother...

- ...as kill a king and marry with his brother - As kill a king?

Ay, lady, it was my word

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell. I took thee for thy better

Take thy fortune. Thou findest to be too busy is some danger

Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down and let me wring your heart

For so I shall if it be made of penetrable stuff

If damned custom have not brazed it so that it be proof and bulwark against sense

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 from the fair forehead of an innocent love...

...and sets a blister there, makes marriage vows as false as dicers' oaths

Ay me, what act 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 station like the herald Mercury new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill

This was your husband. Look you now what follows

Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear blasting his wholesome brother

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 judgement, and what judgement would step from this to this?

O shame, where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, if thou canst mutine in a matron's bones...

...to flaming youth let virtue be as wax and melt in her own fire

O Hamlet, speak no more. Thou turnest my very eyes into my soul

And there I see such black and grieved spots as will leave there their tinct

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

Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty

O speak no more! Your words like daggers enter in my ears

No more, sweet Hamlet

A murderer and a villain, a slave that is not twentieth part the kith of your precedent lord

A vice of kings, a cutpurse of the empire and the rule...

...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's 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? O say

Do not forget. This visitation is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose

But look, amazement on thy mother sits

O step between her and her fighting soul. Speak to her, Hamlet

- How is it with you, lady? - Alas, how is it with you...

...that you do bend your eye on vacancy and with the incorporal air do hold discourse?

O gentle son, upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience

- Whereon do you look? - On him, on him

Do not look upon me, lest with this piteous action you convert my stern effects

Then what I have to do will want true colour, tears perchance for blood

- To whom do you speak this? - Do you see nothing there?

- Nothing at all, yet all that is I see - Nor did you nothing hear?

- Nothing but ourselves - Why, look you there! Look how it steals away

My father in his habit as he lived

This is the very coinage of your brain. This bodiless creation ecstasy is very cunning in

My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time and makes as healthful music

It is not madness that I have uttered, 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...

...whiles rank corruption mining all within infects unseen

Confess yourself to heaven, repent what's past, avoid what is to come

And do not spread the compost on the weeds to make them ranker

O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain

O throw away the worser part of it and live the purer with the other half

Goodnight, but go not to my uncle's bed

Assume a virtue if you have it not. To the next abstinence, the next more easy

So again goodnight, and when you are desirous to be blessed I'll blessing beg of you

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 goodnight. I must be cruel only to be kind

Thus bad begins and worse remains behind. One word more, good lady

- What shall I do? - Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:

Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed...

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 hast said to me

- I must to England, you know that? - Alack, I had 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, they must sweep my way and marshal me to knavery

Let it work. This man shall set me packing. I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room

Mother, goodnight indeed. This man is now most still...

...most secret and most grave, who was in life a most foolish prating knave

Come now, to draw toward an end with you

Goodnight, mother

There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves

You must translate, 'tis fit we understand them. Where is your son?

Bestow this place on us a little while

- Ah, mine own lord, what have I seen tonight! - What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

Mad as the sea and wind when both contend which is the mightier

Behind the arras hearing something stir, whips 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

- Where has he gone? - To draw apart the body he hath killed

Over whom, his very madness like some ore among a mineral of metals base shows itself pure...

- ...he weeps for what is done - O Gertrude, come away

The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch, but we will ship him hence

Ho, Guildenstern!

Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain and from his mother's closet hath he dragged him

Go seek him out, speak fair and bring the body into the chapel. I pray you haste in this

O come away, my soul is full of discord and dismay

Safely stowed. But soft, what noise? Who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come

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

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

How now, what hath befallen?

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

- Now Hamlet, where's Polonius? - At supper

- At supper? Where? - Not where he eats but where he is eaten

Your worm is your only emperor for diet

We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots

- Where is Polonius? - In heaven. Send thither to see

If your messenger find him not there seek him in the other place yourself

But if indeed you find him not within this month...

...you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby

- Go, seek him there - He will stay till you come

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

Therefore prepare thyself. The bark is ready and the wind at help

The associates tend and everything is bent for England

- For England? - Ay, Hamlet

- Good - So is it if thou knewst our purposes

I see a cherub that sees them

But come, for England. Farewell, dear mother

- Thy loving father, Hamlet - My mother

Father and mother is man and wife. Man and wife is one flesh. So, my mother

Come, for England

Follow him at foot. Tempt him with speed aboard.

Delay it not, I'll have him hence tonight

Away, for everything is sealed and done that else leans on the affair. Pray you make haste

And England, if my love thou holdest at aught pay homage to us...

And 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

Go, Captain, from me greet the Danish king. Tell him that by his licence...

...Fortinbras craves 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

- I will do it, my lord - Go softly on

- Good sir, whose powers are those? - They are of Norway, sir

- How purposed, I pray you? - Against some part of Poland

- Who commands them? - The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras

Goes it against the main of Poland, or for some frontier?

Truly to speak, and with no addition...

...they go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name

- Will it please you go, my lord? - I'll be with you straight. Go a little before

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...

...sith 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 twenty thousand men...

That for a fantasy and trick of fame go to their graves like beds...

Fight for a plot whereon 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? - She speaks much of her father

Says she hears there's tricks in the world, and hems and beats her heart

Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt that carry but half sense

'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

How full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills itself in fearing being spilt

- Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark? - How now, Ophelia?

How should I your true love know From another one?

By his cockle hat and staff And his sandal shoon

- 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 a stone

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

White his shroud as the mountain snow Larded all with sweet flowers

Which bewept to the ground did not go With true-love showers

Alack, look here, my lord

- How do you, pretty lady? - Well, God thank you

They say the owl was a baker's daughter

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

- God be at your table - Conceit upon her father

Pray, let's have no words of this...

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

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day All in the morning betime

And I a maid at your window To be your valentine

Then up he rose and donned his clothes And dupped the chamber door

Let in the maid that out a maid Never departed no more

- Pretty Ophelia... - Indeed, without an oath I'll make an end on it

By Gis and by Saint Charity, Alack and fie for shame

Young men will do it if they come to it, By Cock they are too blame

Quoth she, 'Before you tumbled me You promised me to wed'

He answers 'So would I have done by yonder sun And thou hadst 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 would lay him in the cold ground

My brother shall know of it

And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach

Goodnight, ladies, goodnight. Sweet ladies, goodnight, goodnight

Follow her close, give her good watch, I pray you

O, this is the poison of deep grief. It springs all from her father's death, and now behold...

- My lord - What is the matter?

Save yourself, my lord

The ocean overpeering of his list eats not the flats with more impiteous haste...

...than young Laertes in a riotous head overbears your officers

The rabble call him lord and cry, 'Choose we, Laertes shall be king'

Caps, hands and tongues applaud it to the clouds, 'Laertes shall be king! Laertes king!'

How cheerfully on the false trail they cry. O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs

O thou vile king, give me my father

- Calmly, 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 brow of my true mother

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

Tell me, Laertes, why art thou thus incensed? Speak, man

- Where is my father? - Dead

- But not by him - Let him demand his fill

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

To hell allegiance, vows to the blackest devil, conscience and grace to the profoundest pit

Let come what comes, only I'll be revenged most thoroughly for my father

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

And for my means I'll husband them so well they shall go far with little

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 both friend and foe, winner and loser?

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

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

...and like the kind life-rendering pelican repast them with my blood

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 judgement appear as day does to your eye

How now, what noise is that?

O heat, dry up my brains, tears seven times salt burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye

By heaven, thy madness shall be paid with weight till our scale turn the beam

O rose of May, dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia

O heavens, is it possible a young maid's wits should be as mortal as a poor man's life?

Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge it could not move thus

You must sing 'He-down a-down...'

O how the wheel becomes it

It is the false steward that stole his master's daughter

This nothing's more than matter

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember

And there is pansies, that's for thoughts

A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted

There's fennel for you, and columbines

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

We may call it herb of grace o'Sundays. You may wear your rue with a difference

I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died

They say he made a good end

For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy

Thoughts and afflictions, passion, hell itself she turns to favour and to prettiness

And will 'a not come again? And will 'a not come again?

No, no, he is dead, Go to thy death bed

He never will come again

His beard was as white as snow, Flaxen was his poll

He is gone, he is gone, And we cast away moan

God a' mercy on his soul

And of all Christians' souls. God buy you

Do you see this, O God?

Laertes, I must commune with your grief or you deny me right

Go but apart, make choice of whom your wisest friends you will...

...and they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me

If by direct or by collateral hand they find us touched, we will our kingdom give...

...our crown, our life, and 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 trophy, sword nor hatchment over his bones, 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, and where the offence is let the great axe fall

There's a letter for you sir, if your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is

Horatio, ere we were two days old at sea...

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

Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour...

...and in the grapple I boarded them

On the instant they got clear of our ship so I alone became their prisoner

They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy. This good fellow will bring thee where I am

Repair thou to me with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death

He that thou knows thine, Hamlet

Come, bring me to him 1384 12:18:40,1000 --> 12:18:43,736 Now must your conscience my acquittance seal...

...and you must put me in your heart for friend...

...sith you have heard and with a knowing ear that he which hath your noble father slain...

- ...pursued my life - It well appears

But tell me why you proceed not against these feats so criminal and so capital in nature?

O, for two special reasons which may to you perhaps seem much unsinewed...

...but 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 is so conjunct 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 count I might not go is the great love...

...the general gender bear him

- But my revenge will come - You must not think that we are made of stuff...

...so flat and dull that we can let our beard be shook with danger and think it pastime

These to your majesty

- From Hamlet. Who brought them? - A sailor, sir

Laertes, you shall hear them

High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked upon 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 return

What should this mean? Are all the rest come back...

...or is it some abuse, and no such thing?

- Know you the hand? - 'Tis Hamlet's character

'Naked', and in a postscript there he says 'alone'.

- Can you devise me? - I am lost in it, my lord, but let him come

It warms the very sickness in my heart that I live and tell him to his teeth 'Thus didst thou'

If it be so, Laertes, will you be ruled by me?

Ay, my lord, so you will not o'errule me to a peace

To thine own peace

I will work him to an exploit, now ripe in my devise...

...under the which he shall not choose but fall

And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe...

...but even his mother shall uncharge the practice and call it accident

My lord, I will be ruled the rather if you could devise it so that I might be the organ

One woe doth tread upon another's heel, so fast they follow

Your sister's drowned, Laertes

Drowned? O, where?

There is a willow grows askant the brook that shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream

There with fantastic garlands did she make...

...of crowflowers, nettles, daises and long purples...

...which liberal shepherds give a grosser name...

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

There on the pendant boughs her crownet weeds clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke...

...when down her weedy trophies and herself fell in the weeping brook

Her clothes spread wide and mermaid-like awhile they bore her up

Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds as one incapable of her own distress...

...or like a creature native and endued unto that element

But long it could not be till that 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

But yet it is our trick. Nature her custom holds, let shame say what it will

Adieu, my lord, I have a speech of fire that fain would blaze but that this folly drowns it

Let's follow, Gertrude

How much I had to do to calm his rage. Now fear I this will give it start again

Therefore let's follow

In youth when I did love, did love, Methought it was very sweet

To contract-a the time for-a my behove, O, methought there-a was nothing-a meet

But age with his stealing steps, Hath clawed me in his clutch

And hath shipped me into the land, As if I had never been such

Has this fellow no feeling of his business? He sings in grave-making

- Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness - I will speak to this fellow

- Whose grave's this, sirrah? - Mine, sir

I think it be thine, indeed, for thou liest in't

You lie not in't, sir, and therefore 'tis not yours

- For my part I do not lie in't, yet it is mine - Thou dost lie in't, to be in't 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 dost thou dig it for? - For no man, sir

- What woman, then? - For none, neither

Who is to be buried in't?

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

How absolute the knave is! How long hast thou been a grave-maker?

Of the days i'the year I came to't that day that our last King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras

- How long is that since? - Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that

It was that very day that young Hamlet was born, he that is mad and sent into England

- Ay, marry. Why was he sent into England? - Why, because he was mad

He shall recover his wits there. But 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, e'en with losing his wits

- Upon what ground? - Why here in Denmark

- How long will a man lie in the earth ere he rot? - Faith, if he be not rotten before he dies...

...as we have many pocky corpses that will scarce hold the laying in...

...he will last you eight year, or nine year. A tanner will last you nine year

- Why he more than another? - Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade...

...that he will keep out water a great while

And your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body

Here's a skull now hath lain you i'the earth some 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

You bastard!

This same skull, sir, was, sir, Yorick's skull, the King's jester

- This? - E'en that

Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy

He hath bore me on his back a thousand times...

...and now how abhorred in my imagination it is

My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft

Where be your jibes now, your gambols, your songs...

...your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Not one now to mock your own grinning

Quite chapfallen

- Horatio, tell me one thing - What's that, my lord?

Dost thou think Alexander looked o'this fashion in the earth?

- E'en so - And smelt so? Pah!

- E'en so, my lord - To what base uses we may return, Horatio

But soft, but soft awhile, here comes the King, the Queen, the courtiers

Who is this they follow? And with such maimed rites?

Couch we awhile and mark

What ceremony else?

Her obsequies have been as far enlarged as we have warranty

Her death was doubtful. And but that great command o'ersways the order...

...she should in ground unsanctified been lodged till the last trumpet

For charitable prayers, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her

Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants, her maiden strewments...

...and the bringing home of bell and burial

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

Lay her in the earth, and from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring

I tell thee, churlish priest, a ministering angel shall my sister be when thou liest howling

What, the fair Ophelia?

Sweets to the sweet. Farewell

I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife

I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid...

...and not have strewed thy grave

Hold off the earth awhile till I have caught her once more in mine arms

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 wandering stars and makes them stand like wonder-wounded hearers?

This is I, Hamlet the Dane

- The devil take thy soul! - Thou prayest not well

I prithee take thy fingers from my throat, for, though I am not splenative rash...

...yet have I in me something dangerous which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand

- Pluck them asunder - Hamlet, Hamlet!

Why, I will fight with him upon this theme until my eyelids will no longer wag

O my son, what theme?

I loved Ophelia

Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum

- What wilt thou do for her? - O, he is mad, Laertes

Dost come here to whine, to outface me with leaping in her grave?

Be buried quick with her, and so will I. Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou

What is the reason you use me thus? I loved you ever. But it is no matter

Let Hercules himself do what he may, the cat will mew and dog will have his day

Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son

What would you undertake, to show yourself indeed your father's son more than in words?

To cut his throat in the church

No place indeed should murder sanctuarize. Revenge should have no bounds

But good Laertes, you have been talked of since your travel much...

...and that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality wherein they say you shine

- What part is that, my lord? - For your combat most especial

That one cried out 'twould be a sight indeed if one could match you

- What out of this, my lord? - Keep close within your chamber

We'll put on those shall praise your excellence...

...and set a double varnish on the fame the people give you

Bring you in fine together and lay a wager on your heads

He being remiss, most generous and free from all contriving, will not peruse the sticks

So that with ease, or with a little shuffling, you may choose a staff unbated...

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

I will do it. I bought an unction of a mountebank...

...so mortal that if I gall him slightly it may be death

Let's further think of this... I have it!

When in your motion you are hot and dry and that he calls for drink...

I'll have prepared him a chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping...

...if he by chance escape your venomed stuck, our purpose may hold there

- We'll put the matter to the present push - This grave shall have a living monument

An hour of quiet thereby shall we see. Till then in patience our proceeding be

Up from my cabin, my sea-gown scarfed about me, in the dark groped I to find out them

Had my desire, fingered their packet, and in fine withdrew to mine own room again...

...making so bold, my fears forgetting manners, to unfold their grand commission

Where I found, Horatio - O royal knavery!

...an exact command my head should be struck off

- Is it possible? - Here's the commission, read it at more leisure

- But wilt thou hear now how I did proceed? - I beseech you

I sat me down, devised a new commission...

...wrote it fair, an earnest conjuration from the King

As England was his faithful tributary, that on the view and knowing of these contents...

...he should those bearers put to sudden death, not shriving time allowed

- So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to it - They are not near my conscience

Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark

I humbly thank you, sir

- Dost know this water fly? - No, my good lord

Thy state is the more gracious, for 'tis a vice to know him

Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure I should impart a thing to you from his majesty

I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of spirit

- Your bonnet to his right use, 'tis for the head - I thank your lordship, it is very hot

No, believe me, 'tis very cold, the wind is northerly

It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed

But yet me thinks it is very sultry and hot, or my complexion...

Exceedingly, my lord, it is very sultry, as 'twere... I cannot tell how

My lord, his majesty bade me signify to you that he has laid a great wager on your head

- Sir, this is the matter... - I beseech you remember

Nay, good my lord, for my ease, in good faith

Sir, here is newly come to court Laertes. Believe me, an absolute gentleman...

...full of most excellent differences, of very soft society and great showing

- What imports the nomination of this gentleman? - The King, sir, hath laid sir...

...that in a dozen passes between yourself and him he shall not exceed you three hits

He hath laid on twelve for nine

And it would come to immediate trial if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer

- How if I answer no? - I mean, my lord...

- ...the opposition of your person in trial - I will win for him an I can

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

Shall I deliver you so?

To this effect, sir, after what flourish your nature will

- You will lose, my lord - I do not think so

Since he went into France I have been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds

Thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart. But it is no matter

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 is special providence in the fall of a sparrow

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

If it be not now, yet it will come, the readiness is all

Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is it to leave betimes?

Let be

Come, Hamlet, come and take this hand from me

Pardon me, sir. I have done you wrong. But pardon it as you are a gentleman

This presence knows, and you must needs have heard...

...how I am punished with a sore distraction

What I have done that might your honour, nature and exception roughly awake...

...I here proclaim was madness

Was it Hamlet wronged Laertes? Never Hamlet. If Hamlet from himself be taken away...

...and when he's not himself does wrong Laertes, then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it

Who does it then? His madness

If it be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wronged...

...his madness is poor Hamlet's enemy

Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil...

...free me so far in your most generous thoughts...

...that I have shot my arrow over 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 stand aloof and will no reconcilement...

...till by some elder masters of known honour...

...I have a voice and precedent of peace to my name ungored

But all that time I do receive your offered love like love, and will not wrong it

I embrace it freely and will this brothers' wager frankly play

- Come, one for me - Cousin Hamlet, you know the wager

Very well, my lord. Your grace has laid the odds on the weaker side

I do not fear it. I have seen you both, and since he is better we have therefore odds

Set me the stoups of wine upon that table. 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 cups

Now the King drinks to Hamlet

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

- One - No

- Judgement? - A hit

Well, again

Stay, give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine

- Here's to thy health. Give him the cup - I'll play this bout first. Set it by a while

- Come, another hit. What say you? - I do confess

- Our son shall win - The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet

Gertrude, do not drink

I will, my lord. I pray you pardon me

It is the poisoned cup! It is too late

- I dare not drink yet, madam. By and by - Come, let me wipe thy face

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

- It is almost against my conscience - Come for the third, Laertes, you do but dally

I pray you pass with your best violence. I am sure you make a wanton of me

Say you so? Come on

Nothing neither way

Have at you now!

Part them, they are incensed

Nay, come again

Look to the Queen there, ho

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

Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric

I am justly killed with mine own treachery

- How does the Queen? - She swoons to see them bleed

No, no, the drink, the drink, O my dear Hamlet, the drink, the drink... I am poisoned

O villainy, ho! Let the doors be locked. Treachery! Seek it out

It is here, Hamlet, thou art slain

No medicine in the world can do thee good, in thee there is not half an hour's life

The treacherous instrument is in thy hand unbated and envenomed

The foul practice hath turned itself on me

Lo, here I lie, never to rise again. Thy mother's poisoned

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

The point envenomed too? Then venom to thy work

- O, yet defend me friends, I am but hurt - Here, thou incestuous, damned Dane

Drink of this potion. Is thy union here? Follow my mother

He is justly served. It is a poison tempered by himself

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. I follow thee

I am dead, Horatio. Wretched Queen, adieu

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

...that are but mutes or 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 livest. Report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied

Never believe it. I am more an antique Roman than a Dane. Here's yet some liquor left

As thou art a man, give me the cup. Let go, by heaven I'll have it

O God, Horatio, 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

- What warlike noise is this? - Young Fortinbras with conquest comes

O, I die, Horatio. This potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit

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

Now cracks a noble heart

Goodnight, sweet Prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest

Why does the drum come hither?

Where is this sight?

What is it you would see? If aught of woe, or wonder, cease your search

This quarry cries on havoc. O proud Death, what feast is toward in thine eternal cell...

...that thou so many princes at a shot so bloodily hast struck?

The sight is dismal and our affairs from England come too late

The ears are senseless that should give us hearing to tell him his commandment is fulfilled...

...that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Where should we have our thanks?

Not from his mouth, had it the ability of life to thank you

He never gave commandment of their death

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

So shall you hear of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts

Of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, of deaths put on by cunning, and for no cause

And in this upshot purposes mistook fallen on the inventors' heads

All this can I truly deliver

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

Of that I shall have also cause to speak...

...and from his mouth whose voice will draw no more

But let this same be presently performed even while men's minds are wild...

...lest more mischance on plots and errors happen

Let four captains bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage

For he was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most royal

And for his passage the soldiers' music and the right of war speak loudly for him

Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this becomes the field but here shows much amiss

Go, bid the soldiers shoot