CAMERA WHIRS
Who's there? Nay, answer me!
Stand, and unfold yourself.
Long live the king! Bernardo? He.
You come most carefully
upon your hour.
'Tis now struck twelve -
get thee to bed, Francisco.
For this relief much thanks.
'Tis bitter cold,
and I am sick at heart.
Have you had quiet guard?
Not a mouse stirring.
Well, good night.
Stand, ho! Who's there?
Friends to this ground.
And liegemen to the Dane.
Give you good night.
Farewell, honest soldier.
Who hath relieved you?
Bernardo has my place.
Give you good night.
Holla! Bernardo!
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 the apparition come,
he may approve our eyes
and speak to it.
Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.
Then let us once again
assail your ears,
that are so fortified
against our story
what we have two nights seen.
Well, let us hear Bernardo
speak of this.
Last night of all,
when yond same star
that's westward from the pole
had made his course to illume
that part of heaven
where now it burns,
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 it not like the king?
Mark it, Horatio.
Most like, it harrows me with fear
and wonder. It would be spoke to.
Question it, Horatio.
What art thou
that usurp'st this time of night,
together with that
fair and warlike form
in which the majesty of buried
Denmark did sometimes march?
By heaven I charge thee, speak!
It is offended. See, it stalks away!
Stay! Speak, speak!
I charge thee, speak!
'Tis gone,
and will not answer.
Before my God,
I might not this believe
without the sensible and true avouch
of mine own eyes.
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 my opinion,
this bodes some strange eruption
to our state.
Good now, stand close,
and tell me, he that knows,
why this same strict
and most observant watch
so nightly toils
the subject of the land,
and why such daily cast
of brazen cannon
and foreign mart
for implements of war.
What might be toward,
that this sweaty haste
doth make the night
joint-labourer with the day?
Who is't that can inform me?
That can I -
at least, the whisper goes so.
Our last king,
whose image
even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know,
by Fortinbras of Norway
dared to the combat,
in which our valiant Hamlet
did slay this Fortinbras, who thus
did forfeit, with his life,
all these his lands.
Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
of unimproved mettle hot and full,
hath in the skirts of Norway
here and there
shark'd up a list
of lawless resolutes,
to recover of us
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 romage in the land.
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!
COCK CROWS
Stay, and speak!
Stop it, Marcellus.
Shall I strike at it?
Do, if it will not stand.
'Tis here! 'Tis here!
'Tis gone!
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
to offer it the show of violence.
For it is, as is 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.
Some say that ever
'gainst that season comes
wherein our Saviour's birth
is celebrated,
the bird of dawning singeth
all night long
and then, they say,
no spirit dares stir abroad.
The nights are wholesome,
then no planets strike,
no fairy takes,
nor witch hath power to charm,
so hallow'd and so gracious
is the time.
So have I heard
and do in part believe it.
But, look -
the morn, in russet mantle clad,
walks o'er the dew
of yond 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,
and our queen,
the imperial jointress
to this warlike state,
have we,
as 'twere with a defeated joy,
with one auspicious
and one dropping eye,
with mirth in funeral
and with dirge in marriage,
in equal scale weighing delight
and dole,
taken to wife.
APPLAUSE
Nor have we herein barr'd
your better wisdoms,
which have freely gone
with this affair along.
For all, our thanks.
Now follows, that you know,
young Fortinbras,
holding a weak supposal
of our worth,
or thinking by our late
dear brother's death
our state to be disjoint
and out of frame,
he hath not fail'd
to pester us with message,
importing the surrender
of those lands
lost by his father,
with all bonds of law,
to our most valiant brother.
So much for him.
Thus much the business is.
We have here writ
We have here writ
To Norway,
uncle of young Fortinbras,
that he suppress
his nephew's further march
and threatening enterprise
against our state.
And we here dispatch you,
good Cornelia,
and Voltimand as our ambassadors
to old Norway.
In that and in all things
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't, Laertes?
LAUGHTER
You cannot speak of reason
to the Dane
and lose your voice.
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,
ny 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.
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,
our cousin Hamlet, and our son.
A little more than kin,
and less than kind.
How is it that the clouds
still hang on you?
Not so, my lord,
I am too much i' 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 vail-ed lids
seek for thy noble father
in the dust.
Thou know'st 'tis common,
all that lives must die,
passing through nature to eternity.
Ay, madam, it is common. If it be,
why seems it
so particular with thee?
Seems, madam! Nay, it is,
I know not "seems".
'Tis not alone my inky cloak,
good mother,
nor customary suits of solemn black,
together with all forms,
moods, shapes of grief,
that can denote me truly.
These indeed seem,
for they are actions
that a man might play.
But I have that within
which passeth show
these but the trappings
and the suits of woe.
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 persever
in obstinate condolement
is a course of impious stubbornness.
'Tis unmanly grief.
I 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.
APPLAUSE
For your intent
In going back to school
in... Wittenberg. ..Wittenberg,
it is most retrograde
to our desire.
And I 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 thee, stay with us -
go not to Wittenberg.
I shall in all my best obey you,
madam.
Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply.
Be as ourself in Denmark.
APPLAUSE
Madam, come.
This gentle and unforced accord
of Hamlet
sits smiling to my heart
in grace whereof,
no jocund health
that Denmark drinks today.
But the great cannon
to the clouds shall tell,
re-speaking earthly thunder.
Come, away.
O, that this too, too solid flesh
would melt...
Thaw,
and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting
had not fix'd
his canon 'gainst self-slaughter!
O God!
God!
HE SOBS
How weary,
stale,
flat and unprofitable
seem to me all the uses
of this world!
Fie on't! 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't.
Frailty, thy name is woman!
A little month,
or 'ere those shoes were old
with which she follow'd
my poor father's body,
like Niobe, all tears
why she, even she...!
O, God! A beast,
that wants discourse of reason,
would have mourn'd longer.
Married with my uncle.
My father's brother,
but no more like my father
than I to Hercules 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 very glad
to see you. Good even, sir.
But what, in faith,
make you from Wittenberg?
We'll teach you to drink deep
'ere you depart.
My lord, I came to see
your father's funeral.
I pray thee, do not mock me,
fellow-student -
I think it was to see
my mother's wedding.
Indeed, my lord,
it follow'd hard upon.
Thrift, thrift, Horatio!
The funeral baked meats
did coldly furnish forth
the marriage tables.
My father!
Methinks I see my father.
Where, my lord?
In my mind's eye, Horatio.
I saw him once.
He was a goodly king.
He was a man.
Take him for all in all.
I shall not look upon
his like again.
My lord...
I think I saw him yesternight.
Saw who?
My lord, the king your father.
The king my father!
Season your admiration 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 Bernardo,
on their watch,
in the dead vast
and middle of the night,
been thus encounter'd.
A figure like your father,
Armed at point exactly,
cap-a-pe,
appears before them,
and with solemn march
goes 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 deliver'd,
the apparition comes.
I knew your father,
these hands are not more like.
But where was this? My lord, upon
the platform where we watch'd.
Did you not speak to it?
My lord, I did, but answer
made it none. 'Tis very strange.
As I do live, my honour'd lord,
'tis true.
And we did think it
writ down in our duty
to let you know of it. Indeed.
Indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
Hold you the watch tonight?
We do, my lord.
Arm'd, say you? Arm'd, my lord.
From top to toe?
My lord, from head to foot.
Then saw you not his face?
O, yes, my lord,
he wore his beaver up.
What look'd he - frowningly?
A countenance
more in sorrow than in anger.
Pale or red? Nay, very pale.
And fix'd his eyes upon you?
Most constantly.
I would I had been there.
It would have much amazed you.
Very like, very like.
Stay'd it long?
While one with moderate haste might
tell a hundred. Longer, longer.
Not when I saw't.
His beard was grizzled?
It was, as I have seen it
in his life,
a sable silver'd.
I will watch tonight -
perchance 'twill walk again.
I warrant it will.
If it assume
my noble father's person,
I'll speak to it,
though Hell itself should gape
and bid me hold my peace.
I pray you all,
if you have hitherto
conceal'd this sight,
let it be tenable
in your silence still,
and whatsoever else
shall hap to-night,
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.
ALL: Our duty to your honour.
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 o'erwhelm them,
to men's eyes.
My necessaries are embark'd.
Farewell.
And, sister,
as the winds give benefit
and as convoy 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,
and now no soil nor cautel
doth besmirch
the virtue of his will.
But you must fear,
his greatness weigh'd,
his will is not his own.
For he himself
is subject to his birth.
He may not,
as unvalued persons do,
carve for himself,
for on his choice depends
the safety and the 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.
DISTANT THUMP
Or lose your heart,
or your chaste treasure open
To his unmaster'd importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia!
Fear it, my dear sister,
and keep you
in the rear of your affection,
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, like a puff'd 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 stay'd for.
There, my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts
in thy memory
see thou character.
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
nor any unproportioned thought
his act.
Be thou familiar,
but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast,
and their adoption tried,
grapple them to thy soul
with hoops of steel.
But do not dull thy palm
with entertainment
of each new-hatch'd,
unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel,
but being in,
bear't that the opposed
may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear,
but few thy voice,
take each man's censure,
but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit
as thy purse can buy,
but not express'd in fancy!
Rich, not gaudy,
for the apparel
oft proclaims the man.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
for loan...
..oft loses both
itself and friend...
And borrowing...
..dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all.
To thine ownself be true,
And it must follow,
as the night the day,
thou canst not then
be false to any man.
Farewell.
My blessing season this in thee!
Most humbly do I take my leave,
my lord.
The time invites you -
go, your servant tends.
Farewell, Ophelia.
And remember well
what I have said to you.
Tis in my memory lock'd,
and you yourself
shall keep the key of it.
Farewell.
DOOR CLOSES
What is't, Ophelia,
he hath said to you?
So please you,
something touching the Lord Hamlet.
Marry, well bethought.
'Tis told me,
he hath very oft of late
Given private time to you,
and you yourself
have of your audience
been most free and bounteous.
If it be so, as so 'tis put on me,
and that in way of caution,
I must tell you,
you do not understand yourself
so clearly
as it behoves my daughter
and your honour.
What is between you?
Give me up the truth.
He hath, my lord,
of late made many tenders
of his affection to me.
Affection! Pah!
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'll teach you.
Think yourself a baby,
That you have ta'en these tenders
for true pay,
which are not Sterling.
Tender yourself more dearly,
or, not to crack the wind
of the poor phrase,
running it thus
you'll tender me a fool.
My lord,
he hath 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.
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks.
I do know,
when the blood burns,
how prodigal the soul
lends the tongue vows.
These blazes, daughter,
giving more light than heat,
extinct in both,
you must not take for fire.
From this time
be somewhat scanter
of your maiden presence,
for 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't, I charge you.
Come your ways.
I shall obey, my lord.
The air bites shrewdly -
it is very cold.
It is a nipping and an eager air.
What hour now?
I think it lacks of twelve.
No, it is struck.
Indeed? I heard it not.
Then it draws near the season
wherein the spirit
held his wont to walk.
BANG
FIREWORK
What does this mean, my lord?
The king doth wake tonight
and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail,
and the swaggering up-spring reels.
And, as he drains his draughts of
Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum
and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
Is it a custom?
Ay, marry, is't.
But to my mind,
though I am native here
and to the manner born,
it is a custom
more honour'd in the breach
than the observance.
FIREWORKS EXPLODE
Look, my lord, it comes!
Angels and ministers of grace
defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health
or goblin damn'd?
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!
Let me not burst in ignorance,
but tell
why thy canonised bones,
hearsed in death,
have burst their cerements.
Why the sepulchre,
wherein we saw thee
quietly inter'd,
hath oped his ponderous
and marble jaws,
to cast thee up again.
What may this mean,
that thou, dead corpse,
again in complete steel
revisits thus
the glimpses of the moon,
making night hideous,
and we fools of nature
so horridly to shake
our disposition
with thoughts beyond
the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this?
Wherefore?
What should we do?
It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
to you alone.
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 in 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
that beetles o'er his base
into the sea,
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 call'd.
Unhand me, gentlemen.
By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him
that lets me!
I say, away!
Go on, I'll follow thee.
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.
Where 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 dost hear.
What?
I am thy father's spirit,
doom'd for a certain term
to walk the night,
and for the day confined
to fast in fires,
till the foul crimes
done in my days of nature
are burned and purged away.
But that I am forbid
to tell the secrets
of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold
whose lightest word
would harrow up thy soul,
freeze thy young blood,
make thy two eyes, like stars,
start from their spheres.
But this eternal blazon
must not be
to ears of flesh and blood.
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't,
that I, with wings as swift
as meditation
or the thoughts of love,
may sweep to my revenge.
I find thee apt.
'Tis given out
that, sleeping in my orchard,
a serpent stung me.
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 wit,
with traitorous gifts,
won to his shameful lust
the will of my most
seeming-virtuous queen.
O Hamlet,
what a falling-off was there!
From me,
whose love was of that dignity
that it went hand in hand
even with the vow
I made to her in marriage,
and to decline
upon a wretch
whose natural gifts were poor
to those of mine!
But lust,
though to a radiant angel link'd,
will sate itself
in a celestial bed,
and prey on garbage.
But, soft!
Methinks I scent the morning air.
Brief let me be.
Sleeping within my orchard,
my custom always in the afternoon,
upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
with juice of curs-ed 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 doth posset
and curd
the thin and wholesome blood.
So did it mine,
and a most instant tetter
bark'd about,
most lazar-like,
with vile and loathsome crust,
all my smooth body.
Thus was I, sleeping,
by a brother's hand
of life, of crown, and queen,
at once dispatch'd.
O, horrible!
Most horrible! O God!
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 glow-worm shows the matin
to be near,
and 'gins to pale
his ineffectual fire.
Adieu, adieu!
Hamlet...
VOICE ECHOES
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 stiffly up.
Remember thee?!
Ay, thou poor ghost,
while 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,
unmix'd 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'm 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 't.
My lord, my lord! Heaven secure him!
So be it!
Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!
Hillo, ho, ho, boy!
Come, bird, come.
How is't, my noble lord?
What news, my lord? O, wonderful!
Good my lord, tell it.
No, you'll 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, my lord.
There's ne'er a villain
dwelling in all Denmark
but he's an arrant knave.
There needs no ghost
come from the grave to tell us this.
Why, right, you are i' 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
has business and desires,
such as it is,
and for mine own poor part,
look you, I'll go pray.
These are but wild and whirling
words, my lord.
I'm sorry they offend you,
heartily. Yes, 'faith heartily.
There's no offence, my lord.
Yes, 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,
O'ermaster 't as you may.
And now, good friends,
as you are friends, scholars
and soldiers,
give me one poor request.
What is't, my lord? We will.
Never make known
what you have seen tonight.
BOTH: My lord, we will not.
Nay, but swear it.
In faith, my lord, not I.
Nor I, my lord, in faith.
Upon my sword.
We have sworn, my lord, already.
Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.
ECHOING VOICE: Swear. Ah, ha, boy!
Say'st thou so?
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 by my sword.
ECHOING VOICE: Swear!
Hic et ubique?
Then we'll shift our ground.
Come hither, gentlemen, and lay
your hands again upon my sword.
Never to speak of this
that you have heard.
Swear by my sword.
ECHOING VOICE: Swear!
Well said, old mole!
Canst work i' 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 our philosophy. But come!
Here, as before, never,
so help you mercy,
how strange or odd soe',
er I bear myself,
As I perchance hereafter
shall think meet
to put an antic disposition on,
that you, at such times seeing me,
never shall,
with arms encumber'd thus,
or this headshake,
or by pronouncing of
some doubtful phrase,
As "Well, well, we know",'
or "We could, and if we would",
or such ambiguous giving out,
to note
that you know aught of me.
This not to do,
so grace and mercy at your most need
help you - swear!
LOUD ECHOING VOICE: Swear!
We swear! We swear!
Rest, rest, perturb-ed spirit!
So, gentlemen,
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!
Give my son this money and these
notes, Reynaldo. I will, my lord.
You shall do marvellous wisely,
good Reynaldo,
before you visit him,
to make inquire of his behaviour.
My lord, I did intend it.
Marry, well said, very well said.
Look you, sir,
inquire me first
what Danskers are in Paris,
and how, and who, what means,
and where they keep,
what company, at what expense,
and finding
by this encompassment
and drift of question
that they do know my son,
come you more nearer.
Take you, as 'twere,
some distant knowledge of him
as thus,
"I know his father and his friends,
"And in part him."
Do you mark this, Reynaldo?
Ay, very well, my lord.
And in part him,
but you may say "not well.
"But, if't be he I mean,
he's very wild,
"addicted so and so",
and there put on him
what forgeries you please.
Marry, none so rank
as may dishonour him,
take heed of that,
but, sir, such wanton, wild
and usual slips
as are companions noted
and most known
to youth and liberty.
As gaming, my lord?
Ay, or drinking, fencing,
swearing, quarrelling,
drabbing - you may go so far.
My lord, that would dishonour him.
Faith, no, as you may season it
in the charge.
But, my good lord...
Wherefore should you do this?
Ay, my lord, I would know that.
Marry, sir, here's my drift,
and I believe, it is a fetch of wit.
You laying these slight sullies
on my son,
as 'twere a thing a little
soil'd i' the working, mark you,
your party in converse,
him you would sound,
having ever seen
in the prenominate crimes
the youth you breathe of guilty,
be assured
he closes with you
in this consequence.
"Good sir," or so, or "friend",
or "gentleman",'
according to the phrase
or the addition
of man and country.
Very good, my lord.
And then, sir, does he this?
He does...
What was I about to say?
By the mass,
I was about to say something.
Where did I leave?
At closes in the consequence.
At closes in the consequence?
Ay, marry!
He closes thus -
"I know the gentleman,
"I saw him yesterday,
or t' other day,
"Or then, or then,
with such, or such,
"and, as you say,
there was a' gaming,
"there a falling out at tennis"
or perchance,
"I saw him enter
such a house of sale" -
Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth.
See you now -
your bait of falsehood
takes this carp of truth
and thus do we of wisdom
and of reach,
by indirections
find directions out.
You have me, have you not?
My lord, I have.
God be wi' you -
fare you well. Good my lord!
Observe his inclinations in yourself.
I shall, my lord.
And let him ply his music.
Well, my lord.
Farewell!
Oh.
How now, Ophelia! What's the matter?
O, my lord, my lord,
I have been so affrighted!
With what, i' 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 foul'd,
ungarter'd,
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 stay'd 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 turn'd,
he seem'd to find his way
without his eyes.
For out o' doors
he went without their help,
and, to the last,
bended their light on me.
Come.
This is the very ecstasy of love,
whose violent property fordoes itself
and leads the will
to desperate undertakings.
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 fetters and denied
his access to me.
That hath made him mad.
I am sorry that with better heed
and judgment
I had not quoted him.
I fear'd he did but trifle,
and meant to wreck thee,
but, beshrew my jealousy!
Come, go we to the king.
This must be known.
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.
What it should be,
more than his father's death,
that thus hath put him
so much from the understanding
of himself,
we cannot dream of. I beseech you
that, being of such young days
brought up with him,
that you vouchsafe your rest
here in our court
some little time
so by your companies
to lead him on to pleasures,
and to gather,
so much as by occasion
you may glean,
whether aught, to us unknown,
afflicts him thus,
that, open'd,
lies within our remedy.
Good gentlemen,
he hath much talk'd of you,
and sure I am two men there are
not living
to whom he more adheres.
If it will please you
to show us
so much gentry and good will
as to expend your time with us
awhile,
for the supply and profit
of our hope,
your visitation
shall receive such thanks
as fits a king's remembrance.
Both your majesties
might, by the sovereign power
you have of us,
put your dread pleasures
more into command
than to entreaty.
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.
Go, some of you, and bring these
gentlemen where Hamlet is.
Heavens make our presence
and our practises
pleasant and helpful to him!
Ay, amen!
The ambassadors from Norway,
my good lord,
are joyfully return'd.
Thou still hast been
the father of good news.
Have I, my lord?
I assure my good liege,
I hold my duty, as I hold my soul,
both to my God
and to my gracious king.
And I do think, that I have found
the very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.
O, speak of that -
that do I long to hear.
First give admittance
to the ambassadors -
my news shall be
the fruit unto the feast.
Thyself do grace to them,
and bring them in.
He tells me, my sweet Gertrude,
that 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 o'erhasty marriage.
We will sift him.
Welcome, good friends!
Say, what from our brother Norway?
Most fair return of
greetings and desires.
He sent out to suppress
his nephew's march.
The which he thought proposed
against the Poles,
but, better look'd into,
he truly found
it was against Your Highness
and our state.
So Fortinbras
receives rebuke from him
and vows before his uncle never more
to give assay of arms
against Denmark here.
Ha!
It likes us well.
At night we'll feast together.
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 night,
and time...is time.
Were nothing but to waste night,
day and time.
Therefore,
since brevity is the soul of wit,
and tediousness the limbs
and outward flourishes,
I will be brief.
Your noble son is mad. Ah!
Mad call I it,
for, to define true madness,
what is't
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 now remains
that we find out the cause
of this effect,
or rather say,
the cause of this defect,
for this effect
defective comes by cause.
Thus it remains,
and the remainder thus.
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..."
HE TUTS
..etc.
Came this from Hamlet to her?
Good madam, stay awhile,
I will be faithful.
"Doubt thou the stars are fire
doubt that the sun doth move,
"doubt truth to be a liar,
but never doubt I love."
This, in obedience, hath my
daughter shown me, and more above.
But how hath she received his love?
What do you think of me?
As of a friend,
faithful and honourable.
I would fain prove so.
But what might you think,
When I had seen this hot love
on the wing
as I perceived it,
I must tell you that,
before my daughter told me
what might you,
Or my dear majesty your queen here,
think,
If I had given my heart a winking,
mute and dumb,
or look'd upon this love
with idle sight?
No, 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 precepts gave her,
that she should lock herself
from his resort,
admit no messengers,
receive no tokens.
Which done,
she took the fruits of my advice.
And he, repulsed,
a short tale to make
fell into a sadness,
then into a fast,
thence to a watch,
thence into a weakness,
thence to a lightness,
and, by this declension,
Into the madness
wherein now he raves,
and all we mourn for.
Do you think 'tis this?
It may be, very likely.
Hath there been such a time
I'd fain know that
that I have positively said
'tis so,
when it proved otherwise?
Not that I know.
Take this from this,
if this be otherwise.
If circumstances lead me,
I will find
where truth is hid,
though it were hid indeed
within the centre.
How may we try this further?
You know, sometimes he walks
four hours together
here 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.
Sweet Gertrude, leave us.
Her father and myself,
lawful espials,
thus may of their encounter
frankly judge,
if 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.
Ophelia, walk you here.
Read on this book,
that show of such an exercise
may colour your loneliness.
I hear him coming.
Let's 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 heart-ache
and the thousand natural shocks
that flesh is heir to.
'Tis a consummation...
..devoutly to be wish'd.
To die,
to sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream.
Ay, there's the rub.
For in that sleep of death
what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off
this mortal coil,
must give us pause.
There's the respect
that makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear
the whips and scorns of time,
but that the dread of
something after death?
The undiscover'd country
from whose bourn
no traveller returns,
puzzles the will
and makes us rather
bear those ills we have
than fly to others
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 pith 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 remember'd.
Good my lord, how does your honour
for this many a day?
I humbly thank you -
well, well, well.
My lord,
I have remembrances of yours
that I have long-ed long
to re-deliver.
I pray you, now receive them.
Not I - I never gave you aught.
Mine honour'd lord,
you know right well you did,
and, with them, words
of so sweet breath composed
as made the things more rich.
Their perfume lost,
take these again,
for to the noble mind
rich gifts wax poor
when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.
Are you honest?
My lord?
Are you fair?
What means your lordship?
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,
and yet I could accuse me of such
things it were better my mother
had not borne me.
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 door be shut upon 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
you 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,
go, farewell.
Or, if thou wilt needs marry,
marry a fool,
for wise men know well enough
what monsters you make of them.
To a nunnery, go, and quickly too.
Farewell.
O Heavenly powers, restore him!
You jig, you amble, and you lisp,
and nick-name 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 suck'd the honey
of his music vows,
now see that noble
and most sovereign reason,
like sweet bells jangled,
out of tune and harsh.
That unmatch'd form
and feature 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.'
There's something in his soul,
o'er which his melancholy
sits on brood,
and I do think the hatch
and the disclose
will be some danger.
How now, Ophelia!
You need not tell us what
Lord Hamlet said, we heard it all.
Away, I do beseech you,
here he comes.
I'll bore him presently.
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 god kissing carrion...
Have you a daughter?
I have, my lord.
Let her not walk in the sun.
Conception is a blessing, but
not as your daughter may conceive.
Friend, look to 't.
How say you by that?
Still harping on my daughter,
yet he knew me not at first -
he said I was a fishmonger.
He is far gone, far gone,
and truly in my youth
I suffered much extremity for love -
very 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 have grey beards...
That their faces are wrinkled...
Their eyes purging thick amber
and plum-tree gum...
and that they have a most plentiful
lack of wit...well...
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 you yourself, sir,
should be as old as I am,
if like a crab
you could go backward.
Though this be madness,
yet there is method in 't.
Will you walk out of the air,
my lord? Into my grave?
Indeed, that is out o' the air.
How pregnant sometimes
his replies are!
My honourable lord, I will
most humbly take my leave of you.
You cannot, sir,
take from me anything
that I would 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!
Good lads, how do ye 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?
Most true, she is a strumpet.
What's the news? None, my lord,
but that the world's grown honest.
Then is doomsday near!
But your news is not true.
Let me question more in particular.
What have you, my good friends,
deserved at the hands of fortune,
that she sends you to prison hither?
Prison, my lord? Denmark's a prison.
Then is the world one.
A goodly one, in which there are
many confines, wards and dungeons,
Denmark being one o' the worst.
We think not so, my lord.
Why, then, 'tis none to you,
for there is nothing either good
or bad, but thinking makes it so.
To me it's a prison.
Why then,
your ambition makes it one -
'tis too narrow for your mind.
O God,
I could be bounded in a nut shell
and count myself
a king of infinite space,
were it not that I have bad dreams.
Shall we to the court?
We'll wait upon you.
No such matter.
I will not sort you with
the rest of my servants.
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 your own inclining?
A free visitation?
Come, deal justly with me.
Come, nay, speak!
What should we say, my lord?
Why, 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.
But let me conjure you,
by the rights of our fellowship,
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 o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof
fretted with golden fire,
why, it appears no other thing
to me
than a foul and pestilent
congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty!
In form and moving,
how express and admirable!
In action, how like an angel!
In apprehension, how like a god!
The beauty of the world!
The paragon of animals!
And yet, to me, what is this...
..quintessence of dust?
Man delights not me.
Uh-huh.
No, nor woman neither, though by
your smiling you seem to say so.
My lord, there was
no such stuff in my thoughts.
Why did you laugh then,
when I said man delights not me?
To think, my lord,
if you delight not in man,
what Lenten entertainment
the players shall receive from you.
We coted them on the way,
and hither are they coming, to offer
you service. What players are they?
Even those you were wont
to take delight in,
the tragedians of the city.
He that plays the king
shall be welcome.
His Majesty
shall have tribute of me.
It is not very strange,
for mine uncle is king of Denmark,
and there are those that would make
mows at him while my father lived,
who'd give twenty, forty,
fifty, an hundred ducats a-piece
for his picture in little.
'Sblood, there is something
in this more than natural,
if philosophy could find it out.
CAR HORN
There are the players. Gentlemen,
you are welcome to Elsinore.
Come then, your hands.
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 an 'awk from an 'andsaw.
Well, be with you, gentlemen!
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's 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.
You say right, sir -
Monday morning, 'twas so 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 mine honour...
Then came each actor on his arse.
The best actors in the world,
either for tragedy, comedy, history,
pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral,
tragical-historical,
tragical-comical-historical-pastoral,
scene individable, or poem unlimited.
Seneca cannot be too heavy,
nor Plautus too light.
O Jephthah, judge of Israel,
what a treasure hadst thou!
What a treasure had he, my lord?
Why, "One fair daughter and no more,
The which he loved passing well."
Still on my daughter.
Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah?
If you call me Jephthah, my lord,
I have a daughter
that I love passing well.
Nay, that follows not.
What follows, then, my lord? You are
welcome, masters, welcome, all.
I am glad to see thee well.
Welcome, good friends.
O, my old friend!
What, my young lady and mistress!
By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer
to Heaven than when I last saw you.
Pray God, your voice be not
cracked within the ring.
We'll have a speech straight.
Come, give us a taste of your
quality - come, a passionate speech.
What speech, my lord?
I heard thee speak me a speech once,
but it was never acted,
or, if it was, not above once,
for the play, I remember,
pleased not the million.
'Twas caviare to the general.
One speech in it I chiefly
loved 'twas Aeneas' tale to Dido,
and thereabout of it especially,
where 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," - it is not so.
It begins with Pyrrhus,
"The rugged Pyrrhus..."
He whose sable arms...
"..whose sable arms"!
Er, "black as his purpose
did the night resemble.
"When he lay couch-ed
in the ominous horse,
"hath now this dread
and black complexion smear'd
"With heraldry more dismal,
head to foot.
"Now is he..." Total...
"total gules, roasted in wrath,
"And thus o'er-sized
with coagulate gore,
"with eyes like carbuncles,
the hellish Pyrrhus..."
Pyrrhus...
"Old grandsire Priam seeks."
So, proceed you.
Fore God, my lord, well spoken,
with good accent and good discretion.
Ssssh!
Anon he finds him,
striking too short at Greeks,
his antique sword,
rebellious to his arm,
lies where it falls,
repugnant to command.
Unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives,
in rage strikes wide,
but with the whiff and wind
of his fell sword
his unnerv-ed 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,
seem'd in the air to stick.
So, as a painted tyrant,
Pyrrhus stood,
And like a neutral to
his will and matter,
did nothing.
But, as we often see,
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,
arous-ed vengeance
sets him new a-work.
And never did
the Cyclops' hammers fall
on Mars, his armours
forged for proof eterne
with less remorse
than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
now falls on Priam.
This is too long.
It shall to the barber's,
with your beard. Prithee, say on.
He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry,
or he sleeps.
Say on, come to Hecuba.
But who,
O,
who had seen the mobled queen?
The mobled queen?
That's good, "mobled queen" is good.
Sshh!
Run barefoot up and down,
threatening the flames
with bisson rheum,
a clout about that head
where late the diadem stood.
And for a robe, about her lank
and all o'er-teemed loins,
A blanket,
in the alarm of fear caught up.
Who this had seen,
with tongue in venom steep'd,
'gainst Fortune's state
would treason have pronounced.
But if the gods themselves
did see her then
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's eyes.
Pray you, no more.
'Tis well.
I'll have thee speak out
the rest soon.
APPLAUSE
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.
My lord, I will use them
according to their desert.
God's bodykins, man, much better!
Use every man after his desert,
and who should 'scape whipping?
Come, sirs. Follow him, friends.
We'll hear a play tomorrow.
Dost thou hear me, old friend?
Can you play the Murder of Gonzago?
Ay, my lord.
We'll ha't tomorrow night.
You could, for a need,
study a speech
of some dozen or sixteen lines,
which I would set down
and insert in't, could you not?
Ay, my lord. Very well.
Follow that lord,
and pray you, mock him not.
Er...no.
My good friends,
I'll leave you till night.
You are welcome to Elsinore.
Good my lord!
Ay, so, God be wi' ye.
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 workings
all his visage wann'd,
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 Hecuba,
that he should weep for her?
What would he do,
had he the motive
and the cue for passion
that I have?
He would drown the stage in tears
and cleave the general ear
with horrid speech,
make mad the guilty
and appal the free,
confound the ignorant,
and amaze indeed
the very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I,
a dull and muddy-mettled rascal,
peak,
like John a'dreams,
unpregnant of my cause,
and can say nothing.
No, not for a king,
upon whose property
and most dear life
a damn'd defeat was made.
Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain?
Breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard,
and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose?
Gives me the lie i' 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-liver'd
and lack gall
to make oppression bitter,
or ere this
I should have fatted
all the region kites
with this slave's offal.
Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous,
lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I!
This is most brave,
that I, the son of a dear father,
murder'd,
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 scullion! Fie upon't! Foh!
About, my brain!
I have heard
that guilty creatures
sitting at a play
have by the very cunning
of the scene
been struck so to the soul
that presently
they have proclaim'd
their malefactions.
For murder, though it
have no tongue, will speak
with most miraculous organ.
I'll have these players
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.
The spirit that I have seen
may be a devil
and the devil hath power
to assume a pleasing shape.
Yea, and perhaps
out of my weakness
and my melancholy,
as he is very potent with such
spirits, abuses me to damn me.
I'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?
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 o'er-raught on the way,
of these we told him,
and there did seem in him a kind of
joy to hear of it. 'Tis most true.
And he beseech'd me
to entreat your majesties
to hear and see the matter.
With all my heart,
and it doth much content me
to hear him thus inclined.
Good gentlemen,
give him a further edge, and drive
his purpose on to these delights.
We shall, my lord.
I have in quick determination
thus set it down.
He shall with speed to England.
Haply the seas
and countries different
with variable objects will expel
This something-settled matter
in his heart,
whereon his brains still beating
puts him thus
from fashion of himself.
What think you on't?
It shall do well,
but yet do I believe
The origin and commencement
of his grief
sprung from neglected love.
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 unwatch'd go.
Speak the speech, I pray you,
as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue,
but if you mouth it,
as many of your players do,
I had as lief the town-crier
spoke my lines.
Nor do not saw the air too much
with your hands, thus,
but use all gently,
for in the very torrent, tempest,
and, as I may say,
the whirlwind of passion,
you must acquire and beget
a temperance
that may give it smoothness.
O, it offends me to the soul to
hear a robustious periwig-pated
fellow tear a passion to tatters,
to very rags, to split the ears of
the groundlings,
who for the most part
are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumbshows and noise.
I would have such a fellow whipped
for o'erdoing Termagant.
It out-Herods Herod.
Pray you, avoid it.
I warrant your honour.
Be not too tame neither,
but let your own discretion
be your tutor.
Suit the action to the word,
the word to the action.
With this special observance,
that you o'erstep not
the modesty of nature.
For any thing so overdone is from
the purpose of playing, whose end,
both at the first and last,
was and is, to hold, as 'twere,
the mirror up to nature,
to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image,
and the very age
and body of the time
is form and pressure.
Now this overdone,
or come tardy off,
though it make
the unskilful laugh,
cannot but make
the judicious grieve,
the censure of the which
one must in your allowance
o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.
I hope we have reformed that
indifferently with us, sir.
O, reform it altogether.
And let those that play your clowns
speak no more than
is set down for them,
for there be of them
that will themselves laugh,
to set on some quantity of barren
spectators to laugh too,
though, in the mean time,
some necessary question of
the play be then to be considered.
That's villanous,
and shows a most pitiful ambition
in the fool that uses it.
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.
Da!
Will you two help to hasten them?
We will, my lord.
What ho! Horatio!
Here, sweet lord, at your service.
Horatio, thou art e'en as just
a man as e'er my conversation
coped withal. O, my dear lord.
Nay, do not think I flatter.
Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul
was mistress of her choice
and could of men distinguish,
her election
hath seal'd thee for herself.
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 smithy.
Well, my lord, if he steal aught
the whilst this play is playing,
and 'scape detecting,
I will pay the theft.
MUSIC STARTS
They are coming to the play.
I must be idle. Get you a place.
HAMLET WHISTLES ALONG TO MUSIC
How fares our cousin Hamlet?
Excellent, i' faith,
of the chameleon's dish
I eat the air, promise-crammed.
I have nothing with this answer,
Hamlet, these words are not mine.
No, nor mine now.
My lord, you played once
i' the university, you say?
That did I, my lord,
and was accounted a good actor.
What did you enact?
I did enact Julius Caesar.
I was killed i' 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.
I mean, my head upon your lap?
Ay, 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,
how cheerfully my mother looks,
and my father died these 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.
O heavens!
Die two months ago,
and not forgotten yet?
PLAYERS GIBBER
Dead!
APPLAUSE
What means this, my lord?
Marry, this is miching mallecho.
It means mischief.
Belike this show
imports the argument of the play.
We shall know by this fellow -
the players cannot keep counsel.
They'll tell all.
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.
MUSIC STARTS
Full 30 years hath
passed in sacred banns
since love our hearts
and Hymen joined our hands.
So many journeys
may the sun and moon
make us again count o'er
ere love be done!
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,
honour'd, 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 kill'd the first.
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.
Nor Earth to me give food,
nor heaven light!
Sport and repose
lock from me day and night!
Both here and hence
pursue me lasting strife,
if, once a widow, ever I be 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.
LAUGHTER
O, but she'll keep her word.
Have you heard the argument?
Is there no offence in't? No, no,
they do but jest, poison in jest.
No offence i' the world.
What do you call the play?
The Mouse-trap.
The play is the image of
a murder done in Vienna.
Gonzago is the duke's name,
his wife, Baptista.
You shall see anon. 'Tis a knavish
piece of work, but what o' that?
Your majesty and we that have
free souls, it touches us not.
Let the gall-ed jade wince,
our withers are unwrung.
Ah, this is one Lucianus,
nephew to the king.
You are as good as a chorus,
my lord.
I could interpret between you
and your love, if I could
see the puppets dallying.
You are keen, my lord, you are keen.
Begin, murderer.
Pox, leave thy damnable faces,
and begin.
Come, the croaking raven
doth bellow for revenge.
Thoughts black,
hands apt, drugs fit,
and time agreeing.
Confederate season,
else no creature seeing.
Thou mixture rank,
of midnight weeds collected,
with Hecate's ban
thrice blasted, thrice infected.
Thy natural magic
and dire property,
on wholesome life usurp immediately.
He poisons him
in the garden for his estate.
His name's Gonzago. The play is
extant, and writ in choice Italian.
You shall see anon how the murderer
gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
The king rises.
What, frighted with false fire?
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.
Come, some music!
Come, the recorder!
For if the king like not the comedy,
why then,
belike he like it not, perdy.
Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word
with you. Sir, a whole history.
The king, sir. Ay, sir, what of him?
Is in his retirement
marvellous distempered.
With drink, sir?
No, my lord, rather with 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.
If it shall please you to make me
a wholesome answer, I will do
your mother's commandment.
Oh, oh, oh, sir, I cannot. What, my
lord? Make you a wholesome answer.
My wit's diseased.
My mother, you say?
Then thus she says,
your behavior hath struck her
into wonder and astonishment.
O, wonderful son,
that can so astonish a mother!
Impart.
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.
So I 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 griefs
to your friend.
Sir, I lack advancement.
How can that be, when you have
the voice of the king himself
for your succession in Denmark?
Ay, but sir,
while the grass grows...
The proverb is something musty.
O, the recorder! Let me see one.
To withdraw with you.
Why do you go about to recover
the wind of me,
as if you would
drive me into a toil?
O, my lord, if my duty be too bold,
my love is too unmannerly.
I do not well understand that.
Will you play upon this pipe?
My lord, I cannot. I pray you.
Believe me, I cannot.
I do beseech you.
I know no touch of it, my lord.
'Tis as easy as lying.
Govern these ventages
with your fingers and thumb,
give it breath with your mouth,
and it will discourse
most eloquent music.
Look you, these are the stops.
But these cannot I command
to any utterance of harmony.
I have not the skill.
Why, look you now,
how unworthy a thing you make of me!
You would play upon ME.
You would seem to know my stops.
You would pluck out
the heart of my mystery.
You would sound me from my lowest
note to the top of my compass
and there is much music, excellent
voice, in this little organ,
yet cannot you make it speak?
'Sblood, do you think I am
easier to be played on than a pipe?
Call me what instrument you will,
though you can fret me,
you cannot play upon me.
God bless you, sir!
My lord,
the queen would speak with you...
THEY PLAY RECORDERS
..and 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.
I will say so.
By and by is easily said!
Leave me, friends.
HAMLET PLAYS "THREE BLIND MICE"
'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.
I will speak daggers to her,
but use none.
I like him not,
nor stands it safe with us
to let his madness range.
Therefore prepare you.
I your commission
will forthwith dispatch,
and he to England
shall along with you.
The terms of our estate
may not endure
hazard so dangerous
as doth hourly grow
out of his lunacy.
We will ourselves provide.
Most holy and religious fear it is
to keep those many, many bodies safe
that live and feed
upon your majesty.
Never alone did the king sigh,
but with a general groan.
For majesty is like a massy wheel,
fix'd on the summit
of the highest mount
to whose huge spokes
10,000 lesser things
are morticed and adjoin'd.
Arm you, I pray you,
to this speedy voyage,
for we will fetters put
upon this fear,
which now goes too free-footed.
We will haste us.
My lord,
he's going to his mother's closet.
Behind the arras
I'll convey myself
to hear the process -
I'll warrant she'll tax him home.
Fare you well, my liege.
I'll call upon you ere you go
to bed, and tell you what I know.
Thanks, dear my lord.
HE COUGHS
O, my offence is rank.
It smells to heaven.
It hath the primal eldest curse
upon't -
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 curs-ed 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 two-fold force
to be forestalled
ere we come to fall,
or pardon'd, 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 possess'd
of those effects
for which I did the murder -
my crown, mine own ambition
and my queen.
May one be pardon'd
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 compell'd,
even to the teeth
and forehead of our faults,
to give in evidence.
What then?
What rests?
Try what repentance can.
O...
what can it not?
But what can it,
when one cannot repent?
O wretched state!
O bosom black as death!
O lime-ed 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 newborn babe.
All may yet be well.
HE MOUTHS
Now might I do it pat,
now he is praying.
And now I'll do't!
And so he goes to heaven,
and so am I revenged.
That would be scann'd.
A villain kills my father,
and for that,
I, his sole son,
do this same villain send to Heaven?
O, this is hire and salary,
not revenge.
He took my father grossly,
full of bread,
with all his crimes broad blown,
as flush as May.
And how his audit stands,
who knows save Heaven?
Am I then revenged,
to take him
in the purging of his soul,
when he is fit and season'd
for his passage?
No!
Up, blade,
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 gaming, swearing,
or about some act
that has no relish
of salvation in't.
Then trip him, that his heels
may kick at Heaven,
and that his soul may be
as damn'd 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 screen'd
and stood between
Much heat and him.
I'll silence me even here.
Pray you, be round with him.
KNOCK AT DOOR
I'll warrant you, Fear me not.
Withdraw, I hear him coming.
Mother! Mother!
Mother!
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, help, ho!
What, ho! Help, help, help! How now!
A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
GUNSHO 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, 'twas my word.
Thou wretched, rash,
intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better.
Take thy fortune.
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.
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,
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,
a combination and a form indeed,
where every god
did seem to set his seal,
to give the world
assurance of a man.
This was your husband.
Look you now, what follows.
Here is your husband,
like a mildew'd ear,
blasting his wholesome brother.
Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair
mountain leave to feed,
and batten on this moor? Ha!
Have you eyes?
You cannot call it love,
for at your age
the hey-day in the blood is tame,
it's humble,
and waits upon the judgement
and what judgement
would step from this to this?
What devil was't
that thus hath cozen'd you
at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling,
feeling without sight,
ears without hands or eyes,
smelling sans all,
or but a sickly part
of one true sense
Could not so mope.
O shame! Where is thy blush?
O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn'st mine eyes
into my very soul.
and there I see such black
and grain-ed spots
as will not leave their tinct.
Nay, but to live
in the rank sweat
of an enseam-ed bed,
stew'd in corruption,
honeying and making love
over the nasty sty.
O, speak to me no more!
These words, like daggers,
enter in mine ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet!
A murderer and a villain.
A slave that is not
twentieth part the tithe
of your precedent lord.
A vice of kings,
a cutpurse of the empire
and the rule,
who from a shelf
the precious diadem stole,
and put it in his pocket! No more!
A king of shreds and patches.
CLOCK CHIMES
Save me, and hover o'er 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.
Conceit in weakest bodies
strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.
How is it with you, lady?
Alas, how is't with you,
that you do bend your eye on vacancy
and with the incorporal air
do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes
your spirits wildly peep.
O gentle son, upon the heat
and flame of thy distemper
sprinkle cool patience.
Whereon do you look?
On him, on him! Look you!
How pale he glares!
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 there is
I see. Nor did you nothing hear?
No, nothing but ourselves.
Why, look you now!
Look, how it steals away!
My father, in his habit as he lived!
Look, where he goes, even now,
out at the portal!
This is the very coinage
of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy
is very cunning in.
Ecstasy! My pulse, as yours,
doth temperately keep time,
and makes as healthful music.
It is not madness
that I have utter'd.
Bring me to the test,
I the matter will re-word,
which madness would gambol from.
Mother, for love of grace,
lay not that flattering unction
to your soul,
that not your trespass,
but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film
the ulcerous place,
whilst rank corruption,
mining all within,
infects unseen.
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.
Good night,
but go not to mine uncle's bed.
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
Refrain tonight, and that
shall lend a kind of easiness
to the next abstinence.
Once more, good night.
And when you are desirous
to be bless'd,
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, good night.
I must be cruel, only to be kind.
Thus bad begins
and worse remains behind.
One more word, 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,
pinch wanton on your cheeks,
call you his mouse.
And let him,
for a pair of reechy kisses,
or paddling in your neck
with his damn'd 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.
Sssh.
I must to England, you know that?
Alack, I had forgot.
'Tis so concluded on.
There's letters seal'd
and my two schoolfellows,
whom I will trust
as I will adders fang'd,
they bear the mandate,
they must sweep my way, and
marshal me to knavery. Let it work.
For 'tis the sport
to have the engineer
hoist with his own
petard and 't shall go hard.
But I will delve
one yard below their mines,
and blow them at the moon.
O, 'tis most sweet,
when in one line
two crafts directly meet.
This man shall set me packing.
I'll lug the guts into
the neighbour room.
Mother, good night.
Indeed this counsellor
is now most still,
most secret
and most grave,
who was in life a foolish
prating knave.
Come, sir,
to draw toward an end with you.
Good night, mother.
SHE LAUGHS THEN SOBS
There's matter in these sighs,
these profound heaves.
You must translate.
'Tis fit we understand them.
Where is your son?
Ah, my good lord, what have I seen
tonight! What, Gertrude?
How does Hamlet?
Mad
as the sea and wind, when both
contend which is the mightier.
In his lawless fit,
behind the mirror
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 every one.
Alas, how will this
bloody deed be answer'd?
It will be laid to us,
whose providence
should have kept short,
restrain'd and out of haunt,
this mad young man.
But so much was our love, we could
not understand what was most fit.
But, like the owner
of a foul disease,
to keep it from divulging,
let it feed,
even on the pith of Life.
Where is he gone? To draw apart
the body he hath kill'd,
o'er whom his madness
weeps for what is done.
O Gertrude, come! The sun no
sooner shall the mountains touch,
but we will ship him hence.
And this vile deed we must,
with all our majesty and skill,
both countenance and excuse.
Guildenstern!
Friends both, go
join you with some further aid.
Hamlet in madness
hath Polonius slain,
and from his mother's closet
hath he dragg'd him.
Go seek him out.
Speak fair,
and bring the body into the chapel.
I pray you, make haste.
Oh, Gertrude, come.
Let's call up our wisest friends,
and let them know
both what we mean to do
and what's untimely done.
Come away.
My soul is full of
discord and dismay.
SHOUTING
Safely stowed.
Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!
What noise?
Here they come.
What have you done, my lord,
with the dead body?
Compounded it with dust,
whereto 'tis kin.
Tell us where 'tis, that we may take
it thence and bear it to the chapel.
Do not believe it. Believe what?
That I can keep your
counsel and not mine own.
Besides, to be demanded of a sponge!
What replication should be
made by the son of a king?
Take you me for a sponge, my lord?
Ay, sir,
that soaks up
the king's countenance,
his rewards, his authorities.
But such officers do the
king best service in the end.
He keeps them,
like an ape, an apple
in the corner of his jaw.
First mouthed,
to be last swallowed
when he needs what you have gleaned,
it is but squeezing you,
and, sponge, you shall be dry again.
I understand you not, my lord.
I am glad of it.
A knavish speech
sleeps in a foolish ear.
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.
Bring me to him.
Hide fox, and all after.
I have sent to seek him,
and to find the body.
How dangerous is it
that this man goes loose!
Yet must not we put
the strong law on him.
He's loved
of the distracted multitude,
who like not in their judgment,
but their eyes.
And where tis so,
the offender's scourge is weigh'd,
but never the offence.
To bear all smooth and even,
this sudden sending him away
must seem deliberate cause.
Diseases desperate grown by
desperate measure are relieved,
or not at all.
How now! what hath befall'n?
Where the dead body is bestow'd,
my lord, We cannot get from him.
But where is he? Without, my lord,
guarded, to know your pleasure.
Bring him before us.
Guildenstern! Bring in my lord.
Now, Hamlet,
where is Polonius?
At supper.
At supper! Where?
Not where he eats,
but where he is eaten.
A certain convocation of
politic worms are e'en at him.
Your worm is your
only emperor for diet.
We fat all creatures else
to fat ourselves,
we fat ourselves for maggots.
Alas, alas!
A man may fish with the worm that
hath eat of a king, and eat of the
fish that hath fed of that worm.
What dost you mean by this?
Nothing but to show you how
a king may go a progress
through the guts of a beggar.
Where is Polonius?
In heaven!
Send hither to see.
If your messenger find him
not there, seek him i'
the other place yourself.
But indeed, if you find
him not within this...month,
you shall nose him
as you go upstairs into the lobby.
Seek him there.
He will stay till ye come.
Hamlet, this deed,
for thine especial safety,
which we do tender, as we dearly
grieve for that which thou hast done,
must send thee hence
with fiery quickness.
Therefore prepare thyself.
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 knew'st our purposes.
I see a cherub that sees them.
Come, for England!
Farewell, dear mother.
Thy loving father, Hamlet.
My mother,
father and mother is man and wife,
man and wife is one flesh,
and so, my mother.
Come, for England!
Whee!
Follow him at foot.
Tempt him with speed aboard.
Delay it not.
I'll have him hence tonight.
For every thing is seal'd and done
that else leans on this affair. Away.
And, England,
if my love thou hold'st at aught,
thou mayst not coldly set
our sovereign purpose.
The present death of Hamlet.
Do it, England,
for like the hectic in my blood
he rages, and thou must cure me.
Till I know 'tis done,
whate'er may hap,
my joys were ne'er begun.
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 i'
the world, speaks things in doubt,
that carry but half sense.
Her speech is nothing,
yet the unshaped use of it doth
move the hearers to collection.
'Twere good she was spoken with,
for she may strew dangerous
conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
Let her come in.
To my sick soul,
as sin's true nature is, each toy
seems prologue to some great amiss.
So full of artless jealousy
is guilt,
it spills itself
in fearing to be spilt.
Where is the beauteous
majesty of Denmark?
How now, Ophelia!
# How should 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 with sweet flowers
# Which bewept to the grave
did not go
# With true-love showers. #
How do you, pretty lady?
Well, God 'ild you!
They say the owl
was a baker's daughter.
O Lord, we know what we are,
but know not what we may be.
God be at your table!
Conceit upon her father. Pray you,
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 donn'd his clothes
# And dupp'd the chamber-door
# Let in the maid
that out a maid never departed more
# I'll make an end on't
# By Gis and by Saint Charity
# Alack, and fie for shame!
# Young men will do't,
if they come to't
# By cock, they are to blame
# Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
# You promised me to wed
# So would I ha' done, by yonder sun
# An 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 should lay him
i' the cold ground.
My brother shall know of it and so
I thank you for your good counsel.
Come, my coach!
Good night, ladies,
good night, sweet ladies,
good night, good night.
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.
O, Gertrude, Gertrude.
When sorrows come, they come not
single spies but in battalions.
First, her father slain.
Next, your son gone,
and he most violent author
of his own just remove.
The people muddied,
sick and unwholesome in their
thoughts and whispers
for good Polonius' death,
and we have done but greenly,
in hugger-mugger thus to inter him.
Poor Ophelia,
divided from herself and her
fair judgment, without the
which we are but pictures,
or mere beasts.
Last, and yet as much
containing all of these,
her brother is in secret
come from France,
and wants not buzzers
to infect his ear
with pestilent speeches
of his father's death.
THUMPING ON DOOR
Alas, what noise is this?
Where are my Switzers?
Bid them guard the door.
Save yourself, my lord.
Laertes, in a riotous head,
o'erbears your officers.
The rabble call him lord. They 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!
BANGING
The doors are broken.
O, vile king, give me my father!
Calmly, good Laertes.
That drop of blood that's calm
proclaims me bastard.
What is the cause, Laertes, that
thy rebellion looks so giant-like?
Let him go, Gertrude.
Do not fear our person.
There is such divinity
doth hedge a king,
that treason can but
peep to what it would,
acts little of his will.
Tell me, Laertes, why art thou
thus incensed. Let him go, Gertrude.
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!
I dare damnation.
To this point I stand,
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.
Good Laertes,
if you desire to know the certainty
of your dear father's death,
is't 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
dear father's death,
and am most sensibly in grief for it.
It shall as level to your judgment
pierce as day does to your eye.
Let her come in.
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!
O rose of May!
Dear maid, kind sister,
sweet Ophelia!
O heavens! Is't possible, a
young maid's wits should be as
mortal as an old man's life?
# They bore him barefaced
on the bier
# Hey, nonny nonny, nonny, no
# And in his grave
rain'd many a tear
# Fare you well, my dove! #
Hadst thou thy wits,
and didst persuade revenge,
it could not move thus.
(You must sing a-down a-down,
an' you call him a down...) This
nothing's more than matter.
There's rosemary,
that's for remembrance.
Pray, 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-grace o' Sundays.
O, you must wear your rue
with a difference.
There's a daisy.
I would give you some violets,
but they withered
all
when my father died.
They say he made a good end.
# For bonny sweet Robin
is all my joy... #
Thought and affliction, passion,
hell itself, she turns to
favour and to prettiness.
# And will he not come again?
# And will he not come again?
# No, no, he is dead
# Go to thy death-bed
# He never will come again
# His beard was as white as snow
# All flaxen was his poll
# He is gone, he is gone... #
And we cast away moan
God ha' mercy on his soul!
And of all Christian souls,
I pray God.
God be wi' ye.
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 touch'd,
we will our kingdom give, our crown,
our life, yea all that we call ours,
to you in satisfaction.
But if not,
be you content
to lend your patience to us,
and we will jointly labour with
your soul to give it due content.
Let this be so.
And where the offence is,
let the great axe fall.
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.
I will do so, my lord. Go safely on.
Sir, whose powers are these?
They are of Norway, sir.
How purposed, sir, I pray you?
Against some part of Poland.
Who commands them, sir?
The nephew to old Norway,
Fortinbras.
Goes it against the main of
Poland, sir, Or for some frontier?
Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch
of ground that hath in
it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five,
I would not farm it.
Why, then the Polack
never will defend it.
Yes, it is already garrison'd.
Two thousand souls and
20,000 ducats will not debate
the question of this straw.
I humbly thank you, sir.
God be wi' you, sir.
How all occasions
do inform against me,
and spur my dull revenge.
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't.
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 puff'd
makes mouths at the invisible event,
exposing what is mortal and unsure
to all that fortune,
death and danger dare,
even for an egg-shell.
O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody,
or be nothing worth!
Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you but the painting of
a sorrow, a face without a heart?
Why ask you this?
Hamlet comes back.
What will you undertake,
to prove yourself your father's son
in deed more than in words?
To cut his throat i' the church.
No place, indeed,
should murder sanctuarize,
Revenge should know no bounds.
But, good Laertes, will you do this,
stay close within your chamber.
Hamlet return'd shall
know you are come home.
We'll set on those who'll
praise your excellence,
and for your rapier
most especially, bring you in fine
together and wager on your heads.
He, being remiss,
and free from all contriving,
will not peruse the foils, so that,
with ease, or a little shuffling,
you may choose a sword unblunted,
and in a pass of practise
requite him for your father.
I will do it.
And, for that purpose,
I'll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank
so mortal that,
but dip a knife in it,
where it draws blood
no cataplasm so rare
can save the thing from death
that's scratch'd withal.
I'll touch my point with this
contagion, that, if I but gall him
slightly, it may be his death.
Hm. Let's further think on this.
If this should fail
and that our drift look through
our bad performance,
'twere better not assay'd.
Therefore this plot should have a
back or second, that might hold,
if this did blast in proof.
Soft!
I ha't.
When in your motion you
are hot and dry - as make your
bout more violent to that end -
and that he calls for drink,
I'll have prepared him a chalice
for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
if, by chance, he escape your venom'd
stuck, our purpose will hold there.
How now, sweet queen?
One woe doth tread upon
another's heel, so fast they follow.
Your sister's drown'd, Laertes.
Drown'd? Where?
There is a willow
grows aslant a brook,
that shows his hoar leaves
in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands
did she come
of crow-flowers, nettles,
daisies, and long purples - that
liberal shepherds
give a grosser name -
but our cold maids
do dead men's fingers call them.
There, on the pendent boughs her
coronet weeds clambering to hang,
an envious sliver broke,
when down her
weedy trophies and herself
fell in the weeping brook.
Her clothes
spread wide, and,
mermaid-like,
awhile they bore her up,
which time she chanted
snatches of old tunes,
as one incapable
of her own distress,
or like a creature native
and indued Unto that element,
but long it could not be
till that her garments,
heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her
melodious lay
to muddy death.
Alas, then, she is drown'd?
Drown'd.
Drown'd.
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 douses it.
Let's follow, Gertrude.
How much I had to do
to calm his rage.
Now fear I
this will give it start again.
Is she to be buried
in Christian burial
that wilfully
seeks her own salvation?
I tell thee, she is.
And, therefore,
make her grave straight.
Well, how can that be, unless she
drowned herself in her own defence?
Why, 'tis found so.
It must be se offendendo,
it cannot be else.
For here lies the point.
If I drown myself wittingly,
it argues an act.
And an act hath three branches.
It is, to act, to do, to perform.
Argal, she drowned herself wittingly.
Nay, but hear you, goodman delver.
Give me leave.
Here lies the water, good.
Here stands the man, good.
If the man go to this water, and
drown himself, it is, will he,
nill he, he goes, mark you that.
But if the water come to him and
drown him, he drowns not himself.
Argal, he that is not guilty of his
own death shortens not his own life.
Cudgel thy brains no more about it.
Go, get thee to Yaughan.
Fetch me a stoup of liquor.
# In youth, when I did love,
did love
# Methought it was very sweet... #
Has this fellow no
feeling of his business,
that he sings at grave-making?
Custom hath made it in him a
property of easiness. Tis e'en so.
That skull had a tongue in it,
and could sing once.
How the knave jowls it to the
ground, as if it were Cain's
jaw-bone, that did the first murder!
It might be the
pate of a politician,
one that would circumvent God,
might it not? It might, my lord.
And now my Lady Worm's,
chapless,
and knocked about the mazzard
with a sexton's spade.
Here's fine revolution,
an' we had the trick to see't.
There's another.
Why, may not that be
the skull of a lawyer?
Where be his quiddities now,
his quillets, his tricks?
Why does he suffer this rude knave
now to knock him about the sconce
with a dirty shovel,
and will not tell him
of his action of battery? Eh?
I'll speak to this fellow.
Whose grave's this, sirrah?
Mine, sir.
# O, a pit of clay for to be made
# For such a guest is meet... #
I think it be thine,
indeed, for thou liest in't.
Thou lie out of it, sir,
and therefore it is not yours.
For my part, I do not
lie in't, and 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 gain, 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 all 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 the 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,
or, if he do not, it's
no great matter there. Why?
'Twill, a 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.
I have been sexton here,
man and boy, 30 years.
How long will a man lie
i' the earth ere he rot?
I' faith,
if he be not rotten before he die -
as we have many pocky corpses
now a days,
that will scarce hold the laying in -
he will last you
some eight year or nine year.
A tanner will last you nine year.
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, sir.
I've lain you in the earth
three and 20 years. Whose was it?
A whoreson mad fellow, he was.
Whose do you think it was?
Nay, I know not.
A pestilence on him for a mad rogue!
He poured a flagon of
Rhenish on my head once.
This same skull, sir, was
Yorick's skull, the king's jester.
This? E'en that. Let me see.
Alas, poor Yorick!
I knew him, Horatio.
A fellow of infinite jest,
of most excellent fancy.
He hath borne me on his back
a thousand times,
and now,
how abhorred in my
imagination it is!
My gorge rises at it.
Here hung those lips
that I have kissed
I know not how oft.
Where be your gibes now?
Your 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 chap-fallen.
Now get you to my lady's chamber,
and tell her,
let her paint an inch thick,
to this favour she must come.
Make her laugh at that.
Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.
What's that, my lord?
Dost thou think Alexander looked o'
this fashion i' the earth? E'en so.
And smelt so? Whoo!
E'en so, my lord.
Imperious Caesar,
dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to
keep the wind away.
'Twere to consider too
curiously to consider so.
Not a jot.
BELLS CHIME
Here comes the king.
The queen, the courtiers.
Who is this they follow?
And with such maimed
rites this doth betoken
the corse they follow did, with
desperate hand, foredo its own life.
'Twas of some estate.
Couch we awhile, and mark.
What ceremony else? That is Laertes.
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
have lodged till the last trumpet.
Must there no more be done?
No more be done.
We should profane
the service of the dead
to sing a requiem and such rest
to her as to peace-parted souls.
Lay her i' 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 deck'd, sweet maid,
not have strew'd thy grave.
O, treble woe, fall ten times
treble on that cursed head,
whose wicked deed thy most
ingenious sense deprived thee of.
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 pray'st not well. I prithee,
take thy fingers from my throat.
For, though I am not splenitive
and rash, yet have I
something in me dangerous,
which let thy wiseness fear.
Hold off thy hand!
Pluck them asunder. Hamlet, Hamlet!
Gentlemen. Good my lord, be quiet.
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.
For love of God, forbear him.
Swounds,
show me what thou'lt do. Woo't weep?
Woo't fight? Woo't fast?
Woo't tear thyself?
Woo't drink up eisel?
Eat a crocodile? I'll do't.
Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with
leaping in her grave?
Be buried quick with
her, and so will I.
And, if thou prate of mountains, let
them throw millions of acres on us,
till our ground, singeing his pate
against the burning zone,
make Ossa like a wart!
Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou.
This is mere madness. And thus
awhile the fit will work on him.
Anon, his silence will sit drooping.
Hear you, sir.
What is the reason
that 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 Horatio, wait upon him.
Strengthen your patience
in our last night's speech.
We'll put the matter
to the present push.
Good Gertrude,
set some watch over your son.
There's a divinity
that shapes our ends,
rough-hew them how we will.
That is most certain.
Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are dead.
Why, man, they did make love
to this employment, they
are not near my conscience.
Why, what a king is this!
Does it not, think'st thee,
stand me now upon?
He that hath kill'd my
king and whored my mother,
popp'd in between the
election and my hopes,
thrown out his angle
for my proper life,
and with such cozenage is't not
perfect conscience,
to quit him with this arm?
But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
that to Laertes I forgot myself.
For, by the image of my cause,
I see the portraiture of his.
I'll court his favours.
But, sure, the bravery of his grief
did put me into a towering passion.
Peace! who comes here? Your lordship
is right welcome back to Denmark.
I humbly thank you, sir.
Dost know this water-fly?
No, my lord.
Thy state is the more gracious,
for 'tis a vice to know him.
'Tis a chough.
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.
Put 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 methinks it is very
sultry and hot for my complexion.
Exceedingly, my lord,
it is very sultry, as 'twere,
I cannot tell how.
But, 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 mine 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.
Indeed, to speak feelingly of him,
he is the card
or calendar of gentry,
for you shall find in him
the continent of what
part a gentleman would see.
The concernancy, sir?
Why do we wrap the gentleman
in our more rawer breath?
Sir? What imports the
nomination of this gentleman?
Of Laertes? Of him, sir.
I know you are not ignorant.
I would you did, sir.
Yet, in faith, if you did, it would
not much approve me. Well, sir?
You are not ignorant of
what excellence Laertes is.
I dare not confess that,
lest I should compare with him in
excellence, but, to know a man well,
were to know himself.
I mean, sir, for his weapon.
But in the imputation laid on him by
them, in his meed he's unfellowed.
What's his weapon?
Rapier and dagger.
That's two of his weapons but, well.
The king, sir, hath wagered
with him six Barbary horses
against the which he has imponed,
as I take it, six French rapiers
and poniards, with their assigns,
as girdle, hangers, and so.
Three of the carriages, in faith,
are very dear to fancy,
very responsive to the hilts,
most delicate carriages,
and of very liberal conceit.
What call you the carriages?
The carriages, sir, are the hangers.
But, on. Why is this
"imponed", as you call it?
The king, sir, hath laid,
that in a dozen passes between
yourself and him,
he shall not exceed you three hits.
It would come to immediate
trial, if your lordship
would vouchsafe the answer.
How if I answer no?
I mean, sir, the opposition
of your person in trial.
Sir, I will walk here in the hall
if it please his majesty.
'Tis the breathing time of day with
me, I will win for him an I can,
if not, I will gain nothing
but my shame and the odd hits.
Shall I re-deliver you e'en so?
To this effect, sir, after
what flourish your nature will.
I commend my duty to your lordship.
Yours, yours.
This lapwing runs away
with the shell on his head.
He did comply with his mother's dug,
before he sucked it.
You will lose this wager, my lord.
I do not think so.
Since he went into France,
I have been in continual practise.
I shall win at the odds.
But thou wouldst not think how
ill all's here about my heart.
But it is no matter.
Nay, good my lord.
It is but foolery. If your
mind dislike any thing, obey it.
I will forestall their repair
hither, and say you are not fit.
Not a whit.
We defy augury.
There's a special providence
in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, 'tis not to come.
If it be not to come,
it will be now.
If it be not now,
yet it will come.
The readiness is all.
Come, Hamlet, come,
and take this hand from me.
Give me your pardon, sir.
I've done you wrong.
But pardon't,
as you are a gentleman.
This presence knows,
and you must needs have heard,
how I am punish'd
with sore distraction.
What I have done, that might your
nature, honour and exception roughly
awake, I here proclaim was madness.
Sir, in this audience, let
my disclaiming from a purposed evil
free me so far
in your most generous thoughts,
that I have shot mine arrow o'er
the house, and hurt my brother.
I am satisfied.
I do receive your offer'd love
like love, and will not wrong it.
I do embrace it freely.
And will this brother's wager
frankly play. Give us the foils.
Come on. Come, one for me.
I'll be your foil, Laertes,
in mine ignorance.
Your skill shall, like a
star i' the darkest night,
stick fiery off indeed.
You mock me, sir.
No, by this hand.
Give them the foils, young Osric.
Cousin Hamlet, you know the wager?
Very well, my lord. Your grace hath
laid the odds o' the weaker side.
I do not think it.
I have seen you both.
But since he is better'd,
we have therefore odds.
This is too heavy,
let me see another.
This likes me well enough.
These foils have all a length?
Ay, my good lord.
If Hamlet give
the first or second hit,
or quit in answer
of the third exchange,
let all the battlements
their ordnance fire.
The king shall drink to
Hamlet's better breath.
And in the cup
an union shall he throw,
richer than that which four
successive kings
in Denmark's crown have worn.
APPLAUSE
Let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
the trumpet to the cannoneer without,
the cannon to the heavens,
the heavens to earth, now the king
drinks to Hamlet. Come, begin.
And you, the judge, bear a wary eye.
Come on, sir. Come, my lord.
No, judgment!
A hit, a very palpable hit.
Well, again.
Stay. Give me the drink.
Hamlet, this pearl is thine.
Here's to thy health.
Give him the cup.
I'll play this bout first,
set it by awhile.
Another hit - what say you?
A touch, a touch, I do confess.
Our son shall win.
He's hot, and scant of breath.
Here, Hamlet, take my napkin,
rub thy brows. The queen
carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.
Good madam! Gertrude,
do not drink.
I will, my lord.
I pray you, pardon me.
It is the poison'd 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't.
And yet
'tis almost 'gainst my conscience.
Come, for the third,
Laertes, you but dally.
I pray you, pass with
your best violence.
I am afeard you make a wanton of me.
Say you so? Come on.
Nothing, neither way.
Have at you now!
Nay, come, again.
My lord! My lord!
My lord! My lord, my lord!
They bleed on both sides. How is
it, my lord? How is't, Laertes?
Why, as a woodcock to mine own
springe, Osric, I am justly
kill'd with mine own treachery.
How does the queen?
She swounds to see them bleed.
No, no, the drink, the drink.
O, my dear Hamlet.
The drink, the drink!
I am poison'd.
O villany!
How?
Let the door be lock'd.
Treachery! Seek it out.
It is here, Hamlet.
Hamlet, thou art slain.
No medicine in the world can
do thee good, in thee there
is not half an hour of life.
The treacherous instrument is in
thy hand, unblunted and envenom'd.
The foul practise
hath turn'd itself on me.
Lo, here I lie,
never to rise again.
Thy mother's poison'd.
I can no more.
The king, the king's to blame.
O, yet defend me, friends.
I am but hurt.
Here,
thou incestuous,
murderous, damned Dane.
Drink off this potion.
Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.
He is justly served,
it is a poison temper'd 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'rt a man,
give me the cuplet! Let go.
By heaven, I'll have't.
O, good Horatio,
what a wounded name.
Things standing thus unknown,
shall live behind me!
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.
The rest...
is silence.
Now cracks a noble heart.
Good night, sweet prince,
and flights of angels
sing thee to thy rest.