1
Witness this army of
such mass and charge
led by a delicate
and tender prince,
whose spirit with
divine ambition puffed
makes mouths at the
invisible event,
exposing what is
mortal and unsure
to all that fortune,
death, and danger dare,
even for an egg shell.
Stand ho. Who's there?
Friends to this ground
and liegemen to the Dane.
Give you good night.
Who hath relieved you?
Bernardo hath my place.
Give you good night.
Holla, Bernardo.
Say, what, and is Horatio there?
A piece of him.
Welcome, Horatio.
Welcome, good Marcellus.
What, has this thing
appeared again tonight?
I have seen nothing.
Horatio says 'tis
but our fantasy
and will not let
belief take hold of him
touching this dreaded
sight twice seen of us.
Therefore I have entreated
him along with us
to watch the minutes
of this night,
that if again this
apparition comes,
he may approve our
eyes and speak to it.
'Twill not appear.
Sit down a while
and let us once again
assail your ears that are so
fortified against our story
what we have two nights seen.
Peace, break thee off.
Look where it comes again.
In the same figure of
the king what's dead.
I'll cross it
though it blast me.
Stay, illusion.
If thou hast any sound or
use of voice, speak to me.
If there be any good
thing to be done
that may to thee do
ease and grace to me,
speak to me.
If thou art privy to
thy country's fate
which happily
foreknowing may avoid.
'Tis here.
'Tis here.
'Tis gone.
Though yet of Hamlet
our dear brother's death,
the memory be green
and that it us befitted to
bear our hearts in grief
and our whole kingdom
to be contracted
in one brow of woe,
yet so far hath discretion
fought with nature
that we with wisest
sorrow think on him
together with
remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore, our sometime
sister, now our queen,
the imperial jointress
to this warlike state,
have we as 'twere
with a defeated joy,
with an auspicious
and a dropping eye,
with mirth in funeral and
with dirge in marriage,
in equal scale weighing delight
and dole, taken to wife,
nor have we herein barred
your better wisdoms,
which have freely gone
with this affair along.
For all, our thanks,
so much for him,
and now Laertes.
What's the news with you?
You told us of some suit.
What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
that shall not be my
offer, not thy asking?
My dread lord, your leave
and favor to return to France,
from whence though
willingly I came
to show my duty in
your coronation,
yet now I must confess
that duty done.
My thoughts and wishes
bend again toward France
and bow them to your
gracious leave and pardon.
Have you your father's leave?
What says Polonius?
Hath, my lord, rung from me
my slow leave by
labors and petition,
and at last, upon his will,
I sealed my hard consent.
I do beseech you
give him leave to go.
Take thy fair hour, Laertes.
Time be thine, and thy best
graces spend it at thy will,
but now, my cousin
Hamlet and my son...
A little more
than kin and less than kind.
How is it the
clouds still hang on you?
Not so, my lord.
I am too much in the sun.
Good Hamlet,
do not forever with
thy veiled lids
seek for thy noble
father in the dust.
Thou knowest 'tis common.
All that lives must die,
passing through
nature to eternity.
Aye, madam.
It is common.
If it be, why seems it
so particular with thee?
Seems, madam?
Nay, it is.
I know not seems.
'Tis not alone my inky
cloak, good mother,
nor customary suits
of solemn black,
nor windy suspiration
of forced breath,
no, nor the fruitful
river in the eye,
nor the dejected
havior of the visage,
together with all forms, moods,
shapes of grief, that
can denote me truly.
These indeed seem,
for they are actions
that a man might play,
but I have that within
which passes show,
these but the trappings
and the 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 persevere in
obstinate condolement
is a course of
impious stubbornness.
'Tis a fault to heaven,
a fault against the
dead, a fault to nature,
to reason most absurd,
whose common theme
is death of fathers,
and who still hath cried
from the first corpse
till he that died today,
"This must be so."
We pray you, throw to
earth this unprevailing woe
and think of us as of a father,
for your intent in going
back to school in Wittenberg,
it is most retrograde
to our desire,
and we beseech you, bend you,
to remain here in the cheer
and comfort of our eye,
our chiefest courtier,
cousin, and our son.
Let not thy mother
lose her prayers, Hamlet.
I pray thee, stay with us.
Go not to Wittenberg.
I shall in all my
best obey you, madam.
Oh, that this too, too
sullied flesh would melt,
thaw, and resolve
itself into a dew,
or that the everlasting
had not fixed
his canon against
self-slaughter.
Oh, God.
God.
How weary, stale,
flat, and unprofitable
seem to me all the
uses of this world.
Fie on it.
Fie.
'Tis an unweeded garden
that grows to seed.
All 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
between the winds
of heaven visit her
face too roughly.
Heaven and Earth,
must I remember?
Why, she would hang on him
as if increase of
appetite had grown
by what it fed on, and
yet within a month,
let me not think on it.
Frailty, thy name is woman.
A little month, or ere
those shoes were old
with which you followed
my poor father's body,
like Niobe, all tears,
why she, even she,
oh God, a beast that
wants discourse of reason
would have mourned 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
have left the flushing
in her galled eyes,
she married.
You don't want veggies?
Oh 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.
Cheers.
Cheers, cheers.
Hail to your lordship.
I'm glad to see you 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, but what,
in faith, make you
from Wittenberg?
A truant disposition,
good my lord.
I would not
hear your enemy say so,
but what is your
affair in Elsinore?
We'll teach you to drink
deep ere you depart.
My lord, I came to see
your father's funeral.
I prithee, do not
mock me, fellow student.
I think it was to see
my mother's wedding.
Indeed, my
lord, it followed hard upon.
Thrift.
Thrift, Horatio.
The funeral baked meats
did coldly furnish forth
the marriage tables.
My father,
methinks I see my father.
Where, my lord?
In the mind's eye, Horatio.
My lord, I
think I saw him yesternight.
Saw who?
My lord, the king, your father.
The king, my father?
Season your admiration
a while with an attent ear
till I may deliver
this marvel to you.
Two nights together
had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Bernardo,
upon their watch
in the dead waste and
middle of the night,
been thus encountered.
A figure like your father
appears before them
and with solemn march
goes slow and stately by them,
and I with them the third
night kept the watch,
where, as they had
delivered both in time,
form of the thing, each
word made true and good.
The apparition comes.
I knew your father.
These hands are not more like.
But where was this?
My lord, upon
the platform where we watched.
- Did you not speak to it?
- My lord, I did, but answer made it none.
I would I had been there.
It would have much amazed you.
I will watch tonight.
Perchance 'twill walk again.
If it assume my noble
father's person,
I'll speak to it,
though hell itself should
gape and bid me hold my peace,
so fare you well.
Upon the platform 'twixt 11:00
and 12:00, I'll visit you.
Our duty to your honor.
Your loves, as mine to you.
Farewell.
Do not sleep,
but let me hear from you.
Do you doubt that?
For Hamlet
and the trifling of his favor.
Hold it a fashion
and a toy in blood,
a violet in the youth
of primy nature,
sweet, not lasting,
forward, not permanent,
the perfume and suppliance
of a minute, no more.
No more but so?
Think it no more.
His greatness weighed,
his will is not his own.
Then weigh what loss
your honor may sustain
if with too credent
ear you list his songs
or lose your heart,
or your chaste treasure open
to his unmastered importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia.
Fear it, my dear sister,
and keep you in the
rear of your affection,
out of the shot and
danger of desire.
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,
teach me the steep and
thorny way to heaven whiles,
like a puffed and
reckless libertine,
himself the primrose
path of dalliance treads.
Fear me not.
Yet here, Laertes?
There.
My blessing with thee,
and these few precepts in thy
memory look thou character.
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
nor any unproportioned
thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but
by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast
and their adoption tried,
grapple them unto thy
soul with hoops of steel,
but do not dull thy
palm with entertainment
of each new hatched,
unfledged courage.
Beware of entrance to a
quarrel, but being in,
bear it that the opposed
may beware of thee.
Costly thy habit as
thy purse can buy,
but not expressed in fancy,
rich, not gaudy,
for the apparel oft
proclaims the man,
and they in France of
the best rank and station
are the most select and
generous, chief in that.
This above all.
To thine own self be true,
and it must follow,
as the night, the day.
Thou canst not then
be false to any man.
Farewell.
My blessing season this in thee.
Most humbly do I
take my leave, my lord.
Farewell, Ophelia.
Remember well what
I've said to you.
'Tis in my memory locked,
and you yourself shall
keep the key of it.
Farewell.
The air bites shrewdly.
It is very cold.
It is a nipping
and an eager air.
What hour now?
I think it lacks of 12:00?
No, it is struck.
Indeed?
I heard it not.
Look, my lord.
It comes.
Angels and ministers
of grace, defend us.
Be thou a spirit of
health or goblin damned,
bring with thee airs from
heaven or blasts from hell,
be thy intents
wicked or charitable,
thou comest in such
a questionable shape
that I will speak to thee.
I'll call thee Hamlet,
King,
Father.
Royal Dane, oh, answer me.
Say, why is this?
Wherefore, what should we do?
It will not speak.
Then I will follow it.
Do not, my lord.
Why? What should be the fear?
What if it tempt you
toward the flood, my lord,
or to the dreadful
summit of a cliff
and there assume some
other horrible form
which might deprive
your sovereignty
of reason and draw
you into madness?
Think on it.
Go on.
I'll follow thee.
- You shall not go, my lord.
- Hold off your hands.
- Be ruled, my lord, do not...
- Unhand me.
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.
Something is
rotten in the state of Denmark.
Heaven will direct it.
Wither wilt thou lead me?
Speak.
I'll go no further.
Mark me.
I will.
My hour's almost
come when I to sulfurous
and tormenting flames
must render up myself.
Speak.
I am bound to hear.
So art thou to
revenge, when thou shalt hear.
What?
I am thy father's spirit,
doomed for a certain
term to walk the night,
and for the day confined
to fast in fires
till the foul crimes
done in my days
of nature are burnt
and purged away.
List.
List.
Oh, list.
If thou didst ever
thy dear father love...
God.
Revenge his foul
and most unnatural murder.
Murder?
Murder most
foul, as in the best it is,
but this most foul,
strange, and unnatural.
Haste me to know it that I,
with wings as swift as meditation
or the thoughts of love,
may sweep to my revenge.
Now Hamlet, hear.
'Tis given out that
sleeping in my orchard,
a serpent stung me,
so the whole ear of Denmark
is by a forged process
of my death rankly abused,
but know, thou noble youth,
the serpent that did
sting thy father's life
now wears his crown.
Oh my prophetic soul, my uncle.
But soft.
Methinks I scent
the morning air.
Brief let me be.
Sleeping within my orchard,
my custom always
of the afternoon,
upon my secure hour,
thy uncle stole, with juice
of cursed hebona in a vial,
and in the porches of mine ears
did pour the leprous distilment.
Thus was I, sleeping,
by a brother's hand
of life, of crown, of
queen at once dispatched.
No reckoning made,
but sent to my account
with all my
imperfections on my head.
Oh, horrible.
Oh, horrible.
Most horrible.
If thou hast nature
in thee, bear it not.
Let not the royal bed of Denmark
be a couch for luxury
and damned incest.
Adieu.
Adieu.
Adieu.
Remember me.
Lord Hamlet.
Hamlet.
Lord Hamlet.
My lord.
My lord.
Heavens secure him.
How doth my noble lord?
What news, my lord?
Wonderful.
- Well, good my lord, tell it.
- No, you will reveal it.
Not I, my lord, by heaven.
Nor I, my lord.
But you'll be secret?
Aye, by heaven, my lord.
There's never a villain
dwelling in all Denmark,
but he's an arrant knave.
There needs no ghost, my lord,
come from the grave
to tell us this.
Why, right.
You are in the right,
and so I hold it fit that
we shake hands and part,
you as your business and
desire shall point you,
for every man hath
business and desire,
such as it is, and
for my own poor part,
I will go pray.
These are but wild and
whirling words, my lord.
I'm sorry they
offend you, heartily.
Yes, faith, heartily.
There's no offense, my lord.
Yes, by Saint Patrick,
but there is, Horatio,
and much offense too,
and now, good friends,
as you are friends,
scholars, and soldiers,
give me one poor request.
What is it, my lord?
We will.
Never make known what
you have seen tonight.
My lord, we will not.
Nay, but swear it.
Oh, day and night,
but this is wondrous strange.
And therefore, as a
stranger give it welcome.
There are more things
in heaven and earth,
Horatio, than are dreamt
of in your philosophy.
How now, Ophelia?
What's the matter?
Alas, my lord, I have
been so affrighted.
With what, in the name of God?
As I was sewing in my
chamber, Lord Hamlet,
with his doublet all unbraced,
pale as his shirt, his
knees knocking each other,
and with a look so
piteous in purport
as if he had been
loosed out of hell
to speak of horrors,
he comes before me.
Mad for thy love?
My lord, I do not know,
but truly I do fear it.
What said he?
He took me by
the wrist and held me hard.
Then goes he to the
length of all his arm,
and with his other hand
thus o'er his brow,
he falls to such perusal of
my face as he would draw it.
Long stayed he so.
At last, a little
shaking of mine arm,
and thrice his head
thus waving up and down,
he raised a sigh so
piteous and profound
as it did seem to
shatter all his bulk
and end his being.
Come, go with me.
I will go seek the King.
This is the very ecstasy of love
whose violent property
fordoes itself
and leads the will to
desperate undertakings
as oft as any
passions under heaven
that does afflict our natures.
I'm sorry.
What, have you given him
any hard words of late?
No, my lord, but
as you did command
I did repel his letters
and denied his access to me.
That hath made him mad.
Come.
Go we to the King.
This must be known,
which being kept close might
move more grief to hide
than hate to utter love.
Come.
Welcome, dear Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern.
Moreover that we much
did long to see you,
the need we have to use you
did provoke our hasty sending.
Something, have you heard,
of Hamlet's
transformation, so call it?
Sith nor the exterior
nor the inward man
resembles that it was.
What it should be, more
than his father's death,
that thus has put him so much
from the understanding
of himself,
I cannot dream of.
I entreat you both that,
being of so young days
brought up with him,
and sith so neighbored
to his youth and havior,
that you vouchsafe
your rest here
in our court some little time,
so by your companies
to draw him on to pleasures
and to gather so much as
from occasion you may glean
whether aught to us
unknown afflicts him thus
that opened lies
within our remedy.
Good gentlemen, he
hath much talked of you,
and sure I am two men
there is not living
to whom he more adheres.
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.
He tells me, my dear Gertrude,
he hath found the
head and source
of all your son's distemper.
I doubt it is no
other than the main,
his father's death and
our o'er hasty marriage.
Well, we shall sift him.
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.
Mad call I it, for to
define true madness,
what is it but to be
nothing else but mad?
But let that go.
More matter with less art.
Madam, I swear I
use no art at all.
That he's mad, 'tis true.
'Tis true.
'Tis pity,
and pity 'tis 'tis
true, a foolish figure,
but farewell it, for
I will use no art.
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.
"In her excellent white bosom..."
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."
"Oh dear Ophelia, I am
ill at these numbers.
"I have not art to
reckon my groans,
"but that I love thee best,
"oh, most best," believe it.
"Adieu."
"Thine evermore, most dear lady,"
"whilst this machine
is to him, Hamlet."
But how hath
she received his love?
What do you think of me?
As of a man faithful
and honorable.
I would fain prove so.
Do you think 'tis this?
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 center.
How may we try it 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.
How does my good Lord Hamlet?
Well, God a mercy.
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 yourself, sir,
shall grow old as I am,
if like a crab, you
could go backward.
Will you walk out
of the air, my lord?
Into my grave?
Indeed, that's out of the air.
My lord, I will take
my leave of you.
You cannot, sir,
take from me anything
that I'll more willingly
part withal, except my life,
except my life, except my life.
Fare you well, my lord.
Tedious old fools.
You go to seek the Lord Hamlet?
There he is.
My honored lord.
My most dear lord.
My excellent good friends.
How dost thou,
Guildenstern, huh?
Rosencrantz.
Good lads, how do you both?
As the indifferent
children of the earth.
Happy in that we
are not overhappy.
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 favors?
Faith, her privates, we.
In the secret parts
of Fortune, huh?
Most true, she is a strumpet.
What 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 of the worst.
We think not so, my lord.
Why then 'tis none to you,
for there's nothing
either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so.
To me, it is a prison.
Why, then, your
ambition makes it one.
'Tis too narrow for your mind.
Oh God, I could be
bounded in a nutshell
and count myself king
of infinite space
were it not that
I have bad dreams.
Which dreams
indeed are ambition,
for the very substance
of the ambitious
is merely the shadow of a dream.
A dream itself is but a shadow.
Truly, and I hold
ambition of so airy
and light a quality that it
is but a shadow's shadow.
Then are our beggars bodies
and our monarchs and
outstretched heroes
the beggars' shadows?
Shall we to the court?
For, by my fay, I cannot reason.
We will wait upon you.
No such matter.
I will not sort you with
the rest of my servants,
for to speak to you
like an honest man,
I am most dreadfully attended,
but in the beaten
way of friendship,
what make you at Elsinore?
To visit you, my
lord, no other occasion.
Beggar that I am, I
am even poor in thanks,
but I thank you, and
sure, dear friends,
my thanks are too
dear a halfpenny.
Were you not sent for?
Is it your own inclining?
Is it a free visitation?
Come, come, deal justly with me.
Come, come.
Nay, speak.
What should we say, my lord?
Anything but to the purpose.
You were sent for,
and there is a kind of
confession in your looks
which your modesties have
not craft enough to color.
I know the good King and
Queen have sent for you.
To what end, my lord?
That you must teach me,
but let me conjure
you by the rights
of our fellowship, by the
consonancy of our youth,
by the obligation of
our ever preserved love,
and by what more dear
a better proposer can
charge you withal.
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 molt 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
but a foul and pestilent
congregation of vapors.
What a piece of work is a man.
How noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties.
In form and moving,
how express and admirable.
In action, how like an angel.
In apprehension, how like a god,
the beauty of the world,
the paragon of animals,
and yet,
to me, what is this
quintessence of dust?
Man delights not me.
No, nor woman neither,
though by your smiling
you seem to say so.
My lord, there were 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.
He that plays the
king shall be welcome.
What players are they?
Even those you were won't
to take such delight in,
the tragedians of the city.
This blood, there is
something in this more than natural,
if philosophy could find it out.
You are welcome,
but my uncle father and
aunt mother are deceived.
In what, my dear lord?
I am but mad north, northwest.
When the wind is southerly,
I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Oh, my old friend,
we'll have a speech straight.
Come, give us a taste
of your quality.
Come, a passionate speech.
What speech, my good lord?
I heard thee speak
me a speech once,
but it was never acted,
or if it was, not above once,
for the play, I remember,
pleased not the million.
'Twas caviary to the
general, but it was,
as I received it, and
others whose judgments
in such matters cried
at the top of mine,
an excellent play.
One speech in it
I chiefly loved.
'Twas Aeneas' tale to Dido,
and thereabout of it especially
when he speaks of
Priam's slaughter.
If it live in your memory,
begin at this line.
Oh, let me see.
Let me see.
The rugged Pyrrhus, like
the Hyrcanian beast,
'tis not so.
It begins with Pyrrhus.
The hellish Pyrrhus, old
grandsire Priam seeks,
so proceed you.
Anon he finds him,
striking too short at Greeks.
His antique sword,
rebellious to his arm,
lies where it falls,
repugnant to command.
Unequal matched,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives,
in rage strikes wide,
but with the whiff and wind
of his fell sword the
unnerved father falls.
Then senseless Ilium,
seeming to feel his blow,
from flaming top
stoops to his base,
and with a hideous crash
takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear,
for lo, his sword,
which was declining on the
milky head of reverend Priam,
seemed in the air to stick.
Anon the dreadful thunder
doth rend the region,
so after Pyrrhus' pause,
aroused vengeance
sets him new a-work,
and never did the
Cyclops' hammers fall
on Mars's armor, forged
for proof eterne,
with less remorse than
Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
now falls on Priam.
Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune.
All you gods in general
synod take away her power.
Break all the spokes and
fellies from her wheel,
and bowl the round
nave down the hill
of heaven as low
as to the fiends.
This is too long.
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, ah, woe, had
seen the mobled queen.
The mobled queen?
That's good.
Mobled queen is good.
Run barefoot up and down,
threatening the flames
with bisson rheum,
a clout upon that head
where late the diadem
stood, and for a robe,
about her lank and
all o'erteemed loins,
a blanket, in the alarm
of fear caught up.
Who this had seen, with
tongue in venom steeped,
against 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
clamor 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.
Prithee, no more.
'Tis well.
I'll have thee speak out
the rest of this soon.
Good my lord, will you see
the players well bestowed?
Dost thou hear me, old friend?
Can you play The
Murder of Gonzago?
Aye, my lord.
We'll have it tomorrow night.
You could, for a
need, study a speech
of some dozen or 16 lines,
which I would set
down and insert in it,
could you not?
Aye, my lord.
Very well.
Follow that lord, and
look you mock him not.
Now I am alone.
Oh, what a rogue and
peasant slave am I.
Is not this monstrous
that this player here,
but in a fiction, in
a dream of passion,
could force his soul
so to his own conceit
that from her working
all his visage wanned.
Tears in his eyes,
distraction in his aspect,
a broken voice, and his
whole function suiting
with forms to his conceit,
and all for nothing,
for Hecuba.
What's Hecuba to him,
or he to 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 with tears
and cleave the general
ear with horrid speech,
make mad the guilty
and appall 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.
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 of the throat
as deep as to the lungs?
Who does me this, huh?
Zounds, I should take it,
for it cannot be but
I am pigeon livered
and lack gall to make
oppression bitter,
or ere this I should have fatted
all the region kites
with this slave's offal.
Bloody, bawdy villain,
remorseless,
treacherous, lecherous,
kindless villain, oh vengeance.
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 proclaimed
their malefactions.
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 do blench,
I know my course.
The play's the thing
wherein I'll catch the
conscience of the King.
Ophelia,
walk you here.
Gracious, so please you,
we will bestow ourselves.
Read on this book that
show of such an exercise
may color 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 heartache
and the thousand natural shocks
that flesh is heir to,
'tis a consummation
devoutly to be wished.
To die, to sleep,
to sleep, perchance to dream,
aye, 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,
th'oppressor's wrong, the
proud man's contumely,
the pangs of despised love,
the law's delay,
th'insolence of office,
and the spurns
that patient merit
of the unworthy
takes when he himself
might his quietus
make with bare bodkin?
Who would fardels bear
to grunt and sweat
under a weary life,
but that the dread of
something after death?
The undiscovered country,
from whose bourn no
traveler returns,
puzzles the will and
makes us rather bear
those ills we have
than fly to those
we know not of.
Thus conscience does
make cowards of us all,
and thus the native
hue of resolution
is sicklied o'er with
the pale cast of thought
and enterprises of
great pitch and moment.
With this regard their currents
turn awry and lose
the name of action.
Soft you now, fair Ophelia.
Nymph.
In thy orisons be all
my sins remembered.
Good my lord,
how does your honor
for this many a day?
I humbly thank you, well.
My lord, I have
remembrances of yours
I have longed long to redeliver.
I pray you now receive them.
No, not I.
I never gave you aught.
My honored 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?
That if you be honest and fair,
your honesty should admit
no discourse to your beauty.
Could beauty, my lord,
have better commerce
than with honesty?
Aye, truly, for
the power of beauty
will sooner transform honesty
from what it is to a bawd
than the force of honesty
can translate beauty
into his likeness.
This was sometime a paradox,
but now the time gives it proof.
I did love you once.
Aye, my lord.
You made me believe so.
You should not have believed me,
for our virtue cannot so
inoculate our old stock,
but we shall relish of it.
I loved you not.
I was the more deceived.
Get thee to a nunnery.
Why wouldst thou be
a breeder of sinners?
I am myself indifferent honest,
but yet I could accuse
me of such things
that it were better my
mother had not borne me.
I am very proud,
revengeful, ambitious,
with more offenses at my beck
than I have thoughts
to put them in,
imagination to give them shape,
or time to act them in.
What should such fellows as I do
crawling between
earth and heaven?
We are arrant knaves all.
Go thy ways to a nunnery.
Where's your father?
He is at home, my lord.
Let the doors be shut upon him
that he may play
the fool nowhere
but in his own house.
Farewell.
Oh help him, you sweet heavens.
If thou dost marry,
I'll give thee this
plague for thy dowry.
Be thou as chaste as ice,
as pure as snow, thou
shalt not escape calumny.
Get thee to a nunnery, farewell,
or if thou wilt needs
marry, marry a fool,
for wise men know well enough
what monsters you make of them.
To a nunnery, go,
and quickly too,
farewell.
Oh heavenly powers, restore him.
I have heard of your
paintings too, well enough.
God hath given you one face,
and you make yourselves another.
You jig and amble, and you lisp.
You nickname God's creatures
and make your wantonness
your ignorance.
Go to.
I'll no more on it.
It hath made me mad.
I say we will have
no more marriage.
Those that are married already,
all but one shall live.
The rest shall keep as they are.
To a nunnery, go.
Oh, woe is me,
to have seen what I have seen,
to see what I see.
He shall with speed to England
for the demand of our
neglected tribute.
Haply the seas and
countries different,
with variable
objects shall expel
this something settled
matter in his heart.
It shall do well,
but yet do I believe the
origin and commencement
of his grief sprung
from neglected love.
How now, Ophelia?
You need not tell us
what Lord Hamlet said.
We heard it all.
My lord, do as you please,
but if you hold it fit,
after the play, let his queen
mother all alone entreat him.
Let her be round with him,
and I'll be placed,
so please you,
in the ear of all
their conference.
If she find him not,
to England send him,
or confine him where your
wisdom best shall think.
It shall be so.
Madness in great ones
must not unwatched go.
Speak the speech, I pray you,
as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue,
but if you mouth it, as
many of our players do,
I had as lief the town
crier spoke my lines,
nor do not saw the air too
much with your hand thus,
but use all gently,
for in the very torrent,
tempest, and as I may say,
whirlwind of your passion,
you must acquire and
beget a temperance
that may give it smoothness.
Oh, 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
dumb shows and noise.
It out Herods Herod.
Pray you, avoid it.
I warrant your honor.
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 anything so overdone
is from the purpose
of playing, whose end,
both at the first and
now was and is to hold,
as it were, the
mirror up to nature.
Oh, there be players
that I have seen play
and heard others
praise, and that highly,
not to speak it profanely,
that neither having the accent
of Christians nor the gait
of Christian, pagan, nor man,
have so strutted and bellowed
that I have thought some
of nature's journeymen
had made men,
and not made them well,
they imitated humanity
so abominably.
I hope we have reformed that
indifferently with us, sir.
Oh, reform it altogether.
Go, make you ready.
How now, my lord.
Will the King hear
this piece of work?
And the Queen too,
and that presently.
Bid the players make haste.
Will you two help
to hasten them?
Aye, my lord.
What ho, Horatio.
Here, sweet lord,
at your service.
Horatio, thou art
even as just a man
as e'er my conversation
coped withal.
My dear lord, I...
Nay, do not think I flatter.
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 my uncle.
If his occulted guilt do not
itself unkennel in one speech,
it is a damned ghost
that we have seen,
and my imaginations are as
foul as Vulcan's stithy.
Give him heedful note,
for I mine eyes will
rivet to his face,
and after, we will
both our judgments join
in censure of his seeming.
Well, my lord, if he steal aught
the whilst this play is
playing and escape detecting,
I will pay the theft.
They are coming to the play.
I must be idle.
Get you a place.
How fares our cousin Hamlet?
Excellent in faith,
of the chameleon's dish.
I eat the air, promise crammed.
You cannot feed capons so.
I have nothing with
this answer, Hamlet.
These words are not mine.
No, nor mine now.
My lord, you played once
in the university, you say?
That did I, my lord, and
was accounted a good actor.
What did you enact?
I did enact Julius Caesar.
I was killed at the Capitol.
Brutus killed me.
It was a brute part of him
to kill so capital a calf there.
Be the players ready?
Aye, my lord.
They stay upon your patience.
The instances that
second marriage move
are base respects of
thrift, but none of love.
A second time I
kill my husband dead
when second husband
kisses me in bed.
I do believe you
think what now you speak.
Come hither, my dear
Hamlet, sit by me.
No good mother, here's
metal more attractive.
Do determine oft...
Oh, do you mark that?
Purpose is but
the slave to memory,
a violent birth
but for validity.
Now the fruit unripe
sticks on the tree
but fall unshaken
when they mellow be.
Most necessary 'tis
that we forget...
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ourselves is debt.
No, my lord.
What to
ourselves in passion we...
I mean my head upon your lap.
Aye, my lord.
Do you think I
meant country matters?
I think...
Where joy most
revels, grief doth...
- Nothing... - MAN: Grief joys...
- My lord.
On slender accident...
That's a fair thought to
lie between maids' legs.
What is, my lord?
Nothing.
You are merry, my lord.
Who, I?
Aye, my lord.
What should a man
do but be merry?
For look you how
cheerfully my mother looks,
and my father died
within two hours.
Nay, 'tis twice
two months, my lord.
- Our thoughts are ours...
- So long?
Their ends none of our own.
Is this a prologue
or the posy of a ring?
'Tis brief, my lord.
As woman's love.
So think thou wilt
no second husband wed,
but die thy thoughts when
thy first lord is dead.
Nor earth to me give
food, nor heaven light.
Sport and repose lock
from me day and night.
To desperation turn
my trust and hope,
and anchor's cheer in
prison be my scope.
Each opposite that
blanks the face of joy
meet what I would have
well and it destroy,
so here and hence pursue
me lasting strife.
If once a widow, ever I be wife.
'Tis...
Madam, how like you this play?
The lady doth protest
too much, methinks.
My spirits grow dull,
and fain I would beguile
the tedious day with sleep.
What do you call the play?
Sleep rock thy
brain, and never come...
The Mousetrap.
Between us twain.
Marry, how?
Tropically.
This 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 of that?
Your Majesty and we
that have free souls,
it touches us not.
This is one Lucianus,
nephew to the king.
He poisons him in the
garden for his estate.
His name's Gonzago.
You shall see anon
how the murderer
gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
You are as good
as 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.
It would cost you a groaning
to take off mine edge.
Begin murderer.
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.
The King rises.
How fares my lord?
Give o'er the play.
Give me some light.
Away.
Lights, lights.
Lights, lights.
For thou dost
know, oh Damon dear,
this realm dismantled
was of Jove himself,
and now reigns here
a very, very peacock.
You might have rhymed.
Good Horatio,
I'll take the ghost's
word for 1,000 pound.
Didst perceive?
Very well, my lord.
Upon the talk of the poisoning?
I did very well note him.
Good my lord,
vouchsafe me a word with you.
Sir, a whole history.
The King, sir.
Aye sir, what of him?
Is in his
retirement marvelous distempered.
With drink, sir?
No.
My lord, your mother,
with much great
affliction of spirit,
hath sent me to you.
You are welcome.
Nay, my good lord,
this courtesy is not
of the right breed.
If it shall please you to
make me a wholesome answer,
I will do your
mother's commandment.
If not, your pardon,
and my return shall be
the end of my business.
Sir, I cannot.
What, my lord?
Make you a wholesome answer.
My wit's diseased,
but, sir, such answer as I
can make you shall command,
or rather, as you
say, my mother.
Therefore no more
but to the matter.
My mother, you say?
She desires to speak with you
in her closet ere you go to bed.
We shall obey were
she 10 times our mother.
Have you any further
trade with us?
My lord, you once did love me.
And do still, by these
pickers and stealers.
Good my lord,
what is the cause
of your distemper?
You do surely bar the
door upon your own liberty
if you deny your
griefs to your friend.
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.
It is as easy as lying.
Govern these ventages with
your fingers and thumb.
Give it breath with your mouth,
and it will discourse
most eloquent music.
Look you, these are the stops.
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.
'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.
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.
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.
Fare you well, my liege.
I'll call upon you
ere you go to bed
and tell you what I know.
Oh, my offense is rank.
It smells to heaven,
hath the primal
eldest curse upon it,
a brother's murder.
Pray can I not,
for I am still possessed
of those effects
for which I did the murder,
my crown, mine own
ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned
and retain the offense?
In the corrupted
currents of this world,
offense's gilded hand
may shove by justice
and oft 'tis seen the
wicked prize itself
buys out the law, but
'tis not so above.
There is no shuffling.
There the action lies
in his true nature,
and we ourselves compelled,
even to the teeth and
forehead of our faults,
to give in evidence.
What then?
What rests?
Try what repentance can.
What can it not?
Yet what can it when
one cannot repent?
Help, angels.
Make assay.
Bow, stubborn knees.
All may be well.
Now might I do it pat.
Now he is a-praying,
and now I'll do it,
and so he goes to heaven,
and so am I revenged.
That would be scanned.
A villain kills my
father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this
same villain send to heaven.
No.
My words fly up.
My thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts
never to heaven go.
Mother.
Mother?
Withdraw, I hear him coming.
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.
How now, Hamlet?
What's the matter now?
Have you forgot me?
No, by the rood, not so.
You're the Queen, your
husband's brother's wife,
and would it were not
so, you are my mother.
Nay, then I'll set those
to you that can speak.
Come, come and sit you down.
You shall not budge.
You go not till I
set you up a glass
where you may see the
inmost part of you.
What wilt thou do?
Thou wilt not murder me?
- Help, ho...
- What ho, help...
- Help...
- How now, a rat?
Help.
Oh me, what hast thou done?
Nay, I know not.
Is it the King?
Oh, what a rash and
bloody deed is this.
A bloody deed, almost as
bad, good mother,
as kill a king and
marry with his brother.
As kill a king?
Aye, lady, it was my word.
Leave wringing of your hands.
Peace, sit you down, and
let me wring your heart.
Look you 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.
Could you on this
fair mountain leave
to feed and batten
on this moor, huh?
Have you eyes?
You cannot call it
love, for at your age,
the heyday in the blood is tame.
It's humble and waits
upon the judgment,
and what judgment would
step from this to this?
Oh, shame, where is thy blush?
Oh, Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turnest mine eyes
into my very soul,
and there I see such
black and grained spots
as will not leave their tinct.
Nay, but to live
in the rank sweat
of an enseamed bed,
stewed in corruption,
honeying and making
love over the nasty sty.
Oh, speak no more.
These words like daggers
enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
A murderer and a villain,
a slave that is not
20th part the tithe
of your precedent
lord, a vice of kings,
a cutpurse of
empire and the rule,
that from a shelf the
precious diadem stole
and put it in his pocket...
No more.
A king of shreds and patches.
Save me,
and hover o'er me with your
wings, you heavenly guards.
What would your gracious figure?
Alas.
He's mad.
How is it with you, lady?
Alas,
how is it with you?
Oh, gentle son.
Upon the heat and
flame of thy distemper
sprinkle cool patience.
Whereon do you look?
Do you see nothing there?
Nothing at all,
yet all that is I see.
Nor did you nothing hear?
No, nothing but ourselves.
Why, look you there.
Look, how it steals away,
my father in his
habit as he lived.
It is not madness
that I have uttered.
Mother, for love of grace,
lay not a flattering
unction to your soul
that not your trespass,
but my madness speaks.
Confess yourself to heaven.
Oh, Hamlet.
Thou hast cleft
my heart in twain.
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This bad begins, and
worse remains behind.
One word more, good lady.
What shall I do?
Not this, by no means,
that I bid you do.
Let the bloat king
tempt you again to bed,
pinch wanton on your
cheek, call you his mouse,
and let him, for a
pair of reechy kisses
or paddling in your neck
with his damned fingers,
make you to ravel
all this matter out
that I essentially
am not in madness,
but mad in craft.
Be thou assured, if
words be made of breath,
and breath of life,
I have no life to breathe
what thou hast said to me.
I must to England.
You know that.
This man shall set me packing.
I'll lug the guts into
the neighbor room.
Mother, good night indeed.
This counselor is
now most still,
most secret, and most grave,
that was in life a
foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw
toward an end with you.
Good night, mother.
Where is your son?
Where has he gone?
To draw apart the
body he hath killed.
Oh Gertrude, come away.
The sun no sooner shall
the mountains touch
but we will ship him hence.
Safely stowed.
Hamlet.
Hamlet.
Hamlet.
But soft, what noise?
Who calls on Hamlet?
My lord.
Oh, here they come.
What have you done, my
lord, with the dead body?
Compounded it
with dust, whereto 'tis kin.
My lord, you must tell
us where the body is.
Do not believe it.
Believe what, my lord?
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?
Aye sir, that soaks up
the King's countenance,
his rewards, his authorities...
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.
How now?
What hath befallen?
Where the dead body is bestowed,
my lord, we cannot get from him.
Now Hamlet, where is Polonius?
At supper.
At supper where?
Not where he eats,
but where he's eaten.
A certain convocation of
politic worms are eating at him.
Where is Polonius?
In heaven?
Send thither to see.
If your messenger
find him not there,
seek him in the
other place yourself.
Hamlet.
This deed, for thine
especial safety,
which we do tender as
dearly as we grieve
for that which thou hast done,
must send thee hence
with fiery quickness.
Therefore prepare yourself...
For England.
Aye, Hamlet.
Good.
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.
I do not know why
yet I live to say
this thing's to do,
Sith I have cause, and will,
and strength, and
means to do it.
Oh, from this time forth,
my thoughts be bloody
or be nothing worth.
Where is the beauteous
majesty of Denmark?
How now, Ophelia?
Alas, sweet
lady, what imports this song...
Say you, nay, pray you mark.
- Nay, but Ophelia...
- Pray you, mark.
Alas, look here, my lord.
How do you, pretty lady?
Well, God 'ild you.
They say the owl was
a baker's daughter.
Lord, we know what we are
but not what we may be.
Conceit upon her father.
Pray, let's have
no words of this,
but when they ask you what
it means, say you this.
I hope all will be well.
We must be patient,
but I cannot choose
but weep to think
they would lay him
in the cold ground.
How long hath she been thus?
Come.
Come, my coach.
Good night, ladies.
Follow her close,
and give her good
watch, I pray you.
Good night.
Oh thou vile king,
give me my father.
Calmly, good Laertes.
That drop of blood that's
calm proclaims me bastard,
cries cuckold to my father,
brands the harlot even here
between the chaste unsmirched
brow of my true mother.
What is the cause, Laertes,
that thy rebellion
looks so giant like?
There's such divinity
doth hedge a king
that treason can but
peep at what it would,
acts little of his will.
Tell me, Laertes, why
thou art 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.
Let come what comes,
only I'll be revenged most
thoroughly for my father.
Who shall stay you?
That I am guiltless
of your father's death
and am most sensibly
in grief for it,
it shall as level
to your judgment
appear as day does to your eye.
How now?
Oh heat, dry up my brains.
Oh, rose of May.
Sweet Ophelia.
Oh, how the wheel becomes it.
It is the false steward that
stole his master's daughter.
There's rosemary.
That's for remembrance.
Pray you, love, remember,
and there is pansies.
That's for thoughts.
There's fennel and columbines.
There's rue for you
and some for me,
and we may call it herb
of grace on Sundays.
You must wear your
rue with a difference.
There's a daisy.
I would give you violets,
but they withered all
when my father died.
They say he made a good end.
"Ere we were two
days old at sea,
"a pirate of very warlike
appointment gave us chase.
"Finding ourselves
too slow of sail,
"we put on a compelled valor,
"and in the grapple
I boarded them.
"On the instant, they
got clear of our ship,
"so I alone became
their prisoner.
"They have dealt with me
like thieves of mercy,
"but they knew what they did."
"I am to do a good
turn for them."
"Let the King have the
letters I have sent,"
"and repair thou
to me with as much"
"speed as thou
wouldst fly death."
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
hold their course for England."
"Of them I have
much to tell thee."
"Farewell."
He that thou
knowest thine, Hamlet.
The Queen his mother
lives almost by his looks,
and for myself, my
virtue or my plague,
be it either which,
she is so conjunctive
to my life and soul
that as the star moves
not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her.
And so have I a
noble father lost,
a sister driven into
desperate terms,
whose worth, if praises
may go back again,
stood challenger on mount of all
the age for her perfections,
but my revenge will come.
I loved your father,
and we love ourself,
and that, I hope, will
teach you to imagine.
How now?
What news?
Letters, my lord, from Hamlet.
These to your Majesty,
this to the Queen.
From Hamlet?
Who brought them?
Sailors, my lord, they say.
I saw them not.
They were given me by Claudio.
He received them of
him that brought them.
Laertes, you shall hear them.
Leave us.
"High and mighty,"
"you shall know I am set
naked on your kingdom."
"Tomorrow shall I beg leave
to see your kingly eyes,"
"when I shall, first
asking your pardon,"
"thereunto recount the
occasion of my sudden"
"and more strange return."
"Hamlet."
What should this mean?
All the rest come back,
or is it some abuse
and no such thing?
Naked,
and in a postscript
here he says, "Alone."
Can you advise me?
I am lost in it, my
lord, but let him come.
It warms the very
sickness in my heart
that I shall live and tell him
to his teeth, thus didst thou.
If it be so, Laertes,
will you be ruled by me?
Aye, my lord, so you will
not overrule me to a peace.
What would you
undertake to show yourself
indeed your father's
son more than in words?
To cut his throat in the church.
Keep close within your chamber.
Hamlet, returned, shall
know you are come home.
We'll put on those shall
praise your excellence
and set a double varnish
on the fame and
wager on your heads.
He, being remiss, most generous,
and free from all contriving,
will not peruse the foils,
so that with ease, or
with a little shuffling,
you may choose a sword unbated,
and in a pass of practice
requite him for your father.
I will do it,
and for that purpose
I'll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction
of a mountebank.
I'll touch my point
with this contagion,
that if I gall him
slightly it may be death.
When in your motion
you are hot and dry,
as make your bouts more
violent to that end,
and that he calls for drink,
I'll have prepared him
a chalice for the nonce,
whereon but sipping,
if he by chance escape
your venom stuck,
our purpose may hold there.
One woe doth tread
upon another's heel,
so fast they follow.
Your sister's drowned, Laertes.
Drowned?
Oh.
Where?
There is a willow
grows askant the brook
that shows his hoar leaves
in the glassy stream.
There, fantastic
garlands did she make
of crowflowers, nettles,
daisies, and long purples.
That liberal shepherds
give a grosser name,
but our cold maids do dead
men's fingers call them.
There on the pendant bough,
her coronet weeds
clamoring to hang,
an envious sliver broke.
When down her weedy
trophies and herself
fell in the weeping brook,
her clothes spread wide
and mermaid like awhile
they bore her up,
which time she chanted
snatches of old lauds,
as one incapable of
her own distress,
but long it could not be
till that her garments,
heavy with their drink,
pulled the poor wretch
from her melodious lay
to muddy death.
How much I
had to do to calm his rage.
Now I fear this will
give it start again.
Sir, in my heart
there was a kind
of fighting that would
not let me sleep.
There's a divinity
that shapes our ends,
rough hew them how we will.
That is most certain.
Up from my cabin, my
sea gown scarfed about me,
in the dark groped
I to find out them.
Had my desire,
fingered their packet,
and in fine withdrew
to mine own room again,
making so bold, my fears
forgetting manners,
to unfold their
grand commission,
where I found, Horatio,
a royal knavery,
an exact command,
larded with many
several sorts of reasons
importing Denmark's
health and England's too,
with such bugs and
goblins in my life
that on the supervise,
no leisure bated,
no, not to stay the
grinding of the ax,
my head should be struck off.
Is it possible?
Here's the commission.
Read it at more leisure,
but wilt thou hear
now how I did proceed?
I beseech you.
I sat me down, devised
a new commission.
Wilt thou know the
effect of what I wrote?
Aye, good my lord.
An earnest conjuration
from the King,
as England was his
faithful tributary,
that on the view and
knowing of these contents,
without debatement
further, more or less,
he should those bearers
put to sudden death,
not shriving time allowed.
Now, the next day
was our sea fight,
and what to this was sequent
thou knowest already.
So Guildenstern and
Rosencrantz go to it?
Why, man, they did make
love to this employment.
They are not near my conscience.
Whose grave is this, sirrah?
Mine, sir.
I think it be thine
indeed, for thou liest in it.
You lie out on it, sir,
and therefore 'tis not yours.
For my part, sir, I do not
lie in it, yet it is mine.
Thou dost lie in it to be
in it and say it is thine.
'Tis for the dead,
not for the quick.
Therefore thou liest.
'Tis a quick lie, sir.
'Twill away again
from me to you.
What man dost thou dig it for?
For no man, sir.
What woman then?
For none, neither.
Who is to be buried in it?
One that was a woman, but
rest her soul, she's dead.
How absolute the knave is.
How long hast thou
been grave maker?
I came to it that very day
that young Hamlet was born,
he that is mad and
sent to England.
Aye, marry.
Why was he sent in to England?
Why, because he was mad.
He shall recover his wits there.
If he do not, 'tis no
great matter there.
Why?
'Twill not be seen in him there.
There the men are as mad as he.
How came he mad?
Very strangely, they say.
How strangely?
Faith, even with
losing his wits.
Upon what ground?
Why, here in Denmark.
Here.
A skull hath lien
you in the earth
some three and 20 years.
Whose was it?
A whoreson mad fellow's it was.
Whose do you think it was?
Nay, I know not.
This same skull, sir, was, sir,
Yorick's skull.
The King's jester?
This?
Even that.
Let me see.
Alas.
Poor Yorick.
I knew him, Horatio,
a fellow of infinite jest,
of most excellent fancy.
He hath bore me on
his back 1,000 times,
and now how abhorred in
my imagination it is.
My gorge rises at it.
Where be your gibes now,
your gambols,
your songs, your
flashes of merriment
that were won't to set
the table on a roar?
Not one now to mock
your own grinning?
Quite chapfallen?
Prithee, Horatio,
tell me one thing.
What's that, my lord?
Dost thou think Alexander looked
of this fashion in the earth?
Even so.
And smelt so?
Even so, my lord.
But soft, but soft awhile.
Here comes the King, the Queen.
Who is this they follow?
Lay her in the earth.
What, the fair Ophelia?
May violets spring.
Sweets to the sweet.
Farewell.
I hoped thou shouldst have
been my Hamlet's wife.
I thought thy bride
bed to have decked,
sweet maid, and not
have strewed thy grave.
Oh treble woe,
fall 10 times treble
on that cursed head
whose wicked deed
thy most ingenious
sense deprived thee of.
Hold off the earth awhile
till I have once more
held her in mine arms.
What is he whose grief
bears such an emphasis,
whose phrase of sorrow
conjures the wandering stars
and makes them stand like
wonder wounded hearers?
This is I, Hamlet the Dane.
The devil take thy soul.
Thou prayest not well.
I prithee take thy
fingers from my throat.
- Hamlet.
- Good my lord, be quiet.
I loved Ophelia.
40,000 brothers could not
with all their quantity
of love make up my sum.
What wilt thou do for her?
Oh, for the love
of God, forbear him.
Show me what thou will do.
Would weep, would
fight, would fast,
would tear thyself,
would drink up esill,
eat a crocodile?
I'll rant as well as thou.
This is mere madness.
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.
Why, what a king is this?
Does it not, think
thee, stand me now upon.
He that hath killed my
king and whored my mother,
popped in between the
election and my hopes,
thrown out his angle
for my proper life,
and with such cosenage,
is it not perfect conscience
to quit him with this arm,
and is not to be damned to let
this canker of our nature
come in further evil?
It must shortly be
known to him from England
what is the issue of
the business there.
It will be short.
The interim is mine,
and a man's life no
more than to say one,
but I am very
sorry, good Horatio,
that to Laertes I forgot myself,
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 good lord.
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.
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.
Why do we wrap the gentleman
in our more rarer 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.
What's his weapon?
Rapier and dagger.
That's two of his
weapons, but well...
The King, sir, hath laid, sir,
that in a dozen passes
between yourself and him,
he shall not exceed
you three hits.
He hath laid on 12 for nine,
and it would come
to immediate trial
if your lordship would
vouchsafe the answer.
Sir, I will walk
here in the hall.
If it please his Majesty,
it is the breathing
time of day with me.
Let the foils be brought.
The gentleman willing, and
the King hold his purpose,
I will win for him, and I can.
If not, I will gain nothing
but my shame and the odd hits.
Shall I deliver you even so?
To this effect, after what
flourish your nature will.
I commend
my duty to your Lordship.
Yours.
Hm?
You will lose, my lord.
I do not think so.
Since he went into France,
I have been in
continual practice.
I shall win at the odds,
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,
but it is such a
kind of gain giving
as would perhaps
trouble a woman.
If your mind dislike
anything, obey it.
I will forestall
their repair hither
and say you are not fit.
Not a whit.
We defy augury.
There is a special providence
in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, 'tis not to come.
If it be not to
come, it will be now.
If it be not now,
yet it will come.
The readiness is all.
Since no man of aught
he leaves knows,
what is it to leave betimes?
Let be.
Come, Hamlet.
Come and take this hand from me.
- Give me your pardon, sir.
- I have done you wrong,
but pardon't, as
you are a gentleman.
This presence knows,
and you must needs have heard,
how I am punished with
a sore distraction.
Sir, in this audience,
let my disclaiming
from a purposed
evil free me so far
in your most generous thoughts
that I have shot my
arrow o'er the house
and hurt my brother.
I am satisfied in nature,
whose motive in this case
should stir me
most to my revenge,
but in my terms of
honor I stand aloof
and will no reconcilement
till by some elder
masters of known honor
I have a voice and precedent
of peace to keep
my name ungored.
I 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 in the darkest
night, stick fiery off indeed.
You mock me, sir?
No, by this hand.
You know the wager?
Very well, my lord.
Your Grace has laid the
odds of the weaker self.
I do not fear it.
I have seen you both,
but since he is better,
we have therefore odds.
Now the King drinks to Hamlet.
Come, begin,
and you, the judges,
bear a wary eye.
Come on, sir.
Come, my lord.
One.
No.
Judgment.
A hit, a very palpable hit.
Well, again.
Stay.
Hamlet, this pearl is thine.
Here's to thy health.
Give him the cup.
- I'll play this bout first.
- Set it by awhile.
Come.
Halt.
Another hit.
A touch.
A touch, I do confess it.
Our son shall win.
He's fat and scant of breath.
Here, Hamlet, take my napkin.
Rub thy brow.
The Queen carouses to
thy fortune, Hamlet.
Good madam.
Gertrude.
Do not drink.
I will, my lord.
I pray you pardon me.
I dare not drink
yet madam, by and by.
Come, let me wipe thy face.
- My lord, I'll hit him now.
- I do not think it.
Come for a third, Laertes.
You do but dally.
I pray you pass with
your best violence.
I am afeard you
make a wanton of me.
Say you so?
Nothing neither way.
Have at you now.
Part them.
They are incensed.
Nay, come again.
Look to the Queen there, ho.
They bleed on both sides.
How is it, my lord?
I am justly slain
with mine own treachery.
How does the Queen?
She swoons to see them bleed.
No, no, the drink,
the drink.
Oh my dear Hamlet, the drink.
The drink, I am poisoned.
Oh, villainy.
Oh, treachery.
Hamlet, thou art slain.
No medicine in the
world can do thee good.
The King, the King's to blame.
Here.
Thou incestuous,
murderous,
damned
Dane.
Drink of this potion.
Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.
Exchange forgiveness
with me, noble Hamlet.
Mine and my father's
death come not upon thee,
nor thine on me.
Heaven make thee free of it.
I follow thee.
I am dead, Horatio.
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.
Here's yet some liquor left.
Art a man, give me the cup.
Let go, by heaven.
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.
O
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Now cracks a noble heart.
Good night, sweet prince,
and flights of angels
sing thee to thy rest.