1
[BELL CHIMING]
[SQUEALING IN DISTANCE]
[SQUEALING CONTINUES
IN DISTANCE]
-Who's there?
-Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.
Long live the king?
-Barnardo?
-He.
You come most carefully upon your hour.
'Tis now struck 12.
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.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
the rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
FRANCISCO:
I think I hear them. Stand! Who's there?
HORATIO: Friends to this ground.
MARCELLUS: And liegemen to the Dane.
Give you good night.
Farewell, honest soldier.
Who hath relieved you?
Barnardo has my place.
Give you good night.
-Holla, Barnardo.
BARNARDO: Say what, is Horatio there?
A piece of him.
Welcome, Horatio.
Welcome, good Marcellus.
-What, has this thing appeared again?
-I have seen nothing.
Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,
and will not let belief take hold of him...
...touching this dreaded sight
twice seen of us.
Therefore I have entreated him along
with us to watch the minutes of this night...
...that if again this apparition come
he may approve our eyes and speak to it.
Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.
Sit down a while,
and let us once again assail your ears...
...that are so fortified against our story,
what we two nights have seen.
Well, sit we down,
and let us hear Barnardo speak of this.
Last night of all...
...when yond same star
that's westward from the pole...
...had made his course t'illume
that part of heaven...
...where now it burns...
...Marcellus and myself,
the bell then beating 1 --
Peace, break thee off.
Look where it comes again.
[GASPING]
-Same figure as the king that's dead.
MARCELLUS: Thou art a scholar. Speak to it.
BARNARDO:
Looks it not like the king?
-Mark it.
-Most like.
It harrows me with fear and wonder.
-It would be spoke to.
-Speak to 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.
MARCELLUS: It is offended.
BARNARDO: See, it stalks away.
HORATIO:
Stay, speak, speak, I charge thee speak.
MARCELLUS:
'Tis gone, and will not answer.
How now, Horatio?
You tremble and look pale.
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on't?
Before my God, I might not this believe...
...without the sensible and true avouch
of mine own eyes.
-Is it not like the king?
-As thou art to thyself.
Such was the very armor he had on
when he th' ambitious Norway combated.
So frowned he once
when in an angry parle...
...he smote the sledded Polacks
on the ice.
'Tis strange.
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, look here,
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...
...why such impress of shipwrights,
whose sore task...
...does not divide the Sunday
from the week:
What might be toward
that this sweaty haste...
...doth make the night joint-laborer
with the day...
...who is't that can inform me?
HORATIO:
That can I.
At least the whisper goes so:
Our last king...
...whose image
even but now appeared to us...
...was as you know
by Fortinbras of Norway...
...thereto pricked on
by a most emulate pride...
...dared to the combat.
In which our valiant Hamlet--
For so this side
of our known world esteemed him.
--did slay this Fortinbras...
...who by a sealed compact,
well ratified by law and heraldry...
...did forfeit with his life
all those his lands...
...which he stood seized of
to the conqueror.
Against the which a moiety competent...
...was gaged by our king, which had returned
to the inheritance of Fortinbras...
...had he been vanquisher,
as, by the same cov'nant...
...and carriage of the article designed,
his fell to Hamlet.
HORATIO: Now sir, young Fortinbras,
of unimproved mettle hot and full...
...hath in the skirts of Norway
here and there...
...sharked up a list of landless resolutes
for food and diet to some enterprise...
...that hath a stomach in't,
which is no other--
And it doth well appear unto our state.
--but to recover of us by strong hand...
...and terms compulsatory
those foresaid lands...
...so by his father lost.
And this, I take it,
is the main motive of our preparations...
...the source of this our watch,
and the chief head...
...of this post-haste
and rummage in the land.
I think it be no other but e'en so.
Well, may it sort
that this portentous figure...
...comes armed through our watch
so like the king...
...that was and is the question
of these wars.
A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
a little ere the mightiest Julius fell...
...the graves stood tenantless
and the sheeted dead...
...did squeak and gibber
in the Roman streets.
And even the like precurse of feared events,
as harbingers preceding still the fates...
...and prologue to the omen coming on...
...have heaven and earth
together demonstrated...
...unto our climatures and countrymen.
As stars with trains of fire
and dews of blood...
...disasters in the sun.
And the moist star...
...upon whose influence
Neptune's empire stands...
...was sick almost to doomsday
with eclipse.
But soft, behold.
Lo, where it comes again.
Ill 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,
O speak.
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
extorted treasure in the womb of earth...
...for, they say,
spirits oft walk in death...
...speak for it, stay and speak.
Stop it, Marcellus.
-Strike it with my partisan?
-Do if it will not stand.
MARCELLUS: 'Tis here.
-'Tis here.
'Tis gone.
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
to offer it the show of violence...
...for it is as the air invulnerable...
...and our vain blows malicious mockery.
It was about to speak
when the cock crew.
And then it started like a guilty thing...
...upon a fearful summons.
I have heard
the cock, that is the trumpet to the morn...
...doth with his lofty
and shrill-sounding throat...
...awake the god of day...
...and at his warning,
whether in sea or fire, in earth or air...
...th' extravagant and erring spirit hies
to his confine.
And of the truth herein,
this present object made probation.
BARNARDO:
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst
that season comes...
...wherein our savior's birth
is celebrated...
...the bird of dawning
singeth all night long.
And then, they say,
no spirit can walk abroad...
...the nights are wholesome.
Then no planets strike...
...no fairy takes,
nor witch hath power to charm...
...so hallowed 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 yon high eastward hill.
Break we our watch up,
and by my advice...
...let us impart
what we have seen tonight...
...unto young Hamlet.
For upon my life,
this spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Do you consent we acquaint him with it,
as needful in our loves, fitting our duty?
Let's do't, I pray.
And I this morning know
where we shall find him most conveniently.
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...
...th' imperial jointress
of 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.
Nor have we herein barred
your better wisdoms...
...which have freely gone
with this affair along. For all, our thanks.
[APPLAUDING]
Now follows
that you know young Fortinbras...
...holding a weak supposal
of our worth...
...or thinking
by our late dear brother's death...
...our state to be disjoint
and out of frame...
...colleagued with the dream
of his advantage...
...he hath not failed
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.
[APPLAUDING]
Now for ourself,
and for this time of meeting...
...thus much the business is:
We have here writ
to Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras...
...who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears
of this his nephew's purpose...
...to suppress his further gait herein,
in that the levies...
...the lists, and full proportions are all made
out of his subject.
And we here dispatch
you, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand...
...for bearers of this greeting
to Old Norway...
...giving you no further personal power
to business with the king...
...more than the scope
of these dilated articles allow.
Farewell, and let your haste
commend your duty.
In that, and all things,
will we show our duty.
We doubt it nothing, heartily farewell.
[APPLAUDING]
And now, Laertes,
what's the news with you?
You told us of some suit.
What is't, Laertes?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane
and lose your voice.
What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
that shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
The head is not more native to the heart,
the hand more instrumental to the mouth...
...than is the throne of Denmark
to thy father.
What wouldst thou have, Laertes?
My dread Lord,
your leave and favor to return to France...
...from whence, willingly I came to Denmark
to show my duty in your coronation...
...yet now I must confess,
that duty done...
...my thoughts and wishes
bend again towards France...
...and bow them
to your leave and pardon.
Have you your father's leave?
What says Polonius?
He hath, my lord,
wrung from me my slow leave...
...by laborsome 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.
[APPLAUDING]
But now, my cousin Hamlet...
...and my son.
HAMLET [WHISPERS]:
A little more than kin, and less than kind.
How is it that the clouds
still hang on you?
HAMLET:
Not so, my lord...
... I am too much in the sun.
Good Hamlet...
...cast thy nighted color off...
...and let thine eye
look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know'st 'tis common.
All that lives must die,
passing through nature to eternity.
Ay, madam, it is common.
If it be,
why seems it so particular with thee?
Seems, madam?
Nay, it is.
I know not "seems."
'Tis not alone my inky cloak,
good mother...
...nor customary suits of solemn black,
nor windy suspiration of 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 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...
...it shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
a heart unfortified, a mind impatient...
...an understanding
simple and unschooled.
For what we know must be,
and is as common...
...as any the most vulgar thing to sense.
Why should we
in our peevish opposition...
...take it to heart?
Fie, 'tis a fault to heaven...
...a fault against the dead,
a fault to nature...
...to reason most absurd,
whose common theme...
...is death of fathers,
and who still hath cried...
...from the first corpse
till he that died today:
"This must be so."
We pray you throw to earth
this unprevailing woe...
...and think of us as of a father.
For let the world take note...
...you are the most immediate
to our throne.
[CHEERING]
And with no less nobility of love...
...than that which dearest father
bears his son...
...do I impart towards you.
For your intent
in going back to school in Wittenberg...
...it is most retrograde to our desire...
...and we beseech you
bend you to remain...
...here in the cheer
and comfort of our eye...
...our chiefest courtier, cousin,
and our son.
Let not thy mother
lose her prayers, Hamlet.
I pray 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.
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...
...and the king's rouse the heavens
shall bruit again...
...re-speaking earthly thunder.
Come, away.
[CHEERING]
O that this too too solid flesh
would melt...
...thaw and resolve itself into a dew...
...or that the Everlasting had not fixed
his canon 'gainst self-slaughter.
O God, God...
...how weary, stale, flat,
and unprofitable...
...seem to me all the uses of this world.
Fie on 't, ah fie.
'Tis an unweeded garden
that grows to seed.
Things rank and gross in nature
possess it merely.
That it should come to this.
But two months dead.
Nay, not so much, not two.
So excellent a king, that was to this...
...Hyperion to a satyr...
...so loving to my mother...
...that he might not
beteem the winds of heaven...
...visit her face too roughly.
Heaven and earth, must I remember?
Why, she would hang on him
as if increase of appetite had grown...
...by what it fed on,
and yet within a month--
Let me not think on't.
Frailty, thy name is woman.
A little month,
or ere those shoes were old...
...with which she followed
my poor father's body...
...like Niobe, all tears,
why she, even she--
O God, a beast
that wants discourse of reason...
...would have mourned longer.
--married with mine uncle...
...my father's brother...
...but no more like my father
than I to Hercules...
...within a month...
...ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
had left the flushing in her galled eyes...
...she married.
O most wicked speed...
...to post with such dexterity
to incestuous sheets.
lt 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,
Ill change that name with you.
And what make you from Wittenberg,
Horatio? Marcellus.
-My good lord.
-l am very glad to see you.
Good even, sir.
But what in faith
make you from Wittenberg?
A truant disposition, good my lord.
I would not hear your enemy say so,
nor shall you do my ear that violence...
...to make it truster of your own report
against yourself. I know you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?
We'll teach you to drink deep
ere you depart.
My lord, I came to see
your father's funeral.
I pray thee 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.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
ere I had ever seen that day, Horatio.
My father.
Methinks I see my father.
Where, my lord?
In my mind's eye, Horatio.
I saw him once.
He was a goodly king.
He was a man.
Take him for all in all...
... I shall not look upon his like again.
My lord...
... I think...
... I saw him yesternight.
Saw?
Who?
My lord, the king...
...your father.
The king my father?
Season your admiration for a while
with an attent ear till I may deliver...
...upon the witness of these gentlemen,
this marvel to you.
For God's love, let me hear.
Two nights together had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch...
...in the dead waste and middle
of the night, been thus encountered.
A figure like your father,
armed at all points exactly, cap-a-pie...
...appears before them,
and with solemn march...
...goes slow and stately by them.
Thrice he walked by their oppressed
and fear-surprised eyes...
...within his truncheon's length,
whilst they distilled...
...almost to jelly with the act of fear,
stand dumb and speak not to him.
This to me in dreadful secrecy
impart they did...
...and I with them the third night
kept the watch...
...where, as they had delivered,
both in time...
...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?
Upon the platform where we watched.
-Did you not speak to it?
-My lord, I did.
But answer made it none.
Yet once methought...
...it lifted up its head and did address
itself to motion like as it would speak...
...but even then the morning cock
crew loud...
...and at the sound it shrunk in haste away
and vanished from our sight.
'Tis very strange.
As I do live, my honor'd lord, 'tis true.
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.
-Armed, say you?
BOTH: Armed, my lord.
-From top to toe?
-From head to foot.
-Then saw you not his face.
O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.
What looked he? Frowningly?
-Countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
-Pale, or red?
-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.
-Stayed it long?
-With moderate haste might tell a hundred.
-Longer, longer.
-Not when I saw't.
His beard was grizzled, no?
It was as I have seen it in his life
a sable silver'd.
I will watch tonight.
Perchance 'twill walk again.
I warrant you it will.
If it assume my noble father's person...
... Ill speak to it though hell itself
should gape...
...and bid me hold my peace.
I pray you all,
if you have hitherto concealed this sight...
...let it be tenable in your silence still...
...and whatsoever else
shall hap tonight...
...give it an understanding but no tongue.
I will requite your loves.
So fare you well.
Upon the platform 'twixt 11 and 12
Ill visit you.
-Our duty to your honor.
-Your loves, as mine to you.
Farewell.
HAMLET:
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 embarked. Farewell.
And sister, as the winds give benefit
and convoy is assistant, 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,
forward not permanent, sweet not lasting...
...the perfume and suppliance of a minute,
no more.
-No more but so?
-Think it no more.
For nature crescent does not grow alone
in thews and bulk...
...but as his temple waxes
the inward service of the mind and soul...
...grows wide withal.
Perhaps he loves you now...
...and now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
the virtue of his will. But you must fear...
...his greatness weighed,
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 sanity and health
of the 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 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 within the rear of your affection,
out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough
if she unmask her beauty to the moon.
Virtue itself scapes not
calumnious strokes.
The canker galls the infants of the spring
too oft before their buttons be disclosed...
...and in the morn
and liquid dew of youth...
...contagious blastments
are most imminent.
Be wary then. Best safety lies in fear.
Youth to itself rebels,
though none else near.
I shall th' 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...
...whilst like a puffed
and reckless libertine...
...himself the primrose path
of dalliance treads...
...and recks not his own rede.
O fear me not.
-I stay too long.
POLONIUS: Yet here, Laertes?
But here my father comes.
A double blessing is a double grace.
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.
Aboard, aboard, for shame.
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
and you are stayed for.
There, my blessing with thee.
And these few precepts in thy memory,
see thou character.
Give thy thoughts no tongue...
...nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar.
The 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-hatched,
unfledged comrade.
Beware of entrance to a quarrel,
but being in...
...bear't that th' opposed
may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear
but few thy voice.
Take each man's censure,
but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
but not expressed in fancy.
Rich not gaudy.
For the apparel oft proclaims the man...
...and they in France
of the best rank and station...
...are of all most select
and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be...
...for loan oft loses
both itself and friend...
...and borrowing dulls the edge
of husbandry.
This above all:
To thine own self be true...
...and it must follow, as the night the day,
thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell.
My blessing season this in thee.
Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
The time invites you.
Go. Your servants tend.
Farewell, Ophelia...
...and remember well
what I have said to you.
'Tis in my memory locked...
...and you yourself shall keep
the key of it.
Farewell.
POLONIUS:
What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?
[BELL CHIMING]
OPHELIA:
So please you...
...something touching the Lord Hamlet.
POLONIUS:
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 honor.
What is between you?
Give me up the truth.
He hath, my lord, of late...
...made many tenders
of his affection to me.
POLONIUS:
Affection, pooh.
You speak like a green girl
unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
You believe his "tenders"
as you call them?
I do not know, my lord,
what I should think.
Marry, Ill teach you:
think yourself a baby...
...that you have ta'en his tenders
for true pay, which are not sterling.
Tender yourself dearly...
...or, not to crack the wind
of the phrase, you'll tender me a fool.
My lord, he hath importuned me with love
in honorable fashion--
Ay, "fashion" you may call it.
Go to, go to.
And hath given countenance to his speech
with almost all the holy vows of heaven.
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks.
I do know when the blood burns
how prodigal the soul...
...lends the tongue vows.
These blazes, daughter,
giving more light than heat, extinct in both...
...even in their promise as it is a-making,
you must not take for fire.
From this time, be somewhat scanter
of your maiden presence.
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
than a command to parley.
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.
ln few, Ophelia...
...do not believe his vows,
for they are brokers...
...not of the dye
which their investments show...
...but mere implorators of unholy suits...
...breathing like sanctified and pious bawds
the better to beguile.
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.
OPHELIA:
I shall obey...
...my lord.
HAMLET:
The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold.
It is nipping and an eager air.
-What hour now?
-I think it lacks of 12.
No, it is struck.
Indeed? I heard it not.
Then it draws near the season
wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
[RUMBLING ABOVE]
[WHISPERS]
What does this mean, my lord?
HAMLET: The king doth wake tonight
and takes his rouse...
...keeps wassail,
and the swagg'ring upspring reels.
And as he drains his drafts
of Rhenish down...
..the kettledrum 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 honored
in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west...
...makes us trauduc'd
and tax'd of other nations...
...they clepe us drunkards,
and with swinish phrase...
...soil our addition.
And indeed it takes
from our achievements...
...though perform'd at height,
the pith and marrow of our attribute.
So oft it chances in particular men...
...that for some vicious mole
of nature in them...
...as in their birth, wherein they are not guilty
since nature cannot choose his origin...
...by their o'ergrowth
of some complexion...
...oft breaking down the pales
and forts of reason...
...or by some habit,
that too much o'erleavens...
...the form of plausive manners,
that these men...
...carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
being nature's livery or Fortune's star...
...his virtues else, be they as pure as grace,
as infinite as man may undergo...
...shall in the general censure
take corruption...
...from that particular fault.
The dram of evil
doth all the noble substance over-daub...
...to his own scandal.
HORATIO:
Look, my lord, it comes.
lt beckons you to go away with it...
...as if it some impartment did desire
to you alone.
Look with what courteous action
it waves you to a more removed ground.
-But do not go with it.
-No, by no means.
-lt will not speak. Then will I follow it.
-Do not, my lord.
What should be the fear?
I do not set my life at a pin's fee...
...and for my soul, what can it do to that,
being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again.
Ill follow it.
What if it tempt you toward the flood?
Or the 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?
Think of it.
The very place puts toys of desperation...
...without more motive, into every brain
that looks so many fathoms to the sea...
...and hears it roar beneath.
-It wafts me still. Go on, Ill follow thee.
-You shall not go.
-Hold off your hands.
-Be ruled. You shall not go.
My fate cries out.
And makes each petty artery in this body
as hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.
Still am I called. Unhand me, gentlemen.
By heav'n,
Ill make a ghost of him that lets me.
I say, away!
Go on, Ill 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 him.
HAMLET:
Angels and ministers of grace defend us.
Be thou a spirit of health
or goblin damned...
...bring airs from heaven
or blasts from hell...
...be thy intents wicked or charitable,
thou com'st in such a shape...
...that I will speak to thee.
Ill call thee Hamlet,
king, father, royal Dane.
O answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance...
...but tell why thy canonized bones,
hearsed in death...
...have burst their cerements...
...why the sepulcher
wherein we saw thee quietly inurned...
...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 the 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?
Whither with thou lead me?
Speak.
Ill go no further.
GHOST: Mark me.
HAMLET: I will.
GHOST:
My hour is almost come...
...when I to sulph'rous
and tormenting flames...
...must render up myself.
HAMLET:
Alas, poor ghost.
GHOST: Pity me not, but lend thy
serious hearing to what I shall unfold.
HAMLET:
Speak, I am bound to hear.
GHOST: So art thou to revenge
when thou shalt hear.
HAMLET:
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.
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...
...thy knotted and combined locks
to part...
...and each particular hair
to stand on end...
...like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
to ears of flesh and blood.
List, Hamlet, list, O list.
-If thou didst ever thy dear father love--
-Oh, God!
Revenge his foul
and most unnatural murder.
-Murder?
-Murder most foul, as in the best it is...
...but this most foul, strange,
and unnatural.
Haste me to know it...
...that I with wings as swift
as meditation or the thoughts of love...
...may sweep to my revenge.
I find thee apt...
...and duller shouldst thou be
than the fat weed...
...that roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
wouldst thou not stir in this.
Now, Hamlet, hear.
'Tis given out that,
sleeping in mine orchard...
...a serpent stung me.
So the whole ear of Denmark...
...is by a forged process of my death
rankly abused.
But know, thou noble youth,
the serpent that did sting thy father's life...
...now wears his crown.
O my prophetic soul. Mine uncle?
GHOST: Ay, that incestuous,
that adulterate beast...
...with witchcraft of his wit,
with traitorous gifts--
O wicked wit and gifts,
that have the power so to seduce.
--won to his shameful lust...
...the will of my most
seeming-virtuous queen.
O Hamlet...
...what a falling-off was there.
From me, whose love was of that dignity
that it went hand-in-hand...
...even with the vow
I made to her in marriage...
...and to decline upon a wretch...
...whose natural gifts were poor
to those of mine.
But virtue, as it never will be moved...
...though lewdness court it
in a shape of heaven...
...so lust,
though to a radiant angel linked...
...will sate itself in a celestial bed...
...and prey on garbage.
But soft, methinks I scent
the morning's air.
Brief let me be.
Sleeping within mine orchard,
my custom always in the afternoon...
...upon my secure hour thy uncle stole...
...with juice of cursed hebenon
in a vial...
...and in the porches of mine ears did pour
the leprous 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 vigor
it doth posset...
...and curd, like eager droppings into milk,
the thin and wholesome blood.
So did it mine.
And a most instant tetter barked about...
...most lazar-like,
with vile and loathsome crust...
...all my smooth body.
Thus was I, sleeping...
...by a brother's hand...
...of life, of crown, of queen...
...at once dispatched...
...cut off
even in the blossoms of my sin...
...unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled...
...no reckoning made,
but sent to my account...
...with all my imperfections on my head.
O horrible...
...O horrible...
...most horrible.
If thou has 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 uneffectual fire.
Adieu, adieu, Hamlet.
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...
...whilst memory holds a seat
in this distracted globe.
Remember thee? Yea...
...from the table of my memory
Ill wipe away all trivial fond records...
...all saws of books, all forms,
all pressures past...
...that youth and observation
copied there...
...and thy commandment all alone shall live
within the book and volume of my brain...
...unmixed with baser matter.
Yes, by heaven.
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain.
My tables...
...meet it is I set it down
that one may smile and smile and be a villain.
At least I'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!
-My lord!
-Lord Hamlet!
-Heaven secure him.
-So be it.
Illo, ho, ho, my lord!
Hillo, ho, ho, boy.
-Come, bird, come!
-How is't, my lord?
-What news?
-O wonderful.
-My lord, tell it.
-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 heav'n, 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.
Why, you are in the right.
Without more circumstance at all
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part...
...you as your business
and desires shall point you--
For every man hath business and desire,
such as it is.
--and for mine own poor part,
look you, Ill go pray.
These are but wild and whirling words.
I am sorry they offend you heartily
yes, faith, heartily.
-There's no offense.
-Yes by Saint Patrick but there is, Horatio...
...and much offense 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.
-My lord, we will not.
-Nay, but swear't.
In faith, my lord, not I.
Nor I , my lord, not I.
Upon my sword.
But we have sworn, my lord, already.
Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.
GHOST:
Swear!
Ah ha, boy, hear! Sayst thou so?
Art thou there, truepenny?
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.
GHOST:
Swear.
[SPEAKS IN LATIN]
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.
GHOST: Swear.
-Well said, old mole.
Canst work i' th' 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 times seeing me never shall
with arms encumbered thus...
...or with this headshake,
or by pronouncing some doubtful phrase...
...as "We know,"
or "We could an' if we would"...
...or "If we list to speak,"
or "There be, if they might"...
...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.
GHOST:
Swear.
[RUMBLING]
[PANTING]
Rest...
...rest...
...perturbed spirit.
So gentlemen,
with all my love I do commend me to you...
...and what so poor a man as Hamlet is...
...may do to express
his love and friending to you...
...God willing, shall not lack.
Let us go in together...
...and still your fingers on your lips,
I pray.
The time is out of joint.
O cursed spite...
...that ever I was born to set it right.
Nay, come.
Let's go together.
Give him this money
and these notes, Reynaldo.
I will, my lord.
You shall do marv'lous wisely,
good Reynaldo...
...before you visit him, to make inquire
of his behavior.
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
than your particular demands will touch it.
Take you, as 'twere,
some distant knowledge of him...
...as thus: "l 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 dishonor 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...
...quarreling, drabbing.
You may go so far.
My lord, that would dishonor him.
Faith, no, as you may season it
in the charge.
You must not put another scandal on him,
that he is open to incontinency--
That's not my meaning.
--but breathe his faults so quaintly
that they may seem the taints of liberty...
...the flash and outbreak
of a fiery mind...
...a savageness in unreclaimed blood,
of general assault.
-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 warrant.
You laying these slight sullies
on my son...
...as 'twere a thing
a little soiled i' th' 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 phrase and 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 "friend, or so," and "gentleman."
At "closes in the consequence."
Ay, marry,
he closes me with thus:
"I know the gentleman,
I saw him yesterday"--
Or t'other day,
Or then, or then.
--"with such and such, and, as you say...
...there was a gaming,
there o'ertook in 's rouse...
...there 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...
...with windlasses
and with assays of bias...
...by indirections find directions out.
So by my former lecture and advice,
shall you my son.
-You have me, have you not?
-My lord, I have.
God be wi' you. Fare ye well.
Good my lord.
Observe his inclination in yourself.
I shall, my lord.
And let him ply his music.
Well, my lord.
Farewell.
OPHELIA:
My lord!
POLONIUS:
How now, Ophelia, what's the matter?
Alas, my lord, I have been so affrighted.
With what, in the name of God?
My lord, as I was sewing
in my chamber...
...Lord Hamlet,
with his doublet all unbraced...
...no hat upon his head,
his stockings fouled...
...ungartered, and down-gyved
to his ankle...
...pale as his shirt,
his knees knocking each other...
...and with a look so piteous in purport...
...as if he had been loosed out of hell
to speak of horrors...
...he comes before me.
-Mad for thy love?
-My lord, I do not know.
-But truly I do fear it.
-What said he?
He took me by the wrist
and held me hard...
...then goes he to the length
of all his arm...
...and with his other hand
thus o'er his brow...
...he falls to such perusal of my face
as 'a 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...
...that it did seem to shatter all his bulk
and end his being.
That done, he lets me go...
...and, with his head
over his shoulder turned...
...he seemed to find his way
without his eyes...
...for out o'doors he went
without their help...
...and to the last
bended their light on me.
POLONIUS:
Come.
Go with me.
I will go seek the king.
This is the very ecstasy of love,
whose violent property fordoes itself...
...and leads the will
to desperate undertakings...
...as oft as any passion under heaven
that does afflict our natures.
I am sorry.
[OPHELIA CRYING]
What, have you given him
any hard words of late?
No, my good lord,
but as you did command...
... I did repel his letters and denied
his access to me.
That hath made him mad.
I am sorry that with better heed
and judgment...
... I had not quoted him.
I feared he did but trifle
and meant to wrack thee.
But beshrew my jealousy.
By heaven, it is as proper to our age
to cast beyond ourselves in our opinions...
...as it is common for the younger sort
to lack discretion.
[OPHELIA SOBBING]
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 I call it...
...since not the exterior nor the inward man
resembles that it was.
What it should be...
...more than his father's death,
that hath put him...
...so much from th' understanding of himself,
I cannot dream of.
I entreat you both...
...that, being of so young days
brought up with him...
...and since so neighbored
to his youth and humor...
...that you vouchsafe your rest
here in our court...
...some little time, so by your companies
to draw him into 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.
If it will please you
to show us so much gentry and good will...
...as to expend your time with us a while
for the supply and profit of our hope...
...your visitation shall receive such thanks
as fits a king's remembrance.
Both your majesties might,
by the sovereign power you have of us...
...put your dread pleasures
more into command that 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, bring these gentlemen
where Hamlet is.
Heavens make our presence and practices
pleasant and helpful to him.
GERTRUDE:
Ay, amen.
POLONIUS: Th' ambassadors from
Norway, my lord, are joyfully return'd.
-Thou hast been the father of good news.
POLONIUS: Have I , my lord?
Assure you, my good liege,
I hold my duty as I hold my soul...
...both to my God
and to my gracious king.
And I do think--
Or else this brain of mine
hunts not the trail of policy so sure...
...as it hath used to do.
--that I have found
the very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.
O speak of that, that I do long to hear.
Give first admittance to th' ambassadors.
My news shall be the fruit
to that great feast.
Well, thyself do grace to them,
and bring them in.
He tells me, my dear 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'er-hasty marriage.
Well, we shall sift him.
CLAUDIUS:
Welcome, my good friends.
Say, Voltemand,
what from our brother Norway?
Most fair return of greetings and desires.
Upon our first, he sent out to suppress
his nephew's levies...
...which to him appeared
to be a preparation 'gainst the Polack.
But better looked into, he truly found
it was against Your Highness.
Whereat grieved
that so his sickness, age, and impotence...
...was falsely borne in hand,
sends out arrests...
...on Fortinbras, which he, in brief, obeys,
receives rebuke from Norway...
...and, in fine,
makes vow before his uncle never more...
...to give th' essay of arms
against Your Majesty.
Whereon Old Norway,
overcome with joy...
...gives him 3000 crowns in annual fee...
...and his commission
to employ those soldiers...
...so levied as before,
'gainst the Polack...
...with an entreaty herein further shown...
...that it might please you to give quiet pass
through your dominions for his enterprise...
...on such regards of safety and allowance
as therein are set down.
It likes us well.
And at our more consider'd time we'll read,
answer, and think upon this business.
Meantime we thank you
for your well-took labor.
Go to your rest.
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.
"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.
Perpend.
Ophelia.
I have a daughter--
Have whilst 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.
"These...
...in...
...her excellent...
...white bosom, these."
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."
Dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers.
I have not art to reckon my groans.
But that I love thee best...
...O most best, believe it.
Adieu, adieu.
Thine evermore....
"Most dear lady,
whilst this machine is to him, Hamlet."
This in obedience
hath my daughter showed me...
...and more above hath his solicitings...
...as they fell out by time,
by means, and place...
...all given to mine ear.
How hath she receiv'd his love?
-What do you think of me?
-As of a man faithful and honorable.
I would fain prove so.
But what might you think,
when I had seen this hot love on the wing...
...as I perceived it,
before my daughter told me...
...what might you, or your queen, think
if I had played the desk or table-book?
Or given my heart
a winking mute and dumb?
Or looked upon this with idle sight,
what might you think?
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 likeness, by this declension,
into the madness wherein now he raves...
...and we wail for.
-Do you think 'tis this?
-It may be. Very like.
Hath there been such a time--
I'd fain know that.
--that I have 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 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,
Ill 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 fall'n thereon...
...let me be no assistant for a state,
but keep a farm and carters.
-We will try it.
-But look...
...oh, where sadly the poor wretch
comes reading.
Away, I do beseech you, both away.
Ill board him presently.
O give me leave.
How does my good Lord Hamlet?
[GASPS]
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 10,000.
That's very true, my lord.
For if the sun breed maggots
in a dead dog...
...being a god kissing carrion.
Have you a daughter?
I have, my lord.
Let her not walk i' the sun.
Conception is a blessing,
but as your daughter may conceive....
Friend...
...look to it.
How say you by that?
Still harping on my daughter.
Yet he knew me not at first.
He said I was a fishmonger.
He is far gone, far gone.
And truly in my youth
I suffered much extremity for love...
...very near this.
Ill 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 you read.
Slanders, sir. For the satirical rogue
says here that old men have gray beards...
...that their faces are wrinkled...
...their eyes purging thick amber
and plum-tree gum...
...and that they have a plentiful lack of wit,
together with most weak hams.
All which, sir,
though I most powerfully believe...
...yet I hold it not honesty to have it
thus set down.
For you yourself, sir,
shall grow old as I am...
...if, like a crab, you could go backward.
Though this be madness,
yet there is method in 't.
-Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
-Into my grave?
Indeed, that is out of the air.
How pregnant sometimes his replies are.
A happiness
that often madness hits on...
...which reason and sanity could not
so prosperously be delivered of.
I will leave him, and suddenly contrive...
...the means of meeting
between him and my daughter.
My lord?
My lord, I will take my leave of you.
You cannot, sir, take from me anything
I would more willingly part withal.
Except my life.
Fare you well, my lord.
These tedious old fools.
My honored lord!
You go to seek the Lord Hamlet.
There he is.
Mine honored lord!
[CHUCKLING]
My most dear lord.
HAMLET:
My excellent good friends.
How dost thou, Guildenstern?
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 shoes?
-Neither, my lord.
You live about her waist,
in the middle of her favors?
Faith, her privates we.
In the secret parts of Fortune? 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 in particular.
What have you deserved at the hands
of Fortune that she sends you to prison?
-Prison?
-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 is nothing either good or bad
but thinking makes it so.
To me it is a prison.
Why, then your ambition makes it one.
'Tis too narrow for your mind.
O God, I could be bounded
in a nutshell...
...and count myself
a king of infinite space...
...were it not that I have bad dreams.
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.
And I hold ambition
of so airy and light a quality...
...it is but a shadow's shadow.
Well, 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'll 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, deal justly with me.
Come, come. Nay, speak.
What should we say, my lord?
Why, anything but to th' purpose!
You were sent for.
There is a confession in your looks, which
your modesties have not craft to color.
-The king and queen have sent for you.
-To what end, my lord?
That you must teach me.
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.
HAMLET:
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 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.
He that plays the king shall be welcome.
His Majesty shall have tribute of me.
The adventurous knight
shall use his foil and target...
...the lover shall not sigh gratis...
...the humorous man
shall end his part in peace...
...the clown shall make those laugh
whose lungs are tickled o' th' sere...
...and the lady shall speak her mind freely,
or the blank verse shall halt for it.
What players are they?
ROSENCRANTZ: Even those you were wont
to take delight in, the tragedians of the city.
How chances it they travel?
Their residence, both in reputation
and profit, was better both ways.
Their inhibition comes
by the means of the late innovation.
They hold the estimation
they did when I was in the city?
-Are they so followed?
-They are not.
HAMLET:
Well, how comes it? Do they grow rusty?
Their endeavor
keeps in the wonted pace.
But there is, sir, an aerie of children...
...little eyases that cry out on the top
of question and are clapped for it.
These are now the fashion...
...and so berattle the common stages...
...that many wearing rapiers are afraid of
goose-quills and scarce come thither.
Are they children? Who maintains 'em?
How are they escoted?
Will they pursue the quality
no longer than they can sing?
Will they not say afterwards, if they
grow themselves to common players--
As it is most like,
if their means are no better.
--their writers do them wrong to make them
exclaim against their own succession?
Faith, there has been much to-do
on both sides.
The nation holds it no sin
to tarre them to controversy.
There was no money bid for argument
unless the poet and player went to cuffs.
-Is't possible?
-There has been much throwing of brains.
And do the boys carry it away?
ROSENCRANTZ: Ay, that they do,
my lord, Hercules and his load too.
Well, it is not very strange.
For mine uncle is king of Denmark...
...and those that would make mouths at him
while my father lived...
...give 20, 40, 50, a hundred ducats
apiece for his picture in little.
[LAUGHING]
'Sblood, there is something in this more
than natural, if philosophy could find it out.
[PEOPLE CHUCKLING]
There are the players.
You are welcome to Elsinore.
Your hands. The appurtenance of welcome
is fashion and ceremony.
Let me comply with you in this garb,
lest my extent to the players--
Which must show fairly outwards.
--should more appear like entertainment
than yours.
But my uncle-father and aunt-mother
are deceived.
In what, my dear lord?
I am but mad north-north-west.
When the wind is southerly,
I know a hawk from a handsaw.
POLONIUS:
Well be with you, gentlemen.
Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too--
At each ear a hearer.
--that baby is not
out of his swaddling-clouts.
He's the second time come to them,
they say an old man is twice a child.
I will prophesy he comes
to tell me of the players.
You say right, sir, o' Monday morning,
'twas then indeed.
POLONIUS:
My lord, I have news to tell you.
HAMLET:
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 honor--
Then came each actor on his ass.
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.
For the law of writ and the liberty,
these are the only men.
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,
I have a daughter that I love passing well.
Nay, that follows not.
POLONIUS:
What follows then, my lord?
Why, "As by lot, God wot," and then....
You know, "lt came to pass,
as most like it was."
The first row of the pious chanson
will show you more...
...for look where my abridgement comes.
You are welcome, masters, welcome all.
I am glad to see thee well.
Welcome, good friends.
-O, my old friend.
-Sir.
Why, thy face is valenced
since I saw thee last.
Com'st thou to beard me
in Denmark, yeah?
What, my young lady and mistress.
By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven
than when I saw you last...
...by the altitude of a chopine.
Pray God your voice,
like a piece of uncurrent gold...
...not cracked within the ring.
Masters, you are all welcome.
We'll e'en to't like French falconers,
fly at anything we see.
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 caviar to the general.
But it was-- As I received it...
...and others whose judgments
in such matters cried in the top of mine.
--an excellent play,
well-digested in the scenes...
...set down with as much modesty
as cunning.
I remember one said there were no sallets
in the lines to make the matter savory...
...nor no matter in the phrase...
...which might indict
the author of affectation...
...but called it an honest method...
...as wholesome as sweet,
and by very much more handsome than fine.
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 th' Hyrcanian beast--
-It 'tis not so.
-It begins with Pyrrhus.
It begins with Pyrrhus.
The rugged Pyrrhus,
he whose sable arms...
...black as his purpose,
did the night resemble...
...when he lay couch'd
In the ominous horse...
...hath now this dread
and black complexion smeared...
...with heraldry more dismal.
-Head to foot now is he total gules...
ALL: Gules.
...horridly tricked with blood of fathers,
mothers, daughters, sons...
...baked and impasted
with the parching streets...
...that lend a tyrannous and damned light
to their lord's murder.
Roasted in wrath and fire...
...and thus o'er-sized
with coagulate gore...
...with eyes like carbuncles
the hellish Pyrrhus...
...old grandsire Priam seeks.
So proceed you.
Fore God, my lord, well-spoken,
with good accent and good discretion.
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,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives...
...in rage strikes wide.
But with the whiff and wind
of his fell sword...
...th' unnerved father falls.
Then senseless Ilium...
...seeming to feel his blow,
with flaming top...
...stoops to his base,
and with a hideous crash...
...takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear.
For lo, his sword,
which was declining on the milky head...
...of reverend Priam,
seemed i' th' air to stick.
So as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood...
...and like a neutral to his will and matter,
did nothing.
But as we often see
against some storm...
...a silence in the heavens,
the rack stand still...
...the bold winds speechless...
...and the orb below as hush as death...
...anon the dreadful thunder
doth rend the region.
So after Pyrrhus' pause,
a roused vengeance sets him new a-work.
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall...
...on Mars his 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,
O who had seen the mobbled queen.
Mobbled queen.
That's good. "Mobbled queen" is good.
Run barefoot up and down...
...threat'ning 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're-teemed loins...
...a blanket in the alarm of fear caught up.
Who this had seen,
with tongue in venom steeped...
...'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 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.
Look, whe'er he has not turned his color,
and has tears in's eyes.
Prithee, no more.
[APPLAUDING]
-'Tis well.
-Sir.
Ill have thee speak out the rest soon.
Will you see the players well bestowed?
Do you hear? Let them be well used...
...for they are the abstract
and brief chronicles of the time.
After your death you were better
have a bad epitaph...
...than their ill report while you live.
My lord, I will use them
according to their desert.
God's bodkin, man, much better.
Use every man after his desert,
and who shall scape whipping?
Use them after your own honor
and dignity.
The less they deserve,
the more merit is in your bounty.
-Take them in.
-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 1 6 lines...
...which I would set and insert in 't,
could you not?
-Ay, my lord.
-Very well.
Follow that lord,
and look you mock him not.
My good friends, Ill leave you till night.
-You are welcome to Elsinore.
-Good, my lord.
Ay, so, God b' wi' ye.
[PANTING]
Now I am alone.
O what a rogue...
...and peasant slave am I.
Is it not monstrous
that this player here...
...but in a fiction...
...in a dream of passion...
...could force his soul
so to his own conceit...
...that from her working
all his visage waned...
...tears in his eyes,
distraction in's aspect...
...a broken voice...
...and his whole function suiting
with forms to his conceit?
And all for nothing.
For Hecuba.
What's Hecuba to him, 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 faculty of eyes and ears.
Yet I,
a dull and muddy-mettled rascal...
...peak like John-a-dreams,
unpregnant of my cause...
...and can say nothing.
No, not for a king...
...upon whose property and most dear life
a damned defeat was made.
Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain,
breaks my pate across...
...plucks off my beard
and blows it in my face...
...tweaks me by th' nose,
gives me the lie i' th' throat...
...as deep as to the lungs?
Who does me this?
'Swounds, I should take it!
For it cannot be
but I am pigeon-livered and lack gall...
...to make oppression bitter, or ere this...
... I should ha' fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal.
Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous,
lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
What an ass am I?
This is most brave...
...that I, the son
of a dear father murdered...
...prompted to my revenge
by heaven and hell...
...must, like a whore,
unpack my heart with words...
...and fall a-cursing like a very drab,
a 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 proclaimed
their malefactions.
For murder, though it have no tongue,
will speak with most miraculous organ.
Ill have these players play something
like the murder of my father...
...before mine uncle. Ill observe his looks,
Ill tent him to the quick.
If he but blench, I know my course.
The spirit that I have seen
may be of the devil...
...and the devil hath power
t'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.
Ill have grounds more relative than this.
The play's the thing...
...wherein Ill catch the conscience
of the king.
And can you by no drift of conference...
...get from him
why he puts on this confusion...
...grating so harshly all his days of quiet
with turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
He does confess
he feels himself distracted...
...but from what cause
he will by no means speak.
Nor do we find him forward
to be sounded...
...but with a crafty madness
keeps aloof...
...when we would bring him on
to some confession...
...of his true state.
-Did he receive you well?
ROSENCRANTZ: 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,
there did seem in him a joy to hear of it.
They are about the court, and they have
already order to play before him.
POLONIUS: 'Tis most true, and he
beseeched me to entreat your majesties...
-...to hear and see the matter.
-With all my heart.
And it doth much content me
to hear him so inclined.
Good gentlemen,
give him a further edge...
-...and drive his purpose into these delights.
-We shall, my lord.
Sweet Gertrude, leave us too...
...for we have closely sent
for Hamlet hither...
..that he, as 'twere by accident, may here
affront Ophelia.
Her father and myself, lawful espials,
will so bestow ourselves...
...that, seeing unseen,
we may of their encounter frankly judge...
...and gather by him, as he is behaved,
If't be th' affliction of his love or no...
...that thus he suffers for.
I shall obey you.
And for your part, Ophelia, I do 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 honors.
Madam, I wish it may.
POLONIUS:
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.
We are oft to blame in this.
'Tis too much proved that with
devotion's visage and pious action...
...we do sugar o'er the devil himself.
O 'tis too true.
How smart a lash that speech
doth give my conscience.
The harlot's cheek,
beautied with plast'ring art...
...is not more ugly
to the thing that helps it...
...than is my deed
to my most painted word.
O heavy burden.
POLONIUS: 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.
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...
...th' oppressor's wrong,
the proud man's contumely...
...the pangs of disprized love,
the law's delay...
...the insolence of office, and the spurns
that patient merit of th' unworthy takes...
...when he himself might his quietus make
with a bare bodkin?
Who would fardels bear...
...to grunt and sweat
under a weary life...
...but that the dread...
...of something after death...
...the undiscovered country...
...from whose bourn no traveler returns...
...puzzles the will...
...and makes us rather bear
those ills we have...
...than fly to others
that we know not of?
Thus conscience...
...doth 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.
[FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING]
Soft you now, the fair Ophelia.
Nymph...
...in thy orisons?
-Be all my sins remembered?
OPHELIA: Good, my lord.
How does your honor
for this many a day?
I humbly thank you.
Well.
My lord...
... I have remembrances of yours...
...that I have longed long to redeliver.
I pray you now receive them.
No.
Not I, I never gave you aught.
My honored lord...
...you know right well you did...
...and with them...
...words of so sweet breath compos'd
as made the things more rich.
Their perfume lost...
...take these again.
For to the noble mind rich gifts
wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.
Huh?
-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 better commerce
than honesty?
Truly, for the power of beauty
will transform honesty...
...from what it is to a bawd than honesty
can translate beauty into his likeness.
This was sometime a paradox,
but now the time gives it proof.
I did love you once.
Indeed, my lord,
you made me believe so.
Well, you should not have believed me...
...for 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 indifferent honest...
...yet I could accuse me that it were better
my mother had not borne me.
I am proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more
offenses than I have thoughts to put them...
...imagination to give them shape,
or time to act them in.
What should such fellows as I do
crawling between earth and heaven?
We are arrant knaves, all. Believe none of us.
Go thy ways to a nunnery.
[THUD]
Where's your father?
At home, my lord.
Let the doors be shut upon him...
...that he may play the fool...
...nowhere but in's own house.
Farewell.
[CRYING]
O help him, you sweet heavens.
If thou dost marry,
Ill 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, go, farewell.
Or if thou wilt need marry, marry a fool.
For wise men know well enough
what monsters you make of them.
To a nunnery, go, and quickly too.
Farewell.
Heavenly powers, restore him.
HAMLET: I have heard of
your paintings too, well enough.
God hath given you one face,
and you make yourselves another.
You jig, you amble, and you lisp...
...and you nickname God's creatures...
...and you make your wantonness
your ignorance.
Go to.
Ill 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.
[SHRIEKS]
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 mold of form...
...th' observed of all observers...
...quite, quite down.
And I...
...of ladies most deject and wretched...
...that sucked the honey
of his music vows...
...now see that noble
and most sovereign reason...
...like sweet bells jangled,
out of tune and harsh.
That unmatched form and feature
of blown youth...
...blasted with ecstasy.
O woe is me,
t' have seen what I have seen...
...see what I see.
Love?
His affections do not that way tend...
...nor what he spake, though it
lacked form a little, was not like madness.
There's something in his soul
o'er which his melancholy sits on brood...
...and I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
will be some danger.
Which to prevent, I have
in quick determination thus set it down:
He shall with speed to England
for the demand of our neglected tribute.
Haply the seas, and countries different,
with variable objects...
...shall expel this something-settled
matter in his heart...
...whereon his brains still beating
puts him thus from fashion of himself.
What think you on't?
It shall do well.
But yet do I believe
the origin and commencement of his grief...
...sprung from neglected love.
How now, Ophelia?
You need not tell us
what Lord Hamlet said.
We heard it all.
My lord, do as you please...
...but, if you hold it fit, after the play...
...let his queen mother all alone entreat him
to show his griefs.
Let her be round with him...
...and Ill be placed
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 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.
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 dumb shows and noise.
-My lord.
I would have such a fellow whipped
for o'erdoing Termagant.
-It out-Herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.
-I warrant your honor.
And 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 o'erdone
is from the purpose of playing...
...whose end, both at the first and now...
...was and is to hold as 'twere
the mirror up to nature...
...to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image...
...and the very age and body of the time
his form and pressure.
Now, this overdone, or come tardy off,
though it makes the unskilIful laugh...
...cannot but make the judicious grieve.
The censure of the which one
must in your allowance...
...o'erweigh a whole theater of others.
O, 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 gaits of Christian,
pagan, nor man...
...have so strutted and bellowed...
...that I have thought some
of nature's journeymen had made men...
...and had not made them well,
they imitated humanity so abominably.
I hope we have reformed that
indifferently with us.
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 villainous...
...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.
Will you two help to hasten them?
-We will, my lord.
-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.
For what advancement
may I hope from thee...
...that no revenue hast but thy good spirits
to feed and clothe thee?
Why should the poor be flattered?
No, let the candied tongue
lick absurd pomp...
...and crook the pregnant hinges
of the knee...
...where thrift may follow fawning.
Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul
was mistress of her choice...
...and could of men distinguish, her election
she hath sealed thee for herself.
For thou hast been as one,
in suffering all, that suffers nothing...
...a man that fortune's buffets and rewards
has ta'en with equal thanks.
And blest are those whose blood
and judgment are so well commingled...
...that they are not a pipe
for Fortune's finger...
...to sound what stop she please.
Give me 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 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 scape detecting...
... I will pay the theft.
They are coming to the play.
I must be idle. Get you a place.
[APPLAUDING]
How fares our cousin Hamlet?
Excellent, i' 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.
[PEOPLE LAUGHING]
My lord.
You played once i' th' university, you say.
That did I, my lord,
and was accounted a good actor.
And what did you enact?
-I did enact Julius Caesar.
-Oh.
I was killed i' th' Capitol.
Brutus killed me.
It was a brute part of him
to kill so capital a calf there.
[LAUGHING]
-Be the players ready?
-Ay, my lord, they stay upon your patience.
Come hither, my good Hamlet. Sit by me.
No, good mother,
here's metal more attractive.
Do you mark that?
-Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
-No, my lord.
-I mean, my head upon your lap?
-ay.
-You think I meant country matters?
-I think nothing.
-A fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
-What is?
-Nothing.
-You are merry, my lord.
Who, I? Your only jig-maker.
What should a man do but be merry?
For look you how cheerfully my mother looks,
and my father died within's two hours.
Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.
So long?
Nay then, let the devil wear black,
for Ill have a suit of sables.
Heavens, die two months ago
and not forgotten yet.
Then there's hope a great man's memory
may outlive his life haIf a year.
By'r lady, a must build churches then...
...or else shall a suffer
not thinking on, with the hobbyhorse...
...whose epitaph is,
"For O, for O, the hobbyhorse is forgot."
What means this?
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.
-Will he tell us what this meant?
-Any show you'll show him.
Be not you ashamed to show,
he'll not shame to tell you.
You are naught, you are naught.
Ill mark the play.
For us and for our tragedy...
...here stooping to your clemency...
...we beg your hearing patiently.
Is this the prologue,
or the posy of a ring?
-'Tis brief, my lord.
-As woman's love.
Full 30 times hath Phoebus' cart
gone round...
...Neptune's salt wash...
...and Tellus' orbed ground...
...and 30 dozen moons
with borrowed sheens...
...about the world
have times 12 thirties been...
...since love our hearts
and Hymen did our hands...
...unite commutual in most sacred bands.
So many journeys may the sun and moon
make us again count o'er ere love be done.
But woe is me, you are so sick of late...
...so far from cheer
and from your former state...
...that I distrust you.
Yet, though I distrust...
...discomfort you, my lord,
it nothing must.
For women's fear and love
hold quantity...
...in either naught, or in extremity.
Now what my love is,
proof hath made you know...
...and as my love is sized, my fear is so.
Where love is great,
the littlest doubts are fear.
Where little fears grow great,
great love grows there.
Faith, I must leave thee, love,
and shortly too.
My operant powers
their functions leave to do...
...and thou shalt live
in this fair world behind...
...honored, beloved.
And haply one as kind
for husband shalt thou--
ACTRESS:
O, confound the rest!
Such love must needs be treason
in my breast.
In second husband let me be accurst.
None wed the second
but who killed the first.
That's wormwood, wormwood.
The instances that second marriage move
are base respects of thrift, but none of love.
A second time I kill my husband dead...
...when second husband
kisses me in bed.
ACTOR: I do believe you think
what now you speak...
...but what we do determine
oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory...
...of violent birth but poor validity...
...which now like fruit unripe
sticks on the tree...
...but falls unshaken
when they mellow be.
Most necessary 'tis that we forget
to pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.
What to ourselves
in passion we propose...
...the passion ending,
doth the purpose lose.
The violence of either grief or joy...
...their own enactures
with themselves destroy:
Where joy most revels,
grief doth most lament.
Grief joys, joy grieves,
on slender accident.
[ACTOR GRUNTS]
This world is not for aye...
...and 'tis not strange...
...that even our loves
should with our fortunes change.
For 'tis a question left us yet to prove...
...whether love leads fortune
or else fortune love.
The great man down,
you'll mark his favorite flies.
Poor men advanced
make friends of enemies.
And hitherto does love on fortune tend...
...for who not needs
shall never lack a friend...
...and who in want
a hollow friend doth try...
...directly seasons him his enemy.
But orderly to end where I begun...
...our wills and fates do so contrary run
that our devices still are overthrown.
Our thoughts are ours,
their ends none of our own:
So think thou wilt
no second husband wed...
...but die thy thoughts
when thy first lord is dead.
ACTRESS: 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...
...an 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...
...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.
[APPLAUDING]
Madam, how like you this play?
-The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
-O, but she'll keep her word.
Have you heard the argument?
ls there no offense in't?
No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest.
No offense i' th' world.
-What do you call the play?
-The Mousetrap.
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. 'Tis a knavish piece of work.
But what of that?
Your Majesty, and we
that have free souls, it touches us not.
Let the galled jade wince,
our withers are unwrung.
This is one Lucianus,
nephew to the king.
You are as good as a chorus.
I could interpret between you and your love
if I could see the puppets.
-You are keen, my lord.
-Cost you a groaning to take off mine edge.
-Still better, and worse.
-So you mistake your husbands.
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 i' th' garden
for his estate.
His name's Gonzago.
The story is extant,
and written in choice Italian.
You shall see anon how the murderer
gets the love of Gonzago's wife!
[GASPS]
OPHELIA:
The king rises.
What, frighted with false fire?
-How fares my lord?
-Give o'er the play.
Give me some light.
Away.
GUARD:
Lights, lights, lights!
HAMLET:
Horatio!
Horatio!
Why, let the strucken deer go weep...
...the hart ungalled play...
...for some must watch,
while some must sleep...
...thus runs the world away.
Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers,
if my fortunes turn Turk...
...with two provincial roses
on my razed shoes...
...get me a fellowship in a cry of players?
-Half a share.
-A whole one, I.
For thou dost know, O Damon dear...
...this realm dismantled was
of Jove himself...
...and now reigns here
a very, very peacock.
You might have rhymed.
O good Horatio, Ill take the ghost's word
for a thousand pound.
-Didst perceive?
-Very well, my lord.
Upon the talk of the poisoning?
I did very well note him.
Ah.
Come, some music, come, the recorders.
For if the king like not the comedy,
why then, belike he likes it not, perdy.
Come, some music.
-Vouchsafe me a word with you.
-A whole history.
-The king, sir--
-What of him?
Is in his retirement
marvelous distempered.
-With drink, sir?
-No, rather with choler.
Your wisdom should show
to signify this to his doctor.
For for me to put him to his purgation
might plunge him into far more choler.
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, this courtesy is not of the right breed.
If you 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.
But, 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?
Then thus she says:
Your behavior hath struck her
into amazement and admiration.
O wonderful son,
that can so astonish a mother.
But is there no sequel at the heels
of this mother's admiration? Impart.
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 bar the door of your own liberty
if you deny your griefs to your friends.
Sir, I lack advancement.
How can that be when you have the voice
of the king himself for your succession?
Ay, sir, but "while the grass grows...."
The proverb is something musty.
[RECORDERS PLAYING]
The recorders. 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.
HORATIO: 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 and it will discourse
eloquent music. These are the stops.
But these cannot I command to any
utterance of harmony. I have not the skill.
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing
you would make of me.
You would play upon me,
you would seem to know my stops...
...you would pluck out the heart
of my mystery...
...you would sound me from my lowest note
to the top of my compass.
And there is much music,
excellent voice in this little organ...
...yet cannot you make it speak.
'Sblood, do you think I am easier
to be played upon than a pipe?
Well, call me what instrument you will,
though you can fret me...
...yet you cannot play upon me.
-God bless you, sir.
-My lord, the queen would speak with you.
Do you see yonder cloud
that's almost in the shape of a camel?
By the mass, and 'tis like a camel.
-It is like a weasel.
-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.
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 lunacies.
We will ourselves provide.
Most holy and religious fear it is
to keep those many, many bodies safe...
...that live and feed upon Your Majesty.
The single and peculiar life is bound
by all the strength and armor of the mind...
...to keep itself from noyance.
But much more...
...that spirit upon whose weal
depends and rests...
...the lives of many.
The cease of majesty dies not alone...
...but like a gulf doth draw
what's near it with it.
It is a massy wheel
fixed on the summit of the highest mount...
...to whose huge spokes 10,000
lesser things are mortised and adjoined...
...which when it falls...
...each small annexment,
petty consequence...
...attends the boist'rous ruin.
Never alone did the king sigh,
but with a general groan.
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.
POLONIUS:
He's going to his mother's closet.
Behind the arras Ill convey myself
to hear the process.
Ill warrant she'll tax him home.
And, as you said-- And wisely was it said.
--'tis meet that some more audience
than a mother...
...since nature makes them partial,
should o'erhear the speech of vantage.
Fare you well, my liege.
Ill call ere you go to bed,
and tell you what I know.
Thanks, dear my lord.
'Tis now
the very witching time of night...
...when churchyards yawn,
and hell itself breathes out...
...contagion to this world.
Now could I drink hot blood...
...and do such bitter business as the day
would quake to look on.
Soft, now to my mother.
O heart, lose not thy nature.
Let not ever
the soul of Nero enter this firm bosom.
Let me be cruel, not unnatural.
I will speak daggers to her, but use none.
My tongue and soul...
...in this be hypocrites.
How in my words somever she be shent...
...to give them seals
never my soul consent.
O, my offense 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 cursed hand were thicker
than itself with brother's blood...
...is there not rain enough
in the sweet heavens...
...to wash it white as snow?
Whereto serves mercy
but to confront the visage of offense?
And what's in prayer but this twofold force,
to be forestalled ere we come to fall...
...or pardoned being down?
Then Ill look up.
My fault is past.
But, O, what form of prayer
can serve my turn?
"Forgive me my foul murder"?
That cannot be...
...since I am still possessed
of those effects for which I did the murder:
My crown, mine own ambition...
...and my queen.
May one be pardoned
and retain the 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?
O wretched state,
O bosom black as death...
...O limed soul that, struggling to be free
art more engaged.
Help, angels.
Make assay.
Bow, stubborn knees.
And heart with strings of steel,
be soft as sinews of the newborn babe.
All may be well.
HAMLET:
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.
[BLOOD SPLATTERS]
HAMLET:
That would be scanned.
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?
But in our circumstance
and course of thought...
...'tis heavy with him.
And am I then revenged
to take him in the purging of his soul...
...when he is fit and seasoned
for his passage?
No.
Up, sword,
and know thou a more horrid hent.
When he is drunk asleep...
...or in his rage...
...or in the incestuous pleasure
of his bed...
...at game, a-swearing, or about some act
that has no relish of salvation in 't...
...then trip him,
that his heels may kick at heaven...
...and that his soul
may be as damned and black...
...as hell whereto it goes.
My mother stays.
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
My words fly up,
my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts
never to heaven go.
He will come straight.
Look you lay home to him.
Tell him his pranks
have been too broad to bear with...
...and your grace screened
and stood between much heat and him.
Ill silence me here.
Pray you be round with him.
-Ill warrant you. Fear me not.
HAMLET: Mother, Mother, Mother!
Withdraw, I hear him coming.
Now, Mother, what's the matter?
Hamlet,
thou hast thy father much offended.
Mother,
you have my father much offended.
-Come, you answer with an idle tongue.
-Go, you question with a wicked tongue.
-How now?
-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,
Ill 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!
HAMLET: What, ho! Help!
POLONIUS: Help, help!
HAMLET: How now, a rat?
-Dead, for a ducat, dead!
POLONIUS: Ow! Ow!
[SHOUTING AND GRUNTING]
I am slain.
GERTRUDE:
O me, what hast thou done?
Nay, I know not. Is it the king?
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this.
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.
Thou find'st to be too busy
is some danger.
Leave wringing of your hands. Peace!
Sit you down,
and let me wring your heart.
For so I shall,
if it be made of penetrable stuff...
...if damned custom have not brazed it so
that it be proof and bulwark against sense.
What have I done,
that thou darest wag thy tongue...
...in noise so rude against me?
Such an act
that blurs the grace and blush of modesty...
...calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
from the fair forehead of an innocent love...
...and sets a blister there...
...makes marriage vows
as false as dicers' oaths.
O, such a deed
as from the body of contraction plucks...
...the very soul, and sweet religion makes
a rhapsody of words.
Heaven's face doth glow,
yea, this solidity and compound mass...
...with tristful visage, as against the doom,
is thought-sick at the act.
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 mildewed ear,
blasting his wholesome brother.
Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain
leave to feed, and batten on this moor?
Have you eyes?
You cannot call it love, for at your age
the heyday in the blood is tame...
...it's humble,
waits upon the judgment.
And what judgment
would step from this to this?
Sense you have,
else could you not have motion.
But sure that sense is apoplexed.
For madness would not err...
...nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thralled
but it reserved some quantity of choice...
...to serve in such a difference.
What devil was't that thus
hath cozened 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?
Rebellious hell,
if thou canst mutine in a matron's bones...
...to flaming youth let virtue be as wax
and melt in her own fire.
Proclaim no shame...
...when the compulsive ardor
gives the charge...
...since frost itself as actively doth burn,
and reason panders will.
O, Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul...
...and there I see
such black and grained spots...
...as will not leave their tinct.
Nay, but to live
in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed...
...stewed in corruption, honeying
and making love over the nasty sty!
O, speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
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...
...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.
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.
[WHISPERS]
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 th' incorporal air
do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes
your spirits wildly peep.
And as the sleeping soldiers
in th' alarm...
...your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
start up and stand on end.
O gentle son...
...upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
sprinkle cool patience.
Whereon do you look?
On him.
Look you how pale he glares.
His form and cause conjoined,
preaching to stones...
...would make them capable.
Do not look upon me...
...lest with this piteous action you convert
my stern effects.
Then what I have to do
will want true color.
Tears perchance for blood.
-To whom do you speak this?
-Do you see nothing there?
Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.
-Did you nothing hear?
-Nothing but ourselves.
Look you there! 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 uttered.
Bring me to the test,
and I the matter will reword...
...which madness would gambol from.
Mother, for love of grace...
...lay not that flattering unction
to your soul...
...that not your trespass
but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film
the ulcerous place...
...whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
infects unseen.
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.
Forgive me this my virtue...
...for in the fatness of these pursy times
virtue itself of vice must pardon beg...
...yea, curb and woo
for leave to do him good.
O Hamlet.
Thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
O, throw away the worser part of it,
and live the purer with the other haIf.
Good night.
But go not to my uncle's bed.
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster custom,
who all sense doth eat...
...of habits devil, is angel yet in this...
...that to the use of actions fair and good
he likewise gives a frock or livery...
...that aptly is put on.
Refrain tonight,
and that shall lend a kind of easiness...
...to the next abstinence.
The next more easy.
For use almost can change
the stamp of nature...
...and either shame the devil...
...or throw him out
with wondrous potency.
Once more, good night.
And when you are desirous to be blest...
... Ill blessing beg of you.
For this same lord, I do repent.
But heaven hath pleased is 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 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.
'Twere good you let him know.
For who that's but a queen,
fair, sober, wise...
...would from a paddock,
from a bat, a gib...
...such dear concernings hide?
Who would do so? No...
...in despite of sense and secrecy...
...unpeg the basket on the house's top...
...let the birds fly,
and like the famous ape...
...to try conclusions
in the basket creep...
...and break your own neck down.
Be thou assured...
...if words be made of breath...
...and breath of life...
... I have no life to breathe
what thou hast said to me.
I must to England, you know that?
Alack, I had forgot.
'Tis so concluded on.
There's letters sealed.
And my two schoolfellows...
...whom I will trust
as I will adders fanged...
...they bear the mandate.
They must sweep my way
and marshal me to knavery.
Let it work.
For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
hoist with his own petard.
And it 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.
Ill lug the guts into the neighbor room.
Mother, good night indeed.
This counselor 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.
[CRYING]
CLAUDIUS: There's matter in
these sighs, these profound heaves...
...you must translate.
'Tis fit we understand them.
-Where is your son?
-Bestow this place on us a little while.
Ah, my own lord,
what have I seen tonight.
What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?
Mad as the sea and wind
when both contend which is the mightier.
In his lawless fit...
...behind the arras
hearing something stir...
...whips out his rapier...
...cries, "A rat, a rat!"...
...and in this brainish apprehension kills...
...the unseen good old man.
O heavy deed.
It had been so with us...
...had we been there.
His liberty is full of threats to all.
To you yourself, to us, to everyone.
Alas, how shall this bloody deed
be answered?
It will be laid to us, whose providence
should have kept short, restrained...
...and out of haunt this mad young man.
But so much was our love...
...we would 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 killed...
...o'er whom his very madness...
...like some ore
amongst a mineral of metals base...
...shows itself pure.
-He weeps for what is done.
-O Gertrude, come away.
The sun 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,
go join you with some further aid.
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain...
...and from his mother's closet
dragged him.
Go seek him out, speak fair,
and bring the body into the chapel.
I pray you haste in this.
Come, Gertrude.
We'll call up our wisest friends...
...and let them know
both what we mean to do...
...and what's untimely done.
So envious slander,
whose whisper o'er the world's diameter...
...as level as the cannon to his blank,
transports his poisoned shot...
...may miss our name
and hit the woundless air.
O, come away.
My soul is full of discord and dismay.
[SCREAMING]
-Safely stowed.
GUARD 1 : Hamlet, Lord Hamlet!
But soft, what noise?
-Who calls on Hamlet?
GUARD 2: Lord Hamlet!
O, here they come.
-What have you done with the dead body?
-Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.
-Tell us where 'tis, we may take it thence.
-Do not believe it.
-Believe what?
-That I can keep your counsel.
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?
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.
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.
OPHELIA:
My lord!
Hide fox and all after.
OPHELIA:
My lord!
My good Lord Hamlet!
[GLASS SHATTERING]
Hamlet!
[PEOPLE SHOUTING]
GUARD 1:
Hamlet!
[SIGHS]
[GUN COCKS]
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 weighed,
but never the offense.
To bear all smooth and even...
...this sudden sending him away must seem
deliberate pause.
Diseases desperate grown...
...by desperate appliance are relieved,
or not at all.
[DOOR OPENS]
How now, what hath befall'n?
Where the dead body is bestowed
we cannot get from him.
-Where is he?
-Without, guarded, to know your pleasure.
-Bring him before us.
-Ho, Guildenstern.
Bring in my lord.
-Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?
-At supper.
At supper? Where?
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten.
A certain convocation of politic worms
are e'en at him.
Your worm is your only emperor for diet.
We fat all creatures else to fat us,
and we fat ourselves for maggots.
Your fat king and your lean beggar
is but variable service:
Two dishes, but to one table.
-That's the end.
-Alas, alas.
A man may fish with the worm
that hath eat of a king...
...and eat of the fish
that hath fed of that worm.
-What dost thou mean?
-Nothing...
...but too show you how a king may go
a progress through the guts of a beggar.
Where is Polonius?
In heaven. Send thither to see.
If your messenger find him not there...
...seek him i' th' other place yourself.
But if indeed you find him
not this month...
...you shall nose him
as you go up the stairs into the lobby.
Go seek him there.
He will stay till you come.
Hamlet, this deed of thine,
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...
...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.
But come, for England.
Farewell, dear mother.
-Thy loving father, Hamlet.
-Mother.
Father and mother is man and wife...
...man and wife is one flesh...
...and so my mother.
Come...
...for England.
Stay.
[GRUNTING]
Follow him. Tempt him with speed aboard.
Ill have him hence tonight.
Away. Everything is sealed and done
that else leans on th' affair.
Pray you, make haste.
And England...
...if my love thou hold'st at aught--
My great power thereof may give thee sense
since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red...
...after the Danish sword,
and thy free awe pays homage to us.
--thou mayst not coldly set
our sovereign process...
...which imports at full,
by letters congruing to that effect...
...the present death of Hamlet!
Do it, England.
For like the hectic in my blood he rages...
...and thou must cure me.
Till I know 'tis done...
...howe'er my haps,
my joys were ne'er begun.
[OPHELIA SCREAMING]
Go, captain.
From me, greet the Danish king.
Tell him that by his license, Fortinbras
craves the conveyance...
...of a promised march over his kingdom.
You know the rendezvous.
If that his majesty would aught with us...
...we shall express our duty in his eye...
...and let him know so.
-I will do't, my lord.
-Go...
...softly on.
HAMLET:
Good 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 of 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 5 ducats, 5...
... I would not farm it.
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
a ranker rate should it be sold in fee.
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.
This is the impostume
of much wealth and peace...
...that inward breaks...
...and shows no cause without
why the man dies.
I humbly thank you, sir.
God be with you, sir.
-Will't please you go, my lord?
-Ill be with you straight.
Go a little before.
How all occasions
do inform against me...
...and spur my dull revenge.
What is a man...
...if his chief good and market of his time
be but to sleep and feed?
A beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us
with such large discourse...
...looking before and after...
...gave us not
that capability and godlike reason...
...to fust in us unused.
Now, whether it be bestial oblivion...
...or some craven scruple
of thinking too precisely on the event--
A thought which, quarter'd...
...hath but one part wisdom
and ever three parts coward.
--I do not know...
...why yet I live to say
this thing's to do...
...sith I have cause and will
and strength and means to do'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 eggshell.
Rightly to be great
is not to stir without great argument...
...but greatly to find quarrel in a straw
when honor's at the stake.
How stand I then,
that have a father kill'd...
...a mother stain'd...
...excitements of my reason
and my blood...
...and let all sleep...
...while to my shame...
... I see the imminent death
of 20,000 men...
...that, for a fantasy and trick of fame...
...go to their graves like beds...
...fight for a plot whereon the numbers
cannot try the cause...
...which is not tomb enough
and continent...
...to hide the slain?
O, from this time forth...
...my thoughts be bloody...
...or be nothing worth.
CLAUDIUS: 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,
unwholesome in their thoughts...
...and whispers for good Polonius' death.
And we have done but greenly
in huggermugger to inter him.
Poor Ophelia...
...divided from herself
and her fair judgment...
...without the which we are pictures
or mere beasts.
Last, and as much containing as all these,
her brother is in secret come from France...
...feeds on this wonder,
keeps himself in clouds.
Wants not buzzers to infect his ear with
pestilent speeches of his father's death.
Wherein necessity, of matter beggared...
...will nothing stick our persons to arraign
in ear and ear.
O my dear Gertrude, this,
like to a murd'ring-piece...
...in many places
gives me superfluous death.
[OPHELIA GRUNTING]
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...
...and hems, and beats her heart.
Spurns enviously at straws...
...speaks things in doubt
that carry but haIf sense.
Her speech is nothing...
...yet the unshaped use of it doth move
the hearers to collection.
They aim at it...
...and botch the words up
fit to their own thoughts...
...which, as her winks and nods
and gestures yield them...
...indeed would make one think
there might be thought...
...though nothing sure,
yet much unhappily.
'Twere good she were spoken with...
...for she may strew
dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
Let her come in.
[GERTRUDE SIGHING]
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.
OPHELIA: Where is the beauteous majesty
of Denmark?
How now, Ophelia?
How should I your true love know
from another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
and his sandal shoon.
Alas, sweet lady,
what imports this song?
Say you?
Nay...
[OPHELIA CRYING]
...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
GERTRUDE:
Nay, but Ophelia--
OPHELIA:
Pray you, mark.
White his shroud as the mountain snow
GERTRUDE:
Alas, look here, my lord.
Larded with sweet flowers
Which bewept to the grave did not go
With true-love showers
How do you, pretty lady?
Well, God 'ield you.
They say the owl
was a baker's daughter.
Lord, we know what we are,
but know not what we may be.
God be at your table.
Conceit upon her father.
[SCREAMING]
Pray you!
Let's have no words of this!
But when they ask you what it means...
...say you this:
[SINGING]
Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window
To be your Valentine
Then up he rose, and donned his clothes
And dupped the chamber door
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more
-Pretty Ophelia.
-Indeed, la?
Without an oath, Ill make an end on 't.
By Gis and by Saint Charity
Alack, and file 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"
[CRYING]
How long hath she been thus?
I hope all will be well.
OPHELIA:
We must be patient.
But I cannot choose but weep...
...to think they should lay him
i' th' cold ground.
My brother shall know of it.
[OPHELIA GASPING]
And so I thank you
for your good counsel!
Come...
[OPHELIA SNIFFS]
...my coach!
Good night, ladies.
Good night, sweet ladies, good night.
Good night, sweet ladies!
-Good night!
-Follow her close.
OPHELIA: Good night!
CLAUDIUS: 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.
CLAUDIUS:
O Gertrude, Gertrude.
[MEN SHOUTING]
GERTRUDE:
What noise is this?
Where are my Switzers? Guard the door.
-What is the matter?
-Save yourself, my lord.
The ocean, overpeering of his list,
eats not flats with more impetuous haste...
...than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
o'erbears your officers.
The rabble call him lord,
and, as the world were now but to begin...
...antiquity forgot, custom not known...
...the ratifiers and props of every word...
...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!
CLAUDIUS:
The doors are broke.
[GERTRUDE SHRIEKS]
Where is this king?
-Sirs, stand you all without.
-No, let's come in.
-I pray you, give me leave.
MAN: We will.
I thank you.
LAERTES:
Keep the door!
O thou vile king, give me my father!
Calmly, good Laertes.
That drop of blood that's calm
proclaims me bastard...
...cries cuckold to my father...
...brands the harlot even here...
...between the chaste unsmirched brow
of my true mother.
What is the cause, Laertes,
that thy rebellion looks so giant-like?
Let him go, Gertrude.
Do not fear our person.
There's such divinity doth hedge a king...
...that treason can but peep
to 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.
GERTRUDE: But not by him.
Let him demand his fill.
How came he dead?
Ill 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...
...that both the worlds I give to negligence,
let come what comes.
Only Ill be revenged
most thoroughly for my father.
-Who shall stay to you?
-My will, not all the world.
And for my means...
... Ill husband them so well
they shall go far with little.
Good Laertes...
...if you desire to know the certainty
of your dear father's death...
...is 't writ in your revenge that,
sweepstake...
...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
Ill ope my arms...
...and like the kind life-rend'ring pelican,
repast them with my blood.
Why, now you speak
like a good child and a true gentleman.
[GERTRUDE PANTING]
That I am guiltless
of your father's death...
...and am most sensibly in grief for it...
...it shall as level to your judgment pierce
as day doth to your eye.
[OPHELIA SHOUTING]
HORATIO:
Let her come in.
LAERTES:
How now, what noise is that?
[OPHELIA GASPING]
O heat, dry up my brains.
Tears seven times salt
burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye.
[OPHELIA GIGGLING]
LAERTES: By heaven, thy madness
shall be paid by weight...
...till our scale turns the beam.
LAERTES:
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?
Nature is fine in love,
and where 'tis fine...
...it sends some precious instance
of itself...
...after the thing it loves.
They bore him barefaced on the bier
[SINGING AND LAUGHING]
Hey, non nony, nony, hey, nony
And on his grave rained many a tear
Fare you well, my dove.
Hadst thou thy wits
and didst persuade revenge...
...it could not move thus.
You must sing:
Down, a-down, a-down, a-down
And you, call him:
A-down, a-down, a-down
O, how the wheel becomes it.
It was the false steward
that stole his master's daughter.
[OPHELIA SHUSHES]
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 herb o' grace o' Sundays.
OPHELIA: O, you must wear your rue
with a difference.
There's a daisy.
OPHELIA:
I would give you some violets...
...but they withered all
when my father died.
OPHELIA:
They say a made a good end.
[SINGING]
For bonny sweet robin is all my joy
Thought and affliction,
passion, hell itself...
...she turns to favor and to prettiness.
And will a not come again?
No, no, he is dead
Go to thy deathbed
He never will come again
His beard as white as snow
All flaxen was his poll
He is gone, he is gone
And we cast away moan
God 'a' mercy on his soul
And of all Christian souls...
... I pray God.
God by you.
[SOBBING]
Do you see this, O God?
Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
or you deny me right.
Go but apart, make choice of whom
your wisest friends you will...
...and they shall hear
and judge 'twixt you and me.
If by direct or by collateral hand
they find us touched...
...we will our kingdom give, our crown,
our life, and all that we call ours...
...to you in satisfaction.
But if not, be you content
to lend your patience to us...
...and we shall jointly labor with your soul
to give it due content.
Let this be so.
His means of death...
...his obscure burial--
No trophy, sword,
nor hatchment o'er his bones...
...no noble rite nor formal ostentation.
--cry to be heard,
as 'twere from heaven to earth...
...that I must call 't in question.
So you shall.
And where th' offense is,
let the great ax fall.
I pray you, go with me.
HORATIO:
What are they that would speak with me?
Sailors, sir.
They say they have letters for you.
[WATER SPLASHING
AND OPHELIA SCREAMING]
I do not know from what part of the world
I should be greeted if not from Lord Hamlet.
MAN: God bless you.
-Let him bless thee too.
He shall, sir, an 't please him.
There's a letter for you, sir.
It comes from th' ambassador
that was bound for England...
...if your name be Horatio,
as I am led to know it is.
"Horatio, when thou shalt
have overlooked this...
...give these fellows some means
to the king. They have letters for him.
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 haste
as thou wouldst fly death.
I have words to speak in thine ear
will make thee dumb...
...yet they are much too light
for the bore of the matter.
These good fellows
will bring thee where I am.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
hold their course for England.
Of them I have much to tell thee.
Farewell.
He that thou knowest thine, Hamlet."
Come, I will give you way
for these your letters...
...and do 't the speedier
that you may direct me...
...to him from whom you brought them.
Now must your conscience
my acquittance seal...
...and you must put me
in your heart for friend...
...since you have heard,
and with a knowing ear...
...that he which hath your noble father slain
pursued my life.
It well appears. But tell me...
...why you proceeded
not against these feats...
...so crimeful and so capital in nature,
as by your safety...
...wisdom, all things else,
you mainly were stirred up.
O, for two special reasons
which may to you seem much unsinewed...
...but yet to me they're strong.
The queen his mother
lives almost by his looks.
And for myself--
My virtue or my plague,
be it either which.
--she is so conjunctive
to my life and soul...
...that, as the star moves not
but in his sphere...
... I could not but by her.
The other motive
why to a public count I might not go...
...is the great love
the general gender bear him...
...who, dipping all his faults
in their affection...
...would, like the spring
that turneth wood to stone...
...convert his gyves to graces...
...so that my arrows,
too slightly timbered for so loud a wind...
...would have reverted to my bow again,
but not where I had aimed them.
And so have I a noble father lost.
A sister driven into desp'rate 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.
-Break not your sleeps for that.
You must not think
that we are made of stuff so flat and dull...
...that we can let our beard be shook
with danger, and think it pastime.
You shortly shall hear more.
I loved your father, and we love ourself.
And that, I hope,
will teach you to imagine--
CLAUDIUS:
How now? What news?
Letters, my lord, from Hamlet.
This is 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.
CLAUDIUS: Laertes, you shall hear them.
Leave us.
"High and mighty, you shall know
that 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 th' occasions...
...of my sudden and more strange return.
Hamlet."
What should this mean?
Are all the rest come back?
Or is this some abuse, and no such thing?
-Know you the hand?
-'Tis Hamlet's character.
"Naked," and in a postscript here
he says "alone."
-Can you advise me?
-I'm 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 diest thou."
If it be so, Laertes--
As how should it be so, how otherwise?
--will you be ruled by me?
Ay, my lord,
if so you'll not o'errule me to a peace.
To thine own peace.
If he be now returned,
as checking at his voyage...
...and that he means
no more to undertake it...
... I will work him to an exploit,
now ripe in my device...
...under the which
he shall not choose but fall.
And for his death...
...no wind of blame shall breathe.
Even his mother shall uncharge the practice
and call it accident.
My lord, I will be ruled.
The rather if you could devise it so
that I might be the organ.
It falls right.
You have been talked of
since your travels much--
And that in Hamlet's hearing.
--for a quality
wherein they say you shine.
Your sum of parts did not together
pluck such envy from him...
...as did that one, and that, in my regard,
of the unworthiest siege.
-What part is that, my lord?
-A very ribbon in the cap of youth...
...yet needful too.
For youth no less becomes
the light and careless livery that it wears...
...than settled age his sables and his weeds,
importing health and graveness.
Two months since
here was a gentleman of Normandy.
I have seen myself,
and served against, the French...
...and they can well on horseback,
but this gallant had witchcraft in 't.
He grew into his seat...
...and to such wondrous
doing brought his horse...
...as he had he been incorpsed
and deminatured with the brave beast.
So far he topped my thought
that I in forgery of shapes and tricks...
...come short of what he did.
-A Norman was 't?
-A Norman.
-Upon my life, Lamord.
-The very same.
I know him well. He is the brooch indeed
and gem of all our nation.
He made confession of you...
...and gave you such a masterly report
for art and exercise in your defense...
...and for your rapier most especial...
...that he cried out 'twould be sight indeed
if one could match you.
The scrimers of their nation, he swore,
had neither motion, guard, nor eye...
...if you opposed them, sir.
This report of his
did Hamlet so envenom with his envy...
...that he could nothing do
but wish and beg...
...your sudden coming o'er
to play with him.
-Now, out of this--
-What out of this, my lord?
Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
a face without a heart?
Why ask you this?
Not that I think
you did not love your father...
...but that I know
love is begun by time...
...and that I see, in passages of proof...
...time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives
within the very flame of love...
...a kind of wick or snuff
that will abate it.
And nothing is at a like goodness still.
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
dies in his own too-much.
That we would do,
we should do when we would.
For this "would" changes...
...and hath abatements and delays...
...as many as there are tongues,
are hands, are accidents.
And then this "should"
is like a spendthrift sigh...
...that hurts by easing.
But to the quick of the th' ulcer.
Hamlet comes back.
What would you undertake
to show yourself in deed your father's son...
...more than in words?
To cut his throat i' th' church.
No place indeed
should murder sanctuarize.
Revenge should have no bounds.
But, good Laertes, will you do this?
Keep close within your chamber.
Hamlet returned shall know
that you are come home.
We'll put on those shall praise
your excellence...
...and set a double varnish on the fame
the Frenchman gave you.
Bring you, in fine, together,
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 't.
And for that purpose
Ill 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...
...collected from all simples
that have virtue under the moon...
...can save the thing from death
that is but scratched withal.
Ill touch my point with this contagion,
that if I gall him slightly...
...it may be death.
Let's further think of this.
Weigh what convenience both of time
and means may fit us to our shape.
If this should fail...
...and that our drift look through
our bad performance...
...'twere better not essayed.
Therefore this project should have
a back or second that might hold...
...if this did blast in proof.
Soft, let me see.
We'll make a solemn wager
on your cunnings....
I have it.
When in your motion
you are hot and dry--
As make your bouts
more violent to that end.
--and that he calls for drink...
... Ill have prepared him a chalice
for the nonce, whereon but sipping...
...if he by chance escape
your venomed stuck...
[RUSTLING]
...our purpose may hold there.
But stay, what noise?
How now, sweet queen?
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 hoary leaves
in the glassy stream.
Therewith 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 pendent boughs...
...her crownet weeds clamb'ring 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
a while 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 endued
unto that element.
But long it could not be...
...till that her garments,
heavy with their drink...
...pulled the poor wretch
from her melodious lay to muddy death.
Alas, then she is drowned.
Drowned.
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.
[SOBBING]
When these are gone,
the woman will be out.
Adieu, my lord.
I have a speech of fire
that fain would blaze...
...but that this folly douts it.
Let's follow, Gertrude.
How much I had to do to calm his rage.
Now fear I this will give it start again.
Therefore...
...let's follow.
Is she to be buried in Christian burial
that willfully seeks her own salvation?
I tell thee she is,
therefore make her grave straight.
The coroner hath sat on her,
and finds it Christian burial.
How can that be unless she drowned herself
in her own defense?
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, and to perform.
Argal, she drowned herself wittingly.
-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.
-But is this law?
-Ay, marry, is 't: coroner's quest law.
Will you ha' the truth on 't?
If this had not been a gentlewoman...
...she should have been buried
out o' Christian burial.
Why, there thou sayst,
and the more pity...
...that great folk should have
count'nance in this world...
...to drown or hang themselves
more than their even Christian.
Come, my spade.
There is no ancient gentlemen
but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers.
-They hold up Adam's profession.
-Was he a gentleman?
-He was the first that ever bore arms.
-He had none.
What, art a heathen?
How dost thou understand the Scripture?
The Scripture says Adam digged.
Could he dig without arms?
Ill put another question to thee.
If thou answerest me not to the purpose,
confess thyself.
-Go to.
-What is he that builds stronger...
...than either the mason,
the shipwright, or the carpenter?
The gallows-maker.
For that frame
outlives a thousand tenants.
[BOTH LAUGHING]
I like thy wit well, in good faith.
The gallows does well.
But how does it well?
It does well to those that do ill.
Now, thou dost ill to say the gallows
is built stronger than the church.
Argal, the gallows may do well to thee.
To 't again, come.
"Who builds stronger than a mason,
a shipwright, or a carpenter?"
-Tell me that, and unyoke.
-Marry, I can tell.
To 't.
Mass, I cannot tell.
Cudgel thy brains no more about it...
...for your dull ass
will not mend his pace with beating.
And when you are asked this question next,
say "a grave-maker."
The houses that he makes
last till doomsday.
Go, get thee to Yaughan.
Fetch me a stoup of liquor.
[GULPING]
[GRAVEDIGGER SIGHS]
[SINGING]
In youth when I did love, did love
O methought it was very sweet
GRAVEDIGGER:
To contract-O-the time for-a-my behoove
O methought there-a-was nothing-a-meet
Has this fellow no feeling of his business
that he sings at grave-making?
Custom hath made it in him
a property of easiness.
HAMLET:
'Tis e'en so.
The hand of little employment
hath the daintier sense.
GRAVEDIGGER:
But age, with his stealing steps
Hath caught me in his clutch
And hath shipped me until the land
As if I had never been such
That skull had a tongue in it
and could sing once.
How the knave jowls it to th' ground
as if 'twere Cain's jawbone...
...that did the first murder.
This might be the pate of a politician
which this ass now o'er-reaches...
...one that would circumvent God,
might it not?
-lt might, my lord.
-Or of a courtier, which could say:
"Good morrow, sweet lord.
How dost thou, sweet lord?"
HAMLET: This might be my Lord Such-a-one,
that praised my Lord Such-a-one's horse...
...when a meant to beg it, might it not?
Ay, my lord.
Why, even so,
and now my Lady Worm's...
[GRAVEDIGGER WHISTLING
AND HUMMING]
...chapless, and knocked
about the mazard with a sexton's spade.
Here's fine revolution,
and we had the trick to see 't.
Did these bones cost no more the breeding
but to play at loggats with them?
Mine ache to think on 't.
HAMLET:
Ha, there's another.
Why might not that be the skull
of a lawyer?
Where be his quiddits now, his quillets,
his cases, his tenures, and his tricks?
HAMLET: 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? Hmm?
This fellow might be in 's time
a great buyer of land...
...with his statutes,
his recognizances, his fines...
...his double vouchers, his recoveries.
Is this the fine of his fines
and the recovery of his recoveries...
...to have his fine pate full of fine dirt?
Will his vouchers
vouch him no more of his purchases...
...and double ones too, than the length
and breadth of a pair of indentures?
The very conveyances of his land
will scarcely lie in this box...
...and must th' inheritor himself
have no more, huh?
Not a jot more, my lord.
Is not parchment made of sheepskins?
Ay, my lord, and of calfskins too.
They are sheep and calves
which seek out assurance in that.
HAMLET:
I will speak to this fellow.
-Whose grave's this, sir?
-Mine, sir.
[SINGING]
O, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet
I think it be thine, for thou liest in 't.
You lie out on 't, 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 'tis 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.
-For 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.
We must speak by the card,
or equivocation will undo us.
By the Lord, Horatio, these three years
I have taken note of it.
The age is grown so picked
that the toe of the peasant...
...comes so near the heel of the courtier
he galls his kibe.
How long hast thou been a grave-maker?
Of all the days i' th' year,
I came to 't that day...
...that our last king, Hamlet,
o'ercame Fortinbras.
-How long is that since?
-Cannot you tell that?
Every fool can tell that.
lt was the very day
that young Hamlet was born.
He that was 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, 'tis no great matter there.
-Why?
-'Twill not be seen in him there.
There the men are as mad as he.
[HORATIO CHUCKLES]
-How came he mad?
-Very strangely, they say.
-How strangely?
-Faith, e'en with losing his wits.
-Upon what ground?
-Why, here in Denmark.
[HAMLET GROANS]
I have been sexton here,
man and boy, for 30 years.
How long will a man lie
i' th' earth ere he rot?
I' faith, if he be not rotten before he die--
As we have many pocky corpses nowadays
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 water is a sore decayer
of your whoreson dead body.
Here's a skull, sir, now.
This skull has lain in the earth
three-and-twenty years.
-Whose was it?
-A whoreson mad fellow's it was.
-Whose do you think it was?
-Nay, I know not.
Ooh, 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.
HAMLET: And now, how abhorred
in my imagination it is.
My gorge rises at it.
Here hung those lips that I have kissed
I know not how oft.
Where be your gibes now...
...your gambols, your songs,
your flashes of merriment...
...that were wont
to set the table on a roar?
Not one now to mock your own grinning?
Quite chop-fallen?
Now, get you to my lady's chamber...
...tell her, let her paint an inch thick,
to this favor she must come.
HAMLET:
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' th' earth?
E'en so.
And smelt so? Pfft.
E'en so, my lord.
To what base uses
we may return, Horatio.
Why may not imagination
trace the noble dust of Alexander...
...till a find it stopping a bunghole?
'Twere to consider too curiously
to consider so.
No, faith, not a jot, but to follow him
thither with modesty enough...
...and likelihood to lead it, as thus.
HAMLET:
Alexander died, Alexander was buried.
Alexander returneth to dust,
the dust is earth...
...of earth we make loam,
and why of that loam...
...whereto he was converted,
might they not stop a beer-barrel?
HAMLET: Imperious Caesar,
dead and turned to clay...
...might stop a hole
to keep the wind away.
O, that that earth...
...which kept the world in awe...
...should patch a wall
t' expel the winter's flaw.
[BIRD SCREECHING
AND THEN RUSTLING]
HAMLET:
But soft.
But soft, aside.
Here comes the king,
the queen, the courtiers.
HAMLET: Who is this they follow,
and with such maimed rites?
This doth betoken the corpse they follow
did with desp'rate hand fordo its own life.
HAMLET:
'Twas of some estate.
Couch we a while, and mark.
What ceremony else?
That is Laertes, a very noble youth.
Mark.
What ceremony else?
Her obsequies have been as far enlarged
as we have warrantise.
Her death was doubtful...
...and but that great command
o'ersways the order...
...she should in ground unsanctified
have lodged till the last trumpet.
For charitable prayers, shards, flints,
and pebbles should be thrown on her.
Yet here she has her virgin rites,
her maiden strewments...
...and the bringing home
of bell and burial.
Must there no more be done?
No more be done.
PRIEST: We should profane
the service of the dead...
...to sing sage requiem and such rest to her
as to peace-parted souls.
Lay her i' th' earth.
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
may violets spring.
I tell thee, churlish priest...
...a minist'ring angel shall my sister be
when thou liest howling.
What?
Fair Ophelia.
GERTRUDE:
Sweets to the sweet.
Farewell.
I hoped thou shouldst have been
my Hamlet's wife.
l thought thy bridebed
to have decked, sweet maid...
...and not t' have strewed thy grave.
O, treble woe...
...fall 10 times treble
on that cursed head...
...whose wicked deed
thy most ingenious sense...
...deprived thee of.
[SHOUTS]
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!
HAMLET: What is he whose grief
bears such an emphasis...
...whose phrase of sorrow
conjures the wand'ring stars...
...and makes them stand
like wonder-wounded hearers?
This is I, Hamlet the Dane!
The devil take thy soul.
[GRUNTING]
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
which let thy wisdom fear.
-Hold off thy hand.
-Pluck them asunder.
Hamlet, Hamlet!
Good my lord, be quiet.
Ill fight with him upon this theme
until my eyelids 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 a thou'lt do.
Woo't weep, woo't fight, huh...
...woo't fast, woo't tear thyself,
woo't drink up eisel, eat a crocodile?
Ill do 't.
Dost thou come here to whine,
to outface me with leaping in her grave?
Be buried quick with her, and so will l.
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,
Ill rant as well as thou.
This is mere madness...
...and thus awhile
the fit will work on him.
Anon, as patient as the female dove...
...when that her golden couplets
are disclosed, his silence will sit drooping.
Hear you, sir.
HAMLET:
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.
I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon him.
[WHISPERING] Strengthen your patience
in our last night's speech.
We'll put the matter to the present push.
CLAUDIUS:
Good Gertrude...
...set some watch over your son.
This grave shall have a living monument.
An hour of quiet shortly shall we see.
Till then, in patience our proceeding be.
So much for this, sir.
Now shall you see the other.
-You do remember all the circumstance?
-Remember it, my lord.
Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
that would not let me sleep.
Methought I lay
worse than the mutines in the bilboes.
Rashly, and praised be rashness for it...
...let us know our indiscretion
sometimes serve us well...
...when our deep plots do pall...
...and that should learn us
there's a divinity that shapes our ends.
-Rough-hew them how we will.
-That is most certain.
Up from my cabin, my sea-gown
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 unseal their grand commission,
where I found, Horatio--
O royal knavery.
--an exact command,
larded with many several sorts of reasons...
...importing Denmark's health
and England's too, with ho!
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 't possible?
Here's the commission,
read it at more leisure.
-But wilt thou hear how I did proceed?
-I beseech you.
Being thus benetted round
with villainies--
Ere I could make a prologue to my brains...
...they had begun the play.
--I sat me down,
devised a new commission, wrote it fair.
Ha, I once did hold it, as our statists do...
...a baseness to write fair and labored much
how to forget that learning.
But, sir, now, it did me yeoman's service.
-Wilt thou know th' effect of what I wrote?
-Ah, good.
An earnest conjuration from the king...
...as England was his faithful tributary...
...as love between them
like the palm might flourish...
...as peace should still
her wheaten garland wear...
...and stand a comma
'tween their amities...
...and many such like as-es
of great charge...
...that on the view
and know of these contents...
...without debatement further
more or less...
...he should those bearers
put to sudden death.
-Not shriving-time allowed.
-How was this sealed?
Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.
I had my father's signet in my purse...
...which was the model
of that Danish seal.
Folded the writ up
in the form of th' other...
...subscribed it, gave 't th' impression,
placed it safely...
...the changeling never known, ha.
Now, the next day was our sea-fight.
What to this was sequent
though know'st already.
So...
...Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to 't.
Why, man, they did make love
to this employment.
They are not near my conscience.
Their defeat
does by their own insinuation grow.
'Tis dangerous
when the baser nature comes...
...between the pass and fell incensed points
of mighty opposites.
Why, what a king is this.
Does it not, think'st thee,
stand me now upon--
He that hath killed my king
and whored my mother...
...popped in between th' election
and my hopes...
...thrown out his angle for my proper life,
and with such coz'nage.
--is 't not perfect conscience
to quit him with this arm?
And is 't not to be damned...
...to let this canker of our nature come
in further evil?
lt must be shortly known to him
from England...
...what is the issue of the business there.
It will be short.
The interim's 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.
For by the image of my cause,
I see the portraiture of his.
Ill court his favors.
[SIGHS]
But sure, the bravery of his grief
did put me into a tow'ring passion.
Peace, who comes here?
Your lordship is right welcome back
to Denmark.
I humbly thank you, sir.
HAMLET: Dost know this water-fly?
HORATIO: No, my lord.
Thy state is the more gracious,
for 'tis a vice to know him.
He hath much land, and fertile.
Let a beast be lord of beasts,
and his crib shall stand at the king's mess.
'Tis a chuff, but, as I say,
spacious in the possession of dirt.
OSRlC:
Sweet lord...
...if your friendship were at leisure, I should
impart a thing to you from His Majesty.
I will receive it, sir,
with all diligence of spirit.
Uh, put your bonnet to its right use.
'Tis for the head.
I thank your lordship, but 'tis very hot.
No, '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.
Ha, exceedingly, my lord.
It is very sultry, as 'twere--
I cannot tell how, ha-ha.
But, my lord, His Majesty bade me
signify to you...
...that he hath laid a great wager
on your head.
OSRIC: 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.
Sir, his definement
suffers no perdition in you.
HAMLET: Though I know
to divide him inventorially...
...would dizzy th' arithmetic of memory
and yaw neither in respect of his quick sail.
In the verity of extolment,
I take him to be a soul of great article...
...and his infusion of dearth and rareness,
as to make true diction of him...
...his semblable is his mirror...
...and who else would trace him,
his umbrage, nothing more.
Your lordship speaks
most infallibly of him.
The concernancy, sir?
Why do we wrap the gentleman...
-...in our more rawer breath?
-Sir?
Is 't not possible to understand
in another tongue?
You will to 't sire, really.
What imports the nomination
of this gentleman?
-Of Laertes?
-His purse is empty already.
All's golden words are spent.
-Of him, sir.
-I know you're not ignorant--
I would you did. Yet in faith if you did,
it would not much approve me. Well?
You are not ignorant
of what excellence Laertes is.
I dare not confess that,
lest I 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.
-Ha.
The king, sir, hath wagered
with him six Barbary horses...
-...against the which he has imponed--
-Imponed?
--as I take it, six French rapiers
and poniards...
...with their assigns,
as girdle, hanger, or 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?
I knew you must be edified
by the margin ere you had done.
The carriages, sir, are the hangers.
The phrase would be more germane
if we could carry cannon by our sides.
-I would it might be hangers till then.
-Ah, ha!
But on: six Barbary horses
against six French swords...
...their assigns,
and three liberal-conceited...
-Carriages.
-...carriages.
That's the French bet against the Danish.
Why is this "imponed," as you call it?
The king, sir, hath laid, sir, that
in a dozen passes between you 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.
How if I answer no?
I mean, my lord,
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.
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 shall gain nothing but my shame
and the odd hits.
-Shall I redeliver you e'en so?
-To this effect, sir.
After what flourish your nature will.
I commend my duty to your lordship.
Yours, yours.
HAMLET:
Um....
He does well to commend it himself,
there are no tongues else for 's turn.
This lapwing runs away
with the shell on his head.
He did comply with his dug
before he sucked it.
Thus has he-- And many more of the same
bevy that I know the drossy age dotes on.
--only got the tune of the time
and outward habit of encounter...
...a kind of yeasty collection...
...which carries them through and through
the most fanned and winnowed opinions...
...and do but blow them to their trial,
the bubbles are out.
My lord.
His Majesty commended him to you
by young Osric...
...who brings back to him,
that you attend him in the hall.
He sends to know if your pleasure hold
to play with Laertes...
-...or that you will take longer time.
-I am constant to my purposes.
They follow the king's pleasure:
If his fitness speaks, mine is ready.
Now or whensoever,
provided I be so able as now.
The king and queen and all
are coming down.
In happy time.
The queen desires you
to some gentle entertainment to Laertes...
...before you fall to play.
She well instructs me.
You will lose this wager, my lord.
I do not think so.
Since he went into France,
I have been in continual practice.
I shall win at the odds.
But thou wouldst not think
how ill all's here about my heart.
[SIGHS]
But it is no matter.
Nay, good my lord.
HAMLET:
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 knows aught
of what he leaves...
...what is 't 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're a gentleman.
HAMLET: This presence knows,
and you must needs have heard...
...how I am punished
with a sore distraction.
What I have done that might your nature,
honor, and exception roughly awake...
...I here proclaim was madness.
Was 't Hamlet wronged Laertes?
Never Hamlet.
If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away, and
when he's not himself does wrong Laertes...
...then Hamlet does it not,
Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then?
His madness.
If 't be so, Hamlet is of the faction
that is wronged.
His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy.
HAMLET: 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 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...
...until by some elder masters
of known honor...
... I have a voice and precedent of peace
to keep my name ungored.
But till that time,
I do receive your offered love like love...
...and will not wrong it.
I do embrace it freely...
...and will this brothers' wager
frankly play.
HAMLET:
Give us the foils. Come on.
-Come, one for me.
-Ill be your foil, Laertes.
In mine ignorance your skill shall,
like a star i' th' darkest night...
...stick fiery off indeed.
-You mock me, sir.
-No, by this hand.
Give them the foils, young Osric.
CLAUDIUS:
Cousin Hamlet, you know the wager?
Very well, my lord. Your grace
has laid the odds o' th' weaker side.
CLAUDIUS:
I do not fear it. I have seen you both.
But since he is bettered,
we have therefore odds.
This one's too heavy.
Let me see another.
This likes me well.
These foils have all a length?
Ay, my good lord.
Set me the stoups of wine
upon that table.
If Hamlet give the first or second hit,
or quit in answer of the third exchange...
...let all the battlements
their ordnance fire.
The king shall drink
to Hamlet's better breath...
...and in the cup
an union shall he throw...
...richer than that
which four successive kings...
...in Denmark's crown have worn.
CLAUDIUS:
Give me the cup...
...and let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
the trumpet to the cannoneer without...
...the cannons to the heavens,
the heaven to earth:
"Now the king drinks to Hamlet."
Come, begin.
And you, the judges...
...bear a wary eye.
-Come on, sir.
-Come, my lord.
[GRUNTING]
[GERTRUDE GASPS]
HAMELT: One!
-No!
Judgment!
A hit, a very palpable hit.
LAERTES: Well, again.
-Stay. Give me drink.
Hamlet, this pearl is thine.
Here's to thy health.
-Give him the cup.
-Ill play this bout first.
Set it by a while.
[GRUNTING]
HAMLET:
Come.
[GRUNTING]
Yes.
[LAERTES ROARS]
[LAERTES YELLS]
[CROWD MUMBLING]
[LAERTES SHOUTING]
Another hit. What say you?
A touch, a touch, I do confess.
[CROWD CHEERS]
Our son shall win.
He's fat and scant of breath.
Here, Hamlet, take my napkin.
Rub thy brows.
The queen carouses
to thy fortune, Hamlet.
Good madam.
[SHOUTS]
Gertrude!
Do not drink.
[GERTRUDE LAUGHS]
I will, my lord. I pray you, pardon me.
CLAUDIUS:
It is the poisoned cup.
It is too late.
I dare not drink yet, madam. By and by.
Come, let me wipe thy face.
My lord, Ill hit him now.
I do not think 't.
And yet 'tis almost
against my conscience.
Attack--!
[GUARD GRUNTS]
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.
[LAUGHTER]
Say you so?
Come on.
LAERTES:
Have at you now.
[HAMLET GRUNTS]
[HAMLET ROARING
AND THEN CROWD MURMURING]
[GRUNTING]
-Nothing neither way.
-Part them, they are incensed.
Nay, come again!
Look to the queen there, ho!
HORATIO:
They bleed on both sides.
[LAERTES SHOUTS
AND THEN SCREAMS]
[LAERTES GASPING]
How is 't, Laertes?
Why, as a woodcock
to mine own springe, Osric.
I am justly killed
with mine own treachery.
[HAMLET PANTING]
How does the queen?
She swoons to see them bleed.
GERTRUDE:
No, no...
...the drink.
GERTRUDE:
The drink.
O my dear Hamlet.
The drink, the drink.
I am poisoned.
Villainy.
Let the doors be locked!
-Treachery! Seek it out!
-It is here, Hamlet.
LAERTES:
Hamlet, thou art slain.
No med'cine in the world
can do thee good.
ln thee there is no haIf an hour of life.
The treacherous instrument
is in thy hand...
...unbated and envenomed.
The foul practice
hath turned itself on me.
LAERTES:
Lo, here I lie, never to rise again.
Thy mother's poisoned.
I can no more.
[CHOKING]
The king...
...the king's to blame.
Treason!
[THUD AND THEN OSRlC GROANS]
The point envenomed too?
Then, venom, to thy work.
Unh! O yet defend me, friends.
l am but hurt.
[CLAUDIUS SCREAMING]
[CLAUDIUS GRUNTING
AND THEN GAGGING]
Here, thou incestuous, murd'rous,
damned Dane...
...drink off this potion.
Is thy union here? Follow my mother.
He is justly serv'd.
It is a poison tempered by himself.
Exchange forgiveness with me,
noble Hamlet.
Mine and my father's death
come not upon thee...
...nor thine on me.
Heaven make thee free of it.
I follow thee.
I am dead, Horatio.
[HAMLET GROANING]
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 liv'st.
Report me and my cause aright
to the unsatisfied.
Never believe it.
l am more an antique Roman
than a Dane.
Here's yet some liquor left.
As thou'rt a man,
give me the cup. Let go!
By heaven!
Ill ha 't.
HAMLET:
O God, Horatio...
[CUP CLATTERS]
...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.
HAMLET:
And in this harsh world...
...draw thy breath in pain
to tell my story.
[CANNONS FIRING]
What warlike noise is this?
Young Fortinbras, with conquest
come from Poland...
...to th' ambassadors of England
gives this warlike volley.
I die, Horatio.
The potent poison
quite o'ercrows my spirit.
I cannot live
to hear the news from England...
...but I do prophesy...
...th' election lights on Fortinbras.
[GRUNTING]
He hath my dying voice.
So tell him...
...with th' occurents, more and less...
...which have solicited.
The rest...
...is...
...silence.
Now cracks a noble heart.
Good night...
...sweet prince...
...and flights of angels
sing thee to thy rest.
[DRUMS BEATING]
HORATIO:
Why does the drum come hither?
FORTIMBRAS:
Where is this sight?
HORATIO:
What is it you would see?
If aught of woe or wonder...
...cease your search.
This quarry cries on havoc.
FORTINBRAS:
O proud death...
...what feast is toward
in thine eternal cell...
...that thou so many princes at a shot
so bloodily hast struck?
[DOOR OPENS]
AMBASSADOR:
The sight is dismal...
...and our affairs from England
come too late.
The ears are senseless
that should give us hearing...
...to tell him his commandment
is fulfilled...
...that Rozencrantz and Guildenstern...
...are dead.
Where should we have our thanks?
Not from his mouth...
...had it th' ability of life to thank you.
He never gave commandment
for their death.
But since...
...so jump upon this bloody question...
...you from the Polack wars...
...and you from England,
are here arrived...
...give order that these bodies...
...high on a stage be placed to the view.
HORATIO:
And let me speak...
...to th' yet unknowing world
how these things came about.
HORATIO:
So shall you hear...
...of carnal...
...bloody...
...and unnatural acts...
...of accidental judgments...
...casual slaughters...
...of deaths put on by cunning
and forced cause.
And in this upshot...
...purposes mistook
fall'n on th' inventors' heads.
All this...
...can I truly deliver.
Let us haste to hear it...
...and call the noblest to the audience.
FORTINBRAS:
For me...
...with sorrow I embrace my fortune.
I have some rights of memory
in this kingdom...
...which now to claim my vantage
doth invite me.
Of that...
... I shall have also cause to speak...
...and from his mouth
whose voice will draw on more.
But let this same
be presently performed...
...even while men's minds are wild...
...lest more mischance
on plots and errors happen.
Let four captains bear Hamlet,
like a soldier, to the stage...
...for he was likely, had he been put on,
to have proved most royally.
FORTINBRAS: And for his passage,
the soldiers' music and the rites of war...
...speak loudly for him.
Take up the body.
Such a sight as this becomes the field...
...but here shows much amiss.
Go.
Bid the soldiers shoot.