- (DISTANT) Who's there? - Nay, answer me.
- Stand and unfold yourself. - Long live the king!
Bernardo?
- He. - You come most carefully upon your hour.
'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.
For this relief much thanks. 'Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart.
- Have you had quiet guard? - Not a mouse stirring.
Well, good night.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, the rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
I think I hear them. Stand, ho!
- Who's there? - (MAN) Friends to this ground.
- (2ND MAN) Liegemen to the Dane. - Good night.
- Farewell. Who hath relieved you? - Bernardo has my place.
Give you good night.
Holla! Bernardo!
Say, what, is Horatio there?
A piece of him.
Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.
- Has this thing appear'd again tonight? - I have seen nothing.
Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy, and will not let belief take hold of him
touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.
I have entreated him 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 awhile, and let us once again assail your ears,
that are so fortified against our story, what we have two nights seen.
Well, sit we down, and let us hear Bernardo speak of this.
Last night of all, when yond same star that's westward from the pole
had made his course to where now it burns,
Marcellus and myself, the bell beating one...
Peace! Look where it comes again!
In the same figure like the king that's dead.
Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio.
Looks it not like the king? Mark it, Horatio.
Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.
- It would be spoke to. - Question it, Horatio.
What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
together with that fair and warlike form
in which the majesty of buried Denmark did sometimes march?
By heaven, I charge thee speak!
- It is offended. - See, it stalks away.
Stay! Speak, speak!
I charge thee speak!
'Tis gone and will not answer.
How now, Horatio.
You tremble and look pale. Is not this more than fantasy?
Before my God, I might not this believe without the avouch of mine own eyes.
- Is it not like the king? - As thou art to thyself.
Such was the very armour he had on when he the ambitious Norway combated.
So frown'd he once, when in an angry parle, he smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
- 'Tis strange. - Thus twice before at this dead hour
with martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
In what particular thought to work I...
..I know not.
But in the gross and scope of mine opinion,
this bodes some strange eruption to our state.
Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
why this same strict and most observant watch so nightly toils the subject of the land,
and why such daily cast of brazen cannon and foreign mart for implements of war.
Who is't that can inform me?
That can I. At least the whisper goes so.
Our last king, whose image even but now appear'd to us,
was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride, dared to the combat;
in which our valiant Hamlet - for so we esteem'd him - did slay this Fortinbras,
who by a seal'd compact, well ratified by law and heraldry,
did forfeit, with his life, all his lands which he stood seized of, to the conqueror.
Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
of unimproved mettle, hot and full,
hath in the skirts of Norway here and there shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes
for food to some enterprise that hath a stomach in't,
which is none other, as it doth well appear, but to recover of us,
by strong hand and terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands so by his father lost.
This is the motive of our preparation.
I think it bee'en so. Well may it sort
that this portentous figure comes armed so like the king
that was and is the question of these wars.
But soft. Behold where it comes again!
I'll cross it though it blast me.
Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound or use of voice, speak to me.
If there be any good thing to be done that may to thee do ease, speak to me!
(COCK CROWS)
If thou art privy to thy country's fate, which foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!
- Stop it, Marcellus. - Shall I strike at it?
Do, if it will not stand.
(BERNARDO ) 'Tis here!
'Tis here!
'Tis gone!
We do it wrong to offer it the show of violence,
for it is invulnerable, and our vain blows malicious mockery.
- It was about to speak when the cock crew. - Then it started as 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,
the extravagant and erring spirit hies to his confine.
Of the truth herein, this present object made probation.
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that 'gainst that season wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
this bird of dawning singeth all night long.
And then no spirit dares stir abroad, the nights are wholesome,
then no planets strike, no fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
so hallow'd and gracious is that 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. Let us impart what we have seen tonight unto young Hamlet.
For upon my life, this spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Let's do't, I pray, and I this morning know where we shall find him most convenient.
(APPLAUSE)
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 be contracted in one brow of woe,
yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
that we with wisest sorrow think on him together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister,
now our queen, the imperial jointress to this warlike state,
have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,
with 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 barr'd your better wisdoms, which have gone with this affair along.
For all, our thanks.
Now follows that you know young Fortinbras, holding a weak supposal of our worth,
or thinking by our late dear brother's death our state to be disjoint,
he hath not fail'd to pester us, importing surrender of lands
lost by his father to our most valiant brother.
So much for him. Now for ourself. Thus much the business is:
we have here writ to Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras -
who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears of this his nephew's purpose -
to suppress his further gait herein, in that the proportions are made out of his subject.
We here dispatch you, Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,
for bearers of this greeting to old Norway;
giving you no further power to business with the king more than these articles allow.
Farewell. Let your haste commend your duty.
- In all things will we show our duty. - We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell.
And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?
You told us of some suit. What is't, Laertes?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane and lose your voice.
What wouldst thou beg that shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
The head is not more native to the heart than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
What wouldst thou have, Laertes?
My dread lord, your leave to return to France,
from whence I came to Denmark to show my duty in your coronation,
yet now I must confess, that duty done,
my thoughts bend again toward France and bow them to your gracious pardon.
Have you your father's leave? Polonius?
He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave by laboursome petition,
and at last upon his will I seal'd my hard consent:
I do beseech you, give him leave to go.
Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine, and thy best graces spend it at thy will.
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son.
A little more than kin, and less than kind.
- How is it the clouds still hang on you? - Not so, my lord.
I am too much i' the sun.
Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, and let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know'st 'tis common - all that live 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 passes show,
these but the trappings and the suits of woe.
'Tis sweet and commendable 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 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 unschool'd.
For what we know must be, 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.
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.
With no less nobility of love than that which father bears his son, do I impart toward you.
For your intent in going back to school in Wittenberg...
it is most retrograde to our desires, and we beseech you, remain here
in the cheer and comfort of our eye, our chiefest courtier, cousin, and son.
Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet. 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 but the great cannon to the clouds shall tell.
At the king's rouse, the heavens shall bruit again, re-speaking earthly thunder.
Come away.
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew.
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd his canon 'gainst self-slaughter!
O God.
God.
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't. Oh, fie!
'Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed.
Things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.
That it should come to this.
But two months dead - nay, not so much, not two -
so excellent a king, that was to this Hyperion to a satyr...
..so loving to my mother
that he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly.
Heaven and earth! Must I remember?
Why, she would hang on him as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on.
And yet, within a month...
Let me not think on't.
Frailty, thy name is woman!
A little month, or ere those shoes were old with which she follow'd my poor father's body,
like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she -
O, God! A beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourn'd longer -
married with my uncle,
my father's brother,
but no more like my father than I to Hercules.
Within a month,
ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears had left her galled eyes, she married!
O, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good.
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
- Hail to your lordship! - I am glad to see thee well.
Horatio, or I do forget myself.
The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
Sir, my good friend, I'll change that name with you.
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?
- Marcellus? - My good lord.
I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir. What in faith make you from Wittenberg?
- A truant disposition, good my lord. - I would not hear your enemy say so.
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. It was to see my mother's wedding.
- Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon. - Thrift, Horatio.
The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven or ever I had seen that day.
My father... Methinks I see my father...
Where, my lord?
In my mind's eye, Horatio.
I saw him once; a 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 awhile
with an attent ear, till I may deliver this marvel to you.
For God's love, let me hear.
Two nights together had Marcellus and Bernardo
on their watch in the middle of the night been thus encounter'd.
A figure like your father, armed at point exactly, cap-à-pie, appears before them
and with solemn march goes stately by them.
Thrice he walk'd by their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes
within his truncheon's length,
whilst they, distilled 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 kept the watch.
As they had deliver'd both in time, form of the thing, each word made good.
The apparition comes. I knew your father. These hands are not more like.
- But where was this? - Upon the platform.
- Did you not speak to it? - I did, but answer made it none.
Yet once methought it did address itself to motion like it would speak,
but even then the morning cock crew loud,
and at its sound it shrunk in haste away and vanish'd from our sight.
- 'Tis very strange. - As I do live, 'tis true.
We did think it our duty to let you know of it.
Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
- Hold you the watch tonight? - We do.
- Arm'd, you say? From top to toe? - From head to foot.
- Then saw you not his face? - He wore his beaver up.
- What look'd he, frowningly? - More in sorrow.
- Pale or red? - Very pale.
- Fix'd his eyes upon you? - Most constantly.
- Would I had been there. - It would have amazed you.
- Very like. Stay'd it long? - One might tell a hundred.
- (BOTH) 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 it will. - I'll speak to it,
though hell itself should bid me hold my peace.
If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight, let it be tenable in your silence still.
Whatsoever else shall hap tonight, give it an understanding, but no tongue.
I will requite your loves. Fare you well.
Upon the platform 'twixt eleven and twelve I'll visit you.
- Our duty to your honour. - Your loves, as mine to you. Farewell.
My father's spirit...in arms.
All is not well. I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come!
Till then sit still, my soul.
Foul deeds will rise,
though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
My necessaries are embark'd.
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 favour, hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
a violet in the youth of primy nature, forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
the perfume and suppliance of a minute, no more.
No more but so?
Think it no more.
Perhaps he loves you now, but you must fear,
his greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own.
For he himself is subject to his birth.
He may not, as unvalued persons do, carve for himself,
for on his choice depends the sanity of this whole state.
Therefore must his choice be circumscribed
unto the voice and yielding of that body whereof he is the head.
Then if he says he loves you, it fits your wisdom so far to believe it
as he in his particular act and place may give his saying deed,
which is no further than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain if with too credent ear you list his songs
or lose your heart...or your chaste treasure open to his unmaster'd importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia. Fear it, my dear sister...
..and keep you in the rear of your affection, out of the shot and danger of desire.
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep as watchman to my heart.
But good my brother, do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, whiles like a reckless libertine
himself the primrose path of dalliance treads and recks not his own rede.
O, fear me not.
Yet here, Laertes! Aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail, and you are stay'd for.
There.
My blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory look thou character.
Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel,
but do not dull thy palm with entertainment of each new-hatch'd, unfledged courage.
Beware of entrance to a quarrel,
but being in, bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not express'd in fancy. Rich, not gaudy,
for the apparel oft proclaims the man, and they in France of the best station
are of a most select and generous choice 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 ownself be true,
and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee.
Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
The time invites you. Go, your servants tend.
Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well what I have said to you.
'Tis in my memory lock'd, and you yourself shall keep the key of it.
Farewell.
What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?
So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.
Marry, well bethought. 'Tis told me, he hath oft of late given private time to you,
and you yourself have of your audience been free and bounteous.
What is between you? Hmm? Give me up the truth.
He hath of late made many tenders of his affection to me.
Affection? (SCOFFS) Pooh!
You speak like a green girl, unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
- Do you believe his "tenders"? - I do not know what I should think.
Marry, I shall teach you. You have ta'en tenders for true pay which are not sterling.
Tender yourself more dearly, or you'll tender me a fool.
He hath importuned me with love in honourable fashion.
Ay, fashion you may call it. 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 they are a-making, you must not take for fire.
In few, Ophelia, do not believe his vows.
This is for all. I would not, from this time forth,
have you so slander any moment's leisure as to talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to't, I charge you.
- Come your ways. - I shall obey, my lord.
The air bites shrewdly.
- It is very cold. - It is a nipping, eager air.
- What hour now? - It lacks of twelve.
- No, it is struck. - Indeed? I heard it not.
Then draws near the season wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
(FANFARE AND CANNONFIRE)
- What does this mean? - The king doth take his rouse,
keeps wassail, and the swaggering upspring reels.
As he drains his draughts of Rhenish,
the kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out the triumph of his pledge.
- Is it a custom? - Ay, marry, is't.
But to my mind, though I am to the manner born,
it is a custom more honour'd in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west makes us tax'd of other nations.
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase soil our addition.
Indeed it takes from our achievements 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 the 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 as infinite as man may undergo,
shall in the general censure take corruption from that particular fault.
Look, my lord! It comes!
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
be thy intents wicked or charitable, thou comest in such a questionable shape
that I will speak with thee.
I'll 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 sepulchre, wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws to cast thee up again.
What may this mean, that thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, making night hideous and we fools of nature
so horridly to shake our dispositions with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? Wherefore?
What should we do?
It beckons, as if it some impartment did desire with you.
- It waves you to removed ground. Do not go. - By no means, my lord.
- I will follow it. - Do not!
Why? I do not set my life in a pin's fee,
and for my soul, what can it do to that, being immortal as itself?
It waves me forth. I'll follow it.
What if it tempt you toward the flood or the summit of the cliff
and there assume some other horrible form, which might draw you into madness?
- Think of it! - It waves me still! Go on! I'll follow thee!
- You shall not go, my lord! - Hold off your hands! My fate cries out
and makes each petty artery in this body as hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve!
Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen.
By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me! I say away!
Go on. I'll follow thee.
- He waxes desperate with imagination. - Let's follow him.
- 'Tis not fit thus to obey him. - Have after.
- To what issue will this come? - Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
- Heaven will direct it. - Nay, let's follow him!
Whither wilt thou lead me?
Speak!
I'll go no further.
- Mark me. - I will.
Soon I to sulph'rous flames must render up myself.
- Alas, poor ghost! - Pity me not,
but lend me thy serious hearing.
Speak. I am bound to hear.
So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear.
What?
I am thy father's spirit,
doom'd to walk the night, and for the day confin'd to fast in fires,
till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away.
But that I am forbid, 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 locks to part, and each hair to stand on end
like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
But this eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood. List. O, list.
If thou didst ever thy dear father love...
- O God! - ..revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
- Murder?! - Murder most foul,
as in the best it is, but this most foul and unnatural.
Haste me to know't, that I with wings as swift as meditation
or the thoughts of love may sweep to my revenge.
I find thee apt. Duller shouldst thou be
than the fat weed that roots itself on Lethe wharf, wouldst thou not stir.
Now, Hamlet, hear.
'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, a serpent stung me -
so the whole ear of Denmark is by a forged process of my death rankly abused -
but know, noble youth, the serpent that did sting thy father's life now wears his crown.
O my prophetic soul. My uncle!
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, with witchcraft of his wit,
with traitorous gifts - 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 link'd,
will sate itself in a celestial bed and prey on garbage!
But, soft, methinks I scent the morning air. Brief let me be.
Sleeping within my orchard, my custom always of the afternoon,
upon my secure hour thy uncle stole with juice of cursed hebona in a vial,
and in the porches of my ears did pour the leperous distilment,
whose effect holds such an enmity with blood of man that it courses through the body,
and with a sudden vigour doth posset and curd the thin and wholesome blood.
So did it mine, and a most instant tetter bark'd about,
most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust all my smooth body.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand of life,
of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd,
cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,
no reckoning made, but sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head.
- O, horrible. - (HAMLET) O, horrible!
(GHOST) Most horrible.
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for 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, adieu.
Remember me.
(SOBS)
(WAILS IN ANGUISH) O all you host of heaven!
O earth!
What else? And shall I couple hell?
Fie! Fie!
Hold, hold, my heart!
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, but bear me stiffly up.
Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat in this distracted globe.
Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
that youth and observation copied there,
and thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain,
unmix'd with baser matter.
Yes.
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 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.
(HORATIO ) My lord? My lord?
(MARCELLUS) Lord Hamlet? (HORATIO ) Heaven secure him!
- So be it! - (MARCELLUS) Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!
(SCREECHES) Hillo, ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!
- Come, bird, come! - How is't, my noble lord?
- What news? - Wonderful!
- My lord, tell it. - No, you will reveal it.
- Not I, by heaven. - Nor I.
- How say you then, you'll be secret? - Ay, by heaven, my lord.
There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark...but he's an arrant knave.
There needs no ghost to tell us this.
Why, you are in the right. So I hold it fit that we shake hands and part,
you as your desire shall point you - for every man hath desire, such as it is -
and for mine own poor part, I'll go pray.
- These are but wild and whirling words. - I'm sorry they offend you, heartily.
- Yes faith, heartily. - There's no offence.
Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio, and much offence too.
Touching this vision here, it is an honest ghost.
For your desire to know what is between us, o'ermaster't as you may.
Now, good friends, as you are friends, scholars and soldiers, give me one request.
- What? We will. - Never make known what you have seen.
- We will not. - Nay, but swear't.
- In faith, not I. - Nor I, in faith.
- Upon my sword. - We have sworn already.
Indeed, upon my sword, indeed!
(GHOST) Swear.
(MANIACALLY) Boy, say'st thou so? Art thou there, truepenny?
Come on! You hear this fellow in the cellarage. Consent to swear.
- Propose the oath, my lord. - Never to speak of this.
- Swear by my sword. - (GHOST) Swear.
Hic et ubique? Then we'll shift our ground.
Come hither and lay your hands again upon my sword.
Swear never to speak of this that you have heard.
(GHOST) Swear by his sword.
Well said, old mole! Canst work in the earth so fast?
A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends.
Day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
But come, here, as before, never, how strange or odd soe'er I bear myself -
as I perchance hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on -
that you, seeing me, ne'er shall,
with arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake, or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase
as "Well, well, we know," or "We would and if we could,"
or "If we list to speak," or such ambiguous giving out,
to note that you know aught of me - this do swear,
so grace and mercy at your most need help you.
(GHOST) Swear.
Rest. Rest, perturbed spirit.
So...
Gentlemen, with all my love I do commend me to you.
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.
(GASPS, THEN LAUGHS DEMENTEDLY)
Nay, come, let's go together.
Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.
- I will, my lord. - You shall do marvellous wisely,
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 where they keep, what company, at what expense,
and finding by this 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 - "I know his father and his friends, and in part him."
- Do you mark this, Reynaldo? - Very well, my lord.
"And in part him... But", you may say "not well, and if't be he I mean, he's very wild,
"addicted...so and so." and there put on him what forgeries you please,
marry, none so rank as may dishonour him,
but such wanton, wild and usual slips as are companions most known to youth and liberty.
As gaming, my lord.
Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing,
quarrelling...drabbing, you may go so far.
My lord, that would dishonour him.
'Faith, no, as you may season it in the charge.
- But, my good lord... - Wherefore should you do this?
- Ay, I would know that. - Marry, sir, here's my drift -
you laying these slight sullies on my son, 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 "friend", or "gentleman", according to the addition of man and country.
Very good, my lord.
And then, sir, does a this... Does... What was I about to say?
I was about to say something. Where did I leave?
At "closes in the consequence", at "friend" and "gentleman".
At "closes in the consequence"...?
Ay, marry! He closes thus -
"I know the gentleman. I saw him yesterday" - or t'other day, with such, or 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 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. - Good my lord!
- Observe his inclination in yourself. - I shall, my lord.
Let him ply his music.
- Well, my lord. - Farewell.
How now, Ophelia!
(SOBS)
- What's the matter? - My lord, I have been so affrighted!
With what, in the name of God?
My lord, as I was sewing in my closet, Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd,
no hat upon his head, his stockings foul'd,
ungarter'd and down-gyved to his ancle, 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 I do fear it.
- What said he? - He took me by the wrist and held me hard,
then goes he to the length of all his arm, and with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
he falls to such perusal of my face as he would draw it.
Long stay'd he so. At last, a little shaking of mine arm
and thrice his head thus waving up and down...
..he raised a sigh so piteous and profound
as it did seem to shatter all his bulk and end his being.
That done, he lets me go,
and with his head over his shoulder turn'd, he seem'd to find his way without his eyes;
For out o' doors he went without their helps, and to the last bended their light on me.
Come.
Go with me. I will go seek the king.
This is the very ecstasy of love. Have you given him any hard words of late?
No, my lord, but I did repel his letters and denied his access to me.
That hath made him mad.
I am sorry that with better judgment I had not quoted him.
I fear'd he did but trifle, and meant to wreck thee. Now I'm sorry.
Go we to the king. This must be known,
which, being kept close, might move more grief to hide than hate to utter love.
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, sith nor 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 the understanding of himself, I cannot deeme of.
I entreat you both that, being so neighbour'd to his youth and havior,
that you vouchsafe your rest here some little time,
so by your companies to draw him on to pleasures and to gather, so much as you may,
whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus that, open'd, lies within our remedy.
Good gentlemen, two men there is not living to whom he more adheres.
Both Your Majesties might put your dread pleasures more into command than to entreaty.
But we both obey and give up ourselves in the full bent
to lay our service freely at your feet.
Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.
Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.
And I beseech you instantly to visit my too much changed son.
Heaven make our presence and our practises pleasant and helpful to him.
Ay.
Amen.
The ambassadors from Norway, my good lord, are joyfully return'd.
Thou still hast been the father of good news.
Have I, my lord?
I assure my liege, I hold my duty as I hold my soul, both to my God and my king,
and I do think - or else this brain hunts not the trail of policy so sure as it did -
that I have found the very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.
O, speak of that. That do I long to hear.
Give first admittance to the ambassadors. My news shall be the fruit to that feast.
Thyself do grace to them and bring them in.
He tells me, dear Gertrude, he hath found the source of all your son's distemper.
I doubt it is no other but the main,
his father's death and our...o'erhasty marriage.
Well...we shall sift him.
(APPLAUSE)
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 appear'd to be a preparation 'gainst the Polack.
Better look'd into, he truly found it was against Your Highness,
whereat grieved that so his sickness 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 never more to give the assay of arms against Your Majesty.
Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy, gives him threescore thousand crowns in annual fee
and his commission to employ those soldiers so levied as before against the Polack,
with an entreaty that it might please you to give quiet pass
through your dominions for this enterprise
on such regards of safety and allowance as therein are set down.
It likes us well. Go to your rests.
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 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, 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. I have a daughter - have while she is mine -
who in her duty and obedience, mark, hath given me this.
Now gather and surmise.
"To the celestial and my soul's idol, the most beautified Ophelia..."
That's an ill phrase. It's a vile phrase. "Beautified" is a vile phrase.
But you shall hear. Thus, "ln her excellent white bosom, these...et cetera"
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.
"O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers.
"I have not art to reckon my groans, but that I love thee best, O more best, believe it.
"Adieu. Thine evermore most dear lady,
"whilst this machine is to him, Hamlet."
This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me.
But how hath she received his love?
- What do you think of me? - As of a man honourable.
I would fain prove so.
But what might you think, when I had seen this hot love on the wing -
as I perceived it before my daughter told me -
what might you or your queen here think if I had play'd the desk or table-book,
or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb, or look'd upon this love 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. This must not be."
Then I prescripts 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, repelled - a short tale to make -
fell into a sadness, thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
thence into a lightness, and by this declension,
into the madness wherein now he raves, and all we mourn for.
Do you think 'tis this?
- It may be, very likely. - Take this from this if this be otherwise.
How may we try it further?
You know sometimes he walks four hours together here in the lobby.
At such a time, I'll loose my daughter to him.
Be you and I behind an arras then, mark the encounter.
If he love her not, let me be no assistant for a state, but keep a farm and carters.
We will try it.
But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.
Away, I do beseech you, both away. I'll board him presently.
- How does my good Lord Hamlet? - Well... God-a-mercy.
- Do you know me, my lord? - Excellent well.
- You are a fishmonger. - Not I.
- Then I would you were so honest a man. - Honest?
To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
- That's very true, my lord. - If the sun breed maggots in a dead dog...
- 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 't.
How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter.
Yet he knew me not, said I was a fishmonger. A is far gone, far gone.
And yet in my youth I suffered much extremity for love, very near this.
I'll speak to him again.
What do you read, my lord?
Words.
Words. Words.
What is the matter, my lord?
- Between who? - I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
Slanders, sir. For the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards,
that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum...
..that they have a plentiful lack of wit and weak hams,
all which, though I most potently 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.
(CHUCKLES)
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
I'll speak to him again.
- My lord, will you walk out of the air. - lnto my grave?
Indeed, that's out of the air.
How pregnant sometimes his replies are! My lord, I will take my leave of you.
You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal...
except my life...
except my life...except my life!
Fare you well, my lord.
These tedious old fools.
You seek the Lord Hamlet.
- There he is. - God save you, sir.
- My honoured lord! - My most dear lord!
My excellent good friends!
How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz.
Good lads, how do ye both?
- As the indifferent children of the earth. - Happy in that we are not over-happy.
- On fortune's cap we are not the button. - Nor the soles of her shoe.
- Then you live about her waist. - Faith, her privates we.
(ALL LAUGH COARSELY)
In the secret parts of fortune?
O, 'tis true...she is a strumpet.
What news?
None, my lord...but that the world's grown honest.
Then is doomsday near.
But your news is not true.
Let me question more in particular. What have you, my good friends,
deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?
- Prison, my lord? - Denmark's a prison.
- Then is the world one. - One in which there are many dungeons.
- Denmark being one of the worst. - We think not so.
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 nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space
were it not that...l 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. Shall we to the court?
- (BOTH) We'll wait upon you. - No such matter.
I will not sort you with the rest of my servants, for 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, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for?
Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation?
Come, come. Deal justly with me.
Come. Nay, speak.
- What should we say, my lord? - Why, anything, but to the purpose.
You were sent for. There is a kind of confession in your looks,
which your modesties have not craft enough to colour:
I know the good king and queen have sent for you.
- To what end, my lord? - That you must teach me.
But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship and the obligation of our love,
be even and direct with me whether you were sent for or no?
- What say you? - Nay, then I have an eye of you!
If you love me, hold not off.
My lord, we were sent for.
I will tell you why, so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery,
and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no feather.
I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth,
forgone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition
that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory...
..this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire...
..why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man.
How noble in reason, how infinite in 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. - (LAUGHS)
No, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
- There was no such stuff in my thoughts. - Why did you laugh then?
To think if you delight not in man, what entertainment the players shall receive.
We coted them on the way. Hither are they coming to offer you service.
He that plays the king shall be welcome. His Majesty shall have tribute of me.
- What players are they? - Those you were wont to take delight in.
How chances it they travel?
Their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.
Their inhibition comes by means of the late innovation.
Do they hold the same estimation as they did?
- No, indeed. - Do they grow rusty?
Their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace, but there is an eyrie of children,
little eyases, that cry out on the top of question and are most tyrannically clapped for't.
These are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages
that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and dare scarce come thither.
What, are they children? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing?
Will they not say when they shall grow themselves to common players?
Their writers make them exclaim against their own succession.
There's been much to do. The nation holds it no sin to tar them to controversy.
It is not very strange, for my uncle is the king of Denmark,
and those that would make mows at him while my father lived
now give a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little.
'Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.
(FANFARE)
There are the players. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands.
The appurtenance of welcome is fashion. Let me comply with you in this garb.
You are welcome. 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.
- Well be with you, gentlemen. - Hark you, Guildenstern,
and you - at each ear a hearer.
That great baby is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts.
I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players; mark it.
You say right, sir, Monday morning; 'twas then indeed.
My lord, I have news.
(MOCKINGLY) My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in Rome.
- The actors are come hither, my lord. - Buzz, buzz!
- Upon my honour... - Then came each actor on his ass...
The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral,
pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical...
(BOTH) ..tragical-comical-historical-pastoral...
..scene individable or poem unlimited -
Seneca cannot be too heavy or Plautus too light. These are the only men.
O Jephthah, judge of lsrael, 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 in the right?
I have a daughter that I love passing well.
- Nay, that follows not. - What follows, then, my lord?
Why, "As by lot...God wot..."
But look where my abridgement comes!
(LAUGHTER AND MUSIC)
Welcome, all. I am glad to see thee well.
Welcome, good friends.
Ah, my old friend!
Why, thy face is valenced since I saw thee last. Com'st thou to beard me in Denmark?
What, my young lady and mistress?
Your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the altitude of a chopine.
Pray God your voice, like apiece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.
(SINGS HIGH NOTE)
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, a passionate speech.
- What speech, my good lord? - I heard thee speak me a speech once,
but it was never acted, or not above once, for the play pleased not the million.
'Twas caviare to the general. One speech in it I chiefly loved.
'Twas Aeneas' tale to Dido,
and thereabout of it especially where he speaks of Priam's slaughter.
If it live within your memory, begin at this line -
let me see, let me see... "The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast..."
No. 'Tis not so. It begins with Pyrrhus.
"The rugged Pyrrhus...he whose sable arms,
"Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
"When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
"Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
"With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot
"Now is he total gules, 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'd,
"Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide;
"But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
"The unnerved father falls.
"Then senseless llium, Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
"Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear..."
- 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 had seen the mobbled queen..." - The mobbled queen.
Oh, that's good. Mobbled queen's 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'er-teemed loins, A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up -
"Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
"'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounced:
"But if the gods themselves did see her then,
"When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
"In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
"The instant burst of clamour that she made,
"Unless things mortal move them not at all,
"Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
"And passion in the gods!"
Look, whe'er he has not changed his colour and has tears in's eyes. Prithee no more.
'Tis well.
I'll have thee speak out the rest of this...soon.
Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed?
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.
- I shall use them according to their desert. - God's bodykins, man, much better.
Use every man after his desert and who shall 'scape whipping?
Use them after your own honour and dignity.
The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
Take them in.
Come...sirs.
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 study a speech of some dozen lines,
which I would set down and insert in't, could you not?
- Ay, my lord. - Very well. Follow that lord,
and look you mock him not.
- My good friends! - (THEY LAUGH)
I'll leave you till night. You are welcome to Elsinore.
- Good my lord. - Ay, so.
God buy you.
Now...
..I am alone.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I.
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
but in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
could force his soul so to his own conceit that from her working all his visage wann'd,
tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, a broken voice,
and his whole function suiting with forms to his conceit?
And all for nothing.
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, 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 appal the free,
confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed the very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak like John-a-dreams,
unpregnant of my cause, and can say nothing...
no...not for a king...
..upon whose property and most dear life a damn'd defeat was made.
Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across, plucks off my beard and blows it in my face,
tweaks me by the nose, gives me the lie in the throat as deep as to the lungs?
Who does me this? Ha!
'Swounds, I should take it,
for I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall to make oppression bitter,
or ere this I should have fatted all the region kites with this slave's offal.
Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am l!
This is most brave,
that I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, must like a whore unpack my heart with words,
and fall a-cursing, like a very drab, a scullion! Fie upon't! Foh!
About, my brain.
I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play
have by the very cunning of the scene been struck so to the soul
that presently they have proclaim'd their malefactions,
for murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ.
I'll have these players play something like my father's murder before mine uncle.
I'll observe his looks. I'll tent him to the quick.
If he but blench, I know my course.
The spirit that I have seen may be a devil,
and the devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape,
yea...and perhaps out of my weakness and my melancholy,
as he is very potent with such spirits, abuses me
to damn...me.
I'll have grounds more relative than this.
The play's the thing
wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
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 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 confess his true state.
- Did he receive you well? - Like a gentleman.
- But with much forcing of his disposition. - Niggard of question, but free in his reply.
- Did you assay him to any pastime? - Certain players we o'erraught on the way.
There did seem in him a kind of joy to hear of it:
They have already order to play before him.
'Tis most true. He beseech'd me to entreat Your Majesties to see the matter.
With all my heart, and it doth much content me to hear him so inclined.
Good gentlemen, drive his purpose in to these delights.
- We shall, my lord. - Sweet Gertrude, leave us too,
for we have 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.
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 ways again,
to both your honours.
Madam, I wish it may.
Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious, so please you, we will bestow ourselves.
Read on this book, that show of such an exercise may colour your loneliness.
We are oft to blame in this. With 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 plastering art,
is not more ugly to the thing that helps it than is my deed to my most painted word.
- O heavy burden! - I hear him coming. Let's withdraw, my lord.
To be...or not to be...
that is the question -
whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
and by opposing end them.
To die...
..to sleep...
..no more, and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache
and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,
'tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd.
To die...
..to sleep...
...to sleep, perchance to dream.
Ay, there's the rub.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.
There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong,
the proud man's contumely...
..the pangs of despised love...
..the law's delay, the insolence of office, the spurns that merit of the unworthy takes,
when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin?
Who would these fardels bear,
to grunt and sweat under a weary life,
but that the dread of something after death...
the undiscover'd country
from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will...
and makes us rather bear those ills we have
than fly to others 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 pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry...
and lose the name of action.
Soft you now, the fair Ophelia!
Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remember'd.
Good my lord, how does your honour for this many a day?
(LAUGHS MOCKINGLY)
I humbly thank you. Well, well, 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 honour'd lord, you know right well you did,
and with them words of so sweet breath composed as made the things more rich.
Their perfume lost, take these again,
for to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
- There, my lord. - Ha... Ha...
- Are you honest? - My lord?
- Are you fair? - What means your lordship?
Your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.
Could beauty have better commerce than with honesty?
Ay, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is into 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.
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?
Myself, I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.
(SHOUTS) I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious,
with more offences at my beck than I have time to act them in.
What should such fellows as I do? We are arrant knaves, all. Believe none of us.
Go thy ways to a nunnery.
Where's your father?
At home, my lord.
Let the doors be shut upon him,
(SOBS) that he may play the fool nowhere but in his own house.
- Farewell. - O, help him, you sweet heavens!
If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry - be thou as pure as snow,
thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery.
Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool.
For wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them.
To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell.
- Heavenly powers, restore him! - I have heard of your paintings too!
God has given you one face, you make another. You jig, amble, lisp,
you nick-name God's creatures, you make your wantonness your ignorance.
Go to, I'll no more on't!
It hath made me mad.
I say, we will have no more marriages.
Those that are married already, all but one, shall live.
The rest shall keep as they are.
To a nunnery, go.
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword,
the expectancy and rose of the fair state, the glass of fashion and the mould of form,
the observed of all observers, quite, quite down.
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched...
..that suck'd the honey of his music vows, now see that noble and most sovereign reason
like sweet bells jangled out of time and harsh,
that unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth blasted with ecstasy.
O, woe is me to have seen what I have seen...
..see what I see.
Love? His affections do not that way tend,
nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little, was not like madness.
There's something in his soul o'er which his melancholy sits on brood.
I do doubt the hatch will be some danger,
which to prevent, he shall 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 from fashion of himself.
It shall do well, but yet do I believe 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 entreat him to show his grief.
Let her be round with him. I'll be placed in the ear of 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 as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue,
but if you mouth it, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.
Nor do not saw the air too much with your hands, thus, but use all gently;
for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion,
you must acquire a temperance that may give it smoothness.
- I warrant your honour. - Be not too tame neither.
Let your own discretion be your tutor.
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action;
with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.
For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing,
whose end, both at the first and now,
was and is to hold, as '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 make the unskilful laugh,
cannot but make the judicious grieve;
the censure of the which one must in your allowance outweigh a theatre of others.
- Mmm... - (ALL LAUGH)
Go make you ready.
How now? 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.
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.
- My dear lord... - Do not think I flatter.
What advancement may I hope from thee that no revenue hast but thy good spirits to feed thee?
Why should the poor be flatter'd? Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice and could of men distinguish,
her election hath seal'd thee for herself.
For thou hast been as one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
a man that fortune's buffets and rewards hast ta'en with equal thanks,
and blest are those whose blood and judgment are so well commeddled
that they are not a pipe for fortune's fingers 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 of it comes near the circumstance which I have told thee of my father's death.
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, it is a damned ghost that we have seen,
and my imaginations are as foul as Vulcan's stithy.
Well, my lord, if he steal aught whilst this play is playing and 'scape detecting,
- I will pay the theft. - (FANFARE)
They are coming to the play. I must be idle.
Get you a place.
Ah!
- 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.
My lord, you played once in the university, you say?
That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.
- What did you enact? - I did enact Julius Caesar.
I was killed in the Capitol. Brutus killed me.
'Twas a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.
(ALL LAUGH)
- Be the players ready? - They stay upon your patience.
Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
No, good Mother, here's metal more attractive.
- Do you mark that? - Shall I lie in your lap?
- No, my lord. - I mean, my head upon your lap?
- Ay, my lord. - Did you think I meant country matters?
I think nothing, my lord.
A fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
- What is, my lord? - Nothing.
- You are merry, my lord. - Who, I? O God, your only jig-maker!
What should a man do but be merry?
For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.
- Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord. - So long?
Let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens!
Died two months and not forgotten yet!
Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year.
(MERRY CHAMBER MUSIC)
(SINISTER MUSIC)
- What means this, my lord? - Marry, this is miching mallecho.
It means mischief.
Belike this show imports the argument of the play.
We shall know by this fellow. The players cannot keep counsel. They'll tell all!
For us, and for our tragedy, Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently.
Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
- 'Tis brief, my lord. - As woman's love.
Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands Unite commutual in most sacred bands.
So many journeys may the sun and moon Make us again count o'er ere love be done!
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.
Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too: My operant powers their functions leave to do;
And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honour'd, beloved; and haply one as kind
- For husband shalt thou... - O, confound the rest!
Such love must needs be treason in my breast.
In second husband let me be accurst! None wed the second but who kill'd the first.
Wormwood! Wormwoo...!
The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.
A second time I kill my husband dead, When second husband kisses me in bed.
I do believe you think what now you speak, But what we do determine oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory, Of violent birth, but poor validity.
So think thou wilt no second husband wed,
But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.
Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light,
Sport and repose lock from me day and night,
To desperation turn my trust and hope,
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, lf, once a widow, ever I be wife.
- If she should break it now. - 'Tis deeply sworn.
Sweet, leave me here awhile.
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.
Sleep rock thy brain,
And never come mischance between us twain!
Madam, how like you this play?
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
O, but she'll keep her word.
Have you heard the argument?
- Is there no offence in 't? - No, they do but jest, poison in jest.
What do you call the play?
"The Mousetrap", marry, how tropically.
It is the image of a murder done in Vienna. Gonzago is the duke, his wife Baptista.
You shall see anon. 'Tis a knavish piece of work, but what o' that?
Your Majesty and we that have free souls, it touches us not.
Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.
This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.
Begin, murderer.
Pox, leave your 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 usurps immediately.
(WAILS)
He poisons him in the garden for his estate!
His name's Gonzago. The story is extant.
You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
- The king rises. - What, frighted with false fire?
- How fares my lord? - Give o'er the play.
Give me some light.
- Away! - Lights, lights, lights!
(HAMLET LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY)
(HAMLET) # Why, let the stricken deer go weep
# The hart ungalled play
# For some must watch, while some must sleep
# Thus runs the world away #
O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound.
- Didst perceive? - Very well, my lord.
- Upon the talk of the poisoning? - I did very well note him.
Ha! Come, some music! Come, the recorders!
# For if the king like not the comedy, Why then, belike, he likes it not, perdie #
- Come, some music! - My lord, vouchsafe me a word.
- Sir, a whole history. - The king...
- Ay, sir, what of him? - ..is in his retirement distempered.
- With drink, sir? - Rather with choler.
Signify this to his doctor.
For me to put him to his purgation would plunge him into far more choler.
Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame and start not so wildly from my affair.
I am tame, sir. Pronounce.
The queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.
- You are welcome. - This courtesy is not of the right breed.
If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother's commandment.
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. No more, but to the matter.
Then thus she says - your behaviour hath struck her into amazement and admiration.
O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother!
Is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's admiration? lmpart.
She desires to speak with you in her closet, ere you go to bed.
We shall obey were she ten times our mother.
Have you any further trade with us?
My lord, you once did love me.
And do still, by these pickers and stealers.
Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper?
You do surely bar the door upon your own liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend.
Sir...l lack advancement.
How can that be? You have the voice of the king himself for your succession.
Ay, but while the grass grows... The proverb is something musty.
Ah, the recorders! Let me see one.
To withdraw with you, why do you go about 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 do beseech you.
- I know no touch of it. - It is as easy as lying.
Govern these ventages, give it breath, and it will discourse most eloquent music.
- Look you, these are the stops. - But these cannot I command.
- (ANGRILY) I have not the skill! - How unworthy a thing you make of me.
You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops,
you would sound me to the top of my compass.
There is much music in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak.
'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?
Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, 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 shape of a camel?
- By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. - Methinks it's like a weasel.
- It is backed like a weasel. - Or a whale.
- Very like a whale. - 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.
'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 upon.
Soft...now to my mother.
O heart, lose not thy nature.
Let not the soul of Nero enter this firm bosom.
Let me be cruel, not unnatural. I will speak daggers to her, but use none.
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.
How in my words soever she be shent,
to give them seals never my soul consent!
I like him not!
Nor stands it safe with us to let his madness range.
Therefore I your commission will dispatch, and he to England shall along with you.
The terms of our estate may not endure hazard so near as doth hourly grow out of his brows.
We will ourselves provide.
Most holy and religious fear it is
to keep those many many bodies safe that live and feed upon Your Majesty.
The cease of majesty dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw what's near it with it.
It is a massy wheel to whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things are adjoin'd,
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 about this fear, which now goes too free-footed.
We will haste us.
My lord, he's going to his mother's closet.
Behind the arras, I'll convey myself to hear the process.
Fare you well, my liege.
I'll call upon you ere you go to bed and tell you what I know.
Thanks, good my lord. (SPLUTTERS)
O, my offence is rank.
It smells to heaven.
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't - a brother's murder.
Pray can I not, though inclination be as sharp as will,
my guilt defeats my intent, and, like to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I should first begin, and both neglect.
This cursed hand, thick with brother's blood,
is there not rain enough in heaven to wash it white as snow?
Whereto serves mercy but to confront the visage of offence?
What's in prayer but this two-fold force, to be forestalled ere we fall or pardon'd?
Then I'll look up. My fault is past.
But, O, what form of prayer can serve my turn?
"Forgive me my foul murder"? That cannot be,
since I am still possess'd of its effects - my crown, mine own ambition and...my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
and oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself buys out the law.
But 'tis not so above.
There the action lies in his true nature, and we ourselves compell'd
even in 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 can not 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.
(MOUTHS SILENTLY)
Now might I do it...pat.
Now he is praying, and now I'll do't.
And so he goes to heaven,
and so am I revenged.
That would be scann'd - a villain kills my father,
and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven.
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread,
with all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May.
Am I then revenged to take him in the purging of his soul, when he is season'd 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 hath no relish of salvation in't,
then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
and his soul may be as damn'd and black as hell whereto it goes.
My mother stays.
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
My words fly up.
My thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
A will come straight. Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
and that Your Grace hath stood between much heat and him.
I'll silence me even here. Be round with him.
- (HAMLET) Mother! - I'll warrant you, fear me not.
- Withdraw, I hear him coming. - Mother?
Now...Mother,
what's the matter?
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Mother, you have my father much offended.
You answer with an idle tongue.
- You question with a wicked tongue. - How now, Hamlet!
- What's the matter now? - Hast thou forgot me?
Not so. You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife.
And, would it were not so, you are my mother.
Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.
Sit you down. You go not till I set you up a glass where you see the inmost part of you.
What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me? Help! Help, ho!
- (POLONIUS) Help! Help! - How now! A rat?
Dead for a ducat! Dead!
(POLONIUS) I am slain!
- What hast thou done? - I know not. Is it the king?
- What a rash and bloody deed is this! - A bloody deed?
Almost as bad 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 brass'd it so that it is proof against sense.
What have I done that thou darest wag thy tongue so?
Such an act that blurs the grace of modesty,
calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose from the forehead of an innocent love
and sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows as false as dicers' oaths!
Ay me, what act that roars so loud and thunders in the index?
Look here upon this picture, and on this, the counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow - Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself,
an eye like Mars to threaten and command,
a station like the herald Mercury new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill,
a combination and a form indeed where every god did seem to set his seal
to give the world assurance of a man.
This was your husband.
Look you now what follows.
Here is your husband, like a mildew'd ear blasting his wholesome brother.
Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed and batten on this moor?
Have you eyes? You cannot call it love,
for at your age the blood is tame and waits upon the judgment,
and what judgment would step from this to this?
Sense you have, else could you not have motion,
but that sense is apoplex'd, for madness would not err
nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd
but it reserved some quantity of choice to serve in such a difference.
What devil was't that thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?
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 its own fire.
Proclaim no shame when the compulsive ardour 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 spots as will not leave their tinct.
Nay, but to live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stew'd in corruption,
honeying, making love over the nasty sty!
O, Hamlet, speak no more!
These words like daggers enter in mine ear! 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!
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! - Do not forget.
This visitation is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look...
amazement on thy mother sits.
O, step between her and her fighting soul. Speak to her, Hamlet.
How is it with you, lady?
Alas, how is't with you,
that you do bend your eye on vacancy and with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
- Whereon do you look? - On him.
On him! Look you, how pale he glares!
His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, would make them capable.
Do not look upon me, lest with this piteous action you convert my stern effects.
Then what I have to do will want true colour - tears perchance for blood.
To whom do you speak this?
Do you see nothing there?
Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.
Nor did you nothing hear?
No, nothing but ourselves.
Why, look you there!
Look how it steals away!
My father, in his habit as he liv'd!
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
This is the very coinage of your brain. This bodiless creation ecstasy is very cunning in.
Ecstasy? My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
and makes as healthful music.
It is not madness that I have utter'd.
Bring me to the test, and I the matter will re-word, which madness would gambol from.
Mother, for love of grace, lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
that not your trespass, but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
whilst rank corruption, mining all within, infects unseen.
Confess yourself to heaven, repent what's past,
avoid what is to come, and do not spread the compost on the weeds to make them ranker.
O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
O, throw away the worser part of it, and live the purer with the other half.
Good night, but go not to mine uncle's bed.
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
Refrain tonight, and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence,
the next more easy.
Once more, good night,
and when you are desirous to be bless'd, I'll blessing beg of you.
For this same lord, I do repent, but heaven hath pleased it so
to punish me with this and this with me that I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well the death I gave him.
So, again, good night. I must be cruel only to be kind.
Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.
One 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 damn'd 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.
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 seal'd, and my two schoolfellows,
whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd, they bear the mandate.
They must sweep my way and marshal me to knavery.
Let it work. For 'tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard,
and 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, I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.
Mother, good night.
Indeed this counsellor is now most still, most secret and most grave,
who was in life a foolish...
..(SOBS) prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Good night, Mother.
There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves, you must translate.
'Tis fit we understand them.
Where is your son?
Bestow this place on us a little while.
O, 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 answer'd?
It will be laid to us, whose providence should have kept short, restrain'd
and out of haunt this mad young man,
but so much was our love that like the owner of a foul disease,
to keep it from divulging, let it feed even on the pith of life.
- Where is he gone? - To draw apart the body he hath kill'd,
o'er whom his very madness, like some ore
among a mineral of metals base shows itself pure - he weeps for what is done.
O Gertrude, come away!
The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch, but we will ship him hence.
This vile deed we must with all our majesty and skill both countenance and excuse.
Ho, Guildenstern!
Friends both, go join you with some further aid.
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain and from this closet dragg'd him.
Go seek him out - speak fair - and bring the body into the chapel.
Gertrude, come away.
My soul is full of discord and dismay.
Safely stowed.
(GUILDENSTERN) Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!
Soft, what noise? (CALLS OUT) Who calls on Hamlet?
O, here they come.
- What have you done with the dead body? - Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.
Tell us where 'tis that we may bear it to the chapel.
- Do not believe it. - Believe what?
That I can keep your counsel and not mine own. To be demanded of a sponge -
what replication should be made by the son of a king?
Take you me for a sponge, my lord?
Ay, sir, that soaks up the king's countenance, rewards, authorities.
But such officers do the king best service,
he keeps them, like an ape, in his jaw - first mouthed, to be last swallowed.
When he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you,
and, sponge, you shall be dry again.
- I understand you not, my lord. - I am glad of it.
- A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear. - My lord, tell us where the body is.
The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body.
- The king is a thing. - A thing, my lord?
Of nothing.
Bring me to him.
Hide fox, and all after!
I have sent to seek him and to find the body.
How dangerous is it that this man goes loose.
Yet he's loved of the distracted multitude,
who like not in their judgment but their eyes,
and where 'tis so, the scourge is weigh'd, but never the offence.
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.
How now?
Where the body's bestow'd we cannot get from him.
- But where is he? - Without, my lord. Guarded.
- Bring him before us. - Ho, Guildenstern! Bring in the 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 emperor for diet.
We fat all creatures to fat us, and 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 by this?
Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.
- Where's Polonius? - In heaven. Send thither to see.
If your messenger find him not there, seek him in the other place yourself.
But if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go into the lobby.
Go seek him there.
He will stay till you come.
Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety - which we do tender,
as we grieve for that which thou hast done - must send thee hence with fiery quickness.
Prepare thyself. The bark is ready, the wind at help, 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. - My mother.
Father and mother is man and wife, man and wife is one flesh...so my mother.
Come.
- For England! - Follow him at foot.
Tempt him with speed aboard. Delay it not. I'll have him hence tonight.
And, England,
if my love thou hold'st at aught, 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.
Go, Captain, from me greet the Danish king.
Tell him that, by his licence, Fortinbras craves the conveyance
of a promised march over his kingdom.
You know the rendezvous.
If that His Majesty would aught of us, we shall express our duty in his eye.
- Let him know so. - I will do't, my lord.
Go softly on.
- Good sir, whose powers are these? - They are of Norway, sir.
- How purposed, sir? - Against some part of Poland.
- Who commands them, sir? - The nephew of old Norway, Fortinbras.
Goes it against the main of Poland, sir?
Truly, we go to gain a patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name.
- I would not farm it. - Then the Polack never will defend it.
Yes, it is already garrison'd.
I humbly thank you, sir.
Will't please you go, my lord?
I'll be with you straight go a little before.
How all occasions do inform against me and spur my dull revenge.
What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed?
A beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after,
gave us not that capability and godlike reason to fust in us unused.
Now, whether it be bestial oblivion,
or some craven scruple of thinking too precisely on the event,
I do not know why
yet I live to say this thing's to do.
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means to do it.
Examples gross as earth exhort me. Witness this army of such mass and charge
led by a delicate and tender prince, whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
makes mouths at the invisible event,
exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare...
..even for an egg-shell.
Rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument,
but greatly to find quarrel in a straw when honour's at the stake.
How stand I then, that have a father 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 twenty thousand men
that, for a fantasy and trick of fame, go to their graves like beds,
fight for a plot whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
which is not tomb enough and continent to hide the slain?
O, from this time forth,
my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.
I will not speak with her.
She is importunate, indeed distract. Her mood will needs be pitied.
- What would she have? - She speaks much of her father,
says she hears there's tricks i' the world, and hems, and beats her heart,
spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt that carry but half sense.
Her speech is nothing, yet the unshaped use of it doth move her hearers to collection.
They botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,
which, as her gestures yield them, make one think there might be thought,
though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
It were good she were spoken with,
for she may strew dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
Let her come in.
To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is,
each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.
So full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?
How now...Ophelia?
# How should I your true love know
# From another one?
# By his cockle hat and staff
# And his sandal shoon #
Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
Say you? Nay, pray you, mark.
# He is dead and gone, lady
# He is dead and gone
# At his head a grass-green turf
# At his heels a stone #
- Nay, but Ophelia... - Pray you, mark.
# White his shroud as the mountain snow
# Larded with sweet flowers
# Which bewept to the grave did not go
- # With true-love showers # - How do you, pretty lady?
Well, God dild you!
They say the owl was a baker's daughter.
Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.
- God be at your table. - Conceit upon her father.
Pray, let's have no words of this,
but when they ask you what it means, say you this...
# Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day, all in the morning betime
# And I a maid at your window to be your Valentine
# Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes, and dupp'd the chamber-door
# Let in a maid, that out a maid never departed more #
- Pretty Ophelia... - Without an oath, I'll make an end on't.
# By Gis and by Saint Charity, alack and fie for shame
# Young men will do't if they come to't - by Cock, they are to blame
# Quoth she, "Before you tumbled me, you promised me to wed"
He answers - # "So would I ha' done, by yonder sun
# And thou hadst not come to my bed #
- How long hath she been thus? - I hope all will be well.
We must be patient, but I cannot choose but weep
to think they would lay him in the cold ground.
My brother shall know of it!
And so I thank you for your good counsel.
Come, my coach.
Good night, ladies. Good night, sweet ladies.
Good night.
Follow her close. Give her good watch, I pray you.
O, this is the poison of deep grief. It springs all from her father's death.
And now behold - O Gertrude, Gertrude! -
when sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.
First, her father slain; next, your son gone,
and he most violent author of his own just remove;
the people muddied, thick and unwholesome in their whispers for good Polonius' death;
and we have done but greenly in hugger-mugger 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
and wants not buzzers to infect his ear with pestilent speeches of his father's death.
O my dear Gertrude, this, like to a murdering-piece, gives me superfluous death.
(BANGING)
Alack, what noise is this?
Attend! Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.
- What's the matter? - Save yourself, my lord.
The ocean eats not the flats with more 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, custom not known,
they cry, "Choose we! Laertes shall be king!"
Caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds, "Laertes shall be king!"
How cheerfully on the false trail they cry! O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!
- (CRASH) - The doors are broke.
(LAERTES) Where is this king?
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. - Not by him.
- Let him demand his fill. - How came he dead?
I'll not be juggled with! To hell, allegiance!
Vows, to the blackest devil! Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation.
To this point I stand, that both the worlds I give to negligence, let come what comes,
only I'll be revenged most throughly for my father.
- Who shall stay you? - My will, not all the world's.
Laertes, if you desire to know the certainty of your dear father,
is't writ in your revenge that you will draw both friend and foe?
- None but his enemies. - Will you know them then?
To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms,
and like the kind pelican repast them with my blood.
Why, now you speak like a good child and a true gentleman!
That I am guiltless of your father's death, and am in grief for it,
it shall as level to your judgment 'pear as day does to your eye.
How now, what noise is that?
O heat, dry up my brains.
Tears seven times salt burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye.
By heavens, thy madness shall be paid with weight till our scale turn the beam.
O rose of May!
Dear maid,
kind sister,
sweet Ophelia!
O heavens!
Is'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
# Hey non nonny nonny, hey nonny
# And in his grave rain'd many a tear #
Fare you well, my dove!
Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge, it could not move thus.
You must sing "a-down a-down", and you "call him a-down-a".
How the wheel becomes it!
It is the false steward that stole his master's daughter.
This nothing's more than matter.
There's rosemary. That's for remembrance.
Pray you, love, remember.
There's pansies. That's for thoughts.
A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.
There's fennel for you, and columbines.
Here's rue for you. And there's some for me. We may call it herb of grace a Sundays.
O you must wear your rue with a difference.
There's a daisy.
I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.
They say he made a good end.
# For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy #
Thought and affliction, passion,
hell itself she turns to favour and to pretti...
# And will he not come again?
# No, no, he is dead
# Go to thy death-bed
# He never will come again
# His beard was as white as snow
# All flaxen was his poll
# He is gone, he is gone
# And we cast away moan
# God ha' mercy on his soul #
And of all Christian souls, I pray God.
God buy you.
Do you see this, O God?
Laertes...
I must commune with your grief, or you deny me right.
Go make choice of your wisest friends, and they shall judge 'twixt you and me.
If by direct or by collateral hand they find us touch'd,
we will our kingdom give, our crown, our life, to you in satisfaction.
But if not, be you content to lend your patience to us,
and we shall jointly labour with your soul to give it due content.
Let this be so.
His means of death, his obscure funeral -
no trophy, sword, nor hatchment 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.
And so you shall.
And where the offence is let the great axe fall.
- God bless you, sir. - Let him bless thee, too.
He shall, sir, an't please him.
There's a letter for you, sir. It came from the ambassador that was bound for England...
if your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is.
"Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked this, give these fellows means to the king.
"They have letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea,
"a pirate of warlike appointment gave us chase.
"Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour, and 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. I am to do a good turn for them.
"Let the king have the letters I have sent
"and repair to me with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death.
"I have words to speak which will make thee dumb,
"yet are they too light for the matter.
"These 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 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,
sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
that he which hath your noble father slain pursu'd 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 and wisdom you were stirr'd up.
O, for two special reasons, which may to you seem much unsinew'd.
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 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 love the general gender bear him, who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
work like the spring that turneth wood to stone, convert his gyves to graces.
And so have I a noble father lost, a sister driven into desperate terms,
whose worth 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 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...
- What news? - Letters, my lord, from Hamlet.
- These to Your Majesty, this to the queen. - From Hamlet?
- Who brought them? - Sailors, my lord, they say.
I saw them not. They were given me by Claudio. He received them of him that brought them.
Laertes, you shall hear them. Leave us.
"High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your kingdom.
"Tomorrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes,
"when I shall thereunto recount the occasion of my sudden and 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, he says "alone". Can you devise 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 did'st thou."
If it be so, Laertes -
as how should it be so, how otherwise? - will you be ruled by me?
Ay, my lord, so you will not o'errule me to a peace.
To thine own peace.
If he be checking at his voyage, I will work him to an exploit
under the which he shall not choose but fall, and no wind of blame shall breathe,
but even his mother shall 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 talk'd of since your travel much,
and that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality wherein they say you shine.
Two months since, here was a gentleman of Normandy.
He gave you such a masterly report for art and your defence, and your rapier most especial,
that he cried out 'twould be a sight indeed if one could match you.
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 you.
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?
- Why ask you this? - I know love is begun by time,
and I see, in passages of proof, time qualifies the fire and spark 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, but goodness,
growing to a pleurisy, dies in his own too-much.
But to the quick o' the 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' the church.
No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize; revenge should know no bounds.
But good Laertes, will you do this, keep close within your chamber?
Hamlet return'd shall know you are come back. We'll praise your excellence,
set a varnish on your fame, bring you in fine together and wager on your heads.
He, being remiss, most generous and free from all contrivings, 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 practise requite him for your father.
I will do't, and for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction 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 scratch'd withal.
I'll 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 our drift look through our bad performance, 'twere better not assay'd.
Therefore this project should have a second that might hold if this did blast in proof.
Soft, let me see. We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings...
Oh! I ha't.
When in your motion you are hot and dry and that he calls for drink,
I'll have preferred him a chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
if he by chance escape your venom'd stuck, our purpose may hold there.
Stay, what noise?
One woe doth tread upon another's heels, so fast they follow.
Your sister's...drown'd, Laertes.
Drown'd?
O...where?
There is a willow grows aslant the brook that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands she would make of daisies, crow-flowers, nettles
and long purples which liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
but our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
There on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds clambering to hang,
an envious sliver broke,
when down her weedy trophies and herself fell in the weeping brook.
Her clothes spread wide, and mermaid-like awhile they bore her up,
which time she chanted snatches of old lauds, as one incapable of her own distress,
or like a creature native and indued unto that element,
but long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death.
Alas...then she is drown'd?
Drown'd.
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.
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 when she wilfully seeks her own salvation?
I tell thee she is, therefore make her grave straight.
The crowner finds it Christian burial.
How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence?
- Why, 'tis found so. - It must be "se offendendo".
For if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act,
and an act hath three branches - to act, to do, to perform.
- Argal, she drowned herself wittingly. - Nay, but hear you, Goodman Delver...
Give me leave. Here lies the water - good. Here stands the man - good.
If the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he goes.
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, crowner's quest law.
If this had not been a gentlewoman,
she should have been buried out o' Christian burial.
There thou say'st. The more pity that great folk should have countenance in this world
to drown or hang themselves more than their even Christian.
Come, my spade.
There is no ancient gentleman but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers.
- They hold up Adam's profession. - Was he a gentleman?
- He was the first ever bore arms. - Why, he had none.
Art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture?
The Scripture says "Adam digged".
Could he dig without arms? I'll 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.
I like thy wit well. The gallows does well, but it does well to those that do ill.
Thou dost ill to say the gallows is 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.
When you are asked this question next, say "a grave-maker".
- The houses he makes... - ..last until doomsday.
Go, get thee to Yaughan. Fetch me a stoup of liquor.
# In youth, when I did love, did love
# Methought it were very sweet
# To contract the time a my behove
# Methought there was nothing 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.
'Tis e'en so, the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.
# But age with his stealing step
# Hath claw'd me in his clutch
# And shipped me intil 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 the ground, as if it were Cain's, that did the first murder.
This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'erreaches,
one that would circumvent God, might it not?
- It might, my lord. - Or of a courtier,
which could say "Good morrow, sweet lord. How dost thou, sweet lord?"
This might be my lord Such-a-one,
who praised my lord Such-a-one's horse, when a meant to beg it.
- Ay, my lord. - Why, e'en so.
And now my lady Worm's, chapless, and knocked about the mazzard with a sexton's spade:
Here's fine revolution and we had the trick to see't.
# For and a shrouding sheet
# O, a pit of clay for to be made
# For such a guest is meet #
There's another. Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer?
Why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him with a shovel,
and will not tell him of his action of battery?
Hmm?
I'll speak to this fellow.
- Whose grave's this, sirrah? - Mine, sir.
# O, a pit of clay for to be made
# For such a guest is meet #
Indeed, I think it be thine. Thou liest in't.
You lie out on't, so therefore it's not yours. I do not lie in it, yet it is mine.
Thou dost lie in it to say it is thine. 'Tis for the dead, therefore thou liest.
'Tis a quick lie. 'Twill away gain from me to you.
- What man dost thou dig it for? - No man.
- What woman, then? - None, neither.
- Who is to be buried in't? - One that was a woman, sir, but she's dead.
How absolute the knave is!
We must speak by the card or equivocation will undo us.
How long hast thou been a grave-maker?
Of all the days in the year, I came to't that day our last king, Hamlet, overcame Fortinbras.
- How long is that since? - Cannot you tell that?
Every fool can tell that. It was the very day that young Hamlet was born,
he that is mad and sent into England.
Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?
Why, because he was mad.
He shall recover his wits there, or if he do not, 'tis no matter there.
- Why? - 'Twill not be seen in him there.
There the men are as mad as he.
- How came he mad? - Very strangely, they say.
- How strangely? - Faith, e'en with losing his wits.
- Upon what ground? - Why, here in Denmark.
I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.
How long will a man lie in the earth ere he rot?
If he be not rotten before he die - as we have many pocky corses nowadays
that will scarce hold the laying in - he will last some eight year, nine year.
- A tanner will last you nine year. - Why he more than another?
His hide is so tanned with his trade, that he will keep out water a great while,
and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.
Here's a skull now hath lain in the earth three and twenty years.
- Whose was it? - A whoreson mad fellow's it was.
- Whose do you think it was? - Nay, I know not.
A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! Poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once.
This same skull, sir, was, sir...
..Yorick's skull, the king's jester.
- This? - E'en that.
Let me see.
Alas.
Poor Yorick.
I knew him, Horatio.
A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.
He hath borne me on his back a thousand times,
and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is.
My gorge rises at it.
Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.
Where be your gibes now,
your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment
that were wont to set the table on a roar?
Not one now to mock your own grinning.
Quite chap-fallen.
Now get you to my lady's chamber
and tell her, let her paint an inch thick,
to this favour she must come.
Make her laugh at that.
Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.
What's that, my lord?
Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion in the earth?
- E'en so, my lord. - And smelt so? Pooh!
E'en so.
To what base uses we may return, Horatio!
Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander
till he find it stopping a bung-hole?
'Twere to consider too curiously to consider so.
No, faith, not a jot, as thus -
Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into 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?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd 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 to expel the winter's flaw.
Soft! Soft a while!
Here comes the king, the queen, the courtiers.
Who do they follow, with such maimed rites?
This doth betoken the corse did with desperate hand fordo it own life.
Couch we awhile 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 is allow'd her virgin crants, her maiden strewments
and the bringing home of bell and burial.
- Must there no more be done? - No more be done.
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' the earth.
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring.
I tell thee, churlish priest, an angel shall my sister be when thou liest howling.
What, the fair Ophelia?
Sweets to the sweet.
Farewell.
I hoped thou wouldst have been my Hamlet's wife.
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, and not have strew'd thy grave.
O, treble woe fall ten times treble on that cursed head
whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense deprived thee of.
Hold off the earth awhile, till I have caught her once more in mine arms.
Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, till of this flat a mountain you have made
to o'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head of blue Olympus!
What is he whose grief bears such an emphasis,
whose phrase of sorrow conjures the wandering stars
and makes them stand like wonder-wounded hearers?
This is I, Hamlet the Dane!
The devil take thy soul!
Thou pray'st not well! Take thy fingers from my throat!
(KING) Pluck them asunder. (HORATIO ) My lord, be quiet.
Why, I will fight with him upon this theme until my eyelids will no longer wag.
- O my son, what theme? - I loved Ophelia!
Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum.
- What wilt thou do for her? - He is mad!
- For love of God, forbear him. - Woo't weep? Woo't fight? Woo't fast?
Woo't tear thyself? Woo't drink up eisel? Eat a crocodile? I'll do it!
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, I'll rant as well as thou!
This is mere madness. Awhile the fit will work on him.
Anon, as patient as the female dove when that her couplets are disclosed,
his silence will sit drooping.
Hear you, sir. What is the reason that you use me thus?
I loved you ever.
But it is no matter. Let Hercules himself do what he may,
the cat will mew and dog will have his day.
I pray you, good Horatio, wait on him.
Strengthen your patience in our last night's speech.
We'll put the matter to the present push.
Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.
This grave shall have a living monument.
An hour of quiet shortly shall we see. Till then in patience our proceedings 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 fighting that would not let me sleep.
Methought I lay worse than the mutines in the bilboes.
Rashly - and prais'd be rashness for it.
Let us know, our indiscretion sometimes serves us well when our deep plots do pall.
And that should learn us there's a divinity that shapes our ends.
That is most certain.
Up from my cabin, in the dark groped I to find out them,
finger'd their packet, and 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 axe, my head should be struck off.
- Is't possible? - Here's the commission. Read it at leisure.
- Wilt thou hear how I did proceed? - I beseech you.
Being thus benetted round with villanies, I sat me down, devised a new commission,
wrote it fair - I once did hold it, as our statists do, a baseness to write fair,
but, sir, now it did me yeoman's service.
- Wilt thou know what I wrote? - Ay, my lord.
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 of those contents, without debatement further, more or less,
he should those bearers put to sudden death,
not shriving-time allow'd.
- How was this seal'd? - Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.
I had my father's signet in my purse, which was the model of that Danish seal.
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 stand me upon -
he that hath kill'd my king, whored my mother,
popp'd in between the election and my hopes, thrown out his angle for my proper life -
is't not perfect conscience to quit him with this arm?
And is't not to be damn'd to let this canker of our nature come in further evil?
It must be shortly known to him from England what is the issue of the business there.
It will be short. The interim is mine. And a man's life's no more than to say "one".
But I am very sorry that to Laertes I forgot myself.
For by the image of my cause I see the portraiture of his.
I'll court his favours. But the bravery of his grief did put me into a towering passion.
Peace, who comes here?
- Your lordship is welcome back to Denmark. - I humbly thank you, sir.
Dost know this water-fly?
- No, good my lord. - 'Tis a vice to know him.
He hath much land, and fertile.
'Tis a chuff, but spacious in the possession of dirt.
Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should impart a thing from His Majesty.
I shall receive it with all diligence of spirit.
Put your bonnet to his right use. 'Tis for the head.
- I thank your lordship, it is very hot. - No, believe me, it's very cold.
- The wind is northerly. - It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.
But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my complexion.
Exceedingly, my lord. It is very sultry, as 'twere...I cannot tell how.
But, my lord, His Majesty bade me signify to you that he has laid a great wager on your head.
- This is the matter... - I beseech you, remember.
Nay, good my lord, for my ease...in good faith.
Sir, here is newly come to court Laertes -
believe me, an absolute gentleman, full of most excellent differences,
of very soft society and great showing.
Indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the card or calendar of gentry,
the continent of what part a gentleman would see.
Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you,
though I know, to divide him inventorially would dizzy the arithmetic of memory,
and but yaw in respect of his quick sail.
But I take him to be a soul of great article, and his infusion of such 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 do't, sir, really.
- What imports the nomination of this gentleman? - Of...of..of Laertes?
His purse is empty already. All his golden words are spent.
- Of him, sir. - I know you are not ignorant...
I would you did. And yet, in faith, if you did, it would not much approve me.
You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is...
I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with him in excellence.
But to know a man well were to know himself.
I mean for his weapon. But in the imputation laid on him by them in his meed, he's unfellowed.
- What's his weapon? - Rapier and dagger.
That's two of his weapons. But well.
The king, sir, hath laid, sir,
that in a dozen passes between yourself and him, he shall not exceed you three hits.
It would come to immediate trial if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer.
How if I answer no?
I mean, 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 will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.
- Shall I re-deliver you even so? - To this effect.
After what flourish your nature will.
I commend my duty to your lordship.
Yours, yours.
He does well to commend it himself.
There are no tongues else for's turn.
This lapwing runs away with his shell on his head.
A did comply with his dug before he sucked it.
- You will lose this wager, my lord. - I do not think so.
Since he went into France, I have been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds.
But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart: but it is no matter.
- Nay, good my lord... - It is but foolery,
but yet it is such a kind of gaingiving as would perhaps trouble a woman.
If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will say you are not fit.
Not a whit, we defy augury. There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, 'tis not to come.
If it be not to come, it will be now.
If it be not now, yet it will come.
The readiness is all. Let be.
Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.
Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong.
But pardon't, as you are a gentleman.
This presence knows, and you must needs have heard,
how I am punish'd with a sore distraction.
What I have done that might your nature, honour and exception roughly awake,
I here proclaim was madness.
Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet.
If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away, and when he's not himself does wrong Laertes,
Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then? His madness.
If't be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd. His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy.
Sir, 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 should stir me most to my revenge,
but in my terms of honour I stand aloof and will no reconcilement
till by some elder masters of known honour
I have a voice and precedent of peace to keep my name ungored.
Till that time, I do receive your offer'd love like love, and will not wrong it.
I embrace it freely, and will this brother's wager frankly play.
- Give us the foils. - Come, one for me.
I'll be your foil. In mine ignorance your skill shall like a star in the night stick fiery off indeed.
- You mock me, sir. - No, by this hand.
Give them the foils, young Osric.
- Hamlet, you know the wager? - Very well.
You hath laid the odds on the weaker side.
I do not fear it. Since he is better'd, we have therefore odds.
- This is too heavy. Let me see another. - This likes me well.
- These foils have all a length? - Ay, my good lord.
Set me the stoups of wine upon that table. If Hamlet make the first or second hit,
or quit in answer of the third exchanges, let all ordnance fire -
the king shall drink to Hamlet's better breath.
In the cup an union shall he throw
richer than that which four successive kings in Denmark's crown have worn.
Give me the cup.
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."
(FANFARE)
Come, begin. You, the judges, bear a wary eye.
- Come on, sir. - Come...my lord.
- One! - No!
- Judgment. - A hit. A very palpable hit.
- Well, again. - Stay. Give me drink.
Hamlet, this pearl is thine. Here's to thy health.
- Give him the cup. - I'll play this bout first. Set it by awhile.
Come.
- Another hit. What say you? - A touch, a touch, I do confess.
- 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. - Gertrude, do not drink.
I will, my lord. I pray you, pardon me.
(SOFTLY) 'Tis the poison'd cup. It is too late.
- I dare not drink yet, madam. By and by. - Come, let me wipe thy face.
- My lord, I'll hit him now. - I do not think't.
And yet it is almost against my conscience.
Come, for the third, Laertes. You but dally. I pray you, pass with your best violence.
I am afeard you make a wanton of me.
Say you so?
Come on.
(APPLAUSE)
Nothing neither way.
Have at you now.
- Part them! They are incensed! - Nay, come again!
- Look to the queen there, ho! - They bleed on both sides. My lord?
As a woodcock to mine own springe, I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery.
- How does the queen? - She swounds to see them bleed.
The drink! The drink! O my dear Hamlet...the drink, the drink...
I am...poison'd.
O villainy! Ho! Let the doors be lock'd! Treachery! Seek it out!
It is here, Hamlet! Hamlet, thou art slain.
No medicine in the world can do thee good. In thee there is not half an hour's life.
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, unbated and envenom'd.
The foul practise hath turn'd itself on me...
Lo, here I lie, never to rise again.
Thy mother's poison'd. I can no more.
The king...
The king's to blame!
The point envenom'd too!
Then, venom, to thy work.
(WHISPERS) Treason.
Treason!
O, yet defend me, friends! I am but hurt!
Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, drink off this potion!
Is thy union here? Follow my mother!
He is justly served. It is a poison temper'd by himself.
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.
Mine and my father's death come not on thee, nor thine...on me.
Heaven make thee free of it.
I follow thee.
I am dead, Horatio.
Wretched queen, adieu!
You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
that are but mutes or audience to this act, had I but time -
as this fell sergeant, death, is strict in his arrest - (WAILS) I could tell you...
But let it be.
Horatio, I am dead.
Thou livest. Report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied.
Never believe it. I am more an antique Roman than a Dane. Here's still some liquor left.
As thou'rt a man, give me the cup. Let go!
Horatio, if thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, absent thee from felicity awhile,
and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story.
(DISTANT CANNONFIRE)
- What warlike noise is this? - Young Fortinbras, come from Poland,
to the ambassadors of England gives this warlike volley.
O, I die, Horatio. The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit.
I cannot live to hear the news from England,
but I do prophesy the election lights on Fortinbras.
He has my dying voice.
So tell him...
with the occurrents more and less which have solicited...
The rest is silence.
Now cracks a noble heart.
Good night sweet prince,
and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
(FANFARE AND DRUMS BEATING)
Why does the drum come hither?
Where is this sight?
What is it you would see?
If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.
This quarry cries on havoc.
O proud death, what feast is toward in thine eternal cell
that thou so many princes at a shot so bloodily hast struck?
The sight is dismal, and our affairs from England come too late.
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing
to tell him his commandment is fulfill'd,
that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Where should we have our thanks?
Not from his mouth, had it the ability of life to thank you.
He never gave commandment for their deaths.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question, you from the Polack wars
and you from England are here arrived,
give orders that these bodies high on a stage be placed to the view,
and let me speak to the yet unknowing world how these things came about,
so shall you hear of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause
and, in this upshot, purposes mistook fall'n on the inventors' heads.
All this can I truly deliver.
Let us haste to hear it. Call the noblest to the audience.
For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune.
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.
Of that I shall have also cause to speak, and from his mouth whose voice will draw on more.
But let this same be presently perform'd, even while men's minds are wild,
lest more mischance on plots and errors happen.
Let four captains bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage,
for he was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most royal.
And for his passage, the soldiers' music and the rites of war speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies.
Such a sight as this becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.