I have of late, but wherefore I know not,
lost all my mirth.
What a piece of work is a man?
How noble in reason?
How infinite in faculties and 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?
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
our memory be green,
and that it us befitted to bear our heart in grief
and our whole kingdom to be contracted
in one brow of woe.
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
that we with wisest sorrow think on him,
together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister,
now our queen,
the imperial jointress to this warlike state,
have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy...
With an auspicious and dropping eye,
with mirth in funeral
and with dirge in marriage,
in equal scale weighing delight and dole...
taken to wife.
Nor have we herein barred your better wisdoms,
which have freely gone with this affair along.
- For all... - Our thanks.
Now follows, that you know
young Fortinbras,
holding a weak supposal of our worth.
Or thinking by our late dear brother's death
our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
colleagued with the dream of his advantage,
he hath not failed to pester us with message,
importing the surrender of those lands
lost by his father.
With all bond of law, to our most valiant brother.
So much for him.
And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?
The head is not more native to the heart,
the hand more instrumental to the mouth,
than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
What wouldst thou have, Laertes?
My dread lord, your leave and favor to return to France;
From whence though willingly I come to show my duty in your coronation,
now, I must confess, that duty done,
my thoughts and wishes bend again toward France.
- Have you your father's leave? - What says Polonius?
He has, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
by laboursome petition, and at last
upon his will I sealed my hard consent.
I do beseech you, give him leave to go.
Take thy fair hour, Laertes; Time be thine,
and thy best grace spend it at thy will!
My cousin Hamlet,
and my son...
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Hamlet...
cast thy nighted color off,
and let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not forever with thy vailed lids
seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know'st 'tis common;
All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.
Ay, madam, it is common.
If it be, why seems it so particular with thee?
Seems, Madam.
Nay, it is. I know not "seems."
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good Mother,
nor customary suits of solemn black,
nor windy suspiration of forced breath.
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
that can denote me truly.
These indeed seem,
for they are actions that a man might play.
But I have that within which passeth show,
these but the trappings and the suits of woe.
'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
to give these mourning duties to your father.
But that father lost, lost his,
and the survivor bound in filial obligation for some term
to do obsequious sorrow.
But to persevere in obdurate condolement
is a course of impious stubbornness;
'Tis an unmanly grief.
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven.
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient.
For your intent on going back to school in Wittenberg,
it is most retrograde to our desire,
and we beseech you, bend you
to remain here in the care and comfort of our eye.
Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.
Stay with us,
go not to Wittenberg.
I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
That this too, too solid flesh would melt,
thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter.
God.
God. How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
seem to me all the uses of this world.
'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.
Why, she would hang on him, as if increase of appetite
had grown by what it fed on.
And yet, within a month...
I may not think on it.
Frailty, thy name is woman.
A little month
or ere these shoes were old with which she followed my poor father's body
like Niobe, all tears... Why she, even she...
God!
A beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer.
Married with my uncle, my father's brothe, r
but no more like my father than I to Hercules.
Within a month.
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
had left the flushing in her galled eyes... she married.
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.
What make you from Wittenberg, Marcellus?
- My good lord. - I'm very glad to see you.
Good even, sir.
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
A truant disposition, good my lord.
What is your affair in Elsinore?
My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.
I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow student,
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.
Thrift, thrift, Horatio.
The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
or ever I had seen that day, Horatio.
My father...
methinks I see my father.
Where, my lord?
In my mind's eye.
I saw him once, he was a goodly king.
He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.
I think I saw him...
yester-night.
Saw? Who?
My lord, the king. Your father.
The king my father.
Season your admiration for a while
with an attent ear, till I may deliver
upon the witness of these gentlemen
this marvel to you.
In the dead waste in middle of the night,
the apparition comes.
Where was this?
My lord, upon the platform where we watched.
'Tis here.
Did you not speak to it?
My lord, I did.
But answer made it none.
Yet once methought it lifted up its head and did address itself to motion
like as it would speak.
Stay, illusion.
If thou hast any sound or use of voice,
speak to me.
It is offended.
If there be any good thing to be done,
that may to thee do ease and grace to me,
speak to me.
Speak, speak!
I charge thee, speak.
'Tis very strange.
As I do live, my lord, 'tis true.
And we did think it writ down in our duty
to let you know of it.
Indeed, indeed.
But this troubles me.
- Hold you the watch again tonight? - I do, my lord.
What looked he...
frowningly?
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
- And fixed his eyes upon you? - Most constantly.
I would I had been there.
It would have much amazed you.
I will watch tonight.
I'll speak to it, though Hell itself should gape and bid me hold my peace.
And I pray you all, if you have hitherto concealed this sight,
let it be tenable in your silence still.
And whatsoever else shall hap tonight, give it an...
understanding, but no tongue.
I will require your loves.
So, fare you well.
Upon the platform, 'twixt 11 and 12, I'll visit you.
Our duty to your honor.
Your loves, as mine to you. Farewell.
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.
Perhaps he loves you now, and now no
soil nor cautel doth besmirch the virtue of his will.
But you must fear,
his virtue weighed, his will is not his own.
For he himself is subject to his birth.
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
carve for himself,
for on his choice depends the health and safety of this whole state
and therefore must his choice be circumscribed
unto the voice and yielding of that body
whereof he is the head.
Then if he says he loves you, it fits your wisdom so far to believe it
as he in his particular act and place may give his saying deed,
which is no further than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honor may sustain if with too...
credent ear you list his songs, or...
lose your heart,
or your chaste treasure
open to his unmastered importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia.
Fear it, my dear sister.
And keep you in the rear of your affection
out of the shot and danger of desire.
Best safety lies in fear.
Youth to itself rebels,
though none else near.
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep
as watchman to my heart.
But, good my brother, do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
show me the steep and thorny way to heaven
while like a puffed and reckless libertine himself
the primrose path of dalliance treads
and wrecks not his own creed.
Fear me not.
I stay too long.
A double blessing is a double grace.
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.
Yet here, Laertes?
Aboard, aboard, for shame.
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail
and you are stayed for?
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-hatched, unfledged comrade.
Beware of entrance to a quarrel,
but being in, bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
but not expressed in fancy.
Rich, not gaudy.
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be.
For loan oft loses both itself and friend.
This above all...
To thine own self be true.
And it must follow, as the night the day.
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
I humbly take my leave, my lord.
The time invites you. Go!
Farewell, Ophelia.
And remember well what I have said to you.
Angels and ministers of grace defend us.
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned?
Bring with thee airs of heaven or blasts from hell?
Thou comest in such a questionable shape that I'll speak to thee.
Mark me.
I will.
My hour is almost come.
When I to sulfurous and tormenting flames must render up myself.
- Alas, poor ghost. - Pity me not.
But lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold.
Speak. I am bound to hear.
I am thy father's spirit.
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night
and for the day confined to fast in fires,
till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
are burnt and purged away.
But that I am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul.
Freeze thy young blood,
make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
thy knotted and combined locks to part
and each particular hair to stand on end
like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
But this eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood.
List.
List, list! If thou didst ever thy dear father love...
- God. - Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
- Murder! - Murder most foul as in the best it is.
But this most foul, strange and unnatural.
Now, Hamlet, hear.
'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, a serpent stung me.
So, the whole ear of Denmark is by a forged process of my death
rankly abused.
But know, thou noble youth, the serpent that did sting thy father's life
- now wears his crown. - My uncle.
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast
with witchcraft of his wit with traitorous gifts.
Wicked wit and gifts that have the power so to seduce.
Won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.
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 soft,
methinks I scent the morning air.
Brief let me be.
Sleeping within my orchard, my custom always of the afternoon,
upon my secure hour thy uncle stole
with juice of cursed hebenon in a vial.
And in the porches of my ears did pour the leperous distilment
whose effect holds such an enmity
with blood of man that swift as quicksilver
it courses through the natural gates and alleys of the body.
And with a sudden vigor doth posset and curd,
like eager droppings into milk,
the thin and wholesome blood.
So did it mine.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand.
Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled. No reckoning made, but sent to my account
with all my imperfections on my head.
Horrible. Horrible! Most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and damned incest.
But howsoever thou pursuest this act, taint not thy mind.
Nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother aught.
Leave her to heaven
and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her.
Fare thee well at once.
Remember me.
The time is out of joint.
Cursed spite
that ever I was born to set it right.
My lord.
What news, my lord?
Day and night
but this is wondrous strange.
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
My fate...
cries out.
Hello and welcome to Moviefone.
Brought to you by "The New York Times" and American Express.
If you know the name of the movie you'd like to see, press one now.
What is it, Ophelia, he hath said to you?
So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.
Marry, well bethought.
What is between you?
Give me up the truth.
My lord, he hath of late made many tenders of his affection to me.
Affection.
Think yourself a baby
that you have taken these tenders for true pay,
which are not sterling.
Tender yourself more dearly.
My lord, he hath importuned me with love in honorable fashion.
When the blood burns,
how prodigal the soul doth lend the tongue vows.
These blazes, daughter, giving more light than heat.
Extinct in both.
Even in their promise as it is a-making
you must not take for fire.
I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
From this time
be something scanter of your maiden presence.
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
than a command to parley.
For Lord Hamlet, believe in him so much that he is young,
and with a larger tether may he walk than maybe given you.
Do not believe his vows.
I would not, in plain terms,
from this time forth
have you so slander any moment leisure
as to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to it,
I charge you.
We have the word "to be."
But what I propose is that a word to "in to be."
In to be.
Because it's not possible to be alone,
to be by yourself.
You need other people
in order to be.
You need other beings in order to be.
Not only you need father, mother,
but also uncle or...
brother, sister... society.
But you also need sunshine,
river,
air, trees, birds,
elephants, and so on.
So it is impossible to be by yourself.
Alone.
You have to "in to be" with everyone
and everything else.
Therefore, "to be," means to "in to be."
To the celestial and my soul's idol.
The most beautified.
Ophelia.
Doubt that the stars are fire.
Doubt that the sun doth move.
Doubt truth to be a liar.
But never doubt I love.
To be, or not to be?
To be...
So oft it chances in particular men
that for some vicious mole of nature in them
or by some habit that too much o'er leavens
the form of plausive manners,
that these men
carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
their virtues else be they as pure as grace,
shall in the general censure take corruption.
How does my good Lord Hamlet?
Well, God-a-mercy.
Do you know me, my lord?
Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.
- Not I, my lord. - Then I would you were so honest a man.
- Honest, my lord? - Ay, sir. To be honest, as this world goes,
is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
That is very true, my lord.
Have you a daughter?
I have, my lord.
Let her not walk in the sun.
Conception is a blessing,
but as your daughter may conceive, friend,
look to it.
How say you by that?
Still harping on my daughter.
He is far gone.
And truly in my youth
I suffered much for love.
Will you go out in the air, my lord?
Into my grave.
My honorable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.
You cannot take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal.
Except my life.
My liege.
My liege,
and madam.
To expostulate
what majesty should be,
what duty is,
why day is day, night night,
and time is time
were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit
and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief.
Your noble son is mad.
Mad call I it, for, to define true madness,
what is it but...
to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go.
More matter, less art.
Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
That he is mad, 'tis true.
'Tis true, 'tis pity.
And pity 'tis 'tis true.
A foolish figure, but farewell it, for I will use no art.
Mad let us grant him, then.
And now remains for us to 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.
Gather now and surmise.
Came this from Hamlet to her?
"I have no art to reckon my groans"
I love thee best, most best...
Thine evermore, whilst this machine is to him,
"Hamlet."
This in obedience hath my daughter shown me,
and more above, hath his solicitings, as they fell out by...
time,
by means and place,
all given to mine ear.
How hath she received his love?
What do you think of me?
As of a man faithful and honorable.
I would fain prove so.
But what might you think, when I had seen this hot love on the wing...
As I perceived it, I must tell you that,
before my daughter told me,
what might you, or my dear majesty here, think
if I had looked 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 out of thy star,
this must not be."
She took the fruits of my advice,
and he, repelled... A short tale to make...
Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,
thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,
into the madness wherein now he raves
and all we mourn for.
Do you think 'tis this?
It may be, very like.
Take this from this if this be otherwise.
If circumstances lead me,
I will find where truth is hid,
though it were hid indeed within the center.
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 sleep to say we end the heartache
and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.
'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
To die,
to sleep,
perchance to dream.
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 a life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
the proud man's contumely,
the insolence of office, the law's delay,
the pangs of "desprised" love,
when he himself might his own quietus make
with a bare bodkin?
Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life,
or it not the dread of something after death,
the undiscovered country to whose bourn no traveler returns.
Puzzles the will
and makes us rather bear those ills we have
than fly to others that we know not of?
And thus, conscience does make cowards of us all.
And thus the native hue of resolution
is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought,
and enterprises of great pith and moment, in this regard
their currents turn awry
and lose the name of action.
My excellent good friends!
How dost thou, Guildenstern?
Rosencrantz!
Good lads,
how do ye both?
As the indifferent children of the earth.
Happy, in that we are not overhappy.
On fortune's cap we are not the very button.
- Nor the soles of her shoes? - Neither, my lord.
What news?
None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.
Then doomsday is 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 has sent you to prison hither?
Prison, my lord?
Denmark is a prison.
Then the world is one.
Goodly one, in which there are many confines,
wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one of the worst.
We think not...
We think not so, my lord!
Then 'tis none to you, for there is nothing either good nor bad
but thinking makes it so. To me, it is a prison.
Then your ambition makes it so. 'Tis too narrow for your mind.
God.
I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space
were it not that I have bad dreams.
- What make you here? - Visit you, my lord.
No other occasion.
And can you by no drift of conference
get from him why he puts on this confusion,
grating so harshly all his days of quiet
with turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
He does confess he feels himself distracted.
But from what cause he will by no means speak.
Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
but with a crafty madness keeps aloof
when we would bring him on to some confession of his true state.
Did he receive you well?
Most like a gentleman.
But with much forcing of his disposition.
Niggard of question
but of our demands most free in his reply.
Thank you, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.
Thank you, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.
We lay our service freely at your feet.
What a rogue and peasant slave am I.
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
but in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
could force his soul so to his own conceit
that from her working all his visage wanned,
his whole function suiting with forms to his conceit?
And all for nothing!
What would he do, had he the motive and cue for passion that I have?
I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play
have by the very cunning of the scene
been struck so to the soul that presently
they have proclaimed their malefactions.
For murder,
though it have no tongue,
will speak with most miraculous organ.
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
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.
'Tis most true, and he beseeched me
to entreat your majesties
to hear and see the matter.
With all my heart, and it doth content me much to hear him so inclined.
Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
and drive his purpose on to these delights.
We shall, my lord.
And for your part, Ophelia,
I do wish that your good beauties be the happy cause of Hamlet's wildness.
So shall I hope that your virtues
will bring him to his wonted way again.
How does your honor these many a day?
I humbly thank you.
Well.
My lord, I have remembrances of yours
I have longed long to redeliver.
I pray you receive them.
No, not I.
I never gave you aught.
My honored lord, you know right well you did.
And with them, words of so sweet breath composed
as made these things more rich.
Their perfume lost, take them again.
For to the noble mind, rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.
Are you honest?
My lord?
Are you fair?
What means your lordship?
I did love you once.
Indeed, you made me believe so.
You should not have believed me.
I loved you not.
I was the more deceived.
Get thee to a nunnery.
Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?
I am myself indifferent honest,
and yet I could accuse me of more things
it were better my mother had not borne me.
I'm very proud,
revengeful, ambitious,
with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
imagination to give them shape,
time to act them in.
What should such fellows as I do
crawling between earth and heaven?
We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us.
Where is thy father?
Let the doors be shut upon him that he may play the fool
nowhere but in his own house.
Get thee to a nunnery.
Two messages.
- If thou dost marry, - I give thee this plague
for thy dowry.
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,
thou shalt not escape calumny.
Get thee to a nunnery. Go. Farewell.
I say, we shall have no more marriage!
Those that are married already, all but one shall live!
The rest shall keep as they are!
To a nunnery, go!
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.
Tonight, one scene comes near the circumstances
of which I have told thee of my father's death.
I pray thee, when thou seest the act afoot,
observe...
Observe my uncle.
If his occulted guilt do not itself unkennel in one speech,
it is a damned ghost that we have seen.
Give him heedful note.
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face
and after we will both our judgments join in censure of his seeming.
Well, my lord.
Get you a place. I must be idle.
Hamlet, come sit by me.
No, Mother, here's metal more attractive.
Ay, lady, shall I sit in your lap?
- No, my lord. - I mean, my head upon your lap?
- Ay, my lord. - You think I meant country matters?
I think nothing, my lord.
Well, that's a fair thought, to lie between a maids' legs.
- What is, my lord? - Nothing.
You are merry, my lord.
God. What should a man do but be merry?
For, look you, how cheerful my mother looks
and my father died within two hours.
Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.
So long?
Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables.
Heavens! Die two months ago and not forgotten yet?
Why, then there's hope that a great man's memory
may outlive his life more than half a year.
How fares our cousin Hamlet?
Excellent.
What means this, my lord?
It means mischief.
My lord. My lord?
Light.
- Lights! - Frightened with false fire?
- Away! - My lord!
Good Horatio,
I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound.
- Didst perceive? - Very well, my lord.
- Upon the poisoning? - I did well note him.
Some must watch
while some must sleep.
Thus runs the world away.
Good my lord.
Hello. This is Eartha Kitt.
Cats have nine lives,
but unfortunately, you have only one.
So, buckle your seat belt for safety.
Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.
- The king, sir... - Ay, sir, what of him?
Is in his retirement marvelous distempered.
- With drink? - Good my lord,
try to put your discourse into some frame.
I'm tame, pronounce.
The queen, your mother, in most great affliction
of spirit, hath sent me to you.
You're welcome.
Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed.
If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer...
I cannot.
- What? - Make you a wholesome answer.
My wit's diseased.
Now is the very witching time of night
when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
contagion to this world.
Now I could drink hot blood
and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on.
I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
to let his madness range. Therefore prepare you.
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
and he to England shall along with you.
We will ourselves provide.
Most holy and religious fear it is to keep those
many, many bodies safe that live and feed upon your majesty.
Never alone did the king sigh, but with a general groan.
Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage.
For we will fetters put about this fear that now goes too free-footed.
Rosencrantz We will haste us.
My offence is rank, it smells to heaven.
It hath the primal eldest curse upon it.
What if this cursed hand were thicker than itself with brother's blood?
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow?
Forgive me my foul murder?
That cannot be,
for I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the murder...
My crown, mine own ambition,
my queen.
What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can. What can it not?
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
Look you lay home to him.
Tell him that his pranks are too broad to bear with
and that your grace
hath screened and stood between
much heat and him.
Fear me not.
Mother!
I'll shroud me even here.
Pray you, be round with him.
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.
Have you forgot me?
No, by the rood, not so. You are the queen,
your husband's brother's wife.
And, would it were not so, you are my mother.
I will set those to you that can speak!
Come, come, and sit you down.
You shall not budge. You go not till I set you up a glass
- where you may see the inmost part of you. - What will thou do?
Thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help!
What! Help, help!
What hast thou done?
Nay, I know not.
Is it the king?
What a rash and bloody deed is this!
Almost as bad, good Mother,
as kill a king and marry with his brother.
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.
- What have I done? - Have you eyes?
You cannot call it love, for at your age the hey-day in the blood is tame,
it's humble,
and waits upon the judgment.
Shame! Where is thy blush?
You live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed
honeying and making love over the nasty sty...
- No more! - God.
A murderer. A king of shreds and patches...
How would you gracious figure?
Do you not come your tardy son to chide?
Alas, he's mad.
Do not forget. This visitation is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look,
amazement on thy mother sits.
Step between her and her fighting soul.
Speak to her, Hamlet.
How is it with you, lady?
Whereon do you look?
On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares.
Do not look upon me!
To whom do you speak this?
Do you see nothing there?
Nothing at all.
This is the very coinage of your brain.
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time
and makes as healthful music.
It is not madness that I have uttered.
Mother...
for love of grace,
confess yourself to heaven.
Repent what is past. Avoid what is to come.
Do not spread the compost on the weeds to make them ranker.
Hamlet.
Thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
Throw away the worser part of it
and live the purer with the other half.
Good night.
For this same lord, I do repent.
But heaven hath pleased it so to punish me with this
and this with me.
I will bestow him
and will answer well the death I gave him.
- 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,
make you to ravel all this matter out that I essentially am not in madness
but made in craft.
Be thou assured
if words are 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.
I'll lug the guts into the neighbor room.
Mother...
good night.
Indeed this counselor is now
most still,
most silent,
and most grave
who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Good night, Mother.
What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?
Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.
Tell us where it is, that we may take it thence
and bear it to the chapel.
- Do not believe it. - Believe what?
That I can keep your counsel and not my own.
Besides, to be demanded of a sponge.
- Take you me for a sponge? - Ay, sir,
one that soaks up the king's countenance, his awards, his authorities.
My lord, you must tell us where the body is
and go with us to the king.
The body is with the king,
but the king is not with the body.
- The king is a thing... - A thing, my lord?
Of nothing.
How now.
What hath befallen?
Where the dead body is bestowed, my lord.
We cannot get from him.
Now, Hamlet.
Where is Polonius?
At supper.
Where?
Not where he eats, but where he's eaten.
A certain convocation of politic worms are eating at him.
We fat all creatures else to fat us, we fat ourselves for maggots.
Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service00
two dishes,
but to one table.
That's the end.
Where is Polonius?
In heaven.
Send hither to see.
If your messenger find him not there, seek him in the other place yourself.
Oof.
But indeed, if you find him not within the month,
you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.
Go seek him there.
He will stay till you come.
Hamlet,
this deed
for thine especial safety,
which we do tender, as we dearly grieve for that which thou hast done,
must send thee hence with fiery quickness.
Therefore prepare thyself.
The bark is ready, and the wind at help,
the associates tend, and everything is bent for England.
- For England. - Ay, Hamlet.
- Good. - So it is.
If thou knew'st our purposes.
Farewell, my mother.
Thy loving father, Hamlet.
My mother.
Father and mother is man and wife. Man and wife is one flesh.
And so, my mother.
For everything
is sealed and done and leans on the affair.
The present death of Hamlet.
Do it, England.
For like the hectic in my blood he rages,
and thou must cure me.
Good sir,
whose powers are these?
The nephew to old Norway,
Fortinbras.
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 event00
a thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom
and ever three parts coward...
I do not know why yet I live
to say, "This thing's to do."
Sith I have the cause and means and strength
and will to do it.
Examples gross as earth exort me.
Rightly to be great
is not to stir without great argument,
but greatly to find quarrel in a straw
when honor is at the stake.
How stand I then,
that have a father killed,
a mother stained,
excitements of my reason and my blood
and let all sleep.
From this time forth,
my thoughts be bloody
or be nothing worth.
To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is,
each joy 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?
Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
What say you?
He is dead and gone, lady.
Dead and gone.
At his head a grass-green turf, at his heels a stone.
- Nay, but, Ophelia... - Pray you, mark!
My lord, alas, look here.
How do you, pretty lady?
Pray, let's have no more words of this,
but when they ask you what it means, say you this.
Up he rose, and donned his clothes
and dupped the chamber door.
Let in the maid that out a maid never departed more.
I hope all will be well.
We must be patient,
but I cannot choose to do but to weep
to think they should lay him in the cold ground.
My brother will know of this.
And so I thank you for your good counsel.
Good night. Good night, sweet ladies, good night.
Good night!
How long hath she been thus?
Calmly, 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 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.
Where is my father?
- Dead. - But not by him.
How came he dead?
- I'll not be juggled with. - No, Laertes.
To hell, allegiance!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation.
Let come what comes,
only I'll be revenged most thoroughly for my father.
Who shall stay you?
My will, not all the world's.
And for my means, I shall husband them so well, they shall go far with little.
Why, then now speaks
like a good child and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father's death
and most sensibly in grief for it.
It shall to your level judgment peer
as day doth to your eye.
And will he not come again?
No, no, he is dead.
Go to thy deathbed.
He will never come again.
Rose of May.
Dear maid,
kind sister, sweet Ophelia.
Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, it could not move thus.
Is it possible, a young maid's wits
should be as mortal as an old man's life?
There's rosemary, that's for remembrances.
I pray you, love, remember.
And there's pansies. That's for thoughts.
There's fennel for you,
and columbines,
and there's rue for you.
And some for me, too.
We may call it herb of grace of Sundays.
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 came to a good end.
Where the offence is let the great axe fall.
Now must your conscience my acquaintance seal,
and you must put me in your heart for friend.
Sith you heard,
that he which hath your noble father slain
pursued my life.
Tell me why you proceeded not in these feats so...
crimeful and capital in nature.
The queen his mother
lives almost by his looks
and for myself, my virtue or my plague, I know not which,
she's so conjunctive to my life and soul
that as the star moves not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her.
So I have a noble father lost.
A sister...
driven to desperate terms whose worth, if praises may bring back
stood challenger on mount of all the age for her perfections.
But my revenge will come.
Break not your sleeps for that.
You must not think that we are made of stuff so flat and dull
that we can let our beard be shook with danger
and think it pastime.
You shortly shall hear more.
I loved your father,
and we love ourself.
And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine...
From Hamlet.
Laertes, you shall hear.
"High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your kingdom."
Tomorrow I shall beg your leave to your kingly eyes,
where I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto,
recount the occasion of my sudden and more strange return.
"Hamlet."
Naked?
And in a postscript here, he says "alone."
Can you advise me?
I'm lost in it, my lord.
But let him come.
It warms the very sickness in my heart.
If he be now returned,
I shall work him to an exploit, now ripe in my devise,
under the which he shall not choose but fall.
And for his death
no wind of blame shall breathe
not even his mother shall uncharge the practice and call it accident.
Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart?
Why ask you this, my lord?
There live within the very flame of love
a kind of wick or snuff that will abate it.
And nothing is as a like goodness still.
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
dies in his own too-much.
That we would do, we should do when we would,
for that "would" changes and hath abatements
and delays as many as there are tongues,
are hands, are accidents.
And then this "should" is like a
spendthrift sigh
that hurts by easing.
But to the quick of the ulcer,
what wouldst thou undertake to show yourself your father's son
in deed more than in word?
One woe doth tread upon another's heels so fast they follow.
Your sister is drowned, Laertes.
Drowned?
Drowned.
Not to have strewed thy grave.
And, but that great command o'ersways the order,
she should in ground unsanctified have lodged till the last trumpet.
- Must there no more be done? - No more be done.
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh...
Ophelia.
May violets spring.
Hold off the earth awhile till I have caught her one more time in mine arms.
Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead
till of this flat you have a mountain made.
What's he whose grief bears such an emphasis?
Whose phrase of sorrow conjures the wandering stars
and makes them stand like wonder-wounded hearers?
The devil take thy soul.
I loved Ophelia.
Forty thousand brothers with all their quantity of love
could not make up my sum.
What wilt thou do for her? Show me what thou will do.
Wilt thou weep? Wilt fight, wilt tear thyself,
wilt drink up eisel? Eat a crocodile?
Dost thou come here to whine?
Pluck them asunder.
What is the reason you use me thus?
I loved you ever.
But it does not matter.
In my heart there was a kind of fighting that would not let me sleep.
Rashly, and praised be rashness for it,
let us know our indiscretions do...
Do sometimes serve us well
when our deep plots do pall.
That should teach us
there's a divinity that shapes our ends,
rough-hew them how we will.
But wilt thou hear how I did proceed?
I do beseech you.
Up from my cabin,
in the dark,
groped I
to unseal their grand commission.
Where I found, Horatio...
an exact command
my head should be struck off.
Here's the commission.
Read it at more leisure.
Being thus benetted round with villainies,
I sat me down,
devised a new commission,
wrote it fair.
An earnest conjuration from the king
that, on the view and knowing of these contents,
he should these bearers put to sudden death.
So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to it.
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.
Does it not, think thee, he that hath killed my king
and whored my mother, is it not perfect conscience
to quit him with this arm?
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.
A man's life is no more than to say "one."
But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
that to Laertes I forgot myself,
for, by the image of my cause, I see the portraiture of his.
I'll court his favors.
The king, sir.
The king hath wagered
that in a dozen passes between himself and Laertes
he shall not exceed you three hits.
He hath laid on 12, nine.
It should come to immediate trial
if your lordship should vouchsafe an answer.
How if I answer "no"?
If it please his majesty, it's the breathing time of day with me.
You'll lose, my lord.
I do not think so.
But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart.
If your mind dislike anything,
obey it.
I will forestall their repair hither
say you are not fit.
No, 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.
Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is it to leave betimes?
Let be.
Hamlet, this pearl is thine.
Here's to thy health.
Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong.
But pardon it, as you are a gentleman.
This presence knows, and you must needs have heard,
how I am punished with a sore distraction.
What I have done that might your nature, honor, and exception roughly awake,
I here proclaim was madness.
Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil free me so far
in your most generous thoughts
that I have shot my arrow over the house
and hurt my brother.
Give us the foils.
This is too heavy. Let me see another.
This one likes me well.
- These foils are all a length? - Ay, my good lord.
Your skill shall, like a star in the darkest night, stick fiery off indeed.
You mock me, sir.
No, by this hand.
Cousin Hamlet, you know the wager?
Very well, my lord.
Your grace has laid the odds on the weaker side.
I do not fear it. I have seen you both.
But since he is bettered, we have therefore odds.
Set me the stoups of wine upon the table.
The king drinks to Hamlet.
Come, sir.
Come, my lord.
Point.
- Judgment. - A hit. A palpable hit.
Well, again.
Stay. Give me drink.
Give him the cup.
I'll play this bout first, set it aside awhile.
Another hit. What say you?
A touch, a touch, I do confess it.
Our son shall win.
Hamlet, take my napkin.
Rub thy brows.
The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.
I pray you, pardon me.
Come.
Let me wipe thy face.
Come, Laertes.
You do but dally. I pray you, pass with your best violence.
Say you so?
Come on.
Thy mother's poisoned.
Your king.
The king's to blame.
Horatio,
I am dead.
Thou livest.
Report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied.
And if thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
absent thee from felicity awhile and in this harsh world
draw thy breath in pain to tell my story.
The rest is silence.
Now cracks a noble heart.
Good night,
sweet prince.
Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
This quarry cries on havoc.
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.
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
that our devices still are overthrown.
Our thoughts are ours,
their ends none of our own.