Hamlet-to-Go
ACT I, scene i. Elsinore. A platform before the castle.
FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO
BERNARDO
Who's there? The Play begins with a question.
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MARCELLUS
Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy, There is no doubt that Marley was dead.
And will not let belief take hold of him This must be distinctly understood, or
Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us: nothing wonderful can come of the story
Therefore I have entreated him along I am going to relate. If we were not
With us to watch the minutes of this night; perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father
That if again this apparition come, died before the play began, there would
He may approve our eyes and speak to it. be nothing more remarkable in his
taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
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MARCELLUS
Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio. Again with the questions!
BERNARDO
Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.
HORATIO
Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.
BERNARDO
It would be spoke to.
MARCELLUS
Question it, Horatio.
HORATIO
What art thou that usurp'st this time of night, Usurpation. There’s been a lot of that
Together with that fair and warlike form going around lately.
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!
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ACT I, scene ii. A room of state in the castle.
HAMLET We’re more than a little related, but we
[Aside] A little more than kin, and less than kind. are not the same kind of people. Nor am
I too kindly disposed toward you!
KING CLAUDIUS
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
HAMLET
Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
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 lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
HAMLET
Ay, madam, it is common.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?
HAMLET
Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.' I am grieving!
'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, It’s one thing to pretend to be grief-stricken;
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, it’s quite something else to be grief-stricken.
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show; There’s more to me than meets the eye.
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
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Exeunt all but HAMLET
HAMLET
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt (in some variations, “sullied” flesh)
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! Too bad it’s a sin to commit suicide.
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this! Life sucks.
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!-- Ah, women!
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she--
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post Well, Claudius is her husband’s brother,
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! after all.
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue. Keep it to yourself.
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HAMLET
But what is your affair in Elsinore?
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
HORATIO
My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.
HAMLET
I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student;
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
HORATIO
Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon.
HAMLET
Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats A dark sense of humor.
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
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ACT I, scene iii. A room in Polonius' house.
LAERTES
For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour, Don’t take Hamlet and his affections seriously.
Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, (He’s a prince, and has to be careful who he
A violet in the youth of primy nature, marries.)
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more.
OPHELIA
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, Yea, well you behave yourself, too.
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.
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LORD POLONIUS
Give thy thoughts no tongue, Father knows best.
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, [Sir Ian Holm does a nice job with this part
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; in Franco Zefferelli’s production of Hamlet --
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment starring Mel Gibson. He hoists out all the old
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware clichés that he can think of, then end with a
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, heartfelt “this above all. . .
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. Polonius is a bit of an old windbag, but his
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; advice sounds pretty solid to this old dad.
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 rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
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LORD POLONIUS
For Lord Hamlet, Polonius has Hamlet pegged as a playa!
Believe so much in him, that he is young
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you: in few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
The better to beguile.
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ACT I, scene iv. The platform.
HAMLET
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, It seems like old King Hamlet, but that
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, doesn’t mean it is old King Hamlet.
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, Even more questions.
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 disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?
Ghost beckons HAMLET
MARCELLUS
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Please tell me you’ve heard this before.
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ACT I, scene v. Another part of the platform.
GHOST
I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid Let’s take a little guilt trip.
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, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love--
HAMLET
O God!
GHOST
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
HAMLET
Murder!
GHOST
Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange and unnatural.
HAMLET
O my prophetic soul! My uncle! Really! He knew that? How’d he know that?
(Is this an “honest ghost”?)
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GHOST
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! O, 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!
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire:
Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.
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HAMLET
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Surely you’ve heard some variant of this.
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come;
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, Boys – I may start acting a little strangely,
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet but I want you to keep what has gone on here
To put an antic disposition on, tonight as out little secret.
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,'
Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,'
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me: this not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.
GHOST
[Beneath] Swear. Do the others hear the ghost, or only Hamlet?
HAMLET
Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!
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ACT II, SCENE i. A room in POLONIUS' house.
OPHELIA
My lord, as I was sewing in my closet, What’s happened to Hamlet?
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
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.
LORD POLONIUS
Mad for thy love? Mad for love. (Apparently.)
OPHELIA
My lord, I do not know;
But truly, I do fear it.
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ACT II, scene ii. A room in the castle.
KING CLAUDIUS
Exit POLONIUS
He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found
The head and source of all your son's distemper.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
I doubt it is no other but the main; Mama knows what’s bothering her sonny.
His father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage.
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LORD POLONIUS
[Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't. How about this one?
Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
HAMLET
Into my grave.
LORD POLONIUS
Indeed, that is out o' the air.
[Aside]
How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness Hamlet’s pretending to be crazy – and it’s kind
that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity of liberating. Like a jester or a fool, the madman
could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will can get away with what a sane person could not.
leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of
meeting between him and my daughter.--My honourable
lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.
HAMLET
You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will Notice how mad people (and, oftentimes,
more willingly part withal: except my life, except commoners), speak in prose, not verse.
my life, except my life.
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HAMLET
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! A nice little speech.
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not