William Shakespeare

“ OPHELIA.
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
HAMLET.
You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.
OPHELIA.
I was the more deceived.
HAMLET.
Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. ”

“ HAMLET.
How say you then, would heart of man once think it?—
But you’ll be secret?
HORATIO and MARCELLUS.
Ay, by heaven, my lord.
HAMLET.
There’s ne’er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he’s an arrant knave.
HORATIO.
There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this.
HAMLET.
Why, right; you are i’ the right;
And so, without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part:
You, as your business and desire shall point you,—
For every man hath business and desire,
Such as it is;—and for my own poor part,
Look you, I’ll go pray. ”

“ HAMLET.
’Tis well. I’ll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.—Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.
POLONIUS.
My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
HAMLET.
God’s bodikin, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in. ”

“ Where is he gone?
QUEEN.
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.
KING.
O Gertrude, come away!
The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch
But we will ship him hence, and this vile deed
We must with all our majesty and skill
Both countenance and excuse.—Ho, Guildenstern!
Re-enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Friends both, go join you with some further aid:
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
And from his mother’s closet hath he dragg’d him. ”

“ Nay, good my lord.
HAMLET.
It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a woman.
HORATIO.
If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit.
HAMLET.
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’t to leave betimes?
Enter King, Queen, Laertes, Lords, Osric and Attendants with foils &c. ”

“ HAMLET.
’Tis e’en so; the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.
FIRST CLOWN.
[Sings.]
But age with his stealing steps
Hath claw’d me in his clutch,
And hath shipp’d me into the land,
As if I had never been such.
[Throws up a skull.]
HAMLET.
That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to th’ ground, as if ’twere Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician which this ass now o’er-offices, one that would circumvent God, might it not?
HORATIO.
It might, my lord. ”

“ 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—
HAMLET.
[Aside.] A little more than kin, and less than kind.
KING.
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
HAMLET.
Not so, my lord, I am too much i’ the sun.
QUEEN.
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. ”

“ What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
ROSENCRANTZ.
My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.
HAMLET.
Why did you laugh then, when I said ‘Man delights not me’? ”

“ Enter Polonius.
God bless you, sir.
POLONIUS.
My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.
HAMLET.
Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
POLONIUS.
By the mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.
HAMLET.
Methinks it is like a weasel.
POLONIUS.
It is backed like a weasel.
HAMLET.
Or like a whale.
POLONIUS.
Very like a whale.
HAMLET.
Then will I come to my mother by and by.—They fool me to the top of my bent.—I will come by and by.
POLONIUS.
I will say so.
[Exit.]
HAMLET.
By and by is easily said. Leave me, friends. ”

“ forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum.—What wilt thou do for her?
Queen. O, he is mad, Laertes.
Ham. Come, show me what thou'lt do:
Wou'lt weep? wou'lt fight? wou'lt fast? wou'lt tear thyself?
I'll do't.—Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me41 with leaping in her grave?
Be buried quick with her, and so will I:
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,42
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa43 like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou. ”

“ For no man, sir.
HAMLET.
What woman then?
FIRST CLOWN.
For none neither.
HAMLET.
Who is to be buried in’t?
FIRST CLOWN.
One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she’s dead.
HAMLET.
How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it, the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe.—How long hast thou been a grave-maker? ”

“ OPHELIA.
What is, my lord?
HAMLET.
Nothing.
OPHELIA.
You are merry, my lord.
HAMLET.
Who, I?
OPHELIA.
Ay, my lord.
HAMLET.
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’s two hours.
OPHELIA.
Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.
HAMLET.
So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I’ll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year. But by’r lady, he must build churches then ”

“ Sir, this report of his
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy
That he could nothing do but wish and beg
Your sudden coming o’er to play with him.
Now, out of this,—
LAERTES.
What out of this, my lord?
KING.
Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?
LAERTES.
Why ask you this?
KING.
Not that I think you did not love your father,
But that I know love is begun by time,
And that I see, in passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it. ”

“ HAMLET.
Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw!
This is th’imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.
CAPTAIN.
God b’ wi’ you, sir.
[Exit.]
ROSENCRANTZ.
Will’t please you go, my lord?
HAMLET.
I’ll be with you straight. Go a little before.
[Exeunt all but Hamlet.]
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. ”

“ As will not leave their tinct.
HAMLET.
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty.
QUEEN.
O speak to me no more;
These words like daggers enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet.
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!
QUEEN.
No more.
HAMLET.
A king of shreds and patches!—
Enter Ghost. ”

“ GUILDENSTERN.
In what, my dear lord?
HAMLET.
I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Enter Polonius.
POLONIUS.
Well be with you, gentlemen.
HAMLET.
Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too, at each ear a hearer. That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts.
ROSENCRANTZ.
Happily he’s the second time come to them; for they say an old man is twice a child.
HAMLET.
I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players. Mark it.—You say right, sir: for a Monday morning ’twas so indeed. ”

“ HAMLET.
Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
OPHELIA.
’Tis brief, my lord.
HAMLET.
As woman’s love.
Enter a King and a Queen.
PLAYER KING.
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.
PLAYER QUEEN.
So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o’er ere love be done. ”

“ A happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter.
My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.
HAMLET.
You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal, except my life, except my life, except my life.
POLONIUS.
Fare you well, my lord.
HAMLET.
These tedious old fools.
Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
POLONIUS.
You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is. ”

“ GUILDENSTERN.
Prison, my lord?
HAMLET.
Denmark’s a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ.
Then is the world one.
HAMLET.
A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.
ROSENCRANTZ.
We think not so, my lord.
HAMLET.
Why, then ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ.
Why, then your ambition makes it one; ’tis too narrow for your mind. ”

“ OPHELIA.
The King rises.
HAMLET.
What, frighted with false fire?
QUEEN.
How fares my lord?
POLONIUS.
Give o’er the play.
KING.
Give me some light. Away.
All.
Lights, lights, lights.
[Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio.]
HAMLET.
Why, let the strucken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play;
For some must watch, while some must sleep,
So runs the world away.
Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me; with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir? ”

“ HAMLET.
Do the boys carry it away?
ROSENCRANTZ.
Ay, that they do, my lord. Hercules and his load too.
HAMLET.
It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, and those that would make mouths at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little. ’Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.
[Flourish of trumpets within.]
GUILDENSTERN.
There are the players.
HAMLET.
Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come. The appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. ”

“ HAMLET.
Come on, sir.
LAERTES.
Come, my lord.
[They play.]
HAMLET.
One.
LAERTES.
No.
HAMLET.
Judgement.
OSRIC.
A hit, a very palpable hit.
LAERTES.
Well; again.
KING.
Stay, give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine;
Here’s to thy health.
[Trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within.]
Give him the cup.
HAMLET.
I’ll play this bout first; set it by awhile.
[They play.]
Come. Another hit; what say you?
LAERTES.
A touch, a touch, I do confess.
KING.
Our son shall win.
QUEEN.
He’s fat, and scant of breath.
Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows. ”

“ Most welcome home.
[Exeunt Voltemand and Cornelius.]
POLONIUS.
This business is well ended.
My liege and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief. Your noble son is mad.
Mad call I it; for to define true madness,
What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go.
QUEEN.
More matter, with less art.
POLONIUS.
Madam, I swear I use no art at all. ”

“ HAMLET.
Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you, though I know, to divide him inventorially would dizzy th’arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in the verity of extolment, 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.
OSRIC.
Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him.
HAMLET.
The concernancy, sir? Why do we wrap the gentleman in our more rawer breath? ”

“ GUILDENSTERN.
Is in his retirement, marvellous distempered.
HAMLET.
With drink, sir?
GUILDENSTERN.
No, my lord; rather with choler.
HAMLET.
Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to the doctor, for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far more choler.
GUILDENSTERN.
Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair.
HAMLET.
I am tame, sir, pronounce.
GUILDENSTERN.
The Queen your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.
HAMLET.
You are welcome. ”

“ It shall as level to your judgement ’pear
As day does to your eye.
DANES.
[Within.] Let her come in.
LAERTES.
How now! What noise is that?
Re-enter Ophelia, fantastically dressed with straws and flowers.
O heat, dry up my brains. Tears seven times salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye.
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by 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? ”

“ I know the good King and Queen have sent for you.
ROSENCRANTZ.
To what end, my lord?
HAMLET.
That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for or no.
ROSENCRANTZ.
[To Guildenstern.] What say you?
HAMLET.
[Aside.] Nay, then I have an eye of you. If you love me, hold not off. ”

“ It is a damned ghost that we have seen;
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan’s stithy. Give him heedful note;
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face;
And after we will both our judgements join
In censure of his seeming.
HORATIO.
Well, my lord.
If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,
And ’scape detecting, I will pay the theft.
HAMLET.
They are coming to the play. I must be idle.
Get you a place.
Danish march. A flourish. Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and others. ”