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(INSECTS CHIRPING)
(BIRDS CAWING)
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(CAR ENGINE RUNNING)
(WIND BLOWING)
(GRASS CRUNCHING)
(PANTING)
(WOOD POUNDING)
(ELECTRONIC BEEPING)
(WIND BLOWING)
(DOOR CREAKING)
(METAL THUDDING)
(DOOR CREAKING)
(CUTLERY CLATTERING)
(WATER RUNNING)
(WIND BLOWING)
(ELECTRICITY HUMMING)
Witness this army of such mass and charge
led by a delicate and tender prince,
whose spirit with divine ambition puffed
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.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Stand ho. Who's there?
Friends to this ground and liegemen to the Dane.
Give you good night.
Who hath relieved you?
Bernardo hath my place.
Give you good night.
Holla, Bernardo.
Say, what, and is Horatio there?
A piece of him.
Welcome, Horatio.
Welcome, good Marcellus.
What, has this thing appeared again tonight?
BERNARDO: I have seen nothing.
Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy
and will not let belief take hold of him
touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.
Therefore I have entreated him along with us
to watch the minutes of this night,
that if again this apparition comes,
he may approve our eyes and speak to it.
(BELL RINGING)
'Twill not appear.
Sit down a while and let us once again
assail your ears that are so fortified against our story
what we have two nights seen.
Peace, break thee off.
Look where it comes again.
(WAILING)
in the same figure of the king what's dead.
I'll cross it though it blast me.
Stay, illusion.
(BELL RINGING)
If thou hast any sound or use of voice, speak to me.
If there be any good thing to be done
that may to thee do ease and grace to me,
speak to me.
If thou art privy to thy country's fate
which happily foreknowing may avoid.
(SHRIEKING)
'Tis here.
'Tis gone.
(ALARM RINGING)
(MUMBLING)
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death,
the memory be green
and that it us befitted to bear our hearts in grief
and our whole kingdom
to be contracted in one brow of woe,
yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
that we with wisest sorrow think on him
together with remembrance of ourselves.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
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 a 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,
so much for him, (WOOD KNOCKING)
(DOOR CREAKING)
and now Laertes.
What's the news with you?
You told us of some suit.
What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
that shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
My dread lord, your leave and favor to return to France,
from whence though willingly I came
to show my duty in your coronation,
yet now I must confess that duty done.
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France
and bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
CLAUDIUS: Have you your father's leave?
What says Polonius?
Hath, my lord, rung from me
my slow leave by labors and petition,
and at last, upon his will, I sealed my hard consent.
I do beseech you give him leave to go.
(METAL CLATTERING)
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: A little more than kin and less than kind.
CLAUDIUS: How is it the clouds still hang on you?
Not so, my lord.
I am too much in the sun.
Good Hamlet,
do not forever with thy veiled lids
seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou knowest 'tis common.
All that lives must die,
passing through nature to eternity.
Aye, 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.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
'Tis sweet
and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
to give these mourning duties to your father,
but you must know your father lost a father.
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
in filial obligation for some term to do obsequious sorrow,
but to persevere in obstinate condolement
is a course of impious stubbornness.
'Tis a fault to heaven,
a fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
to reason most absurd,
whose common theme is death of fathers,
and who still hath cried
from the first corpse till he that died today,
"This must be so."
(WIND BLOWING)
We pray you, throw to earth this unprevailing woe
and think of us as of a father,
for your intent in going back to school in Wittenberg,
it is most retrograde to our desire,
and we beseech you, bend you,
to remain here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.
I pray thee, stay with us.
Go not to Wittenberg.
I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
(WOOD CREAKING)
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(DOOR CREAKING)
Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt,
thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
or that the everlasting had not fixed
his canon against self-slaughter.
Oh, God.
God.
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
seem to me all the uses of this world.
Fie on it.
Fie.
'Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed.
All 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 between 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 it.
Frailty, thy name is woman.
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
with which you followed my poor father's body,
like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she,
oh God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
would have mourned 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
have left the flushing in her galled eyes,
she married.
(CUTLERY RATTLING)
You don't want veggies (MUMBLING)?
HAMLET VOICEOVER: Oh most wicked speed,
to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets.
(MUMBLING)
It is not, nor it cannot come, to good,
but break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
MAN: Cheers.
Cheers, cheers.
(MUMBLING)
(CUTLERY RATTLING)
(WIND BLOWING)
(MACHINE RUNNING)
(WATER FLOWING)
(BIRD CAWING)
(LAUGHING)
Hail to your lordship.
I'm glad to see you well.
Horatio?
(LAUGHING)
Or I do forget myself?
The same, my lord, (LAUGHING)
and your poor servant ever.
Sir, my good friend, I'll change that name with you,
and what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?
Marcellus.
MARCELLUS: My good lord.
I am very glad to see you, but what,
in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
A truant disposition, good my lord.
HAMLET: I would not hear your enemy say so,
but what is your affair in Elsinore?
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.
I prithee, do not mock me, fellow student.
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
HORATIO: Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.
Thrift.
Thrift, Horatio.
The funeral baked meats
did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
My father, (BIRD CAWING)
methinks I see my father.
Where, my lord?
In the mind's eye, Horatio.
HORATIO: My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
Saw who?
HORATIO: My lord, the king, your father.
The king, my father?
Season your admiration a while with an attent ear
till I may deliver this marvel to you.
Two nights together had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Bernardo, upon their watch
in the dead waste and middle of the night,
been thus encountered.
A figure like your father
appears before them and with solemn march
goes slow and stately by them,
and I with them the third night kept the watch,
where, as they had delivered both in time,
form of the thing, each word made true and good.
The apparition comes.
I knew your father.
These hands are not more like.
HAMLET: But where was this?
MARCELLUS: My lord, upon the platform where we watched.
- Did you not speak to it? - My lord, I did, but answer made it none.
I would I had been there.
HORATIO: It would have much amazed you.
I will watch tonight.
Perchance 'twill walk again.
If it assume my noble father's person,
I'll speak to it,
though hell itself should gape and bid me hold my peace,
so fare you well.
Upon the platform 'twixt 11:00 and 12:00, I'll visit you.
Our duty to your honor.
Your loves, as mine to you.
Farewell.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Do not sleep, but let me hear from you.
Do you doubt that?
For Hamlet
and the trifling of his favor.
Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
a violet in the youth of primy nature,
sweet, not lasting, forward, not permanent,
the perfume and suppliance of a minute, no more.
No more but so?
Think it no more.
His greatness weighed, his will is not his own.
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.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
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,
teach me the steep and thorny way to heaven whiles,
like a puffed and reckless libertine,
himself the primrose path of dalliance treads.
Fear me not.
(WOOD THUDDING)
Yet here, Laertes?
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 unto thy soul with hoops of steel,
but do not dull thy palm with entertainment
of each new hatched, unfledged courage.
Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
bear it that the opposed may beware of thee.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
but not expressed in fancy,
rich, not gaudy,
for the apparel oft proclaims the man,
and they in France of the best rank and station
are the most select and generous, chief in that.
This above all.
To thine own self be true,
and it must follow, as the night, the day.
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
My blessing season this in thee.
Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
Farewell, Ophelia.
Remember well what I've said to you.
'Tis in my memory locked,
and you yourself shall keep the key of it.
Farewell.
(CLOTH THUDDING)
(METAL SLAMMING)
(CAR ENGINE RUNNING)
(BIRD CAWING)
(WIND BLOWING)
(DRAMATIC INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(METAL RATTLING)
The air bites shrewdly.
It is very cold.
It is a nipping and an eager air.
What hour now?
I think it lacks of 12:00?
No, it is struck.
Indeed?
I heard it not.
(BELL RINGING)
Look, my lord.
It comes.
Angels and ministers of grace, defend us.
(DRAMATIC INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
(WIND BLOWING)
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, oh, answer me.
Say, why is this?
Wherefore, what should we do?
It will not speak.
Then I will follow it.
Do not, my lord.
Why? What should be the fear?
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
or to the dreadful summit of a cliff
and there assume some other horrible form
which might deprive your sovereignty
of reason and draw you into madness?
Think on it.
Go on.
I'll follow thee.
- You shall not go, my lord. - Hold off your hands.
- HORATIO: Be ruled, my lord, do not... - Unhand me.
By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me.
I say away.
Go on.
I'll follow thee.
HORATIO: He waxes desperate with imagination.
MARCELLUS: Let's follow.
'Tis not fit thus to obey him.
HORATIO: Have after.
MARCELLUS: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
(BELL RINGING)
HORATIO: Heaven will direct it.
(GRASS CRUNCHING)
Wither wilt thou lead me?
Speak.
I'll go no further.
GHOST: Mark me.
I will.
GHOST: My hour's almost come when I to sulfurous
and tormenting flames must render up myself.
Speak.
I am bound to hear.
GHOST: So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.
HAMLET: What?
GHOST: 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.
List.
Oh, list.
If thou didst ever thy dear father love...
God.
GHOST: Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
Murder?
GHOST: Murder most foul, as in the best it is,
but this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
HAMLET: Haste me to know it that I,
with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love,
may sweep to my revenge.
GHOST: 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.
HAMLET: Oh my prophetic soul, my uncle.
GHOST: 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 mine ears
did pour the leprous distilment.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand
of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched.
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
with all my imperfections on my head.
Oh, horrible.
(BELL RINGING)
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.
Adieu.
(WIND BLOWING)
Remember me.
(BIRD CHIRPING)
MARCELLUS: Lord Hamlet.
(WATER FLOWING)
Hamlet.
Lord Hamlet.
MARCELLUS: My lord.
HORATIO: My lord.
Heavens secure him.
MARCELLUS: How doth my noble lord?
What news, my lord?
Wonderful.
- Well, good my lord, tell it. - No, you will reveal it.
HORATIO: Not I, my lord, by heaven.
MARCELLUS: Nor I, my lord.
But you'll be secret?
Aye, by heaven, my lord.
There's never a villain dwelling in all Denmark,
but he's an arrant knave.
There needs no ghost, my lord,
come from the grave to tell us this.
Why, right.
You are in the right,
and so 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,
I will go pray.
These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.
HAMLET: I'm sorry they offend you, heartily.
Yes, faith, heartily.
There's no offense, my lord.
Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
and much offense too,
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
and now, good friends, as you are friends,
scholars, and soldiers, give me one poor request.
What is it, my lord?
We will.
Never make known what you have seen tonight.
My lord, we will not.
Nay, but swear it.
HORATIO: Oh, 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 your philosophy.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(WIND BLOWING)
(CAR ENGINE RUNNING)
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(GRASS CRUNCHING)
(WOOD THUDDING)
(PANTING)
How now, Ophelia?
What's the matter?
Alas, my lord, I have been so affrighted.
With what, in the name of God?
As I was sewing in my chamber, Lord Hamlet,
with his doublet all unbraced,
pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
and with a look so piteous in purport
as if he had been loosed out of hell
to speak of horrors, he comes before me.
Mad for thy love?
My lord, I do not know, but truly I do fear it.
What said he?
OPHELIA: 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 stayed he so.
At last, a little shaking of mine arm,
and thrice his head thus waving up and down,
he raised a sigh so piteous and profound
as it did seem to shatter all his bulk
and end his being.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Come, go with me.
I will go seek the King.
This is the very ecstasy of love
whose violent property fordoes itself
and leads the will to desperate undertakings
as oft as any passions under heaven
that does afflict our natures.
I'm sorry.
What, have you given him any hard words of late?
No, my lord, but as you did command
I did repel his letters
and denied his access to me.
That hath made him mad.
Come.
Go we to the King.
This must be known,
which being kept close might move more grief to hide
than hate to utter love.
Come.
(BIRDS CAWING)
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(METAL THUDDING)
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.
(LIQUID POURING)
Something, have you heard,
of Hamlet's transformation, so 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 thus has put him so much
from the understanding of himself,
I cannot dream of.
I entreat you both that,
being of so young days brought up with him,
and sith so neighbored to his youth and havior,
that you vouchsafe your rest here
in our court some little time,
so by your companies
to draw him on to pleasures
and to gather so much as from occasion you may glean
whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus
that opened lies within our remedy.
Good gentlemen, he hath much talked of you,
and sure I am two men there is not living
to whom he more adheres.
Both your Majesties might,
by the sovereign power you have of us,
put your dread pleasures
more into command than to entreaty.
But we both obey and here give up ourselves
in the full bent to lay our service freely
at your feet to be commanded.
Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.
Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz,
and I beseech you instantly
to visit my too much changed son.
(WHISPERING)
He tells me, my dear Gertrude,
he hath found the head and source
of all your son's distemper.
I doubt it is no other than the main,
his father's death and our o'er hasty marriage.
Well, (CUTLERY RATTLING)
we shall sift him.
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 with less art.
Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
That he's mad, 'tis true.
'Tis true.
'Tis pity,
and pity 'tis 'tis true, a foolish figure,
but farewell it, for I will use no art.
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,
a vile phrase.
Beautified is a vile phrase,
but you shall hear.
"In her excellent white bosom..."
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."
"Oh dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers.
"I have not art to reckon my groans,
"but that I love thee best,
"oh, most best," believe it.
"Adieu."
"Thine evermore, most dear lady,"
"whilst this machine is to him, Hamlet."
CLAUDIUS: But how hath she received his love?
What do you think of me?
As of a man faithful and honorable.
I would fain prove so.
Do you think 'tis this?
Take this from this, if this be otherwise.
If circumstances lead me,
I will find where truth is hid,
though it were hid indeed within the center.
How may we try it further?
You know sometimes he walks
four hours together here in the lobby?
So he does indeed.
At such a time, I'll loose my daughter to him.
Be you and I behind an arras then,
mark the encounter.
If he love her not
and be not from his reason fallen thereon,
let me be no assistant for a state,
but keep a farm and carters.
We will try it.
(METAL CLATTERING)
(BIRD CAWING)
(GRAVEL CRUNCHING)
(ROPE WHIRRING)
(WIND BLOWING)
POLONIUS: How does my good Lord Hamlet?
Well, God a mercy.
What do you read, my lord?
Words.
What is the matter, my lord?
Between who?
I mean the matter that you read, my lord.
Slanders, sir, for yourself, sir,
shall grow old as I am,
if like a crab, you could go backward.
Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
Into my grave?
Indeed, that's out of the air.
My lord, I will take my leave of you.
You cannot, sir, take from me anything
that I'll more willingly part withal, except my life,
except my life, except my life.
Fare you well, my lord.
HAMLET: Tedious old fools.
(GRAVEL CRUNCHING)
You go to seek the Lord Hamlet?
There he is.
(BIRDS CAWING)
My honored lord.
My most dear lord.
My excellent good friends.
How dost thou, Guildenstern, huh?
Rosencrantz.
Good lads, how do you 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 shoe?
Neither, my lord.
Then you live about her waist
or in the middle of her favors?
Faith, her privates, we.
In the secret parts of Fortune, huh?
(LAUGHING)
Most true, she is a strumpet.
What news?
None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.
Then is doomsday near,
but your news is not true.
Let me question 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.
A goodly one, in which there are many confines,
wards, and dungeons,
Denmark being one of the worst.
We think not so, my lord.
Why then 'tis none to you,
for there's 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.
Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell
and count myself king of infinite space
were it not that I have bad dreams.
Which dreams indeed are ambition,
for the very substance of the ambitious
is merely the shadow of a dream.
A dream itself is but a shadow.
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy
and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.
Then are our beggars bodies
and our monarchs and outstretched heroes
the beggars' shadows? (LAUGHING)
Shall we to the court?
For, by my fay, I cannot reason.
BOTH: We will wait upon you.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
No such matter.
I will not sort you with the rest of my servants,
for to speak to you like an honest man,
I am most dreadfully attended,
but in the beaten way of friendship,
what make you at Elsinore?
To visit you, my lord, no other occasion.
Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks,
but I thank you, and sure, dear friends,
my thanks are too dear a halfpenny.
Were you not sent for?
Is it your own inclining?
Is it a free visitation?
Come, come, deal justly with me.
Come, come.
Nay, speak.
What should we say, my lord?
Anything but to the purpose.
You were sent for,
and there is a kind of confession in your looks
which your modesties have not craft enough to color.
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, by the consonancy of our youth,
by the obligation of our ever preserved love,
and by what more dear
a better proposer can charge you withal.
Be even and direct with me
whether you were sent for or no.
What say you?
Nay, then, I have an eye of you.
If you love me, hold not off.
My lord, we were sent for.
I will tell you why.
So shall my anticipation prevent your discovery,
and your secrecy to the King and Queen molt no feather.
I have of late,
but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth,
forgone all custom of exercise,
and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition
that this goodly frame, the Earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory.
This most excellent canopy, the air, look you.
This brave o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire,
why it appears no other thing to me
but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
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.
(LAUGHING)
No, nor woman neither,
though by your smiling you seem to say so.
My lord, there were no such stuff in my thoughts.
Why did you laugh then
when I said man delights not me?
To think, my lord, if you delight not in man,
what lenten entertainment
the players shall receive from you.
We coted them on the way,
and hither are they coming to offer you service.
(WOOD RATTLING)
He that plays the king shall be welcome.
What players are they?
Even those you were won't to take such delight in,
the tragedians of the city.
HAMLET: This blood, there is something in this more than natural,
if philosophy could find it out.
You are welcome,
but my uncle father and aunt mother are deceived.
In what, my dear lord?
I am but mad north, northwest.
When the wind is southerly,
I know a hawk from a handsaw.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(METAL RATTLING)
(LIQUID SLOSHING)
Oh, my old friend,
we'll have a speech straight.
Come, give us a taste of your quality.
Come, a passionate speech.
What speech, my good lord?
I heard thee speak me a speech once,
but it was never acted,
or if it was, not above once,
for the play, I remember, pleased not the million.
'Twas caviary to the general, but it was,
as I received it, and others whose judgments
in such matters cried at the top of mine,
an excellent play.
One speech in it I chiefly loved.
'Twas Aeneas' tale to Dido,
and thereabout of it especially
when he speaks of Priam's slaughter.
If it live in your memory, begin at this line.
Oh, let me see.
Let me see.
The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,
'tis not so.
It begins with Pyrrhus.
The hellish Pyrrhus, old grandsire Priam seeks,
so proceed you.
Anon he finds him,
striking too short at Greeks.
His antique sword, rebellious to his arm,
lies where it falls, repugnant to command.
Unequal matched, Pyrrhus at Priam drives,
in rage strikes wide,
but with the whiff and wind
of his fell sword the unnerved father falls.
Then senseless Ilium, seeming to feel his blow,
from flaming top stoops to his base,
and with a hideous crash takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear,
for lo, his sword,
which was declining on the milky head of reverend Priam,
seemed in the air to stick.
Anon the dreadful thunder doth rend the region,
so after Pyrrhus' pause,
aroused vengeance sets him new a-work,
and never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
on Mars's armor, forged for proof eterne,
with less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
now falls on Priam.
Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune.
All you gods in general synod take away her power.
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
and bowl the round nave down the hill
of heaven as low as to the fiends.
POLONIUS: 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, ah, woe, had seen the mobled queen.
The mobled queen?
That's good.
Mobled queen is good.
Run barefoot up and down,
threatening 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'erteemed loins,
a blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up.
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped,
against Fortune's state would treason have pronounced,
but if the gods themselves did see her then,
when she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
in mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
the instant burst of clamor that she made,
unless things mortal move them not at all,
would have made milch the burning eyes
of heaven and passion in the gods.
(CRYING)
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
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?
Dost thou hear me, old friend?
Can you play The Murder of Gonzago?
Aye, my lord.
We'll have it tomorrow night.
You could, for a need, study a speech
of some dozen or 16 lines,
which I would set down and insert in it,
could you not?
Aye, my lord.
Very well.
Follow that lord, and look you mock him not.
(WOOD THUDDING)
Now I am alone.
Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I.
Is not this 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.
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
a broken voice, and his whole function suiting
with forms to his conceit, and all for nothing,
for Hecuba.
What's Hecuba to him,
or he to Hecuba that he should weep for her?
What would he do had he the motive
and the cue for passion that I have?
He would drown the stage with tears
and cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
make mad the guilty and appall the free,
confound the ignorant and amaze indeed
the very 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.
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 of the throat as deep as to the lungs?
Who does me this, huh?
Zounds, I should take it,
for it cannot be but I am pigeon livered
and lack gall to make oppression bitter,
or ere this I should have fatted
all the region kites with this slave's offal.
Bloody, bawdy villain,
remorseless, treacherous, lecherous,
kindless villain, oh vengeance.
(CUTLERY RATTLING)
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
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.
I'll have these players play something
like the murder of my father before mine uncle.
I'll observe his looks.
I'll tent him to the quick.
If he do blench, I know my course.
The play's the thing
wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
(LIGHTER CLICKING)
(BIRD CAWING)
(WOOD CREAKING)
(GRAVEL CRUNCHING)
Ophelia,
walk you here.
Gracious, so please you, we will bestow ourselves.
Read on this book that show of such an exercise
may color your loneliness.
(WOOD RATTLING)
I hear him coming.
Let's withdraw, my lord.
(FROG CROAKING)
(WOOD THUDDING)
(WOOD RATTLING)
(ROCKS SCRAPING)
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.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
To die,
to sleep no more,
and by a sleep to say we end the heartache
and the thousand natural shocks
that flesh is heir to,
'tis a consummation
devoutly to be wished.
To die, to sleep,
to sleep, perchance to dream,
(STICKS CRACKING)
aye, there's the rub,
for in that sleep of death,
what dreams may come
when we have shuffled off this mortal coil
must give us pause.
There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life,
for who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
the pangs of despised love,
the law's delay,
th'insolence of office,
and the spurns that patient merit
of the unworthy takes when he himself
might his quietus make with bare bodkin?
Who would fardels bear
to grunt and sweat under a weary life,
but that the dread of something after death?
The undiscovered country,
from whose bourn no traveler returns,
puzzles the will and makes us rather bear
those ills we have
than fly to those we know not of.
Thus conscience does 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.
(MATCH STRIKING)
(HUMMING)
(BIRDS CAWING)
Soft you now, fair Ophelia.
Nymph.
(GASPING)
In thy orisons be all my sins remembered.
Good my lord,
how does your honor for this many a day?
I humbly thank you, well.
My lord, I have remembrances of yours
I have longed long to redeliver.
I pray you now receive them.
(WIND BLOWING)
(METAL THUDDING)
(PAPER RUSTLING)
HAMLET: 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 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.
(LAUGHING)
Are you honest?
OPHELIA: My lord?
Are you fair?
OPHELIA: What means, your lordship?
That if you be honest and fair,
your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.
OPHELIA: Could beauty, my lord,
have better commerce than with honesty?
Aye, truly, for the power of beauty
will sooner transform honesty
from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty
can translate beauty into his likeness.
This was sometime a paradox,
but now the time gives it proof.
I did love you once.
Aye, my lord.
You made me believe so.
HAMLET: You should not have believed me,
for our virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock,
but we shall relish of it.
I loved you not.
I was the more deceived.
Get thee to a nunnery.
Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?
I am 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 offenses at my beck
than I have thoughts to put them in,
imagination to give them shape,
or time to act them in.
What should such fellows as I do
crawling between earth and heaven?
We are arrant knaves all.
Go thy ways to a nunnery.
(WOOD CREAKING)
Where's your father?
He is at home, my lord.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(WOOD RATTLING)
Let the doors be shut upon him
that he may play the fool nowhere
but in his own house.
Farewell.
OPHELIA: Oh help him, you sweet heavens.
(WHIMPERING)
If thou dost marry,
I'll 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, farewell,
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.
Oh heavenly powers, restore him.
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough.
God hath given you one face,
and you make yourselves another.
You jig and amble, and you lisp.
You nickname God's creatures
and make your wantonness your ignorance.
Go to.
I'll no more on it.
It hath made me mad.
(CRYING)
I say we will 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.
Oh, woe is me,
to have seen what I have seen,
to see what I see.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(CRYING)
(MATCH STRIKING)
(FIRE CRACKLING)
CLAUDIUS: He shall with speed to England
for the demand of our neglected tribute.
Haply the seas and countries different,
with variable objects shall expel
this something settled matter in his heart.
It shall do well,
but yet do I believe the origin and commencement
of his grief sprung from neglected love.
How now, Ophelia?
You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said.
We heard it all.
My lord, do as you please,
but if you hold it fit,
after the play, let his queen mother all alone entreat him.
Let her be round with him,
and I'll be placed, so please you,
in the ear of all their conference.
If she find him not, to England send him,
or confine him where your wisdom best shall think.
(BIRDS CAWING)
It shall be so.
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.
(PENCIL SCRATCHING)
(WATER DRIPPING)
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(WATER DRIPPING)
(SCREAMING)
(WATER RUNNING)
(BIRD CHIRPING)
Speak the speech, I pray you,
as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue,
but if you mouth it, as many of our players do,
I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines,
nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus,
but use all gently,
for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say,
whirlwind of your passion,
you must acquire and beget a temperance
that may give it smoothness.
Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear
a robustious, periwig pated fellow
tear a passion to tatters, to very rags,
to split the ears of the groundlings,
who for the most part are capable
of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise.
It out Herods Herod.
Pray you, avoid it.
I warrant your honor.
Be not too tame neither,
but let your own discretion be your tutor.
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action,
with this special observance
that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.
For anything so overdone
is from the purpose of playing, whose end,
both at the first and now was and is to hold,
as it were, the mirror up to nature.
Oh, there be players that I have seen play
and heard others praise, and that highly,
not to speak it profanely,
that neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait
of Christian, pagan, nor man,
have so strutted and bellowed
that I have thought some
of nature's journeymen had made men,
and not made them well,
they imitated humanity so abominably.
I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir.
Oh, reform it altogether.
Go, make you ready.
(WOOD KNOCKING)
How now, my lord.
Will the King hear this piece of work?
And the Queen too, and that presently.
HAMLET: Bid the players make haste.
Will you two help to hasten them?
Aye, my lord.
(WIND BLOWING)
HAMLET: What ho, Horatio.
Here, sweet lord, at your service.
Horatio, thou art even as just a man
as e'er my conversation coped withal.
My dear lord, I...
Nay, do not think I flatter.
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.
I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,
even with the very comment of thy soul, observe my uncle.
If his occulted guilt do not itself unkennel in one speech,
it is a damned ghost that we have seen,
and my imaginations are as foul as Vulcan's stithy.
Give him heedful note,
for I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
and after, we will both our judgments join
in censure of his seeming.
Well, my lord, if he steal aught
the whilst this play is playing and escape detecting,
I will pay the theft.
They are coming to the play.
I must be idle.
Get you a place.
CLAUDIUS: How fares our cousin Hamlet?
Excellent in 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 at the Capitol.
Brutus killed me.
It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.
(WOOD THUDDING)
Be the players ready?
Aye, my lord.
They stay upon your patience.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
The instances that second marriage move
are base respects of thrift, but none of love.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
A second time I kill my husband dead
when second husband kisses me in bed.
MAN: I do believe you think what now you speak.
Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
No good mother, here's metal more attractive.
MAN: Do determine oft...
Oh, do you mark that?
MAN: Purpose is but the slave to memory,
a violent birth but for validity.
Now the fruit unripe sticks on the tree
but fall unshaken when they mellow be.
Most necessary 'tis that we forget...
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
MAN: Ourselves is debt.
No, my lord.
MAN: What to ourselves in passion we...
I mean my head upon your lap.
OPHELIA: Aye, my lord.
Do you think I meant country matters?
I think...
MAN: Where joy most revels, grief doth...
- Nothing... - MAN: Grief joys... - My lord.
MAN: On slender accident...
That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
What is, my lord?
Nothing.
You are merry, my lord.
Who, I?
Aye, my lord.
What should a man do but be merry?
For look you how cheerfully my mother looks,
and my father died within two hours.
Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.
(WIND BLOWING)
- MAN: Our thoughts are ours... - So long?
MAN: Their ends none of our own.
Is this a prologue or the posy of a ring?
'Tis brief, my lord.
As woman's love.
MAN: 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,
and 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,
so here and hence pursue me lasting strife.
If once a widow, ever I be wife.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
MAN: 'Tis...
Madam, how like you this play?
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
MAN: My spirits grow dull,
and fain I would beguile the tedious day with sleep.
CLAUDIUS: What do you call the play?
WOMAN: Sleep rock thy brain, and never come...
The Mousetrap.
WOMAN: Between us twain.
Marry, how?
Tropically.
This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna.
Gonzago is the duke's name, his wife Baptista.
You shall see anon.
'Tis a knavish piece of work, but what of that?
Your Majesty and we that have free souls,
it touches us not.
This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.
He poisons him in the garden for his estate.
His name's Gonzago.
You shall see anon how the murderer
gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
You are as good as chorus, my lord.
I could interpret between you and your love,
if I could see the puppets dallying.
You are keen, my lord.
You are keen.
It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge.
Begin murderer.
Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
LUCIANUS: Thoughts black, hands apt,
drugs fit, and time agreeing,
confederate season, else no creature seeing.
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
with Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected.
Thy natural magic and dire property
on wholesome life usurp immediately.
(GROANING)
OPHELIA: The King rises.
GERTRUDE: How fares my lord?
(YELLING)
Give o'er the play.
Give me some light.
Away.
POLONIUS: Lights, lights.
(CLAPPING)
Lights, lights.
(METAL THUDDING)
For thou dost know, oh Damon dear,
this realm dismantled was of Jove himself,
and now reigns here a very, very peacock.
(WIND BLOWING)
You might have rhymed.
Good Horatio,
I'll take the ghost's word for 1,000 pound.
Didst perceive?
Very well, my lord.
Upon the talk of the poisoning?
HORATIO: I did very well note him.
GUILDENSTERN: Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.
Sir, a whole history.
The King, sir.
HAMLET: Aye sir, what of him?
GUILDENSTERN: Is in his retirement marvelous distempered.
HAMLET: With drink, sir?
No.
My lord, your mother,
with much great affliction of spirit,
hath sent me to you.
You are welcome.
Nay, my good lord,
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.
If not, your pardon,
and my return shall be the end of my business.
Sir, I cannot.
ROSENCRANTZ: What, my lord?
Make you a wholesome answer.
My wit's diseased,
but, sir, such answer as I can make you shall command,
or rather, as you say, my mother.
Therefore no more but to the matter.
My mother, you say?
She desires to speak with you
in her closet ere you go to bed.
We shall obey were she 10 times our mother.
Have you any further trade with us?
My lord, you once did love me.
And do still, by these pickers and stealers.
Good my lord,
what is the cause of your distemper?
You do surely bar the door upon your own liberty
if you deny your griefs to your friend.
Will you play upon this pipe?
My lord, I cannot.
HAMLET: I pray you.
Believe me, I cannot.
HAMLET: I do beseech you.
I know no touch of it, my lord.
It is as easy as lying.
Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb.
Give it breath with your mouth,
and it will discourse most eloquent music.
Look you, these are the stops.
I have not the skill.
Why look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me.
You would play upon me.
You would seem to know my stops.
You would pluck out the heart of my mystery.
'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, (COUGHING)
you cannot play upon me.
(GASPING)
(DRAMATIC INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(METAL THUDDING)
Now could I drink hot blood
and do such bitter business
as the day would quake to look on.
Soft, now to my mother.
I will speak daggers to her, but use none.
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 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.
(WIND BLOWING)
Oh, my offense is rank.
It smells to heaven,
hath the primal eldest curse upon it,
a brother's murder.
Pray can I not,
for I am still possessed of those effects
for which I did the murder,
my crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain the offense?
In the corrupted currents of this world,
offense's gilded hand may shove by justice
and oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
buys out the law, but 'tis not so above.
There is no shuffling.
There the action lies in his true nature,
and we ourselves compelled,
even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
to give in evidence.
What then?
What rests?
Try what repentance can.
What can it not?
Yet what can it when one cannot repent?
Help, angels.
Make assay.
(BEADS CLATTERING)
Bow, stubborn knees.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
All may be well.
Now might I do it pat.
Now he is a-praying,
and now I'll do it, (MUMBLING)
and so he goes to heaven,
and so am I revenged.
(GASPING)
That would be scanned.
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven.
No.
CLAUDIUS VOICEOVER: My words fly up.
My thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
HAMLET: Mother.
Mother?
GERTRUDE: Withdraw, I hear him coming.
Mother.
(METAL CLATTERING)
Now mother, what's the matter?
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Mother, you have my father much offended.
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
How now, Hamlet?
What's the matter now?
Have you forgot me?
No, by the rood, not so.
You're 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.
Come, come and sit you down.
You shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass
where you may see the inmost part of you.
What wilt thou do?
Thou wilt not murder me?
- Help, ho... - POLONIUS: What ho, help...
- GERTRUDE: Help... - How now, a rat?
POLONIUS: Help.
(SCREAMING)
(METAL THUDDING)
(GROANING)
Oh me, what hast thou done?
Nay, I know not.
Is it the King?
Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this.
A bloody deed,
almost as bad, good mother,
as kill a king and marry with his brother.
As kill a king?
Aye, lady, it was my word.
Leave wringing of your hands.
Peace, sit you down, and let me wring your heart.
Look you upon this picture and on this,
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
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.
Could you on this fair mountain leave
to feed and batten on this moor, huh?
Have you eyes?
You cannot call it love, for at your age,
the heyday in the blood is tame.
It's humble and waits upon the judgment,
and what judgment would step from this to this?
Oh, shame, where is thy blush?
Oh, Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turnest mine eyes into my very soul,
and there I see such black and grained spots
as will not leave their tinct.
Nay, but to live in the rank sweat
of an enseamed bed, stewed in corruption,
honeying and making love over the nasty sty.
Oh, speak no more.
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.
A murderer and a villain,
a slave that is not 20th part the tithe
of your precedent lord, a vice of kings,
a cutpurse of empire and the rule,
that from a shelf the precious diadem stole
and put it in his pocket... No more.
A king of shreds and patches.
(YELLING)
(PANTING)
(BELL RINGING)
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Save me,
and hover o'er me with your wings, you heavenly guards.
What would your gracious figure?
Alas.
He's mad.
How is it with you, lady?
Alas,
how is it with you?
Oh, gentle son.
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
sprinkle cool patience.
Whereon do you look?
HAMLET: 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 lived.
It is not madness that I have uttered.
Mother, for love of grace,
lay not a flattering unction to your soul
that not your trespass, but my madness speaks.
Confess yourself to heaven.
Oh, Hamlet.
Thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This bad begins, and worse remains behind.
One word more, good lady.
What shall I do?
Not this, by no means, that I bid you do.
Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed,
pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,
and let him, for a pair of reechy kisses
or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers,
make you to ravel all this matter out
that I essentially am not in madness,
but mad in craft.
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.
This man shall set me packing.
I'll lug the guts into the neighbor room.
Mother, good night indeed.
This counselor is now most still,
most secret, and most grave,
that was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Good night, mother.
CLAUDIUS: Where is your son?
Where has he gone?
To draw apart the body he hath killed.
(GASPING)
Oh Gertrude, come away.
The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch
but we will ship him hence.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(CLOTH SCRAPING)
(BODY THUDDING)
Safely stowed.
ROSENCRANTZ: Hamlet.
GUILDENSTERN: Hamlet.
Hamlet.
But soft, what noise?
Who calls on Hamlet?
ROSENCRANTZ: My lord.
Oh, here they come.
What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?
HAMLET: Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.
My lord, you must tell us where the body is.
Do not believe it.
Believe what, my lord?
That I can keep your counsel and not mine own.
Besides, to be demanded of a sponge,
what replication should be made by the son of a king?
Take you me for a sponge, my lord?
Aye sir, that soaks up the King's countenance,
his rewards, his authorities...
I understand you not, my lord.
I am glad of it.
A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.
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.
Bring me to him.
(YELLING)
Hide fox, and all after.
(WOOD THUDDING)
(PANTING)
(ROCK THUDDING)
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
How now?
What hath befallen?
Where the dead body is bestowed,
my lord, we cannot get from him.
(MATCH STRIKING)
CLAUDIUS: Now Hamlet, where is Polonius?
At supper.
CLAUDIUS: At supper where?
Not where he eats, but where he's eaten.
A certain convocation of politic worms are eating at him.
Where is Polonius?
In heaven?
Send thither to see.
If your messenger find him not there,
seek him in the other place yourself.
Hamlet.
This deed, for thine especial safety,
which we do tender as dearly as we grieve
for that which thou hast done,
must send thee hence with fiery quickness.
Therefore prepare yourself...
BOTH: For England.
Aye, Hamlet.
Good.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Farewell, dear mother.
Thy loving father, Hamlet.
My mother.
Father and mother is man and wife.
Man and wife is one flesh, and so, my mother.
Come, for England.
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.
Oh, from this time forth,
my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.
(CUTLERY RATTLING)
(SIPPING)
(JET ENGINE RUNNING)
(DRAMATIC INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(WATER FLOWING)
(MUMBLING)
(HUMMING)
(WIND BLOWING)
Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?
GERTRUDE: How now, Ophelia?
♪ How should I your true love know ♪
♪ From another one ♪
♪ By his cockle hat and staff ♪
♪ And his sandal shoon ♪
GERTRUDE: 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 ♪
(SCREAMING)
♪ Larded all with sweet flowers ♪
(GASPING)
♪ To the grave ♪
GERTRUDE: Alas, look here, my lord.
(SINGING)
♪ True love showers ♪
CLAUDIUS: How do you, pretty lady?
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Well, God 'ild you.
They say the owl was a baker's daughter.
Lord, we know what we are but not what we may be.
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 ♪
♪ And all the morning bedtime ♪
♪ And I a maid at your window ♪
♪ To be your Valentine ♪
♪ Then up he rose and donned his clothes ♪
♪ And dupped the chamber door ♪
(SINGING)
(SIGHING)
(INSECTS BUZZING)
I hope all will be well.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
We must be patient,
but I cannot choose but weep to think
they would lay him in the cold ground.
(MUMBLING)
How long hath she been thus?
Come.
Come, my coach.
Good night, ladies.
Follow her close,
and give her good watch, I pray you.
OPHELIA: Good night.
(CLOTH SCRAPING)
(BODY THUDDING)
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Oh thou vile king, (SCREAMING)
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?
There's such divinity doth hedge a king
that treason can but peep at 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.
But not by him.
Let him demand his fill.
How came he dead?
I'll not be juggled with.
Let come what comes,
only I'll be revenged most thoroughly for my father.
Who shall stay you?
That I am guiltless of your father's death
and am most sensibly in grief for it,
it shall as level to your judgment
appear as day does to your eye.
(WHIMPERING)
How now?
(SINGING)
(WIND BLOWING)
♪ They bore him bare ♪
(WHISTLING)
♪ They bore him barefaced on the bier ♪
♪ Hey non nonny ♪
♪ Hey nonny ♪
Oh heat, dry up my brains.
♪ And on his grave rained many a tear ♪
Oh, rose of May.
♪ Fare you well, my dove ♪
Sweet Ophelia.
♪ Fare you well, my dove ♪
♪ My dove ♪
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
And you must sing ♪ A-Down, a-down ♪
♪ Call him a-down ♪
♪ You a-down, a-down ♪
♪ Call him a-down ♪
Oh, how the wheel becomes it.
It is the false steward that stole his master's daughter.
(GRUNTING)
There's rosemary.
That's for remembrance.
Pray you, love, remember,
and there is pansies.
That's for thoughts.
There's fennel and columbines.
(WIND BLOWING)
There's rue for you
and some for me,
and we may call it herb of grace on Sundays.
You must wear your rue with a difference.
There's a daisy.
I would give you violets,
but they withered all when my father died.
They say he made a good end.
♪ For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy ♪
♪ All my joy ♪
(BIRDS CAWING)
(WIND BLOWING)
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(BIRD CAWING)
"Ere we were two days old at sea,
"a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase.
"Finding ourselves too slow of sail,
"we put on a compelled valor,
"and in the grapple I boarded them.
"On the instant, they got clear of our ship,
"so I alone became their prisoner.
"They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy,
"but they knew what they did.
"I am to do a good turn for them.
"Let the King have the letters I have sent,"
"and repair thou to me with as much"
"speed as thou wouldst fly death."
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England."
"Of them I have much to tell thee."
"Farewell."
(FIRE CRACKLING)
HAMLET: He that thou knowest thine, Hamlet.
The Queen his mother lives almost by his looks,
and for myself, my virtue or my plague,
be it either which,
she is so conjunctive to my life and soul
that as the star moves not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her.
And so have I a noble father lost,
a sister driven into desperate terms,
whose worth, if praises may go back again,
stood challenger on mount of all
the age for her perfections,
but my revenge will come.
I loved your father, and we love ourself,
and that, I hope, will teach you to imagine.
How now?
What news?
Letters, my lord, from Hamlet.
These to your Majesty, this to the Queen.
From Hamlet?
Who brought them?
HORATIO: 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.
(WIND BLOWING)
"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, first asking your pardon,"
"thereunto recount the occasion of my sudden"
"and more strange return."
"Hamlet."
What should this mean?
All the rest come back,
or is it some abuse and no such thing?
Naked,
and in a postscript here he says, "Alone."
Can you advise me?
I am 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 didst thou.
If it be so, Laertes, will you be ruled by me?
Aye, my lord, so you will not overrule me to a peace.
What would you undertake to show yourself
indeed your father's son more than in words?
To cut his throat in the church.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Keep close within your chamber.
Hamlet, returned, shall know you are come home.
We'll put on those shall praise your excellence
and set a double varnish
on the fame and wager on your heads.
He, being remiss, most generous,
and free from all contriving, will not peruse the foils,
so that with ease, or with a little shuffling,
you may choose a sword unbated,
and in a pass of practice requite him for your father.
I will do it,
and for that purpose I'll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank.
I'll touch my point with this contagion,
that if I gall him slightly it may be death.
When in your motion you are hot and dry,
as make your bouts more violent to that end,
and that he calls for drink,
I'll have prepared him a chalice for the nonce,
whereon but sipping,
if he by chance escape your venom stuck,
our purpose may hold there.
(DRAMATIC INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
so fast they follow.
(BIRDS CAWING)
Your sister's drowned, Laertes.
Drowned?
Oh.
Where?
There is a willow grows askant the brook
that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
There, fantastic garlands did she make
of crowflowers, nettles,
daisies, and long purples.
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
but our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
There on the pendant bough,
her coronet weeds clamoring 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,
but long it could not be
till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
to muddy death.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
CLAUDIUS: How much I had to do to calm his rage.
Now I fear this will give it start again.
(GRASS CRUNCHING)
(SIGHING)
(WATER FLOWING)
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
(WIND BLOWING)
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Sir, in my heart there was a kind
of fighting that would not let me sleep.
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
rough hew them how we will.
HORATIO: That is most certain.
Up from my cabin, my sea gown scarfed about me,
in the dark groped I to find out them.
Had my desire, fingered their packet,
and in fine withdrew to mine own room again,
making so bold, my fears forgetting manners,
to unfold their grand commission,
where I found, Horatio, a royal knavery,
an exact command,
larded with many several sorts of reasons
importing Denmark's health and England's too,
with such bugs and goblins in my life
that on the supervise, no leisure bated,
no, not to stay the grinding of the ax,
my head should be struck off.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
Is it possible?
Here's the commission.
Read it at more leisure,
but wilt thou hear now how I did proceed?
I beseech you.
I sat me down, devised a new commission.
Wilt thou know the effect of what I wrote?
Aye, good my lord.
An earnest conjuration from the King,
as England was his faithful tributary,
that on the view and knowing of these contents,
without debatement further, more or less,
he should those bearers put to sudden death,
not shriving time allowed.
Now, the next day was our sea fight,
and what to this was sequent thou knowest already.
So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to it?
Why, man, they did make love to this employment.
They are not near my conscience.
(GRASS CRUNCHING)
(BIRDS CAWING)
Whose grave is this, sirrah?
Mine, sir.
I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in it.
You lie out on it, sir, and therefore 'tis not yours.
For my part, sir, I do not lie in it, yet it is mine.
Thou dost lie in it to be in it and say it is thine.
'Tis for the dead, not for the quick.
Therefore thou liest.
'Tis a quick lie, sir.
'Twill away again from me to you.
What man dost thou dig it for?
GRAVEDIGGER: For no man, sir.
What woman then?
For none, neither.
Who is to be buried in it?
One that was a woman, but rest her soul, she's dead.
How absolute the knave is.
How long hast thou been grave maker?
I came to it that very day
that young Hamlet was born,
he that is mad and sent to England.
Aye, marry.
Why was he sent in to England?
Why, because he was mad.
He shall recover his wits there.
If he do not, 'tis no great matter there.
Why?
'Twill not be seen in him there.
There the men are as mad as he.
How came he mad?
GRAVEDIGGER: Very strangely, they say.
How strangely?
Faith, even with losing his wits.
Upon what ground?
Why, here in Denmark.
Here.
A skull hath lien you in the earth
some three and 20 years.
Whose was it?
A whoreson mad fellow's it was.
Whose do you think it was?
Nay, I know not.
This same skull, sir, was, sir,
Yorick's skull.
The King's jester?
This?
Even that.
Let me see.
Alas.
Poor Yorick.
I knew him, Horatio,
a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.
He hath bore me on his back 1,000 times,
and now how abhorred in my imagination it is.
My gorge rises at it.
Where be your gibes now,
your gambols,
your songs, your flashes of merriment
that were won't to set the table on a roar?
Not one now to mock your own grinning?
Quite chapfallen?
(BIRDS CAWING)
Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.
What's that, my lord?
Dost thou think Alexander looked
of this fashion in the earth?
Even so.
And smelt so?
(COUGHING)
Even so, my lord.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
But soft, but soft awhile.
(GRASS CRUNCHING)
Here comes the King, the Queen.
Who is this they follow?
Lay her in the earth.
(MUMBLING)
What, the fair Ophelia?
LAERTES: May violets spring.
Sweets to the sweet.
Farewell.
I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife.
I thought thy bride bed to have decked,
sweet maid, and not have strewed thy grave.
Oh treble woe, fall 10 times treble
on that cursed head whose wicked deed
thy most ingenious sense deprived thee of.
Hold off the earth awhile
till I have once more held her in mine arms.
(CRYING)
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 prayest not well.
I prithee take thy fingers from my throat.
(MUMBLING)
- Hamlet. - HORATIO: Good my lord, be quiet.
I loved Ophelia.
40,000 brothers could not with all their quantity
of love make up my sum.
What wilt thou do for her?
Oh, for the love of God, forbear him.
Show me what thou will do.
Would weep, would fight, would fast,
would tear thyself, would drink up esill,
eat a crocodile?
I'll rant as well as thou.
This is mere madness.
What is the reason that you use me thus?
I loved you ever,
(BIRDS CAWING)
but it is no matter.
Let Hercules himself do what he may.
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.
(DRAMATIC INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Why, what a king is this?
Does it not, think thee, stand me now upon.
He that hath killed my king and whored my mother,
popped in between the election and my hopes,
thrown out his angle for my proper life,
and with such cosenage,
is it not perfect conscience to quit him with this arm,
and is not to be damned to let
this canker of our nature come in further evil?
It must shortly be 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 no more than to say one,
(WIND BLOWING)
but I am very sorry, good Horatio,
that to Laertes I forgot myself,
but sure, the bravery of his grief
did put me into a towering passion.
(WOOD KNOCKING)
Peace.
Who comes here?
OSRIC: Your Lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.
I humbly thank you, sir.
Dost know this water fly?
No, my good lord.
Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure,
I should impart a thing to you from his Majesty.
I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of spirit.
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.
Why do we wrap the gentleman in our more rarer breath?
Sir?
What imports the nomination of this gentleman?
Of Laertes?
Of him, sir.
I know you are not ignorant...
I would you did, sir,
yet, in faith, if you did, it would not much approve me.
Well, sir?
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, sir, for his weapon.
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.
He hath laid on 12 for nine,
and it would come to immediate trial
if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer.
Sir, I will walk here in the hall.
If it please his Majesty,
it is 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 deliver you even so?
To this effect, after what flourish your nature will.
(MUMBLING) I commend my duty to your Lordship.
Yours.
Hm?
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
You will lose, 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 it is such a kind of gain giving
as would perhaps trouble a woman.
If your mind dislike anything, obey it.
I will forestall their repair hither
and say you are not fit.
Not a whit.
We defy augury.
There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, 'tis not to come.
If it be not to come, it will be now.
If it be not now, yet it will come.
The readiness is all.
Since no man of aught he leaves knows,
what is it to leave betimes?
Let be.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
CLAUDIUS: Come, Hamlet.
Come and take this hand from me.
(HEART BEATING)
(GRAVEL CRUNCHING)
- 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 punished with a sore distraction.
Sir, in this audience, let my disclaiming
from a purposed evil free me so far
in your most generous thoughts
that I have shot my arrow o'er the house
and hurt my brother.
I am satisfied in nature,
whose motive in this case
should stir me most to my revenge,
but in my terms of honor I stand aloof
and will no reconcilement
till by some elder masters of known honor
I have a voice and precedent
of peace to keep my name ungored.
HAMLET: I embrace it freely,
and will this brother's wager frankly play.
Give us the foils.
Come on.
Come, one for me.
I'll be your foil, Laertes.
In mine ignorance, your skill shall,
like a star in the darkest night, stick fiery off indeed.
LAERTES: You mock me, sir?
No, by this hand.
You know the wager?
HAMLET: Very well, my lord.
Your Grace has laid the odds of the weaker self.
I do not fear it.
I have seen you both,
but since he is better, we have therefore odds.
Now the King drinks to Hamlet.
Come, begin,
and you, the judges, bear a wary eye.
(METAL CLACKING)
Come on, sir.
Come, my lord.
(METAL CLACKING)
HAMLET: One.
LAERTES: No.
HAMLET: Judgment.
A hit, a very palpable hit.
(CLAPPING)
Well, again.
Stay.
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.
HORATIO: Halt.
(METAL CLATTERING)
(GRUNTING)
HAMLET: Another hit.
A touch.
A touch, I do confess it.
CLAUDIUS: Our son shall win.
He's fat and scant of breath.
Here, Hamlet, take my napkin.
Rub thy brow.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.
HAMLET: Good madam.
Gertrude.
Do not drink.
I will, my lord.
I pray you pardon me.
(DRAMATIC INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
I dare not drink yet madam, by and by.
Come, let me wipe thy face.
- My lord, I'll hit him now. - CLAUDIUS: I do not think it.
Come for a third, Laertes.
You do but dally.
I pray you pass with your best violence.
I am afeard you make a wanton of me.
Say you so?
(DRAMATIC INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(METAL CLATTERING)
(GRUNTING)
HORATIO: Nothing neither way.
Have at you now.
(YELLING)
(GASPING)
(GRUNTING)
CLAUDIUS: Part them.
They are incensed.
Nay, come again.
Look to the Queen there, ho.
HORATIO: They bleed on both sides.
How is it, my lord?
I am justly slain with mine own treachery.
HAMLET: How does the Queen?
She swoons to see them bleed.
(VOMITING)
No, no, the drink,
the drink.
Oh my dear Hamlet, the drink.
The drink, I am poisoned.
Oh, villainy.
Oh, treachery.
Hamlet, thou art slain.
No medicine in the world can do thee good.
The King, the King's to blame.
(GRAVEL CRUNCHING)
Here.
(BIRDS CAWING)
Thou incestuous,
murderous,
damned
Dane.
(GROANING)
(YELLING)
Drink of this potion.
(BIRDS CAWING)
Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.
Mine and my father's death come not upon thee,
nor thine on me.
(METAL CLATTERING)
Heaven make thee free of it.
I follow thee.
(GROANING)
I am dead, Horatio.
(LAUGHING) 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.
Here's yet some liquor left.
Art a man, give me the cup.
Let go, by heaven.
(WIND BLOWING)
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
(PANTING)
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.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
The rest is silence.
(CRYING)
O
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC)
Oh.
(METAL RATTLING)
(METAL THUDDING)
(CAR ENGINE RUNNING)
HORATIO: Now cracks a noble heart.
Good night, sweet prince,
and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
(WIND BLOWING)
(BELL RINGING)