Hamlet

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.

About her lank and all o’er-teemed loins, A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up— Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep’d, ’Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have pronounc’d.

and blest are those Whose blood and judgement are so well co-meddled, That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger To sound what stop she please.

And let them know both what we mean to do And what’s untimely done. So envious slander, Whose whisper o’er the world’s diameter, As level as the cannon to his blank, Transports his pois’ned shot, may miss our name, And hit the woundless air.

And then it started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons. I have heard The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the god of day, and at his warning,

and this, I take it, Is the main motive of our preparations, The source of this our watch, and the chief head Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

and we have done but greenly In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia Divided from herself and her fair judgement, Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts;

And what so poor a man as Hamlet is May do t’ express his love and friending to you, God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together, And still your fingers on your lips, I pray. The time is out of joint—O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!

Any thing but to th’ 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.

An’ can you by no drift of conference Get from him why he puts on this confusion, Grating so harshly all his days of quiet With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

Be thou assur’d, if words be made of breath, And breath of life, I have no life to breathe What thou hast said to me.

Break not your sleeps for that. You must not think That we are made of stuff so flat and dull That we can let our beard be shook with danger And think it pastime.

But as we often see, against some storm, A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still, The bold winds speechless, and the orb below As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder Doth rend the region;

But howsomever thou pursues this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught.

but if not, Be you content to lend your patience to us, And we shall jointly labor with your soul To give it due content.

But in our circumstance and course of thought ’Tis heavy with him. And am I then revenged, To take him in the purging of his soul, When he is fit and season’d for his passage? No!

But look, amazement on thy mother sits, O, step between her and her fighting soul. Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works, Speak to her, Hamlet.

But orderly to end where I begun, Our wills and fates do so contrary run That our devices still are overthrown, Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own:

but yet It is our trick, Nature her custom holds, Let shame say what it will; when these are gone, The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord, I have a speech a’ fire that fain would blaze, But that this folly drowns it.

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.

Do you hear, let them be well us’d, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confin’d to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purg’d away.

“Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

Ecstasy? My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time, And makes as healthful music. It is not madness That I have utt’red.

Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, Or but a sickly part of one true sense Could not so mope.

Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty. BOTH COR. AND VOL. In that, and all things, will we show our duty.

For Lord Hamlet, Believe so much in him, that he is young, And with a larger teder may he walk Than may be given you.

for any thing so o’erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature:

For us, and for our tragedy, Here stooping to your clemency, We beg your hearing patiently.

Forgive me this my virtue, For in the fatness of these pursy times Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

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.

Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son. This grave shall have a living monument. An hour of quiet shortly shall we see, Till then in patience our proceeding be.

Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift As meditation, or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge.

Heaven’s face does glow O’er this solidity and compound mass With heated visage, as against the doom; Is thought-sick at the act.

Her speech is nothing, Yet the unshaped use of it doth move The hearers to collection; they yawn at it, And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts, Which as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,

Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, The perfume and suppliance of a minute— No more.

Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy, And will not let belief take hold of him Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us;

How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, this three years I have took note of it: the age is grown so pick’d that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe.

I am constant to my purposes, they follow the King’s pleasure. If his fitness speaks, mine is ready; now or whensoever, provided I be so able as now.

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.

I do not know from what part of the world I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.

I lov’d you ever. But it is no matter. Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.

I must be cruel only to be kind. This bad begins and worse remains behind.

I pray you all, If you have hitherto conceal’d this sight, Let it be tenable in your silence still, And whatsomever else shall hap tonight, Give it an understanding but no tongue.

I prithee take thy fingers from my throat. For though I am not splenitive and rash, Yet have I in me something dangerous, Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand!

I your commission will forthwith dispatch, And he to England shall along with you. The terms of our estate may not endure Hazard so near ’s as doth hourly grow Out of his brows.

If she find him not, To England send him, or confine him where Your wisdom best shall think.

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. O that that earth which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall t’ expel the winter’s flaw!

It is but foolery, but it is such a kind of gain-giving, as would perhaps trouble a woman.

I’ll have grounds More relative than this—the play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

I’ll lug the guts into the neighbor room. Mother, good night indeed. This counsellor Is now most still, most secret, and most grave, Who was in life a foolish prating knave.

Last night of all, When yond same star that’s westward from the pole Had made his course t’ illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,

Let four captains Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage, For he was likely, had he been put on, To have prov’d most royal;

Let it work, For ’tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petar, an’t shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines, And blow them at the moon.

Let my disclaiming from a purpos’d evil Free me so far in your most generous thoughts, That I have shot my arrow o’er the house And hurt my brother.

Let’s further think of this, Weigh what convenience both of time and means May fit us to our shape.

Mad as the sea and wind when both contend Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit, Behind the arras hearing something stir, Whips out his rapier, cries, “A rat, a rat!”

Masters, you are all welcome. We’ll e’en to’t like French falc’ners—fly at any thing we see; we’ll have a speech straight. Come give us a taste of your quality, come, a passionate speech.

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;

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

n what particular thought to work I know not, But in the gross and scope of mine opinion, This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

Nature is fine in love, and where ’tis fine, It sends some precious instance of itself After the thing it loves.

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.

O heat, dry up my brains! Tears seven times salt Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!

O limed soul, that struggling to be free Art more engag’d! Help, angels! Make assay, Bow, stubborn knees, and heart, with strings of steel, Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe! All may be well.

O, such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words.

Purpose is but the slave to memory, Of violent birth, but poor validity, Which now, the fruit unripe, sticks on the tree, But fall unshaken when they mellow be.

Rashly— And prais’d be rashness for it—let us know Our indiscretion sometime serves us well When our deep plots do pall, and that should learn us There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will—

Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honor’s at the stake.

See you now, Your bait of falsehood take this carp of truth, And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlasses and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out;

Sense sure you have, Else could you not have motion, but sure that sense Is apoplex’d, for madness would not err, Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thrall’d

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.

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 you.

So far he topp’d my thought, That I in forgery of shapes and tricks Come short of what he did.

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, open’d, lies within our remedy.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc’d 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.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature:

Sure He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unus’d.

That unmatch’d form and stature of blown youth Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

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.

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword, Th’ expectation and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mould of form, Th’ observ’d of all observers, quite, quite down!

The imminent death of twenty thousand men, That for a fantasy and trick of fame Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,

The single and peculiar life is bound With all the strength and armor of the mind To keep itself from noyance, but much more That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests The lives of many.

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.

Their perfume lost, Take these again, for to the noble mind Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

Then if he says he loves you, It fits your wisdom so far to believe it As he in his particular act and place May give his saying deed, which is no further Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.

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.

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, my blessing season this in thee!

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.

thrice he walk’d By their oppress’d and fear-surprised eyes Within his truncheon’s length, whilst they, distill’d Almost to jelly with the act of fear, Stand dumb and speak not to him.

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,

’Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on.

To die, to sleep— No more, and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to; ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d.

To die, to sleep— To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause;

To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss, So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

Under the which he shall not choose but fall; And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe, But even his mother shall uncharge the practice, And call it accident.

we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots; your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table—that’s the end.

We pray you throw to earth This unprevailing woe, and think of us As of a father, for let the world take note You are the most immediate to our throne, And with no less nobility of love Than that which dearest father bears his son

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.

Well, God dild you! They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!

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!

What art thou that usurp’st this time of night, Together with that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee speak!

What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel Revisits 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?

What then? What rests? Try what repentance can. What can it not? Yet what can it, when one can not repent?

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.

Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task Does not divide the Sunday from the week, What might be toward, that this sweaty haste Doth make the night joint-laborer with the day:

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. ROS. Why then your ambition makes it one. ’Tis too narrow for your mind.

Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players (as it is most like, if their means are no better), their writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their own succession?

Work like the spring that turneth wood to stone, Convert his gyves to graces, so that my arrows, Too slightly timber’d for so loud a wind, Would have reverted to my bow again, But not where I have aim’d them.

You from the Polack wars, and you from England, Are here arrived, give order that these bodies High on a stage be placed to the view, And let me speak to th’ yet unknowing world How these things came about.

Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to the doctor, for for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into more choler.