ACT 1
Scene 2
...him most convenient.
Flourish. Enter Claudius, King of Denmark, Gertrude the Queen, the Council, as Polonius, and his son Laertes, Hamlet, with others, among them Voltemand and Cornelius.
...thou have, Laertes?
My dread lord,
Your leave and favor to return to France,
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark
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.
...thunder. Come away.
Flourish. All but Hamlet exit.
Scene 3
...men’s eyes.
Enter Laertes and Ophelia, his sister.
My necessaries are embarked. Farewell.
And, sister, as the winds give benefit
And convey is assistant, do not sleep,
But let me hear from you.
...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,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute,
No more.
...more but so?
Think it no more.
For nature, crescent, does not grow alone
In thews and bulk, but, as this temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
The virtue of his will; but you must fear,
His greatness weighed, his will is not his own,
For he himself is subject to his birth.
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself, for on his choice depends
The safety and the health of this whole state.
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head. Then, if he says he loves you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed, which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honor may sustain
If with too credent ear you list his songs
Or lose your heart or your chaste treasure open
To his unmastered importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia; fear it, my dear sister,
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough
If she unmask her beauty to the moon.
Virtue itself ’scapes not calumnious strokes.
The canker galls the infants of the spring
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed,
And, in the morn and liquid dew of youth,
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary, then; best safety lies in fear.
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.
...his own rede.
O, fear me not.
Enter Polonius.
I stay too long. But here my father comes.
A double blessing is a double grace.
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.
...this in thee.
Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
...your servants tend.
Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well
What I have said to you.
...key of it.
Farewell.
Laertes exits.
ACT 4
Scene 5
...doors are broke.
Enter Laertes with others.
Where is this king?—Sirs, stand you all without.
...let’s come in!
I pray you, give me leave.
...will, we will.
I thank you. Keep the door. O, thou vile king,
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 unsmirchèd brow
Of my true mother.
...Gertrude.— Speak, man.
Where is my father?
...demand his fill.
How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with.
To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes, only I’ll be revenged
Most throughly for my father.
...shall stay you?
My will, not all the world.
And for my means, I’ll husband them so well
They shall go far with little.
...Winner and loser?
None but his enemies.
...know them, then?
To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms
And, like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,
Repast them with my blood.
...her come in!”
How now, what noise is that?
Enter Ophelia.
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 with 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?
Nature is fine in love, and, where ’tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.
...well, my dove.
Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move thus.
...his master’s daughter.
This nothing’s more than matter.
...that’s for thoughts.
A document in madness: thoughts and remembrance
fitted.
...all my joy.
Thought and afflictions, passion, hell itself
She turns to favor and to prettiness.
...be wi’ you.
Do you see this, O God?
...it due content.
Let this be so.
His means of death, his obscure funeral
(No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones,
No noble rite nor formal ostentation)
Cry to be heard, as ’twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call ’t in question.
...go with me.
They exit.
Scene 7
...you brought them.
Enter King and Laertes.
...Pursued my life.
It well appears. But tell me
Why you proceeded not against these feats,
So criminal and so capital in nature,
As by your safety, greatness, wisdom, all things else,
You mainly were stirred up.
...have aimed them.
And so have I a noble father lost,
A sister driven into desp’rate 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.
...no such thing?
Know you the hand?
...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.”
...ruled by me?
Ay, my lord,
So you will not o’errule me to a peace.
...call it accident.
My lord, I will be ruled,
The rather if you could devise it so
That I might be the organ.
...the unworthiest siege.
What part is that, my lord?
...what he did.
A Norman was ’t?
... A Norman.
Upon my life, Lamord.
...The very same.
I know him well. He is the brooch indeed
And gem of all the nation.
...out of this—
What out of this, my lord?
...without a heart?
Why ask you this?
...than in words?
To cut his throat i’ th’ church.
...for your father.
I will do ’t,
And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death
That is but scratched withal. I’ll touch my point
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
It may be death.
...sister’s drowned, Laertes.
Drowned? O, where?
...To muddy death.
Alas, then she is drowned.
... Drowned, drowned.
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears. 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 o’ fire that fain would blaze,
But that this folly drowns it.
He exits.
ACT 5
Scene 1
...the winter’s flaw!
Enter King, Queen, Laertes, Lords attendant, and the corpse of Ophelia, with a Doctor of Divinity.
...mark.They step aside.
What ceremony else?
...noble youth. Mark.
What ceremony else?
...bell and burial.
Must there no more be done?
...to peace-parted souls.
Lay her i’ th’ earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
A minist’ring angel shall my sister be
When thou liest howling.
...strewed thy grave.
O, treble woe
Fall ten times treble on that cursèd head
Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense
Deprived thee of!—Hold off the earth awhile,
Till I have caught her once more in mine arms. Leaps in the grave.
Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
Till of this flat a mountain you have made
T’ o’ertop old Pelion or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus.
...Hamlet the Dane.
coming out of the grave
The devil take thy soul!
...pray’st not well.
They grapple.
...lord, be quiet.
Hamlet and Laertes are separated.
...our proceeding be.
They exit.
Scene 2
...betimes? Let be.
A table prepared. Enter Trumpets, Drums, and Officers with cushions, King, Queen, Osric, and all the state, foils, daggers, flagons of wine, and Laertes.
...hand from me.
He puts Laertes’ hand into Hamlet’s.
...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. But till that time
I do receive your offered love like love
And will not wrong it.
...foils. Come on.
Come, one for me.
...fiery off indeed.
You mock me, sir.
...have therefore odds.
This is too heavy. Let me see another.
...my good lord.
Prepare to play.
...Come on, sir.
Come, my lord.
They play.
... One.
No.
...very palpable hit.
Well, again.
...by awhile. Come.
They play.
...What say you?
A touch, a touch. I do confess ’t.
...wipe thy face.
to Claudius
My lord, I’ll hit him now.
...not think ’t.
aside
And yet it is almost against my conscience.
...wanton of me.
Say you so? Come on.
Play.
...Nothing neither way.
Have at you now!
Laertes wounds Hamlet. Then in scuffling they change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes.
...is ’t, Laertes?
Why as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric. He falls.
I am justly killed with mine own treachery.
...Seek it out.
It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain.
No med’cine in the world can do thee good.
In thee there is not half an hour’s life.
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
Unbated and envenomed. The foul practice
Hath turned itself on me. Lo, here I lie,
Never to rise again. Thy mother’s poisoned.
I can no more. The King, the King’s to blame.
...my mother.King dies.
He is justly served.
It is a poison tempered by himself.
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.
Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee,
Nor thine on me.
Dies.