Hamlet (2002) - full transcript
- 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
'gainst self-slaughter.
Oh, God.
God.
How weary,
stale,
flat and unprofitable seem to me
all the uses of this world.
Fie on't.
Ah fie, 'tis an unweeded
garden that grows to seed.
Things rank and gross in
nature posses it merely.
That it should come to this.
(dark atmospheric music)
But two months dead...
Nay.
Not so much, not two.
So excellent a king that was,
to this, Hyperion to a satyr,
and so loving to my mother
that he might not beteem
the winds of heaven, visit
her face too roughly.
Heaven and earth, must I remember?
Frailty,
thy name is woman.
A little month, or ere
those shoes were old,
with which she followed
my poor father's body
like Niobe, all tears.
Why she, even she, 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
had left the flushing in her
galled eyes, she married.
Oh, most wicked speed to
post with such dexterity
to incestuous sheets.
It is not nor it cannot come to good.
- Hail to your lordship.
(chuckles)
- I am glad to see you well,
Horatio, or I do forget myself.
- The same, my lord, and
your poor servant ever.
- Sir, my good friend, I'll
change that name with you.
What make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?
We shall teach you to
drink deep ere you depart.
- My lord, I came to see
your father's funeral.
- I pray thee, do not
mock me, fellow student.
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
- Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.
- Thrift, thrift, Horatio,
the funeral baked meats
did coldly furnish forth
the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven,
or ever I had seen that day.
Horatio, my father.
Methinks I see my father.
- Where, my lord?
- In my mind's eye, Horatio.
- I saw him, once.
He was a goodly king.
- He was a man, take him for all in all.
I shall not look upon his like again.
- My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
- Saw? Who?
- My lord, the king your father.
- The king my father?
- Season your admiration for
a while with an attent ear
till I may deliver this marvel to you.
- For God's love, let me hear.
- In the dead waste and
middle of the night,
a figure like your father
appears before me and goes
slow and stately by, I knew your father.
These hands are not more like.
- Saw you his face?
- Oh yes, my lord.
- What!
Looked he frowningly?
- A countenance more in
sorrow than in anger.
- Pale or red?
- Nay, very pale.
- And fixed his eyes upon you?
- Most constantly.
- Did you not speak to it?
- My lord, I did but answer made it none.
Yet, once methought it lifted up its head,
and did address itself to
motion like as it would speak.
But even then the morning cock
crew loud and at the sound
it shrunk in haste away
and vanished from my sight.
- 'Tis very strange.
- As I do live, my
honored lord, 'tis true.
- I would I had been there.
- It would have much amazed you.
- Very like, very like.
Perchance 'twill walk again.
- I warrant it will.
- If it assume my noble father's
person, I'll speak to it,
though hell itself should
gape and bid me hold my peace.
(faintly blowing wind)
- Look, my lord, it comes.
(faint rattling)
- Angels and ministers of grace defend us.
Be thou a spirit of
health or goblin damned,
bring with thee airs from
heaven or blasts from hell,
be thy intents wicked or
charitable, thou comest in such
a questionable shape that,
I will speak to thee.
I'll call thee,
(faint rattling)
Hamlet.
King.
(faintly blowing wind)
Father, royal Dane.
What may this mean that thou,
dead corse 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?
Say, why is this?
Wherefore? What should we do?
- Mark me.
My hour is almost come.
When I to sulfurous and tormenting flames
must render up myself.
- Alas, poor ghost!
- Pity me not.
But lend thy serious hearing
to what I shall unfold.
- Speak, I am bound to hear.
- So art thou to revenge,
when thou shalt hear.
- What?
- Now Hamlet, '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.
- Oh, my prophetic soul.
My uncle!
- Aye.
That incestuous, that adulterate beast.
With witchcraft of his
wit, with traitorous gifts.
Oh wicked wit and gifts that
have the power so to seduce.
Won to his shameful lust,
the will of my most
seeming-virtuous queen.
Brief let me be, sleeping in my orchard,
my custom always of the afternoon,
upon my secure hour thy uncle stole
with juice of cursed hebenon
in a vial and in the porches
of my ears did pour
the leprous distilment,
whose effect holds such an
enmity with blood of man
that swift as quicksilver
it courses through
the natural gates and alleys of the body
and with a sudden vigor
doth posset and curd
like eager droppings into milk,
the thin and wholesome blood!
So did it mine.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand.
Of life, of crown, of queen,
at once dispatched, cut off!
Even in the blossoms of
my sin, no reckoning made,
but sent to my account with all
my imperfections on my head!
- Oh horrible, most horrible.
- Most horrible!
(screeching wind)
If thou hast nature in thee,
bear it not.
Let not the royal bed
of Denmark be a couch
for luxury and damned incest.
But howsoever thou pursues this act,
taint not thy mind,
nor let thy soul contrive
against thy mother aught.
Leave her to heaven.
And to those thorns
that in her bosom lodge,
to prick and sting her.
Fare thee well at once.
Adieu.
Adieu!
Adieu.
Remember me.
(faintly blowing wind)
(faint rattling)
- Oh all you host of heaven.
Oh earth.
And what else?
And shall I couple hell?
Oh, fie.
Hold.
Hold, my heart,
and you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
but bear me stiffly up.
Remember thee.
Aye, thou poor ghost,
whilst memory holds a seat
in this distracted globe,
remember thee, yea, from
the table of my memory.
I'll wipe away all fond trivial
records, all saws of books,
all forms, all pressures past
that youth and observation
copied there and thy
commandment all alone shall live
within the book and volume of my brain,
unmixed with baser matter.
Most pernicious woman.
Villain.
Villain.
Smiling, damned villain.
That one may smile, and
smile, and be a villain.
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark.
So, uncle.
(chuckles) There you are.
Now.
To my word.
It is, "Adieu, adieu, remember me."
I have sworn it.
- My lord.
My lord.
What news, my lord?
- Wonderful.
- Good my lord, tell it.
- No.
You will reveal it.
- Not I, my lord, by heaven!
- How say you, then, would
heart of man once think it?
But you'll be secret?
- Aye, by heaven, my lord.
- There's never a villain
dwelling in all Denmark,
but he is 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 without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we
shake hands and part.
And for my own poor part, I will go pray.
- These are but wild and
whirling words, my lord.
- 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!
Touching this vision here.
It is an honest ghost.
That let me tell you.
For your desire to know
what is between us,
o'ermaster it as you may.
My good friend, give me one poor request.
- [Horatio] What is it, my lord? I will.
- Never make known what
you have seen tonight.
- My lord, I will not.
- [Hamlet] Nay, but swear it.
- [Ghost From Beneath] Swear.
(Hamlet chuckles)
- Say'st thou so?
Come on!
- Day and night, but
this is wondrous strange.
- Therefore as a
stranger, give it welcome!
There are more things in
heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
But, come.
- So help you mercy,
however strange or odd
some'er I bear myself, to note
that you know aught of me.
This, this, swear.
So, grace.
- So grace.
- And mercy.
- And mercy.
- At your most need.
- At my most need.
- Help you.
- Help me.
- [Ghost From Below] Swear!
- Rest.
Rest, perturbed spirit.
Shh.
So.
Good friend.
With all my love, I do commend me to you.
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is may do
to express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack.
And still your fingers
on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint.
Oh cursed spite that ever
I was born to set it right.
(suspenseful music)
- Now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son.
- A little more than kin,
but less than kind.
- How is it that the
clouds still hang on you?
- Not so, my lord, I
am too much in the sun.
- Good Hamlet, cat thy nighted color off,
and let thine eye look
like a friend on Denmark.
Do not forever with thy veiled lids
seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know'st '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.
- '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 persever in obstinate condolement
is a course of impious stubbornness.
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 corse
till he that died today,
"This must be so."
(chuckles)
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.
(chuckles)
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.
(King and Queen chuckle)
- Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply.
Be as ourself in Denmark.
(rousing folk music)
- [Woman] My lord.
(door closes)
My lord.
- How now, Ophelia, what's the matter?
- My lord, I have been so affrighted.
- With what, in the name of God?
- My lord, as I sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his
doublet all unbraced,
no hat upon his head,
his stockings fouled,
ungartered and down-gyved to his ankle,
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.
- Mad for thy love?
- [Ophelia] My lord, I do not
know, but truly, I do fear it.
- What said he?
- 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 over 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.
That done, he lets me go, and,
with his head over his shoulder turned,
he seemed to find his
way without his eyes.
For out of doors he
went without their help,
and, to the last, bended
their light on me.
- Tender yourself more dearly.
Or, not to crack the
wind of the poor phrase,
running it thus, you'll tender me a fool.
- My lord, he hath
importuned me with his love
in honorable fashion.
- Aye, fashion you may call it.
Go to, go to.
- And hath given countenance
to his speech, my lord,
with almost all the holy vows of heaven.
- Aye, spinges to catch woodcocks.
What, have you given
him hard words of late?
- No, my lord,
but as you did command,
I did repel his letters,
and denied his access to me.
- That has made him mad.
This is the very ectasy of love
whose violent property fordoes itself,
and leads the will to desperate
undertakings as oft as
any passion under heaven that
does afflict our natures.
I will go seek the king.
This must be known.
(percussive music)
- [King] Thou art the father of good news.
- Am I, my lord?
Assure you, my good liege,
I hold my duty as I hold my soul.
Both to my God and to my gracious king.
And I do think that I've found
the very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.
- Oh, speak of that.
That do I long to hear.
He tells me, my dear Gertrude,
he's found the head and source
of all your son's distemper.
- Well I doubt it is
no other but the main.
His father's death and,
our o'erhasty marriage.
- [King] Well, we shall
sift him. (chuckles)
- My liege and madam, 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.
I have a daughter.
Have while she's mine.
Who, in her duty and obedience,
mark, hath given me this.
"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, thus.
"In her excellent white
bosom, these et cetera."
- Came this from Hamlet to her?
- Good madam, stay a while.
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.
"Hamlet."
This, in obedience, hath
my daughter shown me.
And more above, hath his
solicitings, as they fell out
by time, by means and place,
all given to mine ear.
- But how hath she received his love?
- What do you think of me?
(King chuckles)
- As of a man faithful and honorable.
- I would fain prove so.
When I had seen this hot love on the wing,
I prescripts gave her.
That she should lock
herself from his resort,
admit no messengers, receive no tokens.
Which done, she took
the fruits of my advice.
And he, repelled, a short tale to make.
Fell into a sadness,
then into a fast,
thence into a watch,
thence into a weakness,
thence into a lightness,
and by this declension,
into the madness wherein now
he raves and all we mourn for.
- Do you think 'tis this?
- It may be, very like.
- Hath there been such a time?
I would fain know that.
That I have positively said "'tis so"
when it proved otherwise.
- (chuckles) Not that I know.
- Take this from this,
if this be otherwise.
If circumstances lead me, I
will find where truth is hid,
though it be 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 will
loose my daughter to him.
Be you and I behind an arras
then, mark the encounter.
(solemn music)
- [Queen] Where sadly the
poor wretch comes reading.
- Away, I beseech you, both away.
I'll board him presently.
How does my good Lord Hamlet?
- Well, God-a-mercy.
- Do you know me, my lord?
- Excellent well, you are a fishmonger.
- Not I, my lord.
- Then I would you were
so honest a fellow.
- Honest, my lord!
- Aye, sir.
To be honest, as this world goes,
is to be one man picked
out of ten thousand.
- That's very true, my lord.
- For if the sun breed
maggots in a dead dog,
being a good kissing carrion...
Have you a daughter?
- I have, my lord.
- Then let her not walk i' the sun.
Conception is a blessing,
but as your daughter may conceive,
friend,
look to it.
- How say you by that?
Still harping on my daughter.
Yet he knew me not at first,
he said I was a fishmonger.
He's far gone, far gone.
And truly in my youth I suffered
much extremity for love.
Very near this.
What do you read, my lord?
- Words.
Words, words.
- What is the matter, my lord?
- Between who?
- I mean, the matter
that you read, my lord.
- Slanders, sir.
For the satirical rogue says here that,
old men have gray beards,
that their faces are wrinkled,
their eyes purging thick
amber and plum-tree gum
and that they have a
plentiful lack of wit,
together with most weak hams,
though I most powerfully
and potently believe,
yet I hold it not honesty
to have it thus set down.
For you, yourself sir,
shall grow old as I am,
if like a crab you could go backwards.
(dark atmospheric music)
- Though this be madness,
yet there is method in it.
Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
- Into my grave.
- Indeed, that's out of the air.
How pregnant sometimes his replies are.
A happiness that often
madness hits on, that reason
and sanity could not so
prosperously be delivered of.
I will leave him and
suddenly contrive the means
of meeting between him and my daughter.
My honorable lord, I will most
humbly take my leave of you.
- You cannot, sir,
take from me anything that I would not
more willingly part withal.
Except my life.
Except my life.
- [Polonius] Fare thee well, my lord.
- Tedious old fools.
- My most dear lord.
- My most dear lord.
(Hamlet chuckles)
- My excellent good friends,
Rosencrantz, Guildenstern.
Good lads, how do you both?
- As the indifferent children
of the earth, my lord.
- Happy, in that we are not over-happy.
On fortune's cap we're
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, in her privates we!
- Most true, she is a strumpet. (laughs)
(sighs)
(grunts)
So, what news?
- None, my lord, but that
the world's grown honest.
- Then is doomsday near.
(friends chuckle)
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.
- [Rosencrantz] I think not so, my lord.
- 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.
- Why then, your ambition makes it one.
'Tis too narrow for your mind.
- Oh God, I could be
bounded in a nut shell
and count myself a king of infinite space,
were it not that I have bad dreams.
But, in the beaten way of friendship,
what make you at Elsinore?
- To visit you, my
lord, no other occasion.
- Oh!
Beggar that I am, I am even
poor in thanks. (chuckles)
But I thank you, and sure, dear friend,
my thanks are too dear a halfpenny.
Were you not sent for?
Ah.
Is it a free visitation?
Is it?
Your own inclining?
Come, come, deal justly with me.
Come, come!
- What should we say, my lord?
- Why, anything but to the purpose.
You were sent for.
There is a kind of
confession in your looks
which your modesty has
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.
Let me conjure you, eh?
By the rights of our fellowship,
by the consonancy of our youth,
by the obligation of our
ever-preserved love, and by
what more dear a better proposer
could charge you withal,
you be even and direct with me,
whether you were sent for or no?
Nay, I have an eye of you!
If you love me, hold not off!
- My lord!
We were sent for.
(Hamlet chuckles)
- Hey.
I will tell you why.
So shall my anticipation
prevent your discovery,
and your secrecy to the king
and queen moult no feather.
I have of late, but wherefore I know not,
lost all my mirth,
forgone all custom of
exercises, and indeed,
it goes so heavily with my disposition
that this goodly frame, the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory,
this most excellent
canopy, the air, look you,
this brave o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof
fretted with golden fire,
why, it appeareth nothing to me
but a foul and pestilent
congregation of vapours.
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.
(Rosencrantz chuckles)
No, nor woman, neither.
Though by your smiling,
you seem to say so.
- My lord, there was no
such stuff in my thoughts.
- Why did you laugh then, when
I said "man delights not me?"
- To think, my lord, that
if you delight not in man,
what lenten entertainment
the players shall receive from you.
(laughs) We coted them on the way,
and hither are they coming,
to offer you service.
- He that plays the king,
shall be welcome.
But my uncle-father and
aunt-mother are deceived.
- In what, my lord?
(dark atmospheric tones)
- I am but mad north-north-west.
When the wind is southerly,
I know a hawk from a handsaw.
(restless chime music)
- [Polonius] My lord, I
have news to tell you.
- [Hamlet] My lord, I
have news to tell you.
- [Polonius] The actors
have come hither, my lord.
On my honor, the best actors--
(Hamlet laughs)
(players laugh)
- Welcome, master, welcome, good friends.
I am glad to see you well.
(sighs)
(laughs)
Oh, 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.
It was in Ancient Greek,
but it was never acted,
or if it was, not above once.
For the play, I remember,
pleased not the million.
It was caviar to the
general, but one speech in it
I chiefly loved.
'Twas Aeneas' tale to Dido, and
thereabout of it especially,
where he speaks of Priam's slaughter.
Prithee, if it live in your
memory, begin at this line.
Let me see, let me see.
(speaks foreign language)
(somber sitar music)
(player speaks foreign language)
- This is too long.
- Then it shall to the
barber's, with your beard.
He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry,
or he sleeps.
Prithee, say on.
Come, come to Hecuba.
Say on.
Shh.
(somber wind music)
(player speaks foreign language)
- Look, where he has not turned his color,
and has tears in his eyes.
Pray thee, no more.
- 'Tis well.
I'll have thee speak out
the rest of this soon.
I will leave you 'til night.
You are welcome to Elsinore.
- Good, my lord.
- Fine, my lord.
- Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I.
Is it not 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 wann'd,
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.
(chuckles)
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
that he should weep for her?
Ah, what would he do,
had he the motive and cue
for passion that I have?
Oh.
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.
No, not for a king,
upon whose property and most dear life
a damned defeat was made.
Am I a coward?
For it cannot be, but
that 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.
About, my brains. (sniffs)
(moans)
I have heard,
(dark atmospheric music)
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.
For murder, though it
have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.
Yes.
I'll have these players
play something like
the death of my father before mine uncle.
I'll observe his looks,
I'll tent him to the quick.
Now if he do blench,
then, I know my course.
The spirit that I have
seen may be a devil,
and the devil hath power
to assume a pleasing shape.
Yea, and perhaps out of my
weakness and my melancholy,
as he is very potent with such spirits,
abuses me,
to damn me.
I'll have grounds more relative than this.
The play's the thing
wherein I'll catch the
conscience of the king.
(somber sitar music)
Soft you now, the fair Ophelia.
Nymph, 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.
Well, well.
- My lord, I have
remembrances of yours that
I have longed long to re-deliver.
I pray you, now receive them.
- [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.
- Are you honest?
- My lord?
- Are you fair?
- What means your lordship?
- That, if you be honest and fair,
your honesty should admit
no discourse to your beauty.
- 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.
- Indeed, my lord.
You made me believe so.
- You should not have believed me.
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.
Believe none of us.
Go thy ways,
(somber sitar music)
to a nunnery.
Where's your father?
- At home, my lord.
- Then let the doors be shut upon him,
that he may play the fool
no where but in's own house!
- Oh, help him, you sweet heavens.
- 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, go!
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.
I have heard of your paintings, too.
God, hath given you one face,
and you, you make yourselves,
(spits) another.
You jig, and you amble, and you lisp.
You nickname God's creatures,
and make your wantonness your ignorance.
Go to, I'll no more on't.
(Ophelia groans)
It has made me mad!
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.
- Love.
(chuckles)
His affections do not that way tend.
Nor what he spake, though
it lacked form a little,
was not like madness.
There's something in his soul,
over which his melancholy
sits on brood, and I do fear
the hatch and the disclose
will be some danger, which for to prevent,
I have in quick determination
thus set it down.
He shall with speed to
England, haply the seas
and countries different shall expel this
something-settled matter in
his heart, whereon his brain
still beating puts him thus
from fashion of himself.
- [Polonius] It shall do well,
but yet do I believe the
origin and commencement
of his grief sprung from neglected love.
- Oh, what a noble mind
is here overthrown.
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's,
eye, tongue, sword.
The expectancy and rose of the fair state.
The glass of fashion and the mold of form.
The observed of all observers.
Quite, quite down.
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
that sucked the honey of his music vows,
now see that noble and
most sovereign reason,
blasted with ecstasy.
Oh, woe is me.
To have seen what I have
seen, see what I see.
(suspenseful percussion)
- Horatio?
- Yes, my lord, at your service.
- Horatio, there is a play,
tonight, before the king.
One scene of it comes very
the near the circumstance
which I have told thee
of my father's death.
I prithee, observe my uncle.
For I mine eyes will rivet
to his face, and after,
we will both our judgments
join in censure of his seeming.
- If he steal aught the
whilst this play is playing,
and scape detecting, I will pay the theft.
- [King] How fares our cousin Hamlet?
- Excellent, i' 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.
(all chuckle)
Be the players ready?
- Aye, my lord, they
stay upon your patience.
- Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
- No, good mother, here's
metal more attractive.
- Ah, do you mark that?
- [Hamlet] Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
- No, my lord.
- I mean, my head upon your lap?
- [Ophelia] Aye, my lord.
- Did you think I meant country matters?
- I think nothing, my lord.
- [Hamlet] That's a fair thought to lie
between a maid's legs.
- What is, my lord?
- Nothing.
- You are merry, my lord.
- Who, I?
- Aye, my lord.
(Hamlet chuckles)
- Oh God, your only jig-maker!
What should a man do but be merry?
For, look you, how
cheerfully my mother looks,
and my father died within these two hours.
- Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.
- So long?
Nay then, let the devil wear black.
I'll have a suit of sables.
Oh heavens, died two months
ago, and not forgotten yet?
(chuckles)
Then there's hope a great man's
memory may outlive his life
half a year. (chuckles)
(piercing wind music)
- Faith.
I must leave thee, love,
and shortly, too.
My operant powers,
their functions leave to do,
and thou shalt live in
this fair world behind,
honored, beloved,
and haply one as kind for husband--
- Oh, confound the rest.
Such love must needs be
treason in my breast.
A second husband let me be accurst.
None wed the second but
who killed the first.
- [Hamlet] That's wormwood.
- A second time I kill my husband dead,
when second husband kisses me in bed.
- Oh, if she should break it now.
- Deeply sworn.
Sweet,
leave me here awhile.
- Sleep.
Sleep rock thy brain.
And never come mischance between us twain.
- Madam.
How like you this play?
- Lady doth protest too much, methinks.
- [Hamlet] Oh, but she'll keep her word.
- Have you heard the argument?
Is there no offense in it?
- No.
They do but jest.
Poison in jest, no offense in the world.
- What call you the play?
- The Mouse-trap.
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.
Let the galled jade wince.
Our withers are unwrung.
Oh.
This one, Lucianus,
nephew to the king.
He poisons him in the
garden for his estate.
The story is extant and
written in very choice Italian.
You shall see anon how the murderer
gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
(piercing tones)
What?
Frighted with false fire.
- Have fares my lord?
(frantic percussion)
- [Polonius] Give over the play!
- Give me,
some light.
- [Polonius] Lights!
Lights!
Lights!
- Oh good Horatio!
I'll take the ghost's
word for a thousand pound!
Didst perceive?
- Very well done.
- Upon the talk of poisoning?
- I did very well note him!
- Come, some music!
(frantic percussive music)
For if the king like not the comedy,
why then, belike he likes it not, perdy!
Come, music!
- Good my lord, vouchsafe
me a word with you.
- Sir?
A whole history.
- The queen, your mother,
in most great affliction of
spirit, hath sent me to you.
- Oh sir, you are welcome.
- Nay, good my lord,
this courtesy is not of the right breed!
If it will please you to
make me a wholesome answer,
I shall do your mother's
commandment, if not,
your pardon and my return shall
be the end of my business.
- Sir!
Sir, I cannot.
- [Guildenstern] 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 shall no more,
but to the matter, my mother, you say--
- Then thus she says--
- Ah.
(sighs)
- Your behavior hath
struck her into amazement
and admiration.
(Hamlet cackles wildly)
- Wonderful son that can
so astonish a mother.
Is there no sequel at the heels
of this mother's admiration?
Impart.
- She desires to speak
with you in her closet,
ere you go to bed.
- Oh well, we shall obey,
were she ten 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
your cause of distemper?
You do, surely, bar the
door upon your liberty,
if you deny your griefs to your friend.
- Sir, I lack advancement.
- How can that be, when you
have the voice of the king
himself for your succession in Denmark?
- Why do you go about to
recover the wind of me,
as if you would drive me into a toil?
- Oh, my lord, if my duty be too bold,
my love is too unmannerly.
- Uh, I do not well
understand that. (chuckles)
Will you play,
upon this pipe?
- [Guildenstern] My lord, I cannot.
- I pray you.
- Believe me, I cannot.
- I do beseech you.
- [Guildenstern] I know
no touch of it, my lord.
- It is as easy as lying.
You 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.
- But these cannot I command
to any utterance of harmony.
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.
You would sound me from my lowest note
to the top of my compass,
and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ,
yet cannot you make it speak.
'Sblood,
do you think I am easier to
be played upon than a pipe?
Call me what instrument you will,
though you can fret me,
you cannot play upon me.
- My lord.
- God bless you, sir.
- The queen would speak
with you, and presently.
- Do you see yonder cloud
that's almost in shape of a camel?
- By the mass, and 'tis
like a camel, indeed.
- Methinks 'tis like a weasel.
- It is backed like a weasel.
- Or like a whale?
- Very like a whale.
- Then I will come to my mother,
by and by.
(sharp flute note)
They fool me to the top of my bent.
I will come by and by.
- I will say so.
- By and by is easily said.
Leave me.
Friend.
(atmospheric chime music)
- '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.
- Oh, my offense is rank.
It smells to heaven.
It hath the primal
eldest curse upon it.
A brother's murder.
Pray can I not,
though inclination be as sharp as will.
My stronger guilt
defeats my strong intent.
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where
I shall first begin,
and both neglect.
What if this cursed hand
were thicker than itself
with brother's blood.
Is there not rain enough
in the sweet heavens
to wash it white as snow?
(chuckles)
Whereto serves mercy,
but to confront the visage of offense?
And what's in prayer
but this two-fold force,
to be forestalled ere we come to fall,
or pardoned being down?
Then I'll look up.
My fault is past.
But oh, what form of
prayer can serve my turn?
"Forgive me my foul murder?"
That cannot be.
Since I'm still possessed Of those effects
for which I did the murder.
My crown, mine own ambition,
and my queen.
(chuckles)
May one be pardoned
and retain the offense?
(chuckles)
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 its 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 can not repent?
Oh, wretched state.
Oh bosom black as death.
Oh limed soul that, struggling
to be free, art more engaged.
Help, angels.
Make assay.
Bow, stubborn knees.
And, heart with strings of steel,
be soft as sinews of a newborn babe.
All may be well.
- Now might I do it pat,
now he is a-praying.
And now,
I'll do it.
And so he goes to heaven,
and so am I revenged.
That would be scanned.
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this
same villain send to heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly.
Full of bread.
With all his crimes broad
blown, as flush as May,
and how his audit stands
who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance
and course of thought,
it is heavy with him.
Am I then revenged,
to take him in the purging of his soul,
when he is fit and
seasoned for his passage?
No.
Up, sword.
And know thou a more horrid hent.
When he is drunk asleep,
or in his rage, or in the
incestuous pleasure of his bed,
at game, a-swearing, or about some act
that has no relish of salvation in't,
then trip him,
that his heels may kick at heaven,
and his soul may be as
damned and black as hell.
Whereto it goes.
My mother stays.
This physic,
but prolongs thy sickly days.
- My words fly up.
My thoughts,
remain below.
Words without thoughts,
never to heaven go.
(dark atmospheric music)
- He will come straight.
Look you lay home to him.
Tell him his pranks have
been too broad to bear with,
and that your grace hath screened
and stood between much heat and him.
I'll silence me, even here.
Pray you, be round with him.
- I'll warrant you, fear me not.
- [Hamlet] Mother!
- Withdraw, I hear him coming.
- Mother!
How now, mother, what's the matter?
- Hamlet, thou hast thy
father much offended.
- Mother, you have my
father much offended.
- Oh come, come, you
answer with an idle tongue.
- Go, go, you question
with a wicked tongue.
- Have you forgot me?
- No, by the rood, not so.
You are 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.
(sword swooshes)
- Come, come.
- Why, how now, Hamlet?
- Sit you down.
(frantic percussive music)
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!
Help!
- [Polonius] What, ho, help!
- How now, a rat!
Dead, for a ducat, dead!
(thud)
- Oh me, what hast thou done?
- Nay.
I know not.
Is it the king?
- [Queen] 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, that was my word.
Oh, thou wretched, rash, intruding fool.
I took thee for thy better.
Thou find'st to be too
busy is some danger.
Fare you well.
Take thy fortune.
Leave wringing of your
hands, peace, sit you down!
And let me wring your
heart, for so I shall,
if it be made of penetrable stuff.
- What have I done, that
thou darest wag thy tongue
in noise so rude against me?
- Such an act
that blurs the grace of blush of modesty,
calls virtue hypocrite,
takes off the rose from the
fair forehead of an innocent
love and sets a blister there,
makes marriage-vows as
false as dicers' oaths.
Oh, such a deed
as from the body of contraction
plucks the very soul,
and sweet religion makes
a rhapsody of words.
Heaven's face doth glow.
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
with heated visage, as against the doom,
is thought-sick at the act.
- Aye me.
What act, that roars so loud,
and thunders in the index?
- Look here.
Upon this picture,
and on this,
the counterfeit presentment
of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow.
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.
Like a mildewed ear, blasting
his wholesome brother.
Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair
mountain leave to feed,
and batten on this,
moor?
Huh?
Have you eyes?
Ah, you cannot call it love.
For at your age, the hey-day
in the blood is tame,
it's humble, and waits upon judgment.
And what judgment would
step from this to this?
Oh, shame.
- Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn'st 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--
- Speak to me no more.
These words, like daggers,
enter in mine ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet!
- A murderer and a villain.
A slave that is not twentieth part
the tithe of your precedent
lord, a vice of kings.
A cutpurse of the empire and
the realm, who, from a shelf
the precious diadem stole,
and put it in his pocket!
- No more!
- A king of shreds and patches!
(ominous tones)
Save me, and hover over
me with your wings,
you heavenly guards.
What would your gracious figure?
- Alas, he's mad.
- Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
that, lapsed in time
and passion, lets go by
the important acting
of your dread command?
Oh, say.
- Do not forget.
This visitation is but to whet
thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look.
Amazement on thy mother sits.
Oh, step between her
and her fighting soul.
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.
- How is't with you, lady?
- Alas, how is't with you,
that you do bend your eye on vacancy and
with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
Oh gentle son, upon the heat
and flame of thy distemper
sprinkle cool patience.
Whereon do you look?
- On him.
On him.
Look you, how pale he glares.
His form and cause conjoined,
preaching to stones,
would make them capable.
Do not look upon me, lest with this
piteous action you
convert my stern effects.
Then what I have to do
would want true color.
Tears perchance for blood.
- To whom do you speak this?
- Do you see nothing there?
- No, nothing at all, yet,
all that is, I see.
- Nor did you nothing hear?
- No, nothing but ourselves.
- Look you there.
Look!
How it steals away, my father,
in his habit as he lived.
Look, where he goes, even
now, out at the portal!
- This the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation
ecstasy is very cunning in.
- Ecstasy.
My pulse, as yours,
doth temperately keep time,
and makes as healthful music.
It is not madness that I have uttered.
Bring me to the test, and
I the matter will re-word,
which madness Would gambol from.
Mother, for love of grace,
lay not that flattering
unction to your soul,
that not your trespass,
but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and
film the ulcerous place,
whilst rank corruption, mining
all within, infects unseen.
Confess yourself to heaven.
Repent what's past, avoid
what is to come, and do not
spread the compost on the
weeds to make them ranker.
- Hamlet.
Thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
- Oh, throw away the worser part of it,
and live the purer with the other half.
Once more, good night.
And when you are desirous to be blessed,
I'll blessing beg of you.
For this same lord, I do repent me,
but heaven hath pleased it
so to punish me with this
and this with me, that I must
be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him,
and will answer well the death I gave him.
One word more, good lady.
- What shall I do?
- 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.
'Twere good you let him know.
For who, that's but a queen,
fair, sober, wise,
would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
such dear concernings hide?
Who would do so?
No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
unpeg the basket at the house's top.
Let the birds fly,
and like the famous
ape, to try conclusions,
in the basket creep, and
break your own neck down.
- If words be made of
breath, and breath of life,
I have no life to breathe
what thou hast said to me.
(Hamlet sighs)
- Indeed.
This counselor is now most still,
most silent and most grave.
Who was in life, a foolish
prating knave. (chuckles)
Come on, sir, to draw toward
an end with you. (chuckles)
Good night, mother.
- Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?
- At supper.
- At supper?
Where?
- Not where he eats,
but where he is eaten.
A certain convocation of
politic worms are e'en at him.
Your worm is your only emperor for diet.
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.
And that's the end.
- Alas.
Alas.
- A man may fish with the
worm that hath eat of a king,
and eat of the fish that
hath fed of that worm.
- What dost thou mean by this?
- Nothing, but to show
you how a king may go
a progress through the guts of a beggar.
- Where is Polonius?
- In heaven.
Send hither to see.
If your messenger find him not there,
seek him i' the other place,
yourself.
But indeed, if you find
him not with this month,
you shall (sniffs) nose him
as you go upstairs into the lobby.
- [King] Go, seek him there.
- He will stay till you come.
- Hamlet, this deed,
for thine especial safety,
which we do tender as we dearly grieve,
for that which thou hast done,
must send thee hence with fiery quickness.
Therefore prepare thyself.
The bark is ready, and the wind at help.
The associates tend, and
everything is bent for England.
- Oh, England, good.
- Aye!
So is it!
If thou knew'st our purposes.
- I see a cherub that sees them.
But, come.
For England.
Farewell, dear mother.
- Thy loving father,
Hamlet.
- My mother.
A father and mother is man and wife.
Man and wife is one flesh.
So...
Mother.
(dark somber music)
- 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?
To die.
Is to sleep no more,
and by a sleep to say
we end the heart-ache
and thousand natural shocks
that flesh is heir to.
'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
To die.
To sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream.
Oh, aye.
(sighs) 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,
the oppressor's wrong,
the proud man's contumely,
the pangs of despised love,
the law's delay, the
insolence of office and,
the spurns that patient
merit of the unworthy takes,
when he himself might his
quietus make with a 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 bourne
no traveler returns, puzzles the will
and makes us rather
bear those ills we have
than fly to others that 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
(sighs) their currents turn awry,
and lose the name of action.
- [Rosencrantz] Wilt
please you go, my lord?
- Come.
For England.
From this time forth,
my thoughts be bloody,
or be nothing worth.
(somber sitar music)
(hushed prayers)
- Lord.
we know what we are, but,
know not what we may be.
No. (gasps)
Pray, let's have no words of this.
But when they ask you what
it means, say you this.
By Gis and by Saint Charity,
alack, and fie for shame!
Young men will do it, if they come to it.
By cock...
By cock, they are to blame!
Quoth she,
before you tumbled me,
you promised me to wed.
He answers, so would I ha' done,
by yonder sun,
and thou hadst not come to my bed.
I hope all will be well.
We must be patient.
And so I thank you for your good counsel.
Good night, ladies.
Good night,
sweet ladies.
Good night.
Good night.
Good...
- Oh Gertrude, Gertrude.
When sorrows come, they
come not single spies,
but in battalions.
First, her father slain.
Next, your son gone,
and he most violent author
of good Polonius' death.
Poor Ophelia, divided from
herself and her fair judgment.
Last, and as much containing as all these,
her brother is in secret come from France.
Feeds on this wonder.
Keeps himself in clouds.
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
with pestilent speeches
of his father's death.
Oh my dear Gertrude.
This, like to a
murdering-piece, in many places
gives me superfluous death.
(suspenseful percussion)
- Oh thou vile king.
Give me my father.
- Calmly, good Laertes.
- Where is my father?
- Dead.
- But not by him--
- Let him 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!
- Who shall stay you?
- Only his enemies!
- Why, now you speak like
a good child! (chuckles)
And a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of
your father's death,
and am most sensibly in grief
for it, it shall as level
to your judgment peer
as day does to your eye.
Good Laertes, he which hath
your noble father slain
pursued my life.
(somber sitar music)
- Ophelia.
Kind sister.
- And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
I cannot choose but weep.
To think that they would
lay him in the cold ground.
(somber sitar music)
My brother shall know of it!
They bore him barefaced on the bier.
Hey non non, hey nonny, hey non non.
And, on his grave,
rained many a tear.
Fare you well, my dove.
Fare you well.
There's rosemary.
That's for remembrance.
Pray you, love, remember.
There is pansies.
That's for thoughts.
There's fennel for you,
and columbines.
There's rue for you,
and here's some for me, we
may call it herb o' grace.
On Sundays, you must wear
your rue with a difference.
There's a daisy.
I would give you some
violets, but they withered
all when my father died.
They say he made a good end.
And will he not come again?
No, he is dead.
Go to thy death-bed.
He never will come again.
(somber sitar music)
His beard was as white as snow.
All flaxen was his poll.
He is gone.
He is gone, and we cast away moan.
God have mercy on his soul.
And of all Christian souls, I pray God.
God be with you.
God be with you.
God be with you.
- Oh heat, dry up my brains.
Tears seven times salt, burn out the sense
and virtue of mine eyes.
By heaven, thy madness
shall be paid with weight,
till our scale turn the beam.
Oh rose of May.
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia.
Oh heavens, is it possible,
a young maid's wits
should be as mortal as an old man's life?
Adieu, my lord.
I have a speech of fire,
that fain would blaze,
but that this folly doubts it.
- [King] How now, what news?
- Letters, my lord.
From Hamlet.
- From Hamlet?
Who brought them?
- Sailors, my lord.
- Leave me.
"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."
Naked.
And in the postscript here he says,
"Alone."
- One woe doth tread upon another's heels,
so fast they follow.
Your sister's drowned, Laertes.
- Drowned?
Where?
- There is a willow
grows aslant the brook,
that shows his hoar leaves
in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic
garlands did she make of
crow-flowers, nettles,
daisies, and long purples
which liberal shepherds
give a grosser name,
but our cold maids do dead
men's fingers call them.
There on the pendent
boughs her coronet weeds
clambering 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 tunes,
as one incapable of her own distress,
or like a creature native
and indued unto that element.
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.
- Alas.
Then, she is drowned?
- Drowned.
Drowned.
♫ I'll tell me ma when I go home
♫ The boys won't leave the girls alone
♫ Pull me hair, stole my comb
♫ Well that's alright till I go home
♫ She is handsome, she is pretty
♫ Knock on the door
♫ Ringing of the bell
♫ Hello, me true love, are you well
And who builds stronger than a mason,
a shipwright, or a carpenter?
A grave-maker, the houses he
builds last till doomsday.
♫ Let the wind and the
rain and the hail blow high
♫ The snow come travellin' through the sky
♫ She's as sweet as apple pie
♫ She'll get her own lad by and by
♫ When she gets a lad of her own
♫ She won't tell her ma when she gets home
♫ Let them all come as they will
♫ It's Albert Mooney she loves still
- Has this fellow no
feeling of his business?
He sings in grave-making.
(clears throat) Sirrah.
Whose grave's this?
- Mine, sir.
- I think it be thine,
indeed, for thou liest in't.
- You lie out on it, sir,
therefore it is not yours.
For my part, I do not
lie in it, yet 'tis mine.
(Hamlet chuckles)
- What man dost thou dig it for?
- For no man, sir.
- What woman, then?
- For none, neither.
- Who is to be buried in it?
- One that was a woman, sir,
but rest her soul, she's dead.
- (groans) How absolute the knave is.
We must speak by the card,
or equivocation will undo us.
Sirrah, how long hast
thou been a grave-maker?
- Of all the days in the
year, I came to it that day
that our last king Hamlet
overcame Fortinbras,
King of Norway.
- And how long is that since?
- Cannot you tell that?
Every fool can tell you that.
It was that very day that
young Hamlet was born.
He that is mad, and sent into England.
- Aye, marry, why was
he sent into England?
- Why, because he was mad.
He shall recover his wits
there, or, 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.
(Hamlet chuckles)
- How came he mad?
- Very strangely, they say.
- How strangely?
- E'en with losing his wits.
- Upon what ground?
- Why, here in Denmark.
- Solved.
Solved a while.
- Lay her i' the earth.
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh,
may violets spring.
What ceremony else?
What ceremony else, must
there no more be done?
- No more be done.
Her death was doubtful.
We should profane the service
of the dead to sing a requiem
and such rest to her as
to peace-parted souls.
- I tell thee, churlish
priest, a ministering angel
shall my sister be,
when thou liest howling.
- 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 ten times treble
on that cursed head whose wicked deed
thy most ingenious sense deprived thee of.
Hold off the earth awhile,
until I have caught her
once more in mine arms.
Now pile your dust upon
the quick and dead,
till of this flat a
mountain you have made,
To o'ertop old Pelion,
or the skyish head Of blue Olympus.
- 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?
- The devil take thy soul!
(Hamlet chokes)
(tense percussive music)
- Thou pray'st not well.
I prithee, take thy
fingers from my throat!
For, though I am not splenitive and rash,
yet have I something in me dangerous!
Which let thy wisdom fear!
Hold off thy hand!
(coughs)
I loved Ophelia.
40,000 brothers,
with all their quantity of
love, couldn't make up my sum.
What wilt thou do for her?
- Oh, he is mad, Laertes!
- [Queen] For the love
of God, forbear him!
- Woo't weep?
Woo't fight?
Woo't tear thyself, drink
up easel, eat a crocodile?
I'll do it!
Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
Be thou buried quick
with her, and so shall I!
And if thou prate of mountains,
let them throw millions of acres on us,
till our ground, singeing his
pate against the burning zone,
make Ossa like a wart!
Nay, an thou'lt mouth!
I'll rant as well as thou!
- This is mere madness and thus awhile
the fit will work on him.
(somber sitar music)
- I pray thee, good Horatio.
Wait upon him.
- It is no matter.
Let Hercules himself do what he may.
The cat will mew,
and dog will have his day.
I have words to speak in thine ear.
Rosencrantz,
and Guildenstern,
hold their course to England.
Of them I have much to tell thee.
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
rough-hew them how we will.
- That's most certain.
- Sir, in my heart there
was a kind of fighting
which would not let me sleep.
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,
making so bold to unseal
their grand commission
wherein I found, Horatio,
(chuckles) royal knavery.
An exact command, that on the
supervise, no leisure bated,
no, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
my head should be struck off.
- Is't possible?
- Here's the commission.
Read it at more leisure.
Being thus be-netted round with villanies,
I sat me down and
devised a new commission.
I wrote it fair.
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 the bearers put to sudden death.
Not shriving-time allowed.
- What a king is this?
- Is it not perfect conscience,
to quit him,
with this arm?
And is't not to be damned to let this
canker of our nature come in further evil?
- It must be shortly
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 is no
more than to say, "One."
- Hamlet comes back.
What would you undertake
to show yourself indeed
your father's son more than in words?
- To cut his throat,
in the church.
- Revenge should have no bounds.
But, good Laertes, will you do this.
Stay close within your chamber.
Hamlet returned, we'll put on those
shall praise your excellence.
Bring you in fine together
and wager on your heads.
He, being remiss,
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 so mortal
that if I would gall him slightly,
it may be death.
- When in your motion you are hot and dry,
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 venomed stuck,
our purpose may hold there.
(somber sitar music)
- The king, sir, hath laid
that in a dozen passes
between yourself and Laertes,
he shall not exceed you three hits,
he hath laid on twelve for nine,
and it would come to immediate trial,
if your lordship would
vouchsafe the answer.
- Sir.
It is the breathing time of day with me.
If it please His Majesty,
let the foils be brought.
- You will lose this wager, my lord.
- I do not think so.
I shall win at the odds.
But thou wouldst not think how ill
all's here about my heart,
but 'tis no matter.
- [Horatio] Nay, good my lord--
- 'Tis but foolery.
'Tis such a kind of gain-giving as perhaps
would 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 special providence
in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, it is 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 knows of what he leaves,
what is't to leave betimes?
Let be.
(suspenseful percussive music)
- Come, Hamlet, come.
Take this hand from me.
- 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.
What I have done, that
might your honor, nature,
and exception roughly
awake, I here proclaim,
was madness.
Was it Hamlet wronged Laertes?
Never Hamlet.
If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,
and when he's not himself
does wrong Laertes,
then Hamlet does it not.
Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then?
His madness.
If this be so, Hamlet is of
the faction that is wronged.
His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy.
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 over 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 mine honor,
I stand aloof and will no reconcilement.
- 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 i' the darkest
night, stick fiery off indeed.
- You mock me, sir.
- No, by this hand.
- Hamlet, do you know the wager?
- Very well, my liege.
Your Highness hath laid the
odds o' the weaker side.
(King chuckles)
- I do not fear it.
I have seen you both.
(suspenseful percussion)
(whooshes)
(clangs)
- One.
- No.
- Judgment.
- A hit, a very palpable hit.
(whoosh)
- Well, again.
- Stay.
Here's toy our health, Hamlet.
Give him the cup.
- Set it by awhile, I'll
play this bout first.
(suspenseful percussion)
(whooshes)
(clangs)
How say you now?
- A touch.
I do confess.
- Our son shall win.
(Queen chuckles)
- The queen carouses
to thy fortune, Hamlet.
- Good madam.
- Gertrude, do not drink.
- I will, my lord.
I pray you, pardon me.
- [Hamlet] No, by and by.
- My lord, I'll hit him now.
- I do not think it--
(whoosh)
(Hamlet groans)
(suspenseful percussion)
(whooshes)
(whooshes)
(clangs)
(grunts)
(grunts)
(Hamlet chokes)
(clangs)
(Laertes pants)
- Hamlet.
Thou art slain.
No medicine 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.
Why, as a woodcock to mine own
springe, I am justly served.
Thy mother's poisoned.
I can no more.
The king.
The king's to blame!
- Oh my dear Hamlet.
The drink.
The drink.
(gasps) I am poisoned.
(gasps)
(suspenseful percussion)
- Here, thou incestuous,
murderous, damned Dane,
follow my mother.
- This must be so.
(music intensifies)
(thud)
(coughs lightly)
- [Horatio] How is my lord?
- I die, Horatio.
Wretched queen, adieu.
You, that look pale and
tremble at this chance,
that are but mutes or
audience to this act,
had I but time,
as this fell sergeant death
is strict in his arrest,
oh, 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.
I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.
Here's yet some liquor left.
- Give me the cup.
By heaven, I'll have it.
Oh God, Horatio, what a wounded name,
things standing thus unknown
shall I leave behind me.
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.
Let go.
(breathes deeply)
(chuckles)
The rest is silence.
(somber atmospheric music)
would melt, thaw,
and resolve itself into a dew.
Or that the Everlasting
had not fixed his canon
'gainst self-slaughter.
Oh, God.
God.
How weary,
stale,
flat and unprofitable seem to me
all the uses of this world.
Fie on't.
Ah fie, 'tis an unweeded
garden that grows to seed.
Things rank and gross in
nature posses it merely.
That it should come to this.
(dark atmospheric music)
But two months dead...
Nay.
Not so much, not two.
So excellent a king that was,
to this, Hyperion to a satyr,
and so loving to my mother
that he might not beteem
the winds of heaven, visit
her face too roughly.
Heaven and earth, must I remember?
Frailty,
thy name is woman.
A little month, or ere
those shoes were old,
with which she followed
my poor father's body
like Niobe, all tears.
Why she, even she, 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
had left the flushing in her
galled eyes, she married.
Oh, most wicked speed to
post with such dexterity
to incestuous sheets.
It is not nor it cannot come to good.
- Hail to your lordship.
(chuckles)
- I am glad to see you well,
Horatio, or I do forget myself.
- The same, my lord, and
your poor servant ever.
- Sir, my good friend, I'll
change that name with you.
What make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?
We shall teach you to
drink deep ere you depart.
- My lord, I came to see
your father's funeral.
- I pray thee, do not
mock me, fellow student.
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
- Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.
- Thrift, thrift, Horatio,
the funeral baked meats
did coldly furnish forth
the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven,
or ever I had seen that day.
Horatio, my father.
Methinks I see my father.
- Where, my lord?
- In my mind's eye, Horatio.
- I saw him, once.
He was a goodly king.
- He was a man, take him for all in all.
I shall not look upon his like again.
- My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
- Saw? Who?
- My lord, the king your father.
- The king my father?
- Season your admiration for
a while with an attent ear
till I may deliver this marvel to you.
- For God's love, let me hear.
- In the dead waste and
middle of the night,
a figure like your father
appears before me and goes
slow and stately by, I knew your father.
These hands are not more like.
- Saw you his face?
- Oh yes, my lord.
- What!
Looked he frowningly?
- A countenance more in
sorrow than in anger.
- Pale or red?
- Nay, very pale.
- And fixed his eyes upon you?
- Most constantly.
- Did you not speak to it?
- My lord, I did but answer made it none.
Yet, once methought it lifted up its head,
and did address itself to
motion like as it would speak.
But even then the morning cock
crew loud and at the sound
it shrunk in haste away
and vanished from my sight.
- 'Tis very strange.
- As I do live, my
honored lord, 'tis true.
- I would I had been there.
- It would have much amazed you.
- Very like, very like.
Perchance 'twill walk again.
- I warrant it will.
- If it assume my noble father's
person, I'll speak to it,
though hell itself should
gape and bid me hold my peace.
(faintly blowing wind)
- Look, my lord, it comes.
(faint rattling)
- Angels and ministers of grace defend us.
Be thou a spirit of
health or goblin damned,
bring with thee airs from
heaven or blasts from hell,
be thy intents wicked or
charitable, thou comest in such
a questionable shape that,
I will speak to thee.
I'll call thee,
(faint rattling)
Hamlet.
King.
(faintly blowing wind)
Father, royal Dane.
What may this mean that thou,
dead corse 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?
Say, why is this?
Wherefore? What should we do?
- Mark me.
My hour is almost come.
When I to sulfurous and tormenting flames
must render up myself.
- Alas, poor ghost!
- Pity me not.
But lend thy serious hearing
to what I shall unfold.
- Speak, I am bound to hear.
- So art thou to revenge,
when thou shalt hear.
- What?
- Now Hamlet, '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.
- Oh, my prophetic soul.
My uncle!
- Aye.
That incestuous, that adulterate beast.
With witchcraft of his
wit, with traitorous gifts.
Oh wicked wit and gifts that
have the power so to seduce.
Won to his shameful lust,
the will of my most
seeming-virtuous queen.
Brief let me be, sleeping in my orchard,
my custom always of the afternoon,
upon my secure hour thy uncle stole
with juice of cursed hebenon
in a vial and in the porches
of my ears did pour
the leprous distilment,
whose effect holds such an
enmity with blood of man
that swift as quicksilver
it courses through
the natural gates and alleys of the body
and with a sudden vigor
doth posset and curd
like eager droppings into milk,
the thin and wholesome blood!
So did it mine.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand.
Of life, of crown, of queen,
at once dispatched, cut off!
Even in the blossoms of
my sin, no reckoning made,
but sent to my account with all
my imperfections on my head!
- Oh horrible, most horrible.
- Most horrible!
(screeching wind)
If thou hast nature in thee,
bear it not.
Let not the royal bed
of Denmark be a couch
for luxury and damned incest.
But howsoever thou pursues this act,
taint not thy mind,
nor let thy soul contrive
against thy mother aught.
Leave her to heaven.
And to those thorns
that in her bosom lodge,
to prick and sting her.
Fare thee well at once.
Adieu.
Adieu!
Adieu.
Remember me.
(faintly blowing wind)
(faint rattling)
- Oh all you host of heaven.
Oh earth.
And what else?
And shall I couple hell?
Oh, fie.
Hold.
Hold, my heart,
and you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
but bear me stiffly up.
Remember thee.
Aye, thou poor ghost,
whilst memory holds a seat
in this distracted globe,
remember thee, yea, from
the table of my memory.
I'll wipe away all fond trivial
records, all saws of books,
all forms, all pressures past
that youth and observation
copied there and thy
commandment all alone shall live
within the book and volume of my brain,
unmixed with baser matter.
Most pernicious woman.
Villain.
Villain.
Smiling, damned villain.
That one may smile, and
smile, and be a villain.
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark.
So, uncle.
(chuckles) There you are.
Now.
To my word.
It is, "Adieu, adieu, remember me."
I have sworn it.
- My lord.
My lord.
What news, my lord?
- Wonderful.
- Good my lord, tell it.
- No.
You will reveal it.
- Not I, my lord, by heaven!
- How say you, then, would
heart of man once think it?
But you'll be secret?
- Aye, by heaven, my lord.
- There's never a villain
dwelling in all Denmark,
but he is 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 without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we
shake hands and part.
And for my own poor part, I will go pray.
- These are but wild and
whirling words, my lord.
- 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!
Touching this vision here.
It is an honest ghost.
That let me tell you.
For your desire to know
what is between us,
o'ermaster it as you may.
My good friend, give me one poor request.
- [Horatio] What is it, my lord? I will.
- Never make known what
you have seen tonight.
- My lord, I will not.
- [Hamlet] Nay, but swear it.
- [Ghost From Beneath] Swear.
(Hamlet chuckles)
- Say'st thou so?
Come on!
- Day and night, but
this is wondrous strange.
- Therefore as a
stranger, give it welcome!
There are more things in
heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
But, come.
- So help you mercy,
however strange or odd
some'er I bear myself, to note
that you know aught of me.
This, this, swear.
So, grace.
- So grace.
- And mercy.
- And mercy.
- At your most need.
- At my most need.
- Help you.
- Help me.
- [Ghost From Below] Swear!
- Rest.
Rest, perturbed spirit.
Shh.
So.
Good friend.
With all my love, I do commend me to you.
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is may do
to express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack.
And still your fingers
on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint.
Oh cursed spite that ever
I was born to set it right.
(suspenseful music)
- Now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son.
- A little more than kin,
but less than kind.
- How is it that the
clouds still hang on you?
- Not so, my lord, I
am too much in the sun.
- Good Hamlet, cat thy nighted color off,
and let thine eye look
like a friend on Denmark.
Do not forever with thy veiled lids
seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know'st '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.
- '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 persever in obstinate condolement
is a course of impious stubbornness.
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 corse
till he that died today,
"This must be so."
(chuckles)
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.
(chuckles)
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.
(King and Queen chuckle)
- Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply.
Be as ourself in Denmark.
(rousing folk music)
- [Woman] My lord.
(door closes)
My lord.
- How now, Ophelia, what's the matter?
- My lord, I have been so affrighted.
- With what, in the name of God?
- My lord, as I sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his
doublet all unbraced,
no hat upon his head,
his stockings fouled,
ungartered and down-gyved to his ankle,
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.
- Mad for thy love?
- [Ophelia] My lord, I do not
know, but truly, I do fear it.
- What said he?
- 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 over 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.
That done, he lets me go, and,
with his head over his shoulder turned,
he seemed to find his
way without his eyes.
For out of doors he
went without their help,
and, to the last, bended
their light on me.
- Tender yourself more dearly.
Or, not to crack the
wind of the poor phrase,
running it thus, you'll tender me a fool.
- My lord, he hath
importuned me with his love
in honorable fashion.
- Aye, fashion you may call it.
Go to, go to.
- And hath given countenance
to his speech, my lord,
with almost all the holy vows of heaven.
- Aye, spinges to catch woodcocks.
What, have you given
him hard words of late?
- No, my lord,
but as you did command,
I did repel his letters,
and denied his access to me.
- That has made him mad.
This is the very ectasy of love
whose violent property fordoes itself,
and leads the will to desperate
undertakings as oft as
any passion under heaven that
does afflict our natures.
I will go seek the king.
This must be known.
(percussive music)
- [King] Thou art the father of good news.
- Am I, my lord?
Assure you, my good liege,
I hold my duty as I hold my soul.
Both to my God and to my gracious king.
And I do think that I've found
the very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.
- Oh, speak of that.
That do I long to hear.
He tells me, my dear Gertrude,
he's found the head and source
of all your son's distemper.
- Well I doubt it is
no other but the main.
His father's death and,
our o'erhasty marriage.
- [King] Well, we shall
sift him. (chuckles)
- My liege and madam, 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.
I have a daughter.
Have while she's mine.
Who, in her duty and obedience,
mark, hath given me this.
"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, thus.
"In her excellent white
bosom, these et cetera."
- Came this from Hamlet to her?
- Good madam, stay a while.
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.
"Hamlet."
This, in obedience, hath
my daughter shown me.
And more above, hath his
solicitings, as they fell out
by time, by means and place,
all given to mine ear.
- But how hath she received his love?
- What do you think of me?
(King chuckles)
- As of a man faithful and honorable.
- I would fain prove so.
When I had seen this hot love on the wing,
I prescripts gave her.
That she should lock
herself from his resort,
admit no messengers, receive no tokens.
Which done, she took
the fruits of my advice.
And he, repelled, a short tale to make.
Fell into a sadness,
then into a fast,
thence into a watch,
thence into a weakness,
thence into a lightness,
and by this declension,
into the madness wherein now
he raves and all we mourn for.
- Do you think 'tis this?
- It may be, very like.
- Hath there been such a time?
I would fain know that.
That I have positively said "'tis so"
when it proved otherwise.
- (chuckles) Not that I know.
- Take this from this,
if this be otherwise.
If circumstances lead me, I
will find where truth is hid,
though it be 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 will
loose my daughter to him.
Be you and I behind an arras
then, mark the encounter.
(solemn music)
- [Queen] Where sadly the
poor wretch comes reading.
- Away, I beseech you, both away.
I'll board him presently.
How does my good Lord Hamlet?
- Well, God-a-mercy.
- Do you know me, my lord?
- Excellent well, you are a fishmonger.
- Not I, my lord.
- Then I would you were
so honest a fellow.
- Honest, my lord!
- Aye, sir.
To be honest, as this world goes,
is to be one man picked
out of ten thousand.
- That's very true, my lord.
- For if the sun breed
maggots in a dead dog,
being a good kissing carrion...
Have you a daughter?
- I have, my lord.
- Then let her not walk i' the sun.
Conception is a blessing,
but as your daughter may conceive,
friend,
look to it.
- How say you by that?
Still harping on my daughter.
Yet he knew me not at first,
he said I was a fishmonger.
He's far gone, far gone.
And truly in my youth I suffered
much extremity for love.
Very near this.
What do you read, my lord?
- Words.
Words, words.
- What is the matter, my lord?
- Between who?
- I mean, the matter
that you read, my lord.
- Slanders, sir.
For the satirical rogue says here that,
old men have gray beards,
that their faces are wrinkled,
their eyes purging thick
amber and plum-tree gum
and that they have a
plentiful lack of wit,
together with most weak hams,
though I most powerfully
and potently believe,
yet I hold it not honesty
to have it thus set down.
For you, yourself sir,
shall grow old as I am,
if like a crab you could go backwards.
(dark atmospheric music)
- Though this be madness,
yet there is method in it.
Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
- Into my grave.
- Indeed, that's out of the air.
How pregnant sometimes his replies are.
A happiness that often
madness hits on, that reason
and sanity could not so
prosperously be delivered of.
I will leave him and
suddenly contrive the means
of meeting between him and my daughter.
My honorable lord, I will most
humbly take my leave of you.
- You cannot, sir,
take from me anything that I would not
more willingly part withal.
Except my life.
Except my life.
- [Polonius] Fare thee well, my lord.
- Tedious old fools.
- My most dear lord.
- My most dear lord.
(Hamlet chuckles)
- My excellent good friends,
Rosencrantz, Guildenstern.
Good lads, how do you both?
- As the indifferent children
of the earth, my lord.
- Happy, in that we are not over-happy.
On fortune's cap we're
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, in her privates we!
- Most true, she is a strumpet. (laughs)
(sighs)
(grunts)
So, what news?
- None, my lord, but that
the world's grown honest.
- Then is doomsday near.
(friends chuckle)
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.
- [Rosencrantz] I think not so, my lord.
- 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.
- Why then, your ambition makes it one.
'Tis too narrow for your mind.
- Oh God, I could be
bounded in a nut shell
and count myself a king of infinite space,
were it not that I have bad dreams.
But, in the beaten way of friendship,
what make you at Elsinore?
- To visit you, my
lord, no other occasion.
- Oh!
Beggar that I am, I am even
poor in thanks. (chuckles)
But I thank you, and sure, dear friend,
my thanks are too dear a halfpenny.
Were you not sent for?
Ah.
Is it a free visitation?
Is it?
Your own inclining?
Come, come, deal justly with me.
Come, come!
- What should we say, my lord?
- Why, anything but to the purpose.
You were sent for.
There is a kind of
confession in your looks
which your modesty has
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.
Let me conjure you, eh?
By the rights of our fellowship,
by the consonancy of our youth,
by the obligation of our
ever-preserved love, and by
what more dear a better proposer
could charge you withal,
you be even and direct with me,
whether you were sent for or no?
Nay, I have an eye of you!
If you love me, hold not off!
- My lord!
We were sent for.
(Hamlet chuckles)
- Hey.
I will tell you why.
So shall my anticipation
prevent your discovery,
and your secrecy to the king
and queen moult no feather.
I have of late, but wherefore I know not,
lost all my mirth,
forgone all custom of
exercises, and indeed,
it goes so heavily with my disposition
that this goodly frame, the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory,
this most excellent
canopy, the air, look you,
this brave o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof
fretted with golden fire,
why, it appeareth nothing to me
but a foul and pestilent
congregation of vapours.
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.
(Rosencrantz chuckles)
No, nor woman, neither.
Though by your smiling,
you seem to say so.
- My lord, there was no
such stuff in my thoughts.
- Why did you laugh then, when
I said "man delights not me?"
- To think, my lord, that
if you delight not in man,
what lenten entertainment
the players shall receive from you.
(laughs) We coted them on the way,
and hither are they coming,
to offer you service.
- He that plays the king,
shall be welcome.
But my uncle-father and
aunt-mother are deceived.
- In what, my lord?
(dark atmospheric tones)
- I am but mad north-north-west.
When the wind is southerly,
I know a hawk from a handsaw.
(restless chime music)
- [Polonius] My lord, I
have news to tell you.
- [Hamlet] My lord, I
have news to tell you.
- [Polonius] The actors
have come hither, my lord.
On my honor, the best actors--
(Hamlet laughs)
(players laugh)
- Welcome, master, welcome, good friends.
I am glad to see you well.
(sighs)
(laughs)
Oh, 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.
It was in Ancient Greek,
but it was never acted,
or if it was, not above once.
For the play, I remember,
pleased not the million.
It was caviar to the
general, but one speech in it
I chiefly loved.
'Twas Aeneas' tale to Dido, and
thereabout of it especially,
where he speaks of Priam's slaughter.
Prithee, if it live in your
memory, begin at this line.
Let me see, let me see.
(speaks foreign language)
(somber sitar music)
(player speaks foreign language)
- This is too long.
- Then it shall to the
barber's, with your beard.
He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry,
or he sleeps.
Prithee, say on.
Come, come to Hecuba.
Say on.
Shh.
(somber wind music)
(player speaks foreign language)
- Look, where he has not turned his color,
and has tears in his eyes.
Pray thee, no more.
- 'Tis well.
I'll have thee speak out
the rest of this soon.
I will leave you 'til night.
You are welcome to Elsinore.
- Good, my lord.
- Fine, my lord.
- Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I.
Is it not 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 wann'd,
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.
(chuckles)
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
that he should weep for her?
Ah, what would he do,
had he the motive and cue
for passion that I have?
Oh.
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.
No, not for a king,
upon whose property and most dear life
a damned defeat was made.
Am I a coward?
For it cannot be, but
that 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.
About, my brains. (sniffs)
(moans)
I have heard,
(dark atmospheric music)
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.
For murder, though it
have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.
Yes.
I'll have these players
play something like
the death of my father before mine uncle.
I'll observe his looks,
I'll tent him to the quick.
Now if he do blench,
then, I know my course.
The spirit that I have
seen may be a devil,
and the devil hath power
to assume a pleasing shape.
Yea, and perhaps out of my
weakness and my melancholy,
as he is very potent with such spirits,
abuses me,
to damn me.
I'll have grounds more relative than this.
The play's the thing
wherein I'll catch the
conscience of the king.
(somber sitar music)
Soft you now, the fair Ophelia.
Nymph, 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.
Well, well.
- My lord, I have
remembrances of yours that
I have longed long to re-deliver.
I pray you, now receive them.
- [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.
- Are you honest?
- My lord?
- Are you fair?
- What means your lordship?
- That, if you be honest and fair,
your honesty should admit
no discourse to your beauty.
- 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.
- Indeed, my lord.
You made me believe so.
- You should not have believed me.
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.
Believe none of us.
Go thy ways,
(somber sitar music)
to a nunnery.
Where's your father?
- At home, my lord.
- Then let the doors be shut upon him,
that he may play the fool
no where but in's own house!
- Oh, help him, you sweet heavens.
- 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, go!
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.
I have heard of your paintings, too.
God, hath given you one face,
and you, you make yourselves,
(spits) another.
You jig, and you amble, and you lisp.
You nickname God's creatures,
and make your wantonness your ignorance.
Go to, I'll no more on't.
(Ophelia groans)
It has made me mad!
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.
- Love.
(chuckles)
His affections do not that way tend.
Nor what he spake, though
it lacked form a little,
was not like madness.
There's something in his soul,
over which his melancholy
sits on brood, and I do fear
the hatch and the disclose
will be some danger, which for to prevent,
I have in quick determination
thus set it down.
He shall with speed to
England, haply the seas
and countries different shall expel this
something-settled matter in
his heart, whereon his brain
still beating puts him thus
from fashion of himself.
- [Polonius] It shall do well,
but yet do I believe the
origin and commencement
of his grief sprung from neglected love.
- Oh, what a noble mind
is here overthrown.
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's,
eye, tongue, sword.
The expectancy and rose of the fair state.
The glass of fashion and the mold of form.
The observed of all observers.
Quite, quite down.
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
that sucked the honey of his music vows,
now see that noble and
most sovereign reason,
blasted with ecstasy.
Oh, woe is me.
To have seen what I have
seen, see what I see.
(suspenseful percussion)
- Horatio?
- Yes, my lord, at your service.
- Horatio, there is a play,
tonight, before the king.
One scene of it comes very
the near the circumstance
which I have told thee
of my father's death.
I prithee, observe my uncle.
For I mine eyes will rivet
to his face, and after,
we will both our judgments
join in censure of his seeming.
- If he steal aught the
whilst this play is playing,
and scape detecting, I will pay the theft.
- [King] How fares our cousin Hamlet?
- Excellent, i' 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.
(all chuckle)
Be the players ready?
- Aye, my lord, they
stay upon your patience.
- Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
- No, good mother, here's
metal more attractive.
- Ah, do you mark that?
- [Hamlet] Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
- No, my lord.
- I mean, my head upon your lap?
- [Ophelia] Aye, my lord.
- Did you think I meant country matters?
- I think nothing, my lord.
- [Hamlet] That's a fair thought to lie
between a maid's legs.
- What is, my lord?
- Nothing.
- You are merry, my lord.
- Who, I?
- Aye, my lord.
(Hamlet chuckles)
- Oh God, your only jig-maker!
What should a man do but be merry?
For, look you, how
cheerfully my mother looks,
and my father died within these two hours.
- Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.
- So long?
Nay then, let the devil wear black.
I'll have a suit of sables.
Oh heavens, died two months
ago, and not forgotten yet?
(chuckles)
Then there's hope a great man's
memory may outlive his life
half a year. (chuckles)
(piercing wind music)
- Faith.
I must leave thee, love,
and shortly, too.
My operant powers,
their functions leave to do,
and thou shalt live in
this fair world behind,
honored, beloved,
and haply one as kind for husband--
- Oh, confound the rest.
Such love must needs be
treason in my breast.
A second husband let me be accurst.
None wed the second but
who killed the first.
- [Hamlet] That's wormwood.
- A second time I kill my husband dead,
when second husband kisses me in bed.
- Oh, if she should break it now.
- Deeply sworn.
Sweet,
leave me here awhile.
- Sleep.
Sleep rock thy brain.
And never come mischance between us twain.
- Madam.
How like you this play?
- Lady doth protest too much, methinks.
- [Hamlet] Oh, but she'll keep her word.
- Have you heard the argument?
Is there no offense in it?
- No.
They do but jest.
Poison in jest, no offense in the world.
- What call you the play?
- The Mouse-trap.
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.
Let the galled jade wince.
Our withers are unwrung.
Oh.
This one, Lucianus,
nephew to the king.
He poisons him in the
garden for his estate.
The story is extant and
written in very choice Italian.
You shall see anon how the murderer
gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
(piercing tones)
What?
Frighted with false fire.
- Have fares my lord?
(frantic percussion)
- [Polonius] Give over the play!
- Give me,
some light.
- [Polonius] Lights!
Lights!
Lights!
- Oh good Horatio!
I'll take the ghost's
word for a thousand pound!
Didst perceive?
- Very well done.
- Upon the talk of poisoning?
- I did very well note him!
- Come, some music!
(frantic percussive music)
For if the king like not the comedy,
why then, belike he likes it not, perdy!
Come, music!
- Good my lord, vouchsafe
me a word with you.
- Sir?
A whole history.
- The queen, your mother,
in most great affliction of
spirit, hath sent me to you.
- Oh sir, you are welcome.
- Nay, good my lord,
this courtesy is not of the right breed!
If it will please you to
make me a wholesome answer,
I shall do your mother's
commandment, if not,
your pardon and my return shall
be the end of my business.
- Sir!
Sir, I cannot.
- [Guildenstern] 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 shall no more,
but to the matter, my mother, you say--
- Then thus she says--
- Ah.
(sighs)
- Your behavior hath
struck her into amazement
and admiration.
(Hamlet cackles wildly)
- Wonderful son that can
so astonish a mother.
Is there no sequel at the heels
of this mother's admiration?
Impart.
- She desires to speak
with you in her closet,
ere you go to bed.
- Oh well, we shall obey,
were she ten 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
your cause of distemper?
You do, surely, bar the
door upon your liberty,
if you deny your griefs to your friend.
- Sir, I lack advancement.
- How can that be, when you
have the voice of the king
himself for your succession in Denmark?
- Why do you go about to
recover the wind of me,
as if you would drive me into a toil?
- Oh, my lord, if my duty be too bold,
my love is too unmannerly.
- Uh, I do not well
understand that. (chuckles)
Will you play,
upon this pipe?
- [Guildenstern] My lord, I cannot.
- I pray you.
- Believe me, I cannot.
- I do beseech you.
- [Guildenstern] I know
no touch of it, my lord.
- It is as easy as lying.
You 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.
- But these cannot I command
to any utterance of harmony.
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.
You would sound me from my lowest note
to the top of my compass,
and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ,
yet cannot you make it speak.
'Sblood,
do you think I am easier to
be played upon than a pipe?
Call me what instrument you will,
though you can fret me,
you cannot play upon me.
- My lord.
- God bless you, sir.
- The queen would speak
with you, and presently.
- Do you see yonder cloud
that's almost in shape of a camel?
- By the mass, and 'tis
like a camel, indeed.
- Methinks 'tis like a weasel.
- It is backed like a weasel.
- Or like a whale?
- Very like a whale.
- Then I will come to my mother,
by and by.
(sharp flute note)
They fool me to the top of my bent.
I will come by and by.
- I will say so.
- By and by is easily said.
Leave me.
Friend.
(atmospheric chime music)
- '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.
- Oh, my offense is rank.
It smells to heaven.
It hath the primal
eldest curse upon it.
A brother's murder.
Pray can I not,
though inclination be as sharp as will.
My stronger guilt
defeats my strong intent.
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where
I shall first begin,
and both neglect.
What if this cursed hand
were thicker than itself
with brother's blood.
Is there not rain enough
in the sweet heavens
to wash it white as snow?
(chuckles)
Whereto serves mercy,
but to confront the visage of offense?
And what's in prayer
but this two-fold force,
to be forestalled ere we come to fall,
or pardoned being down?
Then I'll look up.
My fault is past.
But oh, what form of
prayer can serve my turn?
"Forgive me my foul murder?"
That cannot be.
Since I'm still possessed Of those effects
for which I did the murder.
My crown, mine own ambition,
and my queen.
(chuckles)
May one be pardoned
and retain the offense?
(chuckles)
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 its 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 can not repent?
Oh, wretched state.
Oh bosom black as death.
Oh limed soul that, struggling
to be free, art more engaged.
Help, angels.
Make assay.
Bow, stubborn knees.
And, heart with strings of steel,
be soft as sinews of a newborn babe.
All may be well.
- Now might I do it pat,
now he is a-praying.
And now,
I'll do it.
And so he goes to heaven,
and so am I revenged.
That would be scanned.
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this
same villain send to heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly.
Full of bread.
With all his crimes broad
blown, as flush as May,
and how his audit stands
who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance
and course of thought,
it is heavy with him.
Am I then revenged,
to take him in the purging of his soul,
when he is fit and
seasoned for his passage?
No.
Up, sword.
And know thou a more horrid hent.
When he is drunk asleep,
or in his rage, or in the
incestuous pleasure of his bed,
at game, a-swearing, or about some act
that has no relish of salvation in't,
then trip him,
that his heels may kick at heaven,
and his soul may be as
damned and black as hell.
Whereto it goes.
My mother stays.
This physic,
but prolongs thy sickly days.
- My words fly up.
My thoughts,
remain below.
Words without thoughts,
never to heaven go.
(dark atmospheric music)
- He will come straight.
Look you lay home to him.
Tell him his pranks have
been too broad to bear with,
and that your grace hath screened
and stood between much heat and him.
I'll silence me, even here.
Pray you, be round with him.
- I'll warrant you, fear me not.
- [Hamlet] Mother!
- Withdraw, I hear him coming.
- Mother!
How now, mother, what's the matter?
- Hamlet, thou hast thy
father much offended.
- Mother, you have my
father much offended.
- Oh come, come, you
answer with an idle tongue.
- Go, go, you question
with a wicked tongue.
- Have you forgot me?
- No, by the rood, not so.
You are 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.
(sword swooshes)
- Come, come.
- Why, how now, Hamlet?
- Sit you down.
(frantic percussive music)
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!
Help!
- [Polonius] What, ho, help!
- How now, a rat!
Dead, for a ducat, dead!
(thud)
- Oh me, what hast thou done?
- Nay.
I know not.
Is it the king?
- [Queen] 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, that was my word.
Oh, thou wretched, rash, intruding fool.
I took thee for thy better.
Thou find'st to be too
busy is some danger.
Fare you well.
Take thy fortune.
Leave wringing of your
hands, peace, sit you down!
And let me wring your
heart, for so I shall,
if it be made of penetrable stuff.
- What have I done, that
thou darest wag thy tongue
in noise so rude against me?
- Such an act
that blurs the grace of blush of modesty,
calls virtue hypocrite,
takes off the rose from the
fair forehead of an innocent
love and sets a blister there,
makes marriage-vows as
false as dicers' oaths.
Oh, such a deed
as from the body of contraction
plucks the very soul,
and sweet religion makes
a rhapsody of words.
Heaven's face doth glow.
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
with heated visage, as against the doom,
is thought-sick at the act.
- Aye me.
What act, that roars so loud,
and thunders in the index?
- Look here.
Upon this picture,
and on this,
the counterfeit presentment
of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow.
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.
Like a mildewed ear, blasting
his wholesome brother.
Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair
mountain leave to feed,
and batten on this,
moor?
Huh?
Have you eyes?
Ah, you cannot call it love.
For at your age, the hey-day
in the blood is tame,
it's humble, and waits upon judgment.
And what judgment would
step from this to this?
Oh, shame.
- Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn'st 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--
- Speak to me no more.
These words, like daggers,
enter in mine ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet!
- A murderer and a villain.
A slave that is not twentieth part
the tithe of your precedent
lord, a vice of kings.
A cutpurse of the empire and
the realm, who, from a shelf
the precious diadem stole,
and put it in his pocket!
- No more!
- A king of shreds and patches!
(ominous tones)
Save me, and hover over
me with your wings,
you heavenly guards.
What would your gracious figure?
- Alas, he's mad.
- Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
that, lapsed in time
and passion, lets go by
the important acting
of your dread command?
Oh, say.
- Do not forget.
This visitation is but to whet
thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look.
Amazement on thy mother sits.
Oh, step between her
and her fighting soul.
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.
- How is't with you, lady?
- Alas, how is't with you,
that you do bend your eye on vacancy and
with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
Oh gentle son, upon the heat
and flame of thy distemper
sprinkle cool patience.
Whereon do you look?
- On him.
On him.
Look you, how pale he glares.
His form and cause conjoined,
preaching to stones,
would make them capable.
Do not look upon me, lest with this
piteous action you
convert my stern effects.
Then what I have to do
would want true color.
Tears perchance for blood.
- To whom do you speak this?
- Do you see nothing there?
- No, nothing at all, yet,
all that is, I see.
- Nor did you nothing hear?
- No, nothing but ourselves.
- Look you there.
Look!
How it steals away, my father,
in his habit as he lived.
Look, where he goes, even
now, out at the portal!
- This the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation
ecstasy is very cunning in.
- Ecstasy.
My pulse, as yours,
doth temperately keep time,
and makes as healthful music.
It is not madness that I have uttered.
Bring me to the test, and
I the matter will re-word,
which madness Would gambol from.
Mother, for love of grace,
lay not that flattering
unction to your soul,
that not your trespass,
but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and
film the ulcerous place,
whilst rank corruption, mining
all within, infects unseen.
Confess yourself to heaven.
Repent what's past, avoid
what is to come, and do not
spread the compost on the
weeds to make them ranker.
- Hamlet.
Thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
- Oh, throw away the worser part of it,
and live the purer with the other half.
Once more, good night.
And when you are desirous to be blessed,
I'll blessing beg of you.
For this same lord, I do repent me,
but heaven hath pleased it
so to punish me with this
and this with me, that I must
be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him,
and will answer well the death I gave him.
One word more, good lady.
- What shall I do?
- 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.
'Twere good you let him know.
For who, that's but a queen,
fair, sober, wise,
would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
such dear concernings hide?
Who would do so?
No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
unpeg the basket at the house's top.
Let the birds fly,
and like the famous
ape, to try conclusions,
in the basket creep, and
break your own neck down.
- If words be made of
breath, and breath of life,
I have no life to breathe
what thou hast said to me.
(Hamlet sighs)
- Indeed.
This counselor is now most still,
most silent and most grave.
Who was in life, a foolish
prating knave. (chuckles)
Come on, sir, to draw toward
an end with you. (chuckles)
Good night, mother.
- Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?
- At supper.
- At supper?
Where?
- Not where he eats,
but where he is eaten.
A certain convocation of
politic worms are e'en at him.
Your worm is your only emperor for diet.
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.
And that's the end.
- Alas.
Alas.
- A man may fish with the
worm that hath eat of a king,
and eat of the fish that
hath fed of that worm.
- What dost thou mean by this?
- Nothing, but to show
you how a king may go
a progress through the guts of a beggar.
- Where is Polonius?
- In heaven.
Send hither to see.
If your messenger find him not there,
seek him i' the other place,
yourself.
But indeed, if you find
him not with this month,
you shall (sniffs) nose him
as you go upstairs into the lobby.
- [King] Go, seek him there.
- He will stay till you come.
- Hamlet, this deed,
for thine especial safety,
which we do tender as we dearly grieve,
for that which thou hast done,
must send thee hence with fiery quickness.
Therefore prepare thyself.
The bark is ready, and the wind at help.
The associates tend, and
everything is bent for England.
- Oh, England, good.
- Aye!
So is it!
If thou knew'st our purposes.
- I see a cherub that sees them.
But, come.
For England.
Farewell, dear mother.
- Thy loving father,
Hamlet.
- My mother.
A father and mother is man and wife.
Man and wife is one flesh.
So...
Mother.
(dark somber music)
- 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?
To die.
Is to sleep no more,
and by a sleep to say
we end the heart-ache
and thousand natural shocks
that flesh is heir to.
'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
To die.
To sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream.
Oh, aye.
(sighs) 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,
the oppressor's wrong,
the proud man's contumely,
the pangs of despised love,
the law's delay, the
insolence of office and,
the spurns that patient
merit of the unworthy takes,
when he himself might his
quietus make with a 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 bourne
no traveler returns, puzzles the will
and makes us rather
bear those ills we have
than fly to others that 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
(sighs) their currents turn awry,
and lose the name of action.
- [Rosencrantz] Wilt
please you go, my lord?
- Come.
For England.
From this time forth,
my thoughts be bloody,
or be nothing worth.
(somber sitar music)
(hushed prayers)
- Lord.
we know what we are, but,
know not what we may be.
No. (gasps)
Pray, let's have no words of this.
But when they ask you what
it means, say you this.
By Gis and by Saint Charity,
alack, and fie for shame!
Young men will do it, if they come to it.
By cock...
By cock, they are to blame!
Quoth she,
before you tumbled me,
you promised me to wed.
He answers, so would I ha' done,
by yonder sun,
and thou hadst not come to my bed.
I hope all will be well.
We must be patient.
And so I thank you for your good counsel.
Good night, ladies.
Good night,
sweet ladies.
Good night.
Good night.
Good...
- Oh Gertrude, Gertrude.
When sorrows come, they
come not single spies,
but in battalions.
First, her father slain.
Next, your son gone,
and he most violent author
of good Polonius' death.
Poor Ophelia, divided from
herself and her fair judgment.
Last, and as much containing as all these,
her brother is in secret come from France.
Feeds on this wonder.
Keeps himself in clouds.
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
with pestilent speeches
of his father's death.
Oh my dear Gertrude.
This, like to a
murdering-piece, in many places
gives me superfluous death.
(suspenseful percussion)
- Oh thou vile king.
Give me my father.
- Calmly, good Laertes.
- Where is my father?
- Dead.
- But not by him--
- Let him 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!
- Who shall stay you?
- Only his enemies!
- Why, now you speak like
a good child! (chuckles)
And a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of
your father's death,
and am most sensibly in grief
for it, it shall as level
to your judgment peer
as day does to your eye.
Good Laertes, he which hath
your noble father slain
pursued my life.
(somber sitar music)
- Ophelia.
Kind sister.
- And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
I cannot choose but weep.
To think that they would
lay him in the cold ground.
(somber sitar music)
My brother shall know of it!
They bore him barefaced on the bier.
Hey non non, hey nonny, hey non non.
And, on his grave,
rained many a tear.
Fare you well, my dove.
Fare you well.
There's rosemary.
That's for remembrance.
Pray you, love, remember.
There is pansies.
That's for thoughts.
There's fennel for you,
and columbines.
There's rue for you,
and here's some for me, we
may call it herb o' grace.
On Sundays, you must wear
your rue with a difference.
There's a daisy.
I would give you some
violets, but they withered
all when my father died.
They say he made a good end.
And will he not come again?
No, he is dead.
Go to thy death-bed.
He never will come again.
(somber sitar music)
His beard was as white as snow.
All flaxen was his poll.
He is gone.
He is gone, and we cast away moan.
God have mercy on his soul.
And of all Christian souls, I pray God.
God be with you.
God be with you.
God be with you.
- Oh heat, dry up my brains.
Tears seven times salt, burn out the sense
and virtue of mine eyes.
By heaven, thy madness
shall be paid with weight,
till our scale turn the beam.
Oh rose of May.
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia.
Oh heavens, is it possible,
a young maid's wits
should be as mortal as an old man's life?
Adieu, my lord.
I have a speech of fire,
that fain would blaze,
but that this folly doubts it.
- [King] How now, what news?
- Letters, my lord.
From Hamlet.
- From Hamlet?
Who brought them?
- Sailors, my lord.
- Leave me.
"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."
Naked.
And in the postscript here he says,
"Alone."
- One woe doth tread upon another's heels,
so fast they follow.
Your sister's drowned, Laertes.
- Drowned?
Where?
- There is a willow
grows aslant the brook,
that shows his hoar leaves
in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic
garlands did she make of
crow-flowers, nettles,
daisies, and long purples
which liberal shepherds
give a grosser name,
but our cold maids do dead
men's fingers call them.
There on the pendent
boughs her coronet weeds
clambering 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 tunes,
as one incapable of her own distress,
or like a creature native
and indued unto that element.
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.
- Alas.
Then, she is drowned?
- Drowned.
Drowned.
♫ I'll tell me ma when I go home
♫ The boys won't leave the girls alone
♫ Pull me hair, stole my comb
♫ Well that's alright till I go home
♫ She is handsome, she is pretty
♫ Knock on the door
♫ Ringing of the bell
♫ Hello, me true love, are you well
And who builds stronger than a mason,
a shipwright, or a carpenter?
A grave-maker, the houses he
builds last till doomsday.
♫ Let the wind and the
rain and the hail blow high
♫ The snow come travellin' through the sky
♫ She's as sweet as apple pie
♫ She'll get her own lad by and by
♫ When she gets a lad of her own
♫ She won't tell her ma when she gets home
♫ Let them all come as they will
♫ It's Albert Mooney she loves still
- Has this fellow no
feeling of his business?
He sings in grave-making.
(clears throat) Sirrah.
Whose grave's this?
- Mine, sir.
- I think it be thine,
indeed, for thou liest in't.
- You lie out on it, sir,
therefore it is not yours.
For my part, I do not
lie in it, yet 'tis mine.
(Hamlet chuckles)
- What man dost thou dig it for?
- For no man, sir.
- What woman, then?
- For none, neither.
- Who is to be buried in it?
- One that was a woman, sir,
but rest her soul, she's dead.
- (groans) How absolute the knave is.
We must speak by the card,
or equivocation will undo us.
Sirrah, how long hast
thou been a grave-maker?
- Of all the days in the
year, I came to it that day
that our last king Hamlet
overcame Fortinbras,
King of Norway.
- And how long is that since?
- Cannot you tell that?
Every fool can tell you that.
It was that very day that
young Hamlet was born.
He that is mad, and sent into England.
- Aye, marry, why was
he sent into England?
- Why, because he was mad.
He shall recover his wits
there, or, 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.
(Hamlet chuckles)
- How came he mad?
- Very strangely, they say.
- How strangely?
- E'en with losing his wits.
- Upon what ground?
- Why, here in Denmark.
- Solved.
Solved a while.
- Lay her i' the earth.
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh,
may violets spring.
What ceremony else?
What ceremony else, must
there no more be done?
- No more be done.
Her death was doubtful.
We should profane the service
of the dead to sing a requiem
and such rest to her as
to peace-parted souls.
- I tell thee, churlish
priest, a ministering angel
shall my sister be,
when thou liest howling.
- 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 ten times treble
on that cursed head whose wicked deed
thy most ingenious sense deprived thee of.
Hold off the earth awhile,
until I have caught her
once more in mine arms.
Now pile your dust upon
the quick and dead,
till of this flat a
mountain you have made,
To o'ertop old Pelion,
or the skyish head Of blue Olympus.
- 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?
- The devil take thy soul!
(Hamlet chokes)
(tense percussive music)
- Thou pray'st not well.
I prithee, take thy
fingers from my throat!
For, though I am not splenitive and rash,
yet have I something in me dangerous!
Which let thy wisdom fear!
Hold off thy hand!
(coughs)
I loved Ophelia.
40,000 brothers,
with all their quantity of
love, couldn't make up my sum.
What wilt thou do for her?
- Oh, he is mad, Laertes!
- [Queen] For the love
of God, forbear him!
- Woo't weep?
Woo't fight?
Woo't tear thyself, drink
up easel, eat a crocodile?
I'll do it!
Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
Be thou buried quick
with her, and so shall I!
And if thou prate of mountains,
let them throw millions of acres on us,
till our ground, singeing his
pate against the burning zone,
make Ossa like a wart!
Nay, an thou'lt mouth!
I'll rant as well as thou!
- This is mere madness and thus awhile
the fit will work on him.
(somber sitar music)
- I pray thee, good Horatio.
Wait upon him.
- It is no matter.
Let Hercules himself do what he may.
The cat will mew,
and dog will have his day.
I have words to speak in thine ear.
Rosencrantz,
and Guildenstern,
hold their course to England.
Of them I have much to tell thee.
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
rough-hew them how we will.
- That's most certain.
- Sir, in my heart there
was a kind of fighting
which would not let me sleep.
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,
making so bold to unseal
their grand commission
wherein I found, Horatio,
(chuckles) royal knavery.
An exact command, that on the
supervise, no leisure bated,
no, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
my head should be struck off.
- Is't possible?
- Here's the commission.
Read it at more leisure.
Being thus be-netted round with villanies,
I sat me down and
devised a new commission.
I wrote it fair.
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 the bearers put to sudden death.
Not shriving-time allowed.
- What a king is this?
- Is it not perfect conscience,
to quit him,
with this arm?
And is't not to be damned to let this
canker of our nature come in further evil?
- It must be shortly
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 is no
more than to say, "One."
- Hamlet comes back.
What would you undertake
to show yourself indeed
your father's son more than in words?
- To cut his throat,
in the church.
- Revenge should have no bounds.
But, good Laertes, will you do this.
Stay close within your chamber.
Hamlet returned, we'll put on those
shall praise your excellence.
Bring you in fine together
and wager on your heads.
He, being remiss,
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 so mortal
that if I would gall him slightly,
it may be death.
- When in your motion you are hot and dry,
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 venomed stuck,
our purpose may hold there.
(somber sitar music)
- The king, sir, hath laid
that in a dozen passes
between yourself and Laertes,
he shall not exceed you three hits,
he hath laid on twelve for nine,
and it would come to immediate trial,
if your lordship would
vouchsafe the answer.
- Sir.
It is the breathing time of day with me.
If it please His Majesty,
let the foils be brought.
- You will lose this wager, my lord.
- I do not think so.
I shall win at the odds.
But thou wouldst not think how ill
all's here about my heart,
but 'tis no matter.
- [Horatio] Nay, good my lord--
- 'Tis but foolery.
'Tis such a kind of gain-giving as perhaps
would 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 special providence
in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, it is 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 knows of what he leaves,
what is't to leave betimes?
Let be.
(suspenseful percussive music)
- Come, Hamlet, come.
Take this hand from me.
- 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.
What I have done, that
might your honor, nature,
and exception roughly
awake, I here proclaim,
was madness.
Was it Hamlet wronged Laertes?
Never Hamlet.
If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,
and when he's not himself
does wrong Laertes,
then Hamlet does it not.
Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then?
His madness.
If this be so, Hamlet is of
the faction that is wronged.
His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy.
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 over 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 mine honor,
I stand aloof and will no reconcilement.
- 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 i' the darkest
night, stick fiery off indeed.
- You mock me, sir.
- No, by this hand.
- Hamlet, do you know the wager?
- Very well, my liege.
Your Highness hath laid the
odds o' the weaker side.
(King chuckles)
- I do not fear it.
I have seen you both.
(suspenseful percussion)
(whooshes)
(clangs)
- One.
- No.
- Judgment.
- A hit, a very palpable hit.
(whoosh)
- Well, again.
- Stay.
Here's toy our health, Hamlet.
Give him the cup.
- Set it by awhile, I'll
play this bout first.
(suspenseful percussion)
(whooshes)
(clangs)
How say you now?
- A touch.
I do confess.
- Our son shall win.
(Queen chuckles)
- The queen carouses
to thy fortune, Hamlet.
- Good madam.
- Gertrude, do not drink.
- I will, my lord.
I pray you, pardon me.
- [Hamlet] No, by and by.
- My lord, I'll hit him now.
- I do not think it--
(whoosh)
(Hamlet groans)
(suspenseful percussion)
(whooshes)
(whooshes)
(clangs)
(grunts)
(grunts)
(Hamlet chokes)
(clangs)
(Laertes pants)
- Hamlet.
Thou art slain.
No medicine 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.
Why, as a woodcock to mine own
springe, I am justly served.
Thy mother's poisoned.
I can no more.
The king.
The king's to blame!
- Oh my dear Hamlet.
The drink.
The drink.
(gasps) I am poisoned.
(gasps)
(suspenseful percussion)
- Here, thou incestuous,
murderous, damned Dane,
follow my mother.
- This must be so.
(music intensifies)
(thud)
(coughs lightly)
- [Horatio] How is my lord?
- I die, Horatio.
Wretched queen, adieu.
You, that look pale and
tremble at this chance,
that are but mutes or
audience to this act,
had I but time,
as this fell sergeant death
is strict in his arrest,
oh, 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.
I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.
Here's yet some liquor left.
- Give me the cup.
By heaven, I'll have it.
Oh God, Horatio, what a wounded name,
things standing thus unknown
shall I leave behind me.
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.
Let go.
(breathes deeply)
(chuckles)
The rest is silence.
(somber atmospheric music)