PLAYER KING 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 Honoured, beloved, and haply one as kind For husband shalt thou – PLAYER QUEEN         O, confound the rest! Such love must needs be treason in my breast. In second husband let me be accurst: […]

PLAYER QUEEN         So many journeys may the sun and moon Make us again count o’er ere love be done. So far from cheer and from our former state, That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust, Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must. For women fear too much, even as they love, And women’s fear and love hold quantity – Either none, in […]

Enter [Player] King and [Player] Queen. PLAYER KING Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen About the world have times twelve thirties been Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands Unite commutual in most sacred bands.       (3.2.148-153) And now the play proper; sometimes the Player King and Player Queen bear more than a superficial resemblance […]

Enter [a Player as the] PROLOGUE. HAMLET         We shall know by this fellow. The players cannot keep council – they’ll tell all. OPHELIA        Will ’a tell us what this show meant? HAMLET         Ay, or any show that you will show him. Be not you ashamed to show, he’ll not shame to tell you what it […]

The trumpets sounds. Dumb-show follows. Enter a king and a queen, the queen embracing him and he her. He takes her up and declines his head upon her neck. He lies him down upon a bank of flowers. She seeing him asleep leaves him. Anon come in another man, takes off his crown, kisses it, […]

HAMLET         O God, your only jig-maker! What should a man do but be merry, for look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within’s two hours! OPHELIA        Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord. HAMLET         So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I’ll have a suit of sables! O […]

HAMLET         Be the players ready? ROSENCRANTZ         Ay, my lord, they stay upon your patience. GERTRUDE    Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me. HAMLET         No, good mother, here’s metal more attractive. POLONIUS      [to King]         O ho, do you mark that! HAMLET         Lady, shall I lie in your lap? OPHELIA        No, my lord. HAMLET         Do you […]

CLAUDIUS      How fares our cousin Hamlet? HAMLET         Excellent, i’faith! Of the chameleon’s dish – I eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so. CLAUDIUS      I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. These words are not mine. HAMLET         No, nor mine now, my lord. [to Polonius] You played once i’th’ university, you say? POLONIUS      That […]

HAMLET                     Give him heedful note, For I mine eyes will rivet to his face And after we will both our judgements join In censure of his seeming. HORATIO                   Well, my lord If ’a steal aught the whilst this play is playing And scape detected I will pay the theft. Enter Trumpets and Kettledrums, CLAUDIUS, GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA [ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN]. HAMLET         [to Horatio]    They are coming […]

HAMLET         Something too much of this: There is a play tonight before the King – One scene of it comes near the circumstance Which I have told thee of my father’s death. I prithee when thou seest that act afoot, Even with the very comment of thy soul Observe my uncle. If his occulted guilt Do not itself unkennel in one speech It is a damned ghost that we have seen And my imaginations are […]