HAMLET                                 Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty – GERTRUDE                            O speak to me no more! These words like daggers enter in my ears. No more, sweet Hamlet.       (3.4.89-94) Actually Hamlet was just pausing for breath, and he now returns to this verbal and moral assault with renewed vigour and […]

HAMLET                     Rebellious hell, If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones, To flaming youth let virtue be as wax And melt in her own fire; proclaim no shame When the compulsive ardour gives the charge, Since frost itself as actively doth burn And reason pardons will. GERTRUDE                O Hamlet, speak no more. Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul And there I see such black and grained spots As will leave there their tinct.          (3.4.80-89) Hamlet […]

HAMLET                     Sense, sure, you have – Else could you not have motion. But sure, that sense Is apoplexed, for madness would not err Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled But it reserved some quantity of choice To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind? Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, Ears without hands or […]

HAMLET                     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? Ha, have you eyes? You cannot call it love, for at your age The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble And waits upon the judgement, and what judgement Would step from this to […]

HAMLET         Look here upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers: See what a grace was seated on this brow, Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars to threaten and command, A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill, A combination and a form indeed Where every god did seem to set his seal To give the world assurance of a man; This […]

HAMLET                     O, such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow O’er this solidity and compound mass With heated visage as against the doom, Is thought-sick at the act. GERTRUDE                Ay me, what act That roars so loud and thunders in the index?       (3.4.43-50) Hamlet still hasn’t finished accusing his mother of doing terrible things, such a deed as from the […]

GERTRUDE    What have I done that thou dar’st wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me? HAMLET                                 Such an act That blurs the grace and 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…     (3.4.37-43) Gertrude can be RAGING, how bloody […]

[Uncovers the body of Polonius.] HAMLET – Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell: I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune; Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger. – 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, If damned custom have […]

POLONIUS      O, I am slain! GERTRUDE                            O me, what hast thou done? HAMLET         Nay, I know not. Is it the King? GERTRUDE    O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! HAMLET         A bloody deed – almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king and marry with his brother. GERTRUDE    As kill a king? HAMLET         […]

GERTRUDE    Nay then, I’ll set those to you that can speak. HAMLET         Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge. You go not till I set you up a glass Where you may see the inmost part of you. GERTRUDE    What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me – Help, ho! POLONIUS      [behind the arras]      What […]