Enter Lucianus. HAMLET         This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king. OPHELIA        You are as good as a chorus, my lord. HAMLET         I could interpret between you and your love if I could see the puppets dallying. OPHELIA        You are keen, my lord, you are keen. HAMLET         It would cost you a groaning to take […]

HAMLET         Madam, how like you this play? GERTUDE       The lady doth protest too much, methinks. HAMLET         O, but she’ll keep her word. CLAUDIUS      Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in’t? HAMLET         No, no, they do but jest. Poison in jest. No offence i’th’ world. CLAUDIUS      What do you call the play? HAMLET         […]

PLAYER QUEEN         Nor earth to me give food nor heaven light, Sport and repose lock from me day and night. To desperation turn my trust and hope And anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope. Each opposite that blanks the face of joy Meet what I would have well and it destroy. Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife If once I be a widow ever I be […]

PLAYER KING The great man down, you mark his favourite flies, The poor advanced makes friends of enemies, And hitherto doth Love on Fortune tend, For who not needs shall never lack a friend, And who in want a hollow friend doth try Directly seasons him his enemy. But orderly to end where I begun, Our wills and fates do so contrary run […]

PLAYER KING Most necessary ’tis that we forget To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt. What to ourselves in passion we propose, The passion ending doth the purpose lose. The violence of either grief or joy Their own enactures with themselves destroy. Where joy most revels grief doth most lament, Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident. This world is […]

PLAYER QUEEN         The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love. A second time I kill my husband dead When second husband kisses me in bed. PLAYER KING I do believe you think what now you speak. But what we do determine oft we break. Purpose is but the slave to memory, Of violent birth but poor […]

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 […]