HAMLET                     What may this mean That thou, dead corpse, again in complete steel, 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? [ GHOST ] beckons. HORATIO        It beckons you to go away with it As if it some impartment did desire To […]

HAMLET                     O answer me, Let me not burst in ignorance but tell Why thy canonized bones hearsed in death Have burst their cerements, why the sepulchre Wherein we saw thee quietly interred Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws To cast thee up again.            (1.4.45-51) What’s going on? What does this mean? asks Hamlet, in effect, but mostly—as well as filling silence and shock with words, […]

HAMLET         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 com’st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane.        (1.4.39-45) Hamlet’s properly shocked, and properly frightened, but manages to come up […]

HAMLET                     – that these men, Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect (Being Nature’s livery or Fortune’s star), His virtues else, be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo, Shall in the general censure take corruption From that particular fault: the dram of eale Doth all the noble substance of a doubt To his own scandal – Enter GHOST. HORATIO                    Look, my lord, […]

HAMLET         This heavy-headed revel east and west Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations: They clepe us drunkards and with swinish phrase Soil our addition, and indeed it takes From our achievements, though performed at height, The pith and marrow of our attribute. So oft it chances in particular men That, for some vicious mole of nature in them, As in their birth wherein they are not guilty (Since nature […]

HAMLET         The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse, Keeps wassail and the swaggering upspring reels, And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge. HORATIO                                Is it a custom? HAMLET         Ay, marry is’t, But to my mind, though I am native here And to the manner born, it is a custom More honoured in the breach than the observance.          […]

Enter HAMLET, HORATIO and MARCELLUS. HAMLET         The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold. HORATIO        It is nipping, and an eager air. HAMLET         What hour now? HORATIO                                I think it lacks of twelve. MARCELLUS   No, it is struck. HORATIO                                Indeed, I heard it not. It then draws near the season Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk. A flourish of trumpets and two pieces goes off. What does this mean, my lord?        […]

POLONIUS                              This is for all; I would not in plain terms from this time forth Have you so slander any moment leisure As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet. Look to’t, I charge you. Come your ways. OPHELIA        I shall obey, my lord. (Exeunt.)         (1.3.130-135) Ophelia’s given up trying to interrupt—or respond—and Polonius is winding up: this is for all, so, […]

POLONIUS                  For Lord Hamlet, Believe so much in him that he is young And with a larger tether may he walk Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia, Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers Not of that dye which their investments show But mere implorators of unholy suits Breathing like sanctified and pious bonds The better to beguile.            (1.3.122-130) For Lord Hamlet—and there can be emphasis on Lord, remember […]

POLONIUS      Ay, springes to catch woodcocks – I do know When the blood burns how prodigal the soul Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter, Giving more light than heat, extinct in both Even in their promise as it is a-making, You must not take for fire. From this time Be something scanter of your maiden presence; Set your entreatments at a higher rate Than a command to parle.    (1.3.114-122) Those vows Hamlet’s making to you? springes […]