CLAUDIUS      Therefore our sometime sister, now our Queen, Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state, Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy, With an auspicious and a dropping eye, With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole, Taken to wife.             (1.1.8-14) Therefore—therefore—because we’ve (I’ve) got to think of ourselves, our own needs as well as those of […]

Flourish. Enter Claudius, King of Denmark, Gertrude the Queen, Council – as Polonius and his son Laertes [and]Hamlet, with others [including Voltemand and Cornelius]. CLAUDIUS      Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death The memory be green, and that it us befitted To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom To be contracted […]

HORATIO        But look, the morn in russet mantle clad Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill. Break we our watch up and by my advice Let us impart what we have seen tonight Unto young Hamlet, for upon my life This spirit dumb to us will speak to him. Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it […]

MARCELLUS   It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated This bird of dawning singeth all night long, And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad, The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallowed and so gracious is that time. HORATIO        So have I […]

BARNARDO    It was about to speak when the cock crew. HORATIO        And then it started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons. I have heard The cock that is the trumpet to the morn Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the god of day and, at his warning, Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, Th’extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine – […]

HORATIO                                Stop it, Marcellus! MARCELLUS   Shall I strike it with my partisan? HORATIO        Do, if it will not stand. BARNARDO    ’Tis here. HORATIO                    ’Tis here. [Exit GHOST.] MARCELLUS                           ’Tis gone. We do it wrong being so majestical To offer it the show of violence, For it is as the air, invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery.     (1.1.138-145) Stop it, Marcellus! Horatio is presumably […]

HORATIO        If thou hast any sound or use of voice, Speak to me. If there be any good thing to be done That may to thee do ease and grace to me, Speak to me. If thou art privy to thy country’s fate Which happily foreknowing may avoid, O, speak. Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life Extorted treasure in the womb of earth – […]

HORATIO        And even the like precurse of feared events, As harbingers preceding still the fates And prologue to the omen coming on, Have heaven and earth together demonstrated Unto our climatures and countrymen. Enter GHOST. But soft, behold, lo where it comes again; I’ll cross it though it blast me. Stay, illusion. (It spreads his arms ).          (1.1.120-126) It’s not looking good, says Horatio: and even the like precurse of feared events, the forerunners, the […]

HORATIO        A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye. In the most high and palmy state of Rome A little ere the mightiest Julius fell The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets; At stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.            […]

HORATIO                    And this, I take it, Is the main motive of our preparations, The source of this our watch, and the chief head Of this post-haste and rummage in the land. BARNARDO    I think it be no other but e’en so. Well may it sort that this portentous figure Comes armed through our watch so like the King That was and is the question of these wars.           (1.1.103-110) Horatio finally draws […]