GERTRUDE     Nay, but Ophelia – OPHELIA        Pray you mark. [Sings.]         White his shroud as the mountain snow – Enter CLAUDIUS. GERTRUDE     Alas, look here, my lord. OPHELIA [Sings.]         Larded all with sweet flowers         Which bewept to the ground did not go With true-love showers. CLAUDIUS      How do you, pretty lady? OPHELIA        Well, good dild you. They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, […]

OPHELIA        (Sings.)          How should I your true love know         From another one?         By his cockle hat and staff         And his sandal shoon. GERTRUDE     Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song? OPHELIA        Say you? Nay, pray you, mark. (Sings.)         He is dead and gone, lady,         He is dead and gone.         At his head a grass-green turf,         At his heels a stone. […]

Enter Ophelia. GERTRUDE     [aside] To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss, So full of artless jealousy is guilt It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. OPHELIA        Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark? GERTRUDE     How now, Ophelia?    (4.5.17-22) Gertrude’s language is a return to that of the closet scene, and demonstrates the extent to which […]

GENTLEMAN             Her speech is nothing, Yet the unshaped use of it doth move The hearers to collection. They yawn at it And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them, Indeed would make one think there might be thought, Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily. HORATIO        ’Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew Dangerous conjectures […]

Enter HORATIO, GERTRUDE, and a GENTLEMAN. GERTRUDE     I will not speak with her. GENTLEMAN She is importunate – indeed, distract. Her mood will needs be pitied. GERTRUDE                 What would she have? GENTLEMAN She speaks much of her father, says she hears There’s tricks i’th’ world, and hems and beats her heart, Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt That carry but half sense.     (4.5.1-7) Abrupt shift, back to characters who have […]

HAMLET                     How stand I then That have a father killed, a mother stained, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep; while to my shame I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men That for a fantasy and trick of fame Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, […]

HAMLET         Examples gross as earth exhort me – Witness this army of such mass and charge, Led by a delicate and tender prince Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed Makes mouths at the invisible event Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death and danger dare Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument But greatly to find quarrel […]

HAMLET         Now whether it be Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on th’event (A thought which quartered hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward) I do not know Why yet I live to say this thing’s to do, Sith I have cause and will and strength and means To do’t.            (4.4.38-45) Hamlet’s both matter-of-factly self-aware and bitterly self-excoriating […]

HAMLET         How all occasions do inform against me And spur my dull revenge. What is a man If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast – no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused. (4.4.31-8) How […]

HAMLET         Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats Will not debate the question of this straw. This is th’impostume of much wealth and peace That inward breaks and shows no cause without Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir. CAPTAIN        God buy you, sir. [Exit.] ROSENCRANTZ          Will’t please you go, my lord? HAMLET         I’ll be with you straight. Go a little […]