LAERTES        Know you the hand? CLAUDIUS                  ’Tis Hamlet’s character. ‘Naked’, And in a postscript here he says ‘alone’. Can you devise me? LAERTES        I am lost in it, my lord, but let him come. It warms the very sickness in my heart That I live and tell him to his teeth ‘Thus didst thou.’ CLAUDIUS                  If it be so, Laertes – As how should it be so, […]

MESSENGER  These to your majesty, this to the Queen. CLAUDIUS      From Hamlet! Who brought them? MESSENGER  Sailors, my lord, they say. I saw them not. They were given me by Claudio. He received them Of him that brought them. CLAUDIUS      Laertes, you shall hear them. Leave us. [Exit Messenger.] [Reads.]          High and mighty. You shall know I am set […]

LAERTES        And so have I a noble father lost, A sister driven into desperate terms Whose worth, if praises may go back again, Stood challenger on mount of all the age For her perfections. But my revenge will come. CLAUDIUS      Break not your sleeps for that; you must not think That we are made of stuff so flat and dull That we […]

CLAUDIUS      The other motive Why to a public count I might not go Is the great love the general gender bear him, Who, dipping all his faults in their affection, Work like the spring that turneth wood to stone, Convert his gyves to graces, so that my arrows, Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind, Would have reverted to my bow again But not where I have aimed them.   (4.7.17-25) This is […]

CLAUDIUS      O, for two special reasons Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinewed But yet to me they’re strong. The Queen his mother Lives almost by his looks and for myself, My virtue or my plague, be it either which, She is so conjunct to my life and soul That as the star moves not but in his sphere I could not but by her.           […]

Enter CLAUDIUS and LAERTES. CLAUDIUS      Now must your conscience my acquittance seal And you must put me in your heart for friend Sith you have heard and with a knowing ear That he which hath your noble father slain Pursued my life. LAERTES                    It well appears. But tell me Why you proceed not against these feats So criminal and so capital in nature As by your safety, greatness, wisdom, all things else, You […]

HORATIO [Reads.] Let the King have the letters I have sent, and repair thou to me with as much speed as thou wouldest fly death. I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb. Yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows will bring thee […]

HORATIO [Reads.]           Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked this, give these fellows some means to the King: they have letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour and in the grapple […]

Enter HORATIO and [a Gentleman]. HORATIO        What are they that would speak with me? GENTLEMAN Sea-faring men, sir. They say they have letters for you. HORATIO        Let them come in. [Exit Gentleman.] I do not know from what part of the world I should be greeted if not from Lord Hamlet. Enter Sailors. SAILOR           God bless […]

LAERTES                    Let this be so. His means of death, his obscure funeral – No trophy, sword nor hatchment o’er his bones, No noble rite, nor formal ostentation – Cry to be heard as ’twere from heaven to earth That I must call’t in question. CLAUDIUS                  So you shall, And where th’offence is let the great axe fall. I pray you go with me. (Exeunt.)      (4.5.204-211) Let this be so, responds […]