PLAYER          I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us. HAMLET         O, reform it altogether, and let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them. For there be of them that will themselves laugh to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime […]

HAMLET         Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it makes the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play and heard others praised – and that highly – not to […]

HAMLET         Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance – that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so o’erdone is from the purpose of playing whose end, both at the first and […]

HAMLET         O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant – it […]

Enter HAMLET and three of the PLAYERS. HAMLET         Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you – trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your […]

POLONIUS      My lord, do as you please, But if you hold it fit after the play Let his Queen-mother all alone entreat him To show his grief. Let her be round with him And I’ll be placed, so please you, in the ear Of all their conference. If she find him not, To England send him or confine him where Your wisdom best shall […]

CLAUDIUS      Haply the seas and countries different With variable objects shall expel This something-settled matter in his heart Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus From fashion of himself. What think you on’t? POLONIUS      It shall do well. But yet do I believe The origin and commencement of his grief Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia? You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said […]

CLAUDIUS      Love! His affections do not that way tend. Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little, Was not like madness. There’s something in his soul O’er which his melancholy sits on brood And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose Will be some danger – which for to prevent I have in quick determination Thus set it down. He shall with speed to England […]

OPHELIA        O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown! The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword, Th’ expectation and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mould of form, Th’observed of all observers, quite, quite down. And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his musicked vows, Now see what noble and most sovereign reason Like sweet bells jangled out of time and harsh – That […]

OPHELIA        [aside] Heavenly powers restore him. HAMLET         I have heard of your paintings well enough. God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another. You jig and amble and you lisp, you nickname God’s creatures and make your wantonness ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t. It hath made me mad. I say […]