1 PLAYER       What speech, my good lord? HAMLET         I heard thee speak me a speech once – but it was never acted, or, if it was, not above once, for the play I remember pleased not the million, ’twas caviare to the general. But it was, as I received it, and others whose judgements in […]

Enter the PLAYERS. HAMLET         You are welcome, masters, welcome all. I am glad to see thee well. Welcome, good friends. O old friend, why, thy face is valanced since I saw thee last! Com’st thou to beard me in Denmark? What, my young lady and mistress! By’r Lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than […]

POLONIUS      The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene individable or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy nor Plautus too light for the law of writ and the liberty. These are the only men. HAMLET         O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou? POLONIUS      What a […]

Enter POLONIUS. POLONIUS      Well be with you, gentlemen. HAMLET         Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too – at each ear a hearer. That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts. ROSENCRANTZ         Happily he is the second time come to them, for they say an old man is twice a child. […]

A flourish GUILDENSTERN        There are the players! HAMLET         Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come, then! Th’appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply with you in this garb lest my extent to the players, which I tell you must show fairly outwards, should more appear like entertainment than yours. You […]

HAMLET         How chances it they travel? Their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways. ROSENCRANTZ         I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late innovation. HAMLET         Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? Are they so followed? ROSENCRANTZ         No, indeed are they not. […]

HAMLET         Why did ye laugh then, when I said man delights not me? ROSENCRANTZ         To think, my lord, if you delight not in man what Lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you; we coted them on the way and hither are they coming to offer you service. HAMLET         He that plays the King shall […]

HAMLET         What a piece of work is a man – how noble in reason; how infinite in faculties, in form and moving; how express and admirable in action; how like an angel in apprehension; how like a god; the beauty of the world; the paragon of animals. And yet to me what is this quintessence […]

HAMLET         I will tell you why. So shall my anticipation prevent your discovery and your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no feather. I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame […]

ROSENCRANTZ                     To what end, my lord? HAMLET         That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer can charge you withal, be even and direct with me whether […]