CLAUDIUS      How fares our cousin Hamlet? HAMLET         Excellent, i’faith! Of the chameleon’s dish – I eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so. CLAUDIUS      I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. These words are not mine. HAMLET         No, nor mine now, my lord. [to Polonius] You played once i’th’ university, you say? POLONIUS      That […]

HAMLET                     Give him heedful note, For I mine eyes will rivet to his face And after we will both our judgements join In censure of his seeming. HORATIO                   Well, my lord If ’a steal aught the whilst this play is playing And scape detected I will pay the theft. Enter Trumpets and Kettledrums, CLAUDIUS, GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA [ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN]. HAMLET         [to Horatio]    They are coming […]

HAMLET         Something too much of this: There is a play tonight before the King – One scene of it comes near the circumstance Which I have told thee of my father’s death. I prithee when thou seest that act afoot, Even with the very comment of thy soul Observe my uncle. If his occulted guilt Do not itself unkennel in one speech It is a damned ghost that we have seen And my imaginations are […]

HAMLET                     For thou hast been As one in suffering all that suffers nothing – A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards Hast ta’en with equal thanks. And blest are those Whose blood and judgement are so well co-meddled That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger To sound what stop she please. Give me that man That is not passion’s slave and I will wear […]

HAMLET                     ay, do not think I flatter, For what advancement may I hope from thee That no revenue hast but thy good spirits To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered? No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear? Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice And could of […]

Enter POLONIUS, GUILDENSTERN and ROSENCRANTZ. HAMLET         How now, my lord, will the King hear this piece of work? POLONIUS      And the Queen too, and that presently. HAMLET         Bid the players make haste. [Exit POLONIUS.]       Will you two help to hasten them? ROSENCRANTZ          Ay, my lord. Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. HAMLET         What ho, Horatio! Enter HORATIO. HORATIO        Here, sweet lord, […]

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 […]