Faculty of English

BARNARDO    It was about to speak when the cock crew. HORATIO        And then it started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons. I have heard The cock that is the trumpet to the morn Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the god of day and, at his warning, Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, Th’extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine – […]

HORATIO                                Stop it, Marcellus! MARCELLUS   Shall I strike it with my partisan? HORATIO        Do, if it will not stand. BARNARDO    ’Tis here. HORATIO                    ’Tis here. [Exit GHOST.] MARCELLUS                           ’Tis gone. We do it wrong being so majestical To offer it the show of violence, For it is as the air, invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery.     (1.1.138-145) Stop it, Marcellus! Horatio is presumably […]

HORATIO        If thou hast any sound or use of voice, Speak to me. If there be any good thing to be done That may to thee do ease and grace to me, Speak to me. If thou art privy to thy country’s fate Which happily foreknowing may avoid, O, speak. Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life Extorted treasure in the womb of earth – […]

HORATIO        And even the like precurse of feared events, As harbingers preceding still the fates And prologue to the omen coming on, Have heaven and earth together demonstrated Unto our climatures and countrymen. Enter GHOST. But soft, behold, lo where it comes again; I’ll cross it though it blast me. Stay, illusion. (It spreads his arms ).          (1.1.120-126) It’s not looking good, says Horatio: and even the like precurse of feared events, the forerunners, the […]

HORATIO        A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye. In the most high and palmy state of Rome A little ere the mightiest Julius fell The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets; At stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.            […]

HORATIO                    And this, I take it, Is the main motive of our preparations, The source of this our watch, and the chief head Of this post-haste and rummage in the land. BARNARDO    I think it be no other but e’en so. Well may it sort that this portentous figure Comes armed through our watch so like the King That was and is the question of these wars.           (1.1.103-110) Horatio finally draws […]

HORATIO        Now, sir, young Fortinbras, Of unimproved mettle, hot and full, Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes For food and diet to some enterprise That hath a stomach in’t, which is no other, As it doth well appear unto our state, But to recover of us by strong hand And terms compulsatory those foresaid lands So by his father lost.              (1.1.94-103) Horatio’s still going […]

HORATIO Against the which a moiety competent Was gaged by our King, which had return To the inheritance of Fortinbras Had he been vanquisher, as by the same co-mart And carriage of the article design His fell to Hamlet. (1.1.89-94) This is complicated stuff, and in very long sentences (this is actually beginning mid sentence) as Horatio sets out the backstory of historical conflict with […]

HORATIO                                That can I. At least the whisper goes so. Our last King, Whose image even but now appeared to us, Was as you know by Fortinbras of Norway – Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride – Dared to the combat, in which our valiant Hamlet (For so this side of our known world esteemed him) Did slay this Fortinbras, who […]

MARCELLUS   Good now, sit down, and tell me he that knows Why this same strict and most observant watch So nightly toils the subject of the land, And with such daily cost of brazen cannon And foreign mart for implements of war, Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task Does not divide the Sunday from the week. What might be toward that this sweaty haste Doth make the night joint […]