Faculty of English

CLAUDIUS      Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply. Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come – This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet Sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof No jocund health that Denmark drinks today But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again, Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away. Flourish. Exeunt all but HAMLET.     (1.2.121-8) I wasn’t speaking […]

CLAUDIUS                  For your intent In going back to school in Wittenberg It is most retrograde to our desire, And we beseech you bend you to remain Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye, Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son. GERTRUDE     Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet. I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg. HAMLET         I shall in all […]

CLAUDIUS                  Fie, ’tis a fault to heaven, A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, To reason most absurd, whose common theme Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried From the first corpse till he that died today ‘This must be so.’ We pray you throw to earth This unprevailing woe, and think of us As of a father, for let the world take note You are […]

CLAUDIUS                  …’tis unmanly grief, It shows a will most incorrect to heaven, A heart unfortified, or mind impatient, An understanding simple and unschooled; For what we know must be, and is as common As any the most vulgar thing to sense – Why should we in our peevish opposition Take it to heart?         (1.2.94-101) Claudius is battering away at his nephew: you’re behaving […]

CLAUDIUS      ’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father, But you must know your father lost a father, That father lost lost his, and the survivor bound In filial obligation for some term To do obsequious sorrow; but to persever In obstinate condolement is a course Of impious stubbornness…  (1.2.87-94) Claudius meets Hamlet’s long howl of furious […]

HAMLET         ’Tis not alone my inky cloak, cold mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected haviour of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly. These indeed ‘seem’, For they are actions that a man might play, But I have that within which passes show, These but the trappings and the suits of woe.        (1.2.77-86) […]

GERTRUDE     Thou knowst ’tis common all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity. HAMLET         Ay, madam, it is common. QUEEN                                               If it be Why seems it so particular with thee? HAMLET         ‘Seems’, madam – nay it is, I know not ‘seems’.       (1.2.72-6) Gertrude attempts a little conventional stoic, Christian consolation: thou knowst ’tis common all that lives […]

CLAUDIUS      But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son – HAMLET         A little more than kin, and less than kind. CLAUDIUS      How is it that the clouds still hang on you? HAMLET         Not so, my lord, I am too much in the son. GERTRUDE     Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. Do not for ever […]

CLAUDIUS      Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius? POLONIUS      He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave By laboursome petition, and at last Upon his will I sealed my hard consent. I do beseech you give him leave to go. CLAUDIUS      Take thy fair hour, Laertes, time be thine And thy best graces spend […]

CLAUDIUS      The head is not more native to the heart, The hand more instrumental to the mouth, Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father. What wouldst thou have, Laertes? LAERTES                                My dread lord, Your leave and favour to return to France, From whence though willingly I came to Denmark To show my duty in your coronation, Yet now I […]