Faculty of English

LAERTES                                O, treble woe Fall ten times double on that cursed head Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense Deprived thee of. Hold off the earth awhile, Till I have caught her once more in mine arms. [Leaps in the grave.] Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead Till of this flat a mountain you have made T’o’ertop old Pelion or the skyish head Of blue Olympus.       (5.1.235-243) Laertes […]

GERTRUDE     Sweets to the sweet. Farewell. I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife: I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid, And not have strewed thy grave.     (5.1.232-235) Sweets to the sweet; it can jar, be just the next instalment in Gertrude’s prettifying of Ophelia’s death—more flowers!—but at the same time it’s kind, helpless, futile—what more […]

LAERTES        Must there no more be done? PRIEST                       No more be done. We should profane the service of the dead To sing a requiem and such rest to her As to peace-parted souls. LAERTES                    Lay her i’th’ earth, And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring. I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering angel shall my sister be […]

PRIEST           Her obsequies have been as far enlarged As we have warranty. Her death was doubtful; And but that great command o’ersways the order She should in ground unsanctified been lodged Till the last trumpet: for charitable prayers, Flints and pebbles should be thrown on her. Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants, Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home Of bell and burial.      (5.1.215-223) The priest can be sympathetic, apologetic, sorry-my-hands-are-tied but it’s easier […]

Enter CLAUDIUS, GERTRUDE, LAERTES and [other Lords, with a PRIEST after] the corpse. HAMLET         But soft, but soft awhile, here comes the King, The Queen, the courtiers. Who is this they follow? And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken The corpse they follow did with desperate hand Fordo it own life. ’Twas of some estate. Couch we awhile and mark. [HAMLET and HORATIO stand aside.] LAERTES        What ceremony else? […]

HAMLET         No, faith, not a jot. But to follow him thither with modesty enough and likelihood to lead it: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel?        Imperious Caesar, dead and […]

HAMLET         Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing. HORATIO        What’s that, my lord? HAMLET         Dost thou think Alexander looked o’this fashion i’th’ earth? HORATIO        E’en so. HAMLET         And smelt so? Pah! HORATIO        E’en so, my lord. HAMLET         To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till […]

HAMLET         Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorred in my imagination it is. My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where […]

GRAVEDIGGER          Here’s a skull now hath lien you i’th’ earth three and twenty years. HAMLET         Whose was it? GRAVEDIGGER          A whoreson mad fellow’s it was. Whose do you think it was? HAMLET         Nay, I know not. GRAVEDIGGER          A pestilence on him for a mad rogue. ’A poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once! […]

HAMLET         How long will a man lie i’th’ earth ere he rot? GRAVEDIGGER          Faith, if ’a be not rotten before ’a die (as we have many pocky corpses that will scarce hold the laying in) ’a will last you some eight year – or nine year – a tanner will last you nine year. HAMLET         […]