Faculty of English

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 […]

Enter HAMLET and three of the PLAYERS. HAMLET         Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you – trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your […]

POLONIUS      My lord, do as you please, But if you hold it fit after the play Let his Queen-mother all alone entreat him To show his grief. Let her be round with him And I’ll be placed, so please you, in the ear Of all their conference. If she find him not, To England send him or confine him where Your wisdom best shall […]

CLAUDIUS      Haply the seas and countries different With variable objects shall expel This something-settled matter in his heart Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus From fashion of himself. What think you on’t? POLONIUS      It shall do well. But yet do I believe The origin and commencement of his grief Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia? You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said […]

CLAUDIUS      Love! His affections do not that way tend. Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little, Was not like madness. There’s something in his soul O’er which his melancholy sits on brood And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose Will be some danger – which for to prevent I have in quick determination Thus set it down. He shall with speed to England […]