Faculty of English

1 PLAYER       But who – ah woe – had seen the mobled queen – HAMLET         ‘The mobled queen’! POLONIUS                              That’s good. 1 PLAYER       – Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames With bisson rheum, a clout upon that head Where late the diadem stood and, for a robe, About her lank and all-o’erteemed loins, A blanket in the alarm of fear caught up. Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped, ’Gainst […]

1 PLAYER       Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods In general synod take away her power, Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven As low as to the fiends. POLONIUS      This is too long. HAMLET         It shall to the barber’s with your beard. Prithee say on – he’s for a jig, or […]

1 PLAYER                   For lo, his sword Which was declining on the milky head Of reverend Priam seemed i’th’ air to stick. So as a painted tyrant Pyrrhus stood Like a neutral to his will and matter, Did nothing. But as we often see against some storm A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still, The bold winds speechless and the orb below As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder Doth rend the […]

1 PLAYER       Anon he finds him, Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword, Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls, Repugnant to command. Unequal matched, Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide, But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword Th’unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top Stoops to his base and with a hideous crash Takes prisoner Pyrrhus’ ear.  (2.2.406-415) The […]

HAMLET         Now is he total gules, horridly tricked With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, Baked and impasted with the parching streets That lend a tyrannous and a damned light To their lord’s murder; roasted in wrath and fire, And thus o’ersized with coagulate gore, With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus Old grandsire Priam seeks. So proceed you. POLONIUS      ’Fore God, my lord, well spoken – with good accent and good discretion.          (2.2.395-405) Hamlet continues […]

HAMLET         One speech in’t I chiefly loved – ’twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido, and thereabout of it especially when he speaks of Priam’s slaughter. If it live in your memory begin at this line – let me see, let me see – The rugged Pyrrhus like th’ Hyrcanian beast … – ’Tis not so. It […]

1 PLAYER       What speech, my good lord? HAMLET         I heard thee speak me a speech once – but it was never acted, or, if it was, not above once, for the play I remember pleased not the million, ’twas caviare to the general. But it was, as I received it, and others whose judgements in […]

Enter the PLAYERS. HAMLET         You are welcome, masters, welcome all. I am glad to see thee well. Welcome, good friends. O old friend, why, thy face is valanced since I saw thee last! Com’st thou to beard me in Denmark? What, my young lady and mistress! By’r Lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than […]

POLONIUS      The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene individable or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy nor Plautus too light for the law of writ and the liberty. These are the only men. HAMLET         O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou? POLONIUS      What a […]

Enter POLONIUS. POLONIUS      Well be with you, gentlemen. HAMLET         Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too – at each ear a hearer. That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts. ROSENCRANTZ         Happily he is the second time come to them, for they say an old man is twice a child. […]