of a man

who could not make up his mind.

- Who's there? - Nay, answer me.

Stand and unfold yourself.

Long live the King.

- Bernardo? - He.

You come most carefully upon your hour.

'Tis now struck 12. Get thee to bed, Francisco.

For this relief, much thanks.

'Tis bitter cold.

I'm sick at heart.

Have you had quiet guard?

- Not a mouse stirring. - Well, good night.

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, the rivals of my watch,

bid them make haste.

I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who's there?

- Friends to this ground. - And liegemen to the Dane.

Give me your good night.

Farewell, honest soldier. Who has relieved you?

Bernardo hath my place. Give you good night.

- Holla! Bernardo! - Say, what, is Horatio there?

A piece of him.

Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.

What... has this thing appeared again tonight?

I have seen nothing.

Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy and will not let belief take hold of him,

touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us.

Therefore I've entreated him along with us to watch the minutes of this night,

that if again this apparition comes he may approve our eyes and speak to it.

Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.

Sit down a while.

Let us once again assail your ears that are so fortified against our story,

what we two nights have seen.

Well, sit we down and let us hear Bernardo speak of this.

Last night of all,

when yon same star that's westward from the pole

had made his course into that part of heaven where now it burns,

Marcellus and myself, the bell then beating one...

Peace! Break thee off.

Look where it comes again!

In the same figure like the dead king, Hamlet.

Thou art a scholar - speak to it, Horatio.

Looks it not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.

Most like.

It harrows me with fear and wonder.

- It would be spoke to. - Question it, 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, oh, speak.

Stay and speak!

Stop it, Marcellus!

- To here! - Here!

'Tis gone and will not answer.

How now, Horatio. You tremble and look pale.

Is not this something more than fantasy? What think you on't?

Before my God I might not this believe

without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes.

- Is it not like the King? - As thou art to thyself.

'Tis strange.

It was about to speak when the cock crew.

And then it started like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons.

I have heard the cock, that is the herald to the morn,

doth, with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat,

awake the god of day.

And at its warning, the wandering and uneasy spirit hies to its confine.

It faded on the crowing of the cock.

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes

wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,

the bird of dawning singeth all night long.

And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad.

The nights are wholesome then.

No planets strike. No fairy takes nor witch hath power to charm.

So hallowed and so gracious is the time.

So have I heard. And do, in part, believe it.

But look. The morn, in russet mantle clad,

walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill.

Break we our watch up and, by my advice,

let us impart what we have seen tonight unto young Hamlet.

For upon my life, this spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.

- Let's do it, I pray. - Mm.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Though yet of Hamlet, our dear brother's death, the memory be green

and that it us befitted to bear our hearts in grief

and our whole kingdom to be contracted in one brow of woe,

yet, so far, hath discretion fought with nature

that we, with wisest sorrow, think on him

together with remembrance of ourselves.

Therefore our sometime sister,

now our Queen,

have we, as 'twere, with a defeated joy,

with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage

in equal scale, weighing delight and dole,

taken to wife.

Nor have we herein barred your better wisdoms,

which have freely gone with this affair along.

For all, our thanks.

Ah. And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?

You told us of some suit. What is't, Laertes?

You cannot speak of reason to the Dane and lose your voice.

What wouldst thou beg, Laertes, that shall not be my offer, not thy asking?

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?

Dread, my 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 must confess, that duty done,

my thoughts and wishes bend again towards France

and bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

Hm. Have you your father's leave? What says 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.

Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine and thy best graces spend it at thy will.

And now, our cousin, Hamlet, and our son.

How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

Good Hamlet... cast thy nighted colour off,

and let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.

Do not forever with thy lowered lids seek for thy noble father in the dust.

Thou know'st 'tis common.

All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.

Aye, madam, it is common.

If it be, why seems it so particular with thee?

Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not "seems".

'Tis not alone, my inky cloak, good mother,

nor customary suits of solemn black,

together with all forms, moulds, shows 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 passeth show -

these but the trappings and the suits of woe.

'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 persist in obstinate condolement

is a course of impious stubbornness. 'Tis unmanly grief.

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."

Why should we, in our peevish opposition, take it to heart?

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 the most immediate to our throne,

and with no less nobility of love than that which dearest father bears his son

do I impart towards you.

For your intent in going back to school at 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.

Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.

I pray thee, stay with us.

Go not to Wittenberg.

I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

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 cannons to the clouds shall tell,

and the King's carouse the heavens shall roar again,

re-speaking earthly thunder.

Come, away.

O that this too too solid flesh would melt,

thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter.

O God. God.

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable

seem to me all the uses of this world.

Fie on't, ah fie.

'Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed.

Things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.

That it should come to this.

But two months dead.

Nay, not so much, not two.

So excellent a king

that was to this Hyperion to a satyr.

So loving to my mother

that he might not suffer the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly.

Heaven and earth, must I remember?

Why, she would hang on him as if increase of appetite

had grown by what it fed on.

And yet, within a month...

Let me not think on it.

Frailty, thy name is woman.

A little month, or ere those shoes were old

with which she followed my poor father's body, like Niobe, all tears.

Why she, even she...

O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason

would have mourned longer.

Married with my uncle, my father's brother,

but no more like my father than I to Hercules.

Within a month... she married.

O most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity

to incestuous sheets.

It is not, nor it cannot come, to good.

But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

My necessaries are embarked.

Farewell.

And, sister, as the winds give benefit and convoy is assistant,

- do not sleep but let me hear from you. - Do you doubt that?

For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour,

hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,

a violet in the youth of primy nature.

Forward, not permanent.

Sweet, not lasting.

The perfume and suppliance of a minute, no more.

No more but so?

Think it no more.

Perhaps he loves you now, but you must fear,

his greatness weighed, his will is not his own,

for he himself is subject to his birth.

He may not, as unvalued persons do, carve for himself,

for on his choice depends the safety and the health of this whole state.

Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain

if with too willing ear you list his songs.

Or lose your heart...

or your chaste treasure open to his unmastered importunity.

Be wary then.

Best safety lies in fear.

I shall the effect of this good lesson keep as watchman to my heart.

But, good my brother, do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

show me the steep and thorny way to heaven

whilst, like a puffed and reckless libertine

himself the primrose path of dalliance treads... and minds not his own creed.

O, fear me not.

But here my father comes - I stay too long.

Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame.

The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail and you are stayed for.

There, my blessing with thee.

And these few precepts in thy memory look thou character.

Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act.

Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar.