ACT I. SCENE I. Elsinore

HAMLET

ACT I. SCENE I. Elsinore.

Dark. Then, the beam of a flashlight, moving nervously over the faces of the audience. The light plays for a moment on the face of the man who holds it – Night Guard FRANCISCO. He is dressed like the middle-aged watchman of a modern business building, who would rather have his feet up on a desk watching TV … though of course we cannot see him properly yet.

There is a sharp tap-tapping of expensive shoes in the dark. They stop.

FRANCISCO Who’s there?

He swings the flashlight to the right – no one there. We hear the shoes walking again. He swings the flashlight to the left, as lights begin to come up, very dimly, in the center of the stage.

FRANCISCO Who’s there?

BERNARDO enters the pool of dim light, upstage of FRANCISCO. He is younger, dressed in a suit with an earpiece, Secret Service-style. He is grinning.

BERNARDO (almost in his ear) Who’s there?

FRANCISCO (staggering away, swinging the flashlight to the other man’s face) Nay, answer me! Stand, and unfold yourself!

BERNARDO (laughing) Long live the king!

FRANCISCO Bernardo?

BERNARDO He.

FRANCISCO (with his hands on his knees, wheezing) God’s teeth! … You come most carefully upon your hour.

BERNARDO ‘Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco. 2

FRANCISCO For this relief much thanks: ‘tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart.

Francisco starts to exit, taking the flashlight with him. The dim pool of light grows even dimmer.

BERNARDO (quickly) Have you had quiet guard?

FRANCISCO (coming back, the light coming up) Not a mouse stirring.

BERNARDO Well, good night.

Again Francisco walks away, again the light dims.

BERNARDO If … If you do meet Marcellus, bid him make haste.

FRANCISCO Stand, ho! Who’s there?

Enter MARCELLUS, also Secret Service, with HORATIO, college student of a moneyed family.

HORATIO Friends to this ground.

MARCELLUS And liegemen to the Dane.

BERNARDO Welcome, good Marcellus. And – Horatio. Welcome.

MARCELLUS Has this thing appeared again tonight?

FRANCISCO I have seen nothing.

MARCELLUS 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 have entreated him along with us to watch the minutes of this night; that if again this apparition come, he may approve our eyes and speak to it.

FRANCISCO Sit down awhile; and let us tell you what we have seen these past two nights. 3

MARCELLUS Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

The four are grouped in the gloomy light center stage, staring out at the audience. We will not see the Ghost in this scene.

BERNARDO In the same figure, like the king that’s dead.

MARCELLUS Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

BERNARDO Looks it not like the king?

HORATIO Most like.

FRANCISCO It would be spoke to.

MARCELLUS Question it, Horatio.

HORATIO (as the others crowd behind him) What art thou, that usurps this time of night, wearing the fair and warlike form of the majesty of buried Denmark? By heaven I charge thee, speak!

FRANCISCO It is offended.

BERNARDO See, it stalks away!

HORATIO Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!

The “Ghost” exits

MARCELLUS ‘Tis gone.

BERNARDO How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale: is not this something more than fantasy? What think you on it? 4

HORATIO Before my God, I might not this believe without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes.

MARCELLUS Is it not like the king?

HORATIO As thou art to thyself.

MARCELLUS Thus twice before, and just at this dead hour, with martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

HORATIO This bodes some strange eruption to our state. They do say that in Rome, just before the mighty Caesar fell, the graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead did moan and walk the Roman streets – … But come, we are resolved. Tomorrow, let us impart what we have seen this night unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life, this spirit will speak to him!

Blackout

SCENE II. A room of state in the castle.

Lights up on KING CLAUDIUS and QUEEN GERTRUDE, with many members of their court. It is a modern politician’s party. Important people – dignitaries, ambassadors, others – wear sharp suits and lovely gowns, and mingle with champagne flutes in hand. POLONIUS and LAERTES are among them. So is HAMLET, but he may not be immediately obvious, skulking in the rear behind others. MARCELLUS and BERNARDO stand upstage, on guard, scanning the crowd.

KING CLAUDIUS (grandly, to all) Though yet of 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: (He smiles, and takes GERTRUDE’S hand.) Therefore our onetime sister, now our queen, have we – in equal scale weighing delight and dole, with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage – taken to wife. (Smattering of applause.) Nor have we herein barred your better wisdoms, which have freely gone with this affair along – and for that, our thanks.

He raises a glass, all gathered raise their glasses in toast and drink. The party shifts into mingling again, and CLAUDIUS moves to speak more privately to two old friends, old POLONIUS and his son LAERTES. 5

CLAUDIUS (cont) And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you? 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?

LAERTES My dear lord, your leave and favor 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 toward France, and bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

CLAUDIUS Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?

POLONIUS (with a smile) He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave by laborsome petition, and at last upon his will I sealed my hard consent: I do beseech you, give him leave to go.

CLAUDIUS (with a laugh, he embraces the young man) Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine, and thy best graces spend it at thy will! But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son –

HAMLET A little more than kin, and less than kind.

This puts a big fat stop to all the smiling. The minglers parted in time to reveal him, more than Hamlet himself stepping forward. Now, there is some muttering among some of the partygoers, as this happens a little too publicly.

CLAUDIUS How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET Not so, my lord; I am too much i’ the sun.

QUEEN GERTRUDE Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off, and let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. Do not forever with thy veiled lids seek for thy noble father in the dust: thou know’st ‘tis common; all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.

HAMLET Ay, madam, it is common.

GERTRUDE If it be, why seems it so particular with thee? 6

HAMLET Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not ‘seems.’ ‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, nor customary suits of solemn black, nor sighing winds nor rivers of tears, 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 passeth show; these but the trappings and the suits of woe.

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 persevere in obstinate condolement is a course of impious stubbornness. ‘Tis unmanly grief! It shows a will most incorrect to heaven.

Hamlet storms away from him, pushing others aside if necessary. Claudius raises his voice, using his power and charisma, aware of their audience.

We pray you, throw to earth this unprevailing woe, and think of us as of a father. (This stops the young man. Smoothly:) 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 toward you. (Hamlet looks daggers at him, across the room.) 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 (moving to him) Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet: I pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.

Hamlet stares at her. Then lets out a scream. As all freeze, he soliloquizes, with some howling, walking among them.

HAMLET Oh! that this too too sullied 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! … ‘Tis an unweeded garden, that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature are all that possess it! 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 beteem 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’t – (Screaming right to Gertrude) Frailty, thy name is woman! … A little month, before 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 – 7

Married with my uncle! My father’s brother! – but no more like my father than I to Hercules: within a month! 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.

He stands again where he was. A subtle shift, as all present look to him for his answer. He collects himself and says calmly:

HAMLET I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

CLAUDIUS Why, ‘tis a loving and a fair reply. Madam, come; this gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet sits smiling to my heart. Come away.

As all begin to exit – all but HAMLET – HORATIO bursts in, followed by FRANCISCO. BERNARDO pauses, then follows the king and queen out. MARCELLUS hangs back, to join the others center stage.

HORATIO Hail to your lordship!

HAMLET Horatio!

HORATIO The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.

HAMLET (correcting) Nay, sir, my good friend. I am very glad to see you! But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

HORATIO My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.

HAMLET I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student; I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.

HORATIO Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.

HAMLET Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven before I had seen that day … My father! … methinks I see my father. 8

HORATIO Where, my lord?

HAMLET In my mind’s eye, Horatio.

HORATIO I saw him once; he was a goodly king.

HAMLET He was a man, take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again.

HORATIO My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

HAMLET Saw? who?

HORATIO My lord, the king your father.

HAMLET The king my father!

HORATIO Season your admiration for awhile with an attent ear, till I may deliver, upon the witness of these gentlemen, this marvel to you.

HAMLET For God’s love, let me hear.

HORATIO Two nights together had these gentlemen, on their watch, in the dead vast and middle of the night, been thus encountered. A figure like your father appears before them, and with solemn march goes slow and stately by them; while they, distilled almost to jelly with the act of fear, stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me in dreadful secrecy did they impart; and I with them the third night kept the watch.

HAMLET … And?

HORATIO (nodding) The apparition comes. I knew your father; these hands are not more like.

HAMLET 9

Did you not speak to it? HORATIO My lord, I did; but answer made it none.

HAMLET ‘Tis very strange.

HORATIO As I do live, my honored lord, ‘tis true. (As Hamlet walks away from him, in thought.) And we did think it writ down in our duty to let you know of it.

HAMLET (to the other two) Hold you the watch to-night?

MARCELLUS We do, my lord.

HAMLET Looked he frowningly?

FRANCISCO A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

HAMLET His beard was grizzled, no?

MARCELLUS It was, as I have seen it in his life, a sable silvered.

HAMLET I would I had been there.

FRANCISCO It would have much amazed you.

HAMLET Very like, very like. Stayed it long?

HORATIO While one with moderate haste might count a hundred.

FRANCISCO Longer, longer.

HORATIO Not when I saw it. 10

The men discuss this a moment.

HAMLET I will watch to-night; perchance ‘twill walk again.

HORATIO I warrant it will.

HAMLET If it assume my noble father’s person, I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape and bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, if you have hitherto concealed this sight, let it be tenable in your silence still; and whatever else shall happen tonight, give it an understanding, but no tongue. I will return this favor. Fare you well.

FRANCISCO and MARCELLUS Our duty to your honor.

Exeunt all but HAMLET

My father’s spirit! all is not well; I fear some foul play: would the night were come! Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

SCENE III. A room in Polonius’ house.

LAERTES, from the last scene, is about to depart for the airport. A servant crosses with luggage, and Laertes enters behind him or her, with a jacket and laptop bag. He is tapping away at his smartphone as he walks. He is followed by his sister OPHELIA, a sweet teenager.

LAERTES I’m off! I must depart, or my luggage will be there before me! (calling offstage) Farewell! (to OPHELIA) And, dear sister, as the winds give benefit and communication assist, do not sleep, but daily let me hear from you.

OPHELIA Do you doubt that?

He swipes a finger along his phone, and pauses – either looking at texts, or Facebook. He shows her the screen. 11

LAERTES For … Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor … (She rolls her eyes, and he puts away the phone to take her gently) Hold it as a fashion, a toy, a passing fancy, a violet in springlike youth: sweet, but not lasting, the perfume and diversion of a minute, no more.

OPHELIA No more but so?

LAERTES Think it no more. Perhaps he loves you now, and now no soil nor deceit doth besmirch the virtue of his will: but you must remember: 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 health of this whole state; and therefore must his choice be subject to their vote and consent. Then, if he says he loves you, it fits your wisdom so far to believe it as he is able to give his saying deed. So weigh what loss your honor may sustain, if with too credent ear you listen to his songs, or lose your heart … or your chaste treasure open to his unmastered importunity.

She slaps at his arm repeatedly, for “chaste treasure” – he cringes, and laughs.

Fear it, Ophelia! fear it, my dear sister, and keep you in the rear of your affection.

OPHELIA 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 … while, like a puffed and reckless libertine, himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, and heeds not his own advice.

LAERTES O, fear me not.

They embrace. Enter POLONIUS

POLONIUS Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame! The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail. (Giving him a little money, and a hug.) There; my blessing with thee!

As his son starts to exit:

And these few precepts in thy memory see thou write: Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unworthy thought its act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, their character tested, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; but do not dull thy palm with entertaining each new-hatched, fledgling comrade. Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear it that the opposed may beware of thee. 12

LAERTES moves to leave, then POLONIUS thinks of a couple more.

POLONIUS Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man’s opinion, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy; for the apparel oft proclaims the man. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend. This above all: to thine ownself be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

LAERTES Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

POLONIUS (as if he doesn’t know why his son is still here) The time invites you! Go! your servants tend.

LAERTES Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well what I have said to you.

OPHELIA ‘Tis in my memory locked, and you yourself shall keep the key of it.

LAERTES Farewell.

POLONIUS What is it, Ophelia, be hath said to you?

OPHELIA So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.

POLONIUS Indeed … ‘Tis told me, he hath very oft of late given private time to you. And you yourself have of your audience been most free and generous. What is between you? Give me up the truth.

OPHELIA He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders of his affection to me.

POLONIUS Affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl, untested in such perilous circumstance. Do you believe his tenders, as you call them? 13

OPHELIA I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

POLONIUS Marry, I’ll teach you. Tender yourself more dearly, as it behooves my daughter and your honor, or you’ll tender me a fool.

OPHELIA My lord, he hath courted me with love in honorable fashion.

POLONIUS Ay, fashion you may call it; go on, go on.

OPHELIA And hath given conviction to his speeches, my lord, with almost all the holy vows of heaven.

POLONIUS Ay, a trap to catch a hare … I do know, my little rabbit, when the blood burns, how lavishly the soul lends the tongue vows: these blazes, giving more light than heat, you must not take for fire. From this time be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence; for Lord Hamlet, believe this of him: that he is young, and a man – and by his birth may he walk with a longer tether than may be given you: in short, Ophelia, do not believe his vows.

OPHELIA But –

POLONIUS I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth, have you so slander any moment of leisure, as to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet. Look to it, I charge you: and come away.

OPHELIA I shall obey, my lord.

Exeunt

SCENE IV. The ghost’s accustomed walking-places at Elsinore.

Enter HAMLET and HORATIO, with FRANCISCO and MARCELLUS. The guards are focused, keeping eagle eyes out for the ghost. HAMLET has changed into the hoodie and jeans he’ll probably be wearing for several scenes, with a long coat. The others are also dressed for warmth.

HAMLET (after a moment) What hour now? 14

HORATIO I think it lacks of twelve.

FRANCISCO No, it is struck.

HORATIO Indeed? I heard it not.

FRANCISCO It draws near the time where the spirit has held his walk.

A pause. Then, offstage, distant voices are raised in a drunken “hurrah!”

HORATIO What does this mean, my lord?

HAMLET The king is awake. … He keeps wassail tonight with the swaggering fools of his court, who nightly do celebrate his … marriage.

HORATIO Is it a custom?

HAMLET It is. But to my mind, a custom more honored in the breach than the observance.

Pause.

HAMLET The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.

HORATIO It is a nipping and an eager air.

MARCELLUS Look, my lord, it comes!

Enter Ghost

HAMLET Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

The Ghost of Hamlet’s father is dressed comfortably, in a tweed jacket or cardigan over a loosened tie, with dress slacks and nice shoes. Probably, these are the clothes he died in. He has 15 a warm smile, but sad eyes. It should be obvious why Hamlet loved him. He does not, at first, speak, but stands gently, watching.

HAMLET (to Ghost) Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned – bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell – be thy intents wicked or charitable, thou comest in such a questionable shape that I will speak to thee: I’ll call thee Father! King! Royal Dane: O, answer me! …Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell why thy canonized bones have burst from their grave to make the night hideous! Why is this? What should we do?

Slowly, the GHOST raises an arm to HAMLET

HORATIO It beckons you to go along, as if it would speak to you alone.

MARCELLUS But do not go with it.

HORATIO No, by no means.

HAMLET It will not speak; then I will follow it.

HORATIO Do not, my lord.

HAMLET Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life in a pin’s fee; and for my soul, what can it do to that, being a thing immortal as itself? … It waves me forth again: I’ll follow it.

HORATIO What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord? Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff that beetles o’er his base into the sea, and there assume some other horrible form, which might deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness?

HAMLET It waves me still. Go on; I’ll follow thee.

MARCELLUS You shall not go, my lord.

HAMLET Hold off your hands. 16

HORATIO Be ruled; you shall not go.

HAMLET Unhand me, gentlemen. By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that tries to stop me! (They fall back.) Go on; I’ll follow thee.

Exeunt GHOST and HAMLET

HORATIO He waxes desperate with imagination.

MARCELLUS Let’s follow; ‘tis not fit thus to obey him.

HORATIO Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Exeunt

SCENE V. The rooftop.

A wind blows for the first few moments of the scene, then dies down. A railing, perhaps, suggests the edge of the building.

Enter GHOST and HAMLET

HAMLET Where wilt thou lead me? speak; I’ll go no further.

GHOST My hour is almost come, when I to sulphurous and tormenting flames must render up myself.

HAMLET Speak; I am bound to hear.

GHOST So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

HAMLET What? 17

GHOST I am thy father’s spirit, doomed for a certain term to walk the night, and for the day confined to fast in fires, till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul and freeze thy young blood: but this eternal blazon must not be, to ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list! If thou didst ever thy dear father love –

HAMLET O God!

GHOST Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET Murder!

GHOST Murder most foul, as even the best may be … but this, most foul, strange and unnatural.

HAMLET Haste me to know it, that I, with wings as swift as thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge.

GHOST ‘Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, a serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark is by a forged process of my death rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth, the serpent that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown.

HAMLET O my prophetic soul! My uncle!

GHOST Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, with witchcraft of his wit, and wicked gifts, that have the power to seduce! – won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming-virtuous queen … O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there! He half-turns, as if scanning the city below. But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air; brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, my custom always of the afternoon – upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, with juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, and in the porches of my ears did pour the leprous distilment; whose effect holds such an enmity with blood of man that swift as quicksilver it courses through the natural gates and alleys of the body, and with a sudden vigor curdles the thin and wholesome blood. Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand, of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatched: cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, unannealed, no reckoning made, but sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head: O, horrible! most horrible! 18

HAMLET (whispering) Horrible!

GHOST If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and damned incest. But Hamlet – howsoever thou pursuest this act, taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive, against thy mother. Leave her to heaven, and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, to prick and sting her. Fare thee well! The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, and ‘gins to pale his uneffectual fire. Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.

HAMLET O all you host of heaven! Hold, hold, my heart. Remember? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe. Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, all books, all pressures past, that youth hath copied there; and thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with baser matter: that I may remember that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!!!

As he screams this over the railing toward where the King must be, we hear from offstage:

HORATIO and the GUARDS My lord, my lord – Heaven secure him! Lord Hamlet –

HAMLET O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! … And O most pernicious woman! …

Enter HORATIO and GUARDS

MARCELLUS How is it, my noble lord?

HORATIO What news, my lord?

HAMLET O, wonderful!

HORATIO Good my lord, tell it.

HAMLET (with a slightly mad grin) No; you’ll reveal it. 19

HORATIO Not I, my lord, by heaven.

FRANCISCO Nor I, my lord.

HAMLET How say you, then … You’ll keep it secret?

MARCELLUS Ay, by heaven, my lord.

HAMLET (carefully, with brittle brightness) There’s no villain dwelling in all Denmark that isn’t an arrant knave.

HORATIO There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave to tell us this.

HAMLET Why, right; you are in the right … And so, without more circumstance at all, I hold it fit that we shake hands and part. Look you, I’ll go pray.

HORATIO These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.

HAMLET I’m sorry they offend you, heartily. Yes, in faith, heartily.

HORATIO There’s no offence, my lord.

HAMLET Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio, and much offence too. It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you: for your desire to know what is between us, overpower it as you may. And now, good friends, as you are friends, scholars and soldiers, give me one poor request.

FRANCISCO What is it, my lord? We will.

HAMLET Never make known what you have seen tonight.

FRANCISCO / MARCELLUS My lord, we will not. 20

HAMLET (with a look to HORATIO) Nay, but swear it.

HORATIO In faith, my lord –

GHOST (offstage, echoing) Swear.

HORATIO O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

HAMLET And therefore, as a stranger, give it welcome! There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come; never, so help you God, however strange or odd I bear myself, since I may hereafter think to put on an antic disposition … Swear that you, at such times seeing me, never shall, with headshake or ambiguous words, give out that you know aught of me: this not to do, so grace and mercy at your most need help you. Swear!

GHOST (offstage, echoing) Swear.

HAMLET Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!

They swear

So, gentlemen, with all my love I do commend me to you: and what so poor a man as Hamlet is may do, to express his love and friending to you, God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together; and still your fingers on your lips, I pray.

They start to exit. He pauses one moment –

The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!

And exits after 21

SCENE VI. (2.1) A room in POLONIUS’ house.

Perhaps a bit of music to show a little time has passed. Enter POLONIUS and REYNALDO

POLONIUS Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.

REYNALDO I will, my lord.

POLONIUS You shall do marvelous wisely, good Reynaldo, before you visit him, to make inquiry of his behavior.

REYNALDO My lord, I did intend it.

POLONIUS Marry, well said; very well said. Look you, sir – inquire of this man and that what Danes they may know in Paris; and by drift of question find if they know my son. Say you know him, but not well – ‘I know his father and his friends the better.’ Do you mark this, Reynaldo?

REYNALDO Ay, very well, my lord.

POLONIUS ‘But,’ you may say, ‘if it be he I mean, he’s very wild; addicted to, so and so’ – and there put on him what forgeries you please. Now, none so rank as may dishonor him, you follow me? – but such wanton, wild, and usual slips as are the companions of youth and liberty.

REYNALDO As gambling, my lord.

POLONIUS Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling –

REYNALDO But, my good lord –

POLONIUS Wherefore should you do this?

REYNALDO Ay, my lord, I would know that. 22

POLONIUS Marry, sir, here’s my drift; that you laying these slight sullies on my son, as ‘twere a little thing – the taints of liberty, the flash and outbreak of a fiery mind – the other may now say, ‘Ay, marry, I know the gentleman; I saw him yesterday, or t’ other day, with such, or such; and, as you say, there was a-gaming’; or perchance, ‘I saw him enter just such a brothel as you speak.’ See you now? Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth: and so shall you know my son. You have me, have you not?

REYNALDO My lord, I have.

POLONIUS God be with you; fare you well.

Exit REYNALDO; enter OPHELIA

How now, Ophelia! what’s the matter?

OPHELIA O, Father, I’ve never been so frightened!

POLONIUS In the name of God, what happened?

OPHELIA I was in my room … sewing … when Lord Hamlet came to me, all in a rush. His clothes all soiled and torn, no hat upon his head, and his stockings fallen down to his ankle – pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, and with a look so piteous in purport as if he had been loosed out of hell to speak of horrors.

POLONIUS What said he?

OPHELIA None. He was silent. He … struggled, within, as if barely damming up a stormy ocean, but words came there none. Such pain I’ve never seen in his eyes, or any eyes …

POLONIUS Mad for thy love?

She shrugs, unsure.

OPHELIA He took me by the wrist and held me hard; then goes he to the length of all his arm; and, with his other hand thus o’er his brow, he falls to such perusal of my face as he would draw it. Long stayed he so; at last, with a little shaking of mine arm, he raised a sigh so piteous and profound as 23 it did seem to shatter all his bulk and end his being: that done, he lets me go: and, with his head over his shoulder turned, he seemed to find his way without his eyes; for out o’ doors he went without their help, and, to the last, bended their light on me.

POLONIUS Come, go with me: I will go seek the king. This is the very ecstasy of love, whose violent property fordoes itself and leads the will to desperate undertakings as oft as any passion under heaven that does afflict our natures. I am sorry. What, have you given him any hard words of late?

OPHELIA No, my good lord … but – as you did command – I did repel his letters and denied his access to me.

POLONIUS That hath made him mad. I am sorry that with better heed and judgment I had not observed him: I feared he did but trifle, and meant to ruin thee! Curse my fatherly love and jealousy … He gives her a peck on the forehead. Come! We’ll go to the king.

Exeunt

SCENE VII. (2.2) Back at Elsinore.

Enter CLAUDIUS and GERTRUDE, possibly with attendants and courtiers, probably with Secret Service types like BERNARDO and MARCELLUS. They are speaking with two more college-age students, ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN, who may not be as “moneyed” as Horatio and Laertes. Probably friends from grade school, who couldn’t afford to go to the same college as the others. (While I’ll refer here to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with masculine pronouns, as with the guards, one or both of these students could be a woman. Also, whatever their genders, I’m drawn to the idea that R&G are a couple …)

CLAUDIUS Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern! Not only have we much longed to meet you, but a … need we have, to use you, did provoke our hasty sending. Something have you heard of Hamlet’s transformation? So I call it, since neither the exterior nor the inward man resembles what it was. What it should be, more than his father’s death, that thus hath put him so much from the understanding of himself, I cannot dream of. So, I entreat you both, that, being of so young days brought up with him, and hence so neighbored to his youthful behavior, that you take your rest here in our court some little time. Eh? And by your company, you may draw him on to pleasures … and, perhaps, if upon occasion you may glean or gather, if something to us unknown may afflict him – with luck, it may even lie within our remedy. 24

GERTRUDE Good gentlemen, he hath much talked of you; and sure I am two men there are not living to whom he more adheres. If it will please you to show us so much gentry and good will as to expend your time with us awhile, for the supply and profit of our hope, your visitation shall receive such thanks as fits a king’s remembrance.

ROSENCRANTZ Both your majesties might, by the sovereign power you have of us, put your pleasures more into command than request.

GUILDENSTERN But we both obey, and here give up ourselves, in the full bent to lay our service freely at your feet, to be commanded.

CLAUDIUS Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

GERTRUDE Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz: and I beseech you instantly to visit my too much changed son.

GUILDENSTERN Heavens make our presence and our practices pleasant and helpful to him!

GERTRUDE Ay, amen!

GERTRUDE has walked the two men downstage left. She turns, as POLONIUS enters from upstage right.

ROSENCRANTZ (as they exit) I didn’t understand a word of that.

GUILDENSTERN Shhh!

POLONIUS My good liege, I hold my duty, as I hold my soul, both to my God and to my gracious king: and I do think that I have found the very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy.

CLAUDIUS O, speak of that; that do I long to hear.

King and Queen meet near center stage. 25

CLAUDIUS He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found the head and source of all your son’s distemper.

GERTRUDE I doubt it is no other but the main; his father’s death, and our o’erhasty marriage.

POLONIUS (bowing) My liege, and madam, … to expostulate what majesty should be, what duty is, why day is day, night night, and time is time, were nothing but to waste night, day and time. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief: your noble son is mad. … Well – mad I call it; for, to define true madness, what is it but to be nothing else but mad? But let that go.

GERTRUDE More matter, with less art.

POLONIUS Madam, I swear I use no art at all. That he is mad, ‘tis true: ‘tis true ‘tis pity; and pity ‘tis ‘tis true! … A foolish figure; but farewell it, for I will use no art. ‘Mad’ let us grant him, then: and now remains that we find out the cause of this effect … Or rather say, the cause of this defect, for this effect defective comes by cause … Perpend. I have a daughter – who, in her duty and obedience, mark, hath given me this. Now gather, and surmise.

Reads: ‘To the celestial and my soul’s idol, the most beautified Ophelia,’ – That’s an ill phrase, a vile phrase; ‘beautified’ is a vile phrase: but you shall hear. Ahhh … ‘In her excellent white bosom, these …’ Oh! No, no, no …

GERTRUDE Came this from Hamlet to her?

POLONIUS Good madam, stay awhile; I will be faithful.

Reads: ‘Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love. ‘O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these rhymes – but that I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu. HAMLET.’

This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me. 26

CLAUDIUS But how hath she received his love?

POLONIUS What do you think of me?

CLAUDIUS As of a man faithful and honorable.

POLONIUS I would fain prove so. What might you think, when I had seen this hot love on the wing – as I perceived it, I must tell you that, before my daughter told me – what might you, or my dear majesty your queen here, think, if I had looked upon this love with idle sight? No, I went round to work, and my young mistress thus I did bespeak: ‘Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star; this must not be:’ and then I precepts gave her, that she should lock herself from his resort, admit no messengers, receive no tokens. Which done, she took the fruits of my advice; and he, repulsed, fell into a sadness, then into a fast, thence into a weakness, and, by this declension, into the madness wherein now he raves, and all we mourn for.

CLAUDIUS Do you think ‘tis this?

GERTRUDE It may be, very likely.

POLONIUS Hath there been such a time – I’d fain know that – that I have positively said ‘‘Tis so,’ when it proved otherwise?

CLAUDIUS Not that I know.

POLONIUS (pointing to his head and shoulder) Take this from this, if this be otherwise. If circumstances lead me, I will find where truth is hid.

CLAUDIUS How may we try it further?

POLONIUS You know, sometimes he walks four hours together in the courtyard.

GERTRUDE So he does indeed. 27

POLONIUS At such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him. You and I shall hide ourselves near, and mark the encounter.

CLAUDIUS We will try it.

POLONIUS But now, I do beseech you, let me take my leave, and I’ll board him presently.

Exeunt, and lights fade

SCENE VIII (2.2)

Lights up to find HAMLET, seated center. He holds his head in his hands, and in one hand holds a gun. The floor around him is littered with half a dozen books. And he does, as Ophelia suggested, look a mess: untied shoes, shirt awry, etc.

After a moment, he sighs, and his hands slump. With his free hand, he picks up a nearby paperback, and reads the cover.

HAMLET ‘To Be, or Not To Be.’

And with a snort, he tosses it to the floor.

That is the question … Whether it’s more noble simply to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune … (He stands, pointing the gun out) … Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die … (he shrugs) to sleep, no more; and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished!

He moves the gun musingly to himself, at the temple, or under the chin …

To die … to sleep; … To sleep … (with sudden realization:) Perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub! For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shed this mortal coil, must give us pause. There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life! For who would bear the whips and scorns of time – the oppressor’s wrong, the pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes – … when he himself might his own exit take in the breath of an instant … Who would these burdens bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life – But that the dread of something after death – the undiscovered country, from whose realm no traveler returns – puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of? 28

(Looking musingly at the gun again) Thus Conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus is red-blooded Resolution made pale by sickly Thought; And enterprises of great pitch and moment … with this respect their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.

He pockets the gun, and sinks to his knees. After a moment POLONIUS tentatively enters.

POLONIUS How does my good Lord Hamlet?

Hamlet brushes at a tear as he stands. He moves toward the old man, acting just a little strange; perhaps he picks something from his hair.

HAMLET Well, God-a-mercy.

POLONIUS Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.

POLONIUS Not I, my lord.

HAMLET Then I would you were so honest a man.

POLONIUS Honest, my lord!

HAMLET Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

POLONIUS That’s very true, my lord.

HAMLET For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion, … Have you a daughter?

POLONIUS I have, my lord.

HAMLET Let her not walk in the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to it. 29

POLONIUS (to himself) Still harping on my daughter … What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET (looking at the scattered books) Words, words, words.

POLONIUS Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET Into my grave.

POLONIUS Indeed, that is out of the air. (Aside) How pregnant sometimes his replies are! Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. I will leave him, and contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter … My honorable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

HAMLET You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part with. (As POLONIUS starts to exit) Except … my life. (then again to himself) Except my life.

POLONIUS Fare you well, my lord.

Exit POLONIUS

HAMLET These tedious old fools!

Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN

GUILDENSTERN My honored lord!

ROSENCRANTZ My most dear lord!

HAMLET My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?

ROSENCRANTZ As the indifferent children of the earth.

GUILDENSTERN Happy, in that we are not over-happy; on fortune’s cap we are not the very button. 30

HAMLET Nor the soles of her shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ Neither, my lord.

HAMLET Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favors?

GUILDENSTERN Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet. What’s the news?

ROSENCRANTZ None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest.

HAMLET Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true. Let me question more in particular: what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN Prison, my lord!

HAMLET Denmark’s a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ Then is the world one.

HAMLET A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one of the worst.

ROSENCRANTZ We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET Why, then, ‘tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ Why then, your ambition makes it one; ‘tis too narrow for your mind. 31

HAMLET O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET The shadow of a dream? A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.

HAMLET (laughing) Shall we to the court? For, by my fay, I cannot reason. … What make you at Elsinore?

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exchange a quick look.

ROSENCRANTZ To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.

HAMLET Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you. (As he looks shrewdly between them.) Were you not sent for? (Nothing.) Is it your own inclining, a free visitation? Come, deal justly with me; nay, speak.

GUILDENSTERN What should we say, my lord?

HAMLET Why, any thing, but to the purpose. You were sent for … and there is a kind of confession in your looks which your modesties have not craft enough to color. … I know the good king and queen have sent for you.

ROSENCRANTZ To what end, my lord?

HAMLET That you must teach me. (Advancing on Rosencrantz) But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the obligation of our youth and the ever-preserved love, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for, or no?

GUILDENSTERN (sharply, heading off what is almost an attack) My lord, we were sent for. 32

HAMLET Aha! … I will tell you why …

He moves to clean up the books, if he hasn’t already.

I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory … this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world … the paragon of animals … and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me … (Little smirk from the others) No, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

ROSENCRANTZ My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.

HAMLET Why did you laugh then, when I said ‘man delights not me’?

ROSENCRANTZ To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you. We passed them on the way; and hither are they coming.

HAMLET (with delight) What players are they?

ROSENCRANTZ The same you have often taken delight in, the tragedians of the city.

Flourish of trumpets within; they have arrived.

HAMLET (gleefully) He that plays the king shall be welcome! The clown will have his laughs, and the lovers peace for their speeches, and all will be well received and well paid! Gentlemen, your hands, come then – you are welcome to Elsinore. But:

He grasps them both firmly, with frightening suddenness. He speaks low and intent:

My uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived. I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Exeunt 33

SCENE IX (2.2) The courtyard, or entrance hall

POLONIUS welcomes four or five PLAYERS, a traveling actor troupe. He, too, seems to remember them fondly.

POLONIUS The best actors in the world! – either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, … pastoral-comical, … historical-pastoral, … tragical-historical, … tragical-comical-historical-pastoral …

Enter HAMLET, followed by ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN

HAMLET You are welcome, masters; welcome, all! I am glad to see thee well. Welcome, good friends. (to one with a beard) O, my old friend! thy face is valenced since I saw thee last: comest thou to beard me in Denmark? (to a boy who plays the women parts – or an actual woman – gesturing how tall the youth has grown) What, my young lady and mistress! By our lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last! Pray God, your voice be still un-cracked, yes? Masters, you are all welcome. We’ll have a speech straight! come, give us a taste of your quality. Come! a passionate speech!

LEADING PLAYER What speech, my lord?

HAMLET I heard thee speak me a speech once: ‘twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido; and of it especially, where 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 the Hyrcanian beast, hath now’ … no no … yes, ‘hath now this dread and black complexion smeared with heraldry more dismal; head to foot is he horridly smeared with blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, baked there by the fires in the burning streets, that lend a tyrannous and damned light to their lord’s murders – and thus decorated with coagulate gore, the hellish Pyrrhus seeks old Priam.’ So, proceed you.

POLONIUS (applauding) Before God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good discretion.

LEADING 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 The unnerved old man falls. Then the great city, As if felled as well by this blow, 34

With a hideous crash collapses to its flaming base. And in that moment, and with less remorse, Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword now fell on Priam.

‘Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods – ‘

POLONIUS This is too long.

HAMLET Prithee, say on: he’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps: say on: come to Hecuba.

HORATIO has entered, somewhere during all this, and stands watching. He may enter carrying a bag of his own fencing equipment – the foils, white vests, and masks, since he and Hamlet both enjoy the sport – or he may later rummage among the players’ theatrical equipment and come up with some swords he likes. For now, he quietly watches.

LEADING PLAYER ‘But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen – ‘

HAMLET ‘The mobled queen?’

POLONIUS That’s good; ‘mobled queen’ is good.

LEADING PLAYER ‘Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames With pitiful tears; a cloth upon that head Where late the crown had stood, and no robe but A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up; Any who this had seen, would have railed ‘gainst Fortune; And if the gods themselves did see her then, When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs – The instant burst of clamor that she made, Would have wet the burning eyes of heaven.’

POLONIUS Look, how pale he has turned, and the tears in his eyes. Pray you, no more.

HAMLET (applauding) ‘Tis well! … I’ll have thee speak out the rest soon. (Embracing the Lead Player, he speaks to Polonius) Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well seen to; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live. 35

POLONIUS My lord, I will give them all that they deserve.

HAMLET God’s bodykins, man, much better! Give every man what he ‘deserves,’ and who should escape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

POLONIUS Come, sirs.

HAMLET Follow him, friends: and look you mock him not. We’ll hear a play tomorrow!

Exit POLONIUS with all the PLAYERS as Hamlet notices HORATIO.

My good friends, I’ll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore.

ROSENCRANTZ Good my lord!

HAMLET Ay, so, God be with you.

Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN

HAMLET and HORATIO stare at one another. Then a fencing foil is wordlessly handed, or tossed, over.

HAMLET O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I, Horatio. (as he idly swings the blade) Is it not monstrous that this player here, but in a fiction, in a dream of passion, could force his soul so to his own imagining that from his face all color drains, tears prick his eyes, his voice broken – his whole function suiting to this conceit?

By this time, they have taken up fencing stances – they are rich kids, and well-practiced in many arts, including this one – so it’s a sport they often like to play, and sometimes practice while they talk. Hamlet lunges on his next line, and they fence while he continues.

And all for nothing! For Hecuba! What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her? What would he do, had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have? He would drown the stage with tears and cleave the general ear with horrid speech – make mad the guilty and appall the free – confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed the very faculties of eyes and ears.

He has beaten Horatio back with those words – now he pauses. 36

Yet I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, mope like John-a-dreams, estranged from my cause, and can say nothing. (Horatio attacks, but not too hard; Hamlet parries almost idly as he continues.) No, not for a king! And a father! Upon whose property and most dear life a damned defeat was made.

Their swords crossed, Hamlet holds Horatio off one more minute, not retreating any further.

Am I a coward?

HORATIO No, my lord.

HAMLET Who calls me villain?

HORATIO None, my lord.

Hamlet shoves him back, and goes on the offensive again.

HAMLET Tweaks me by the nose, and breaks my head? Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face? Gives me the lie in the throat, as deep as to the lungs? Who does me this? Ha! ‘Swounds, I should be so used, and I should take it! For it cannot be but I am pigeon-livered and lack the gall to make oppression bitter –

And now he really starts beating on Horatio, who suddenly fears for his life.

– Or long before this I should have fatted all the region crows with this slave’s offal! Bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! O, vengeance!

Suddenly coming to, seeing Horatio, horrified, on the floor, he drops his sword, and his mania.

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, eh? (He helps him up.) That I, the son of a dear father murdered, prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, must unpack my heart with words, and fall a-cursing like a whore.

Behind him, the Leading Player has entered, to gather up remaining props and equipment they brought on earlier. Hamlet is sunk in thought for a moment, and then speaks slowly.

I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play … have by the very cunning of the scene been struck so to the soul that presently they have proclaimed their malefactions.

He calls to the Player – and if these are his swords, Hamlet and Horatio will hand them over.

Old friend – can you play the Murder of Gonzago? 37

LEADING PLAYER Ay, my lord.

HAMLET We’ll have it to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down and insert in it, could you not?

LEADING PLAYER Ay, my lord.

Hamlet nods his dismissal, and the Leading Player exits.

HAMLET The spirit that we have seen, Horatio, in my father’s form, may be the devil. The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape; and perhaps out of my weakness and my melancholy, as he is very potent with such spirits, abuses me to damn me. My uncle may be an innocent. I’ll have proof before I act.

HORATIO But what will you take for proof?

HAMLET I’ll have these players play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks; if he do but blench, I’ll know my course! The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king!

Blackout

SCENE X. (3.1). The courtyard.

Birdsong, to suggest that we’re outside. Perhaps a gobo to cast the shadows of leafy branches. Enter CLAUDIUS & GERTRUDE, with ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN, already in conversation.

ROSENCRANTZ He does confess he feels himself distracted, but from what cause he will by no means speak.

GUILDENSTERN And with a crafty madness he keeps aloof, when we would bring him on to some confession of his true state.

GERTRUDE Did he receive you well? 38

ROSENCRANTZ Most like a gentleman.

GERTRUDE Did you assay him to any pastime?

Enter POLONIUS with OPHELIA

ROSENCRANTZ Madam, we told him of certain players that are now here about the court, and there did seem in him a kind of joy to hear of it. I think they are already ordered this night to play before him.

POLONIUS ‘Tis most true – and he beseeched me to entreat your majesties to hear and see the matter.

CLAUDIUS With all my heart; and it doth much content me to hear him so inclined. Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, and drive his purpose on to these delights.

ROSENCRANTZ We shall, my lord.

Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN

CLAUDIUS Sweet Gertrude, leave us too; for we have closely sent for Hamlet hither, that he, as ‘twere by accident, may here affront Ophelia: her father and myself will so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen, we may of their encounter frankly judge if it be the affliction of his love or no that thus he suffers for.

GERTRUDE I shall obey you. And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish that your good beauties be the happy cause of Hamlet’s wildness: so shall I hope your virtues will bring him to his senses again.

OPHELIA Madam, I wish it may.

Exit GERTRUDE DL, and POLONIUS and CLAUDIUS UR. OPHELIA sits on a DS bench. Enter HAMLET. He stops for a moment on seeing Ophelia alone, then begins to walk by.

HAMLET Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered.

OPHELIA Good my lord – (He stops.) My lord, I have remembrances of yours, that I have longed long to re-deliver; I pray you, now receive them. 39

HAMLET No, not I; I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA My honored lord, you know right well you did; and, with them, words of so sweet breath composed as made the things more rich: their perfume lost, take these again.

HAMLET Are you honest?

OPHELIA My lord?

HAMLET Are you fair?

OPHELIA What means your lordship?

HAMLET That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty … I did love you once.

OPHELIA Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET You should not have believed me; I loved you not.

OPHELIA I was the more deceived.

HAMLET Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. (He hears a noise, or catches a flicker in her eyes, and becomes immediately suspicious.) Where’s your father?

OPHELIA At home, my lord. 40

HAMLET (watching the wings on both sides, trying to see where Polonius is hiding) Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in his own house. Farewell.

OPHELIA O, help him, you sweet heavens!

HAMLET (turning back from his exit) If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. (moving toward her again, she shrinks away) Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. O! It hath made me mad … Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell.

OPHELIA O heavenly powers, restore him!

HAMLET (shouting to his unseen audience) I say, we will have no more marriages! Those that are married already – all but one – shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.

OPHELIA (on the floor, weeping) O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown …

Re-enter CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS

CLAUDIUS (striding briskly toward where Hamlet exited) Love! his affections do not that way tend. Nor what he spoke, though it lacked form a little, was not like madness. There’s something in his soul, over which his melancholy sits on brood; and I do not doubt that when that egg hatches, the disclose will be some danger. He shall with speed be sent to England – and let the different seas and variable countries expel this matter in his heart. What think you on it?

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 firm with him. If their conference bear not fruit, to England send him, or confine him where your wisdom best shall think.

CLAUDIUS A mother’s touch … It shall be so: Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

They storm out, leaving Ophelia where she is. Slow fade on the sobbing girl. 41

SCENE XI (3.2). A hall in the castle.

The Players are nearly ready to perform … they rehearse, dress, etc., as HAMLET walks among them. They may also be setting up three chairs on SL and three more SR.

HAMLET (to one) Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. (and to another) And do not saw the air too much with your hand, like this, but use all gently. (to all) Suit the action to the word, the word to the action: for anything too overdone is far from the purpose of playing, whose end always was, and still is, to hold a mirror up to nature. Oh – And those that play the clowns? … speak no more than is set down for you.

Enter POLONIUS and HORATIO

How now, my lord! Will the king hear this piece of work?

POLONIUS He and the queen both, and presently.

HAMLET Bid them make haste. Horatio!

Exit POLONIUS

HORATIO Here, sweet lord, at your service.

HAMLET Horatio, thou art as just a man as ever I met.

HORATIO O, my dear lord –

HAMLET Nay, do not think I flatter.

He draws him away downstage, and the Players finish what they’re doing and exit.

There is a play to-night before the king; one scene of it comes near the circumstance which I have told thee of my father’s death. I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot, even with the very comment of thy soul observe mine uncle: if his occulted guilt do not itself unkennel in one speech, it is a damned ghost that we have seen, and my imaginations are as foul as Vulcan’s stithy. Give the king your heedful note; for I need thy fair judgment to join, or test, mine own.

HORATIO Well, my lord. 42

HAMLET They are coming to the play; I must be idle: get you a place.

Danish march. A flourish. Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN – pretty much EVERYONE. The king and queen head toward the chairs or the benches downstage right, while Polonius and Ophelia seat themselves DL.

CLAUDIUS How fares our cousin Hamlet?

HAMLET Excellent, i’ faith! Of the chameleon’s dish – I eat the air! (As Claudius looks puzzled, Hamlet speaks to POLONIUS) My lord, you played once in the university, you say?

POLONIUS That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.

HAMLET What did you enact?

POLONIUS I did enact Julius Caesar: I was killed in the Capitol; Brutus killed me.

HAMLET It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there. Be the players ready?

ROSENCRANTZ Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.

GERTRUDE Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

HAMLET (moving to Ophelia) No, good mother, here’s metal more attractive … Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

OPHELIA No, my lord.

HAMLET I mean, my head upon your lap?

OPHELIA Ay, my lord.

He crouches by her feet, leaning his head on her knee. 43

HAMLET Do you think I meant country matters?

OPHELIA I think nothing, my lord.

HAMLET That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.

OPHELIA What is, my lord?

HAMLET Nothing.

OPHELIA (rolling her eyes as he bounds to his feet, sitting beside her) You are merry, my lord.

HAMLET Who, I?

OPHELIA Ay, my lord.

HAMLET God! What should a man do but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.

OPHELIA Nay, ‘tis twice two months, my lord.

HAMLET So long? O heavens! died two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year.

Enter Prologue

Prologue For us, and for our tragedy, Here stooping to your clemency, We beg your hearing patiently.

HAMLET Is this a prologue, or the inscription in a ring? 44

OPHELIA ‘Tis brief, my lord.

HAMLET As woman’s love.

Enter two Players, King and Queen

Player King Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground, Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

Player Queen So many journeys may the sun and moon Make us again count o’er ere love be done! But, woe is me, you are so sick of late, So far from cheer and from your former state! Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know; And as my love is sized, my fear is so: Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

Player King ‘Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too; My operant powers their functions leave to do: And thou shalt live in this fair world behind, Honour’d, beloved; and haply one as kind For husband shalt thou--

Player Queen O, confound the rest! Such love must needs be treason in my breast: In second husband let me be accurst! None wed the second but who killed the first. A second time I kill my husband dead, When second husband kisses me in bed.

Player King I do believe you think what now you speak; But what we do determine oft we break. What to ourselves in passion we propose, The passion ending, doth the purpose lose. So think thou wilt no second husband wed; But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead. 45

Player Queen Never earth to me give food, nor heaven light! Sport and repose lock from me day and night! Each opposite that blanks the face of joy Meet what I would have well and it destroy! Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife, If, once a widow, ever I be wife!

HAMLET If she should break it now!

Player King ‘Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile; My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile The tedious day with sleep.

Sleeps

Player Queen Sleep rock thy brain, And never come mischance between us twain!

HAMLET Madam, how like you this play?

GERTRUDE The lady protests too much, methinks.

HAMLET O, but she’ll keep her word.

CLAUDIUS (who has been looking uncomfortable) Do you know the story? Is there no offence in it?

HAMLET No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence in the world.

CLAUDIUS What do you call the play?

HAMLET The Mouse-trap. It’s a metaphor … This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna. Gonzago is the duke’s name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see anon. ‘Tis a knavish piece of work: but what o’ that? your majesty and we that have free souls, it touches us not. 46

Another player, in villainous black, creeps in, goes to the sleeping king, and during the following, removes a vial from under his cloak.

HAMLET This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.

OPHELIA You are as good as a chorus, my lord.

Lucianus Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing; Confederate season, else no creature seeing; Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected, With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected, Thy natural magic and dire property, This wholesome life end immediately.

He pours the poison into the sleeper’s ears as Hamlet speaks.

HAMLET He poisons him in the garden for his estate. And you shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.

Claudius, disturbed by the action on stage as well as by the way Hamlet watches him, slowly stands, as if seeing a ghost.

OPHELIA The king rises.

HAMLET What, frighted with false fire!

GERTRUDE How fares my lord?

POLONIUS Give o’er the play.

CLAUDIUS (roaring, off balance) Give me some light: away!

Pandemonium – chairs overturned, people shouting “lights,” everyone rushing in different directions. Hamlet, over all this, gleefully shouts/sings: 47

HAMLET Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play; For some must watch, while some must sleep: So runs the world away.

When everyone else is gone but the two of them:

HAMLET O good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pounds. Didst perceive?

HORATIO Very well, my lord.

HAMLET Upon the talk of the poisoning?

HORATIO I did very well note him.

HAMLET Ah, ha! Come, some music! come, the recorders! (he snatches one up, about to play a tune)

Re-enter GUILDENSTERN from downstage left

GUILDENSTERN Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

HAMLET Sir, a whole history.

GUILDENSTERN (gesturing down left) The king, sir, is in his retirement marvelous distempered.

HAMLET With drink, sir?

GUILDENSTERN No.

HORATIO has quietly exited by this time

ROSENCRANTZ (entering from downstage right) Good my lord! The queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you. Your behavior hath struck her into amazement and wonder. 48

HAMLET O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother!

ROSENCRANTZ Nay, good my lord. If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother’s commandment: if not, your pardon and my return shall be the end of my business.

HAMLET Sir, I cannot.

ROSENCRANTZ What, my lord?

HAMLET Make you a wholesome answer; my wit’s diseased. But impart.

ROSENCRANTZ She desires to speak with you in her rooms, ere you go to bed.

HAMLET We shall obey … (He half-turns, perhaps scanning for Horatio. After a moment, he notices both men are still standing and looking at him.) Have you any further trade with us?

GUILDENSTERN My lord, you once did love me.

HAMLET So I do still!

GUILDENSTERN Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do, surely, bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to your friend.

HAMLET Sir, I lack advancement.

ROSENCRANTZ How can that be, when the king himself says you are next in line for the throne?

HAMLET Ay, but sir, ‘While the grass grows, the horse starves.’ … Why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?

GUILDENSTERN O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly. 49

HAMLET (gesturing with the recorder) Will you play upon this pipe?

GUILDENSTERN My lord, I cannot.

HAMLET I pray you.

GUILDENSTERN Believe me, I cannot.

HAMLET I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET ‘Tis as easy as lying: govern these holes with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony; I have not the skill.

HAMLET (suddenly lashing out) Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would wish to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass! God’s blood! do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?

He is holding a terrified GUILDENSTERN SL when POLONIUS enters SR.

POLONIUS My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently.

With a shout, HAMLET whirls on him, throwing the recorder.

HAMLET I will come to my mother by and by!

All three men flee, and he is alone. 50

HAMLET Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.

Moving down left, where his father waits, he pulls out his gun.

But soft! now to my mother.

He moves SR, then stops again.

Let me be cruel, not unnatural: I will speak daggers to her, but use none. Though she deserve – !

Looking back DL again.

Now could I drink hot blood, and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on.

And DR …

O heart, lose not thy nature …

He stands at center stage, for a moment frozen in indecision … and the lights fade as he struggles with himself.

INTERMISSION 51

HAMLET

ACT II. SCENE I. (3.3) The king’s chambers.

Suggested by a desk, perhaps, and a couple of chairs: his executive office. Enter CLAUDIUS at high speed, followed by ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

CLAUDIUS I like him not! – nor stands it safe with us to let his madness range. Therefore prepare you; I your commission will forthwith dispatch, and he to England shall along with you.

GUILDENSTERN We will ourselves provide.

CLAUDIUS The terms of our estate may not endure hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow out of his lunacies. Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage.

ROSENCRANTZ We will haste us.

Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Claudius is alone for a moment, and silent; then his remorse gives way.

CLAUDIUS O, my offence is rank! It smells to heaven; it hath the primal eldest curse upon it: a brother’s murder. Pray I cannot – though inclination be as sharp as will: my stronger guilt defeats my strong intent. What if this cursed hand were thicker than itself with brother’s blood – is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy but to confront the visage of offence? And what’s in prayer but this two-fold force, to be forestalled ere we come to fall, Or pardoned being down? Then I’ll look up; my fault is past. He kneels, or sits. But, O, what form of prayer can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’? That cannot be; since I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the murder! My crown, mine own ambition and my queen. May one be pardoned and retain the offence? Standing again: In the corrupted currents of this world offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice, and oft ‘tis seen the wicked prize itself buys out the law: but ‘tis not so above … There is no prevarication, there the action lies in his true nature; and we ourselves compelled, even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, to give in evidence. What then? what rests? Try what repentance can: what can it not? Yet what can it when one can not repent? 52

He moves to kneel, downstage center: Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel, be soft as sinews of the newborn babe! … (Weeping) O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul, that, struggling to be free, art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay! All may be well.

He puts his head down, folding his hands, down center. Enter HAMLET, upstage.

HAMLET Now might I do it pat, now he is praying; and now I’ll do it. (He strides forward, holding the gun to the back of his head. Claudius will not hear him.) And so he goes to heaven! … and so am I … revenged. Wait. He pulls back slightly. A villain kills my father; and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven? O, this is a gift, a favor, not revenge. He took my father grossly, full of bread, with all his crimes broad blown – and how the audit of his sins stands, who knows save heaven? Am I then revenged, to take his murderer in the purging of his soul, when he is fit and seasoned for his passage? No! He crouches down beside Claudius, hissing into the praying man’s ear. When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed; at gaming, swearing, or about some act that has no relish of salvation in it; then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, and that his soul may be as damned and black as hell, whereto it goes. He stands, and pockets the gun. My mother stays: This ‘mercy’ but prolongs thy sickly days.

CLAUDIUS (rising slowly, wiping his eyes – he has been unable to pray) My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

SCENE II (3.4-5). The Queen’s rooms.

Enter GERTRUDE and POLONIUS

POLONIUS He will come straight. Look you lay home to him: Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with, and that your grace hath screened and stood between much heat and him. I’ll sconce me even here. Pray you, be round with him.

HAMLET (offstage) Mother! 53

GERTRUDE I promise you, doubt me not: but withdraw, I hear him coming.

POLONIUS hides just offstage

Enter HAMLET

HAMLET Now, mother, what’s the matter?

GERTRUDE Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

HAMLET Mother, you have my father much offended.

GERTRUDE Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

HAMLET Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

GERTRUDE Why, how now, Hamlet!

HAMLET What’s the matter now?

GERTRUDE Have you forgot me?

HAMLET No, by the cross, not so: you are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife; and – would it were not so! – you are my mother.

GERTRUDE Nay, then, I’ll set those to you that can speak.

She starts to exit, and he grabs her roughly, throwing her back against a chair. When she moves to get up again, he pulls out the gun.

HAMLET Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge; you go not till I set you up a glass where you may see the inmost part of you. 54

GERTRUDE What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me? Help! Help!

POLONIUS (charging in) Hamlet!

HAMLET (turning and shooting) How now! a rat?

Polonius falls. It happened too fast for Hamlet to see exactly who it was, as he wheels madly to grin at the Queen.

HAMLET (with crazy eyes) Dead for a ducat – dead!

GERTRUDE O me, what hast thou done?

HAMLET (gleefully, as he crosses to the body) Nay, I know not – is it the king?

He turns him over; then kneels beside him for a moment.

HAMLET (quietly) Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell. I took thee for thy better.

There is the sound of pounding feet, shouts, from offstage, in reaction to the gunshot and screams. HORATIO enters first, but he’s clearly only moments ahead of others. He stops dead, staring at HAMLET, on his knees beside the dead man.

They watch each other in silence for a moment. Hamlet’s face may register something like “You promised”; Horatio’s expression may be “You owe me,” or “Shit,” or both. He turns and exits, shouting “He’s leapt from the window! Follow me!” or words to that effect.

GERTRUDE and HAMLET hold til the guards’ footsteps have faded. Silence.

GERTRUDE (still staring at the body) O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

HAMLET A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother, as kill a king, and marry with his brother.

GERTRUDE As kill a king? 55

HAMLET Ay, lady, ‘twas my word. (as he sets down the gun) Leave wringing of your hands: peace! Sit you down, and let me wring your heart; for so I shall, if it be made of penetrable stuff.

GERTRUDE What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue in noise so rude against me?

HAMLET Such an act that blurs the grace and blush of modesty, calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose from the fair forehead of an innocent love and sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows as false as gamblers’ oaths – Look! Look here, upon this picture, and on this, the image of two brothers.

He may snatch up two small framed pictures from a nightstand – but I think I prefer that they each have a locket around their necks, containing one of the pictures in each.

See, what a grace was seated on this brow: Hyperion’s curls; the face of Jove himself; an eye like Mars, to threaten and command; a posture like the herald Mercury new-landed on a heaven- kissing hill. A combination and a form indeed, where every god did seem to set his seal, to give the world assurance of a man. This was your husband. Look you now, what follows … Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear, blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain cease to feed, and batten on this moor? … You cannot call it love; for at your age the hey-day in the blood is tame! It’s humble, and waits upon the judgment. And what judgment would step from this to this?

GERTRUDE O Hamlet, speak no more: Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul –

HAMLET Nay, but to live in the rank sweat of an unseemly bed, stewed in corruption, making honeyed love in a filthy sty –

GERTRUDE O, speak to me no more! These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears. No more, sweet Hamlet!

HAMLET A murderer and a villain! A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe of your beloved lord! A thief of the empire, that stole the most precious jewels, and put them, the crown and you both, in his pocket!

GERTRUDE No more!

HAMLET A king of shreds and patches – !

The GHOST enters, and as soon as HAMLET sees it, he breaks off, and shrinks in terror. 56

HAMLET … Save me, and hover over me with your wings, you heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

GERTRUDE Alas, he’s mad!

HAMLET Do you not come to chide your tardy son, who, lapsed in time and passion, lets slip the important acting of your dread command? O, say!

GHOST This visitation is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. Do not forget. … But, look, amazement on thy mother sits. Step between her and her fighting soul: Speak to her, Hamlet.

HAMLET How is it with you, lady?

GERTRUDE Alas, how is it with you, that you do bend your eye on vacancy, and with the incorporeal air do hold discourse? O gentle son, upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

HAMLET On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares. Do not look upon me!

GERTRUDE To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET Do you see nothing there?

GERTRUDE Nothing at all; yet all that is, I see.

HAMLET Nor did you nothing hear?

GERTRUDE No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET Why, look you there! look, how it steals away! (moving toward the GHOST as he exits) Father, speak to her! Look, where he goes, even now! 57

Exit GHOST

GERTRUDE This is the very coinage of your brain: this bodiless creation is the stuff of lunacy.

HAMLET Lunacy! My pulse, as yours, doth keep regular time, and makes as healthy music. It is not madness that I have uttered. Mother, for love of grace, soothe your soul not with this comforting thought – that it is my madness, and not your trespass, that speaks. That will but skin over the ulcer, whilst rank corruption infects all unseen. Confess yourself to heaven. Repent what’s past. Avoid what is to come. And do not spread the compost on the weeds, to make them ranker.

GERTRUDE O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

HAMLET Throw away the worser part of it, and live the purer with the other half. Good night: but go not to mine uncle’s bed; pretend some virtue, if you have it not. Going to POLONIUS I do repent, that heaven hath pleased it so, to punish me with this … and this with me. I will bestow him, and will answer well the death I gave him. So, again, good night.

GERTRUDE What shall I do?

HAMLET (back to her) Not this, by no means: Do not let the bloat king tempt you again to bed; pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse; and let him, with his putrid kisses, or stroking your neck with his damned fingers, make you to ravel all this matter out: That I essentially am not in madness, but mad in craft. Let him think me mad.

GERTRUDE (shakily) Be thou assured, if words be made of breath, and breath of life, I have no life to breathe what thou hast said to me.

HAMLET (preparing to drag the body) This man shall set me packing: I’ll lug the guts into the neighbor room. Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. I must be cruel, only to be kind: The bad begins, and the worse will follow behind. Good night, mother.

HAMLET drags out POLONIUS. GERTRUDE sobs. 58

Enter CLAUDIUS, followed by ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN and the guards from Act One, MARCELLUS and BERNARDO. He goes immediately to his wife, on his knees, holding and comforting.

CLAUDIUS Where is your son?

GERTRUDE Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night!

CLAUDIUS What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

GERTRUDE Mad! Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend which is the mightier: in his lawless fit, hearing something stir, he cries, ‘A rat, a rat!’ and, in this brainish apprehension … kills the unseen good old man.

CLAUDIUS (standing, in shock) O heavy deed! It had been so with us, had we been there. Where is he gone?

GERTRUDE To draw away the body he hath killed: he weeps for what is done.

CLAUDIUS The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch, but we will ship him hence: Ho, Guildenstern! As ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN step forward Friends both, go join you with some further aid: Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain, and dragged him somewhere hence: Go seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this.

Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN, with the Secret Service guys

His liberty is full of threats to all; to you, to us, to everyone. Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered? It will be laid to us, whose providence should have kept restrained this mad young man: but so much was our love, we denied it to ourselves, and let the cancer grow. … Come, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends; and let them know, both what we mean to do, and what’s untimely done. O, come away! My soul is full of discord and dismay.

Exeunt 59

SCENE III (4.2). Another room in the castle.

Offstage shouts of Hamlet! Lord Hamlet! are heard, then: Enter HAMLET and HORATIO from opposite sides.

HAMLET Safely stowed.

HORATIO Polonius is dead?

HAMLET (with an inappropriate smile) Indeed, the foolish, prattling counsellor is now most still, most secret and most grave.

HORATIO I have sworn an oath, my lord, and do not forswear it – but this is more than antic disposition!

Cries of Hamlet! from offstage, getting closer

HAMLET I must to England; you know that?

HORATIO Alack, I had not heard.

HAMLET There’s letters sealed: and my two schoolfellows, whom I will trust as I will adders fanged, they bear the mandate; they must sweep my way, and marshal me to knavery. You shall –

Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN

GUILDENSTERN Lord Hamlet!

ROSENCRANTZ What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?

HAMLET Compounded it with dust, whereto ‘tis kin.

ROSENCRANTZ Tell us where ‘tis, that we may take it thence and bear it to the chapel.

HAMLET Do not believe it. 60

ROSENCRANTZ Believe what?

Enter several guards (Francisco and Reynaldo)

HAMLET That I can keep your counsel and not mine own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge! What reply can you expect from the son of a king?

ROSENCRANTZ Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

HAMLET Ay, sir, that soaks up the king’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities …

GUILDENSTERN My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king.

HAMLET The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing –

GUILDENSTERN A thing, my lord!

HAMLET Of nothing: bring me to him.

HAMLET is led away by ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. HORATIO moves to follow, but is blocked by the two GUARDS.

BLACKOUT

SCENE IV. (4.3) Another room in the castle – the King’s offices, with chairs and a desk.

Enter CLAUDIUS, attended by BERNARDO and MARCELLUS, his “Secret Service” detail

CLAUDIUS How dangerous is it that this man goes loose! Yet we must not put the strong law on him: he’s too loved by the distracted multitude, who are swayed not by their minds but by their hearts and eyes. This offense punished, their judgment would fall on our innocent head, rather than his menace … To bear all smooth and even, this sudden sending him away must seem deliberate and planned – and the body must be quietly buried.

Enter (from SR) ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and HAMLET, under guard 61

CLAUDIUS How now! what hath befallen?

ROSENCRANTZ Where the dead body is bestowed, my lord, we cannot get from him.

At a gesture from CLAUDIUS, the Secret Service guys bring a chair down to center stage, or a little left of center. The two guards (Francisco and Reynaldo) deposit HAMLET in the chair, then return to SR entrance. Bernardo and Marcellus flank the seated Hamlet, while Rosencrantz and Guildenstern move to stage left.

CLAUDIUS Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?

HAMLET At supper.

CLAUDIUS At supper! where?

HAMLET Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are even at him.

At a nod from the King, BERNARDO slaps him, or punches him in the gut. There’s a moment while Hamlet recovers.

Your worm is the absolute emperor, for its diet: we fatten all other creatures just to fatten us, and we fatten ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar are but different dishes, at one table: that’s the end.

Another smack. As Hamlet recovers again, Ophelia enters SR – but just barely. She is stopped in the “doorway” by the two guards there. She strains to see or hear what’s going on, but neither Claudius nor Hamlet knows she’s there.

HAMLET A man may fish with the worm that hath eaten of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

CLAUDIUS What do you mean by this?

HAMLET (with quiet menace) Nothing … but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

In one long stride, the King crosses to him and slaps him, hard, himself. 62

CLAUDIUS Where is Polonius?!

If we can manage a blood capsule, I’d love to see Hamlet spit out a little blood during this speech. Maybe at the king’s feet.

HAMLET In heaven … Send hither to see … But if your messenger find him not there, seek him in the other place, yourself. (A raised fist, and Hamlet suddenly giggles.) But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall smell him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

OPHELIA, alarmed, turns and disappears.

CLAUDIUS (half turning to the SR guards) Go seek him there!

HAMLET (as they exit) He will stay till you come!

CLAUDIUS (collecting himself, as Marcellus and Francisco help Hamlet to stand) Hamlet, this deed must send thee hence with fiery quickness. For thine own safety, which we do value, even as we dearly grieve for that which thou hast done. Therefore prepare thyself: the ship is ready, and the wind favorable, the associates wait, and every thing is bound, for England.

HAMLET For England!

CLAUDIUS Ay, Hamlet. There is a home there, where thou mayst … rest.

HAMLET Good.

CLAUDIUS So is it! It is good – if thou could but see our best purposes.

HAMLET I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for England! Farewell, dear mother.

CLAUDIUS Thy loving father, Hamlet.

HAMLET My mother: father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. 63

HAMLET pivots again to ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN, arms outstretched.

HAMLET Come, for England!

There is an awful scream offstage right. HAMLET, SL, has a look of horror as he shrieks “Ophelia!” and lunges in her direction, but his two friends grab him and haul him bodily offstage. BERNARDO moves quickly to SR, but doesn’t exit. CLAUDIUS meanwhile draws downstage, gesturing to MARCELLUS.

CLAUDIUS Follow him at foot; tempt him aboard with speed; delay it not; away, and make haste! I’ll have him hence to-night!

Exit MARCELLUS after Hamlet

And, Bernardo … if my love thou hold’st at aught, and thy Danish sword still pays homage to us and our sovereign command …

BERNARDO Eternally, my lord.

CLAUDIUS Like a hectic fever in my blood young Hamlet rages, and thou must cure me: till I know ‘tis done, my joys can ne’er begin. He must not return. Our earnest and most royal commission is this: the present death of Hamlet. Do it. In England.

Exit BERNARDO after Hamlet

Blackout

SCENE V. Heathrow Airport

The appropriate sound effects fade in, of planes taking off or landing, and the usual PA voiceovers about “final boarding” and “Welcome to Heathrow.” Lights fade up on company members milling about doing airport things: re-tying their shoes while sitting on a bench, running for planes, or having a coffee before takeoff.

After a few moments, HAMLET crosses with ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. They have arrived in England. They are chatting easily, having apparently made amends: this will be some much-needed rest for him, etc. They have coats, luggage, etc.

After they exit, BERNARDO crosses. He is watching Hamlet, but hanging back. He knows where Hamlet is going, after all, and he’s been ordered to wait a few days … so he has all the time in the world. 64

SCENE VI. (4.5) Back at Elsinore.

Enter HORATIO. He moves slowly downstage, deep in thought, then shields his eyes to look up into the sky. Perhaps he is thinking of Hamlet, and looking for planes. He hears singing from offstage, somewhat scattered, loopy singing:

OPHELIA (offstage) To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine.

Enter OPHELIA from SR. She looks like hell. She’s grinning, a lascivious gleam in her eye, perhaps, as this is a bawdy song.

Then up he rose, and donned his clothes, And opened the chamber-door, And let in the maid – but once they laid, Was never a maid no more.

HORATIO Pretty Ophelia!

OPHELIA (singing) By Jesus and by Saint Charity, Alack, and fie for shame! Young men will do’t, if they come to’t; By Cock, they are to blame.

She darts out a hand to his crotch on this line, and he jumps back. Do I have to point out this is out of character for her?

Quoth she: before you tumbled me, You promised me to wed. (She says, or whispers:) Now you say: (singing) So would I had done, by yonder sun, If thou hadst not come to my bed.

Exit OPHELIA SL. As HORATIO stares off after her, GERTRUDE and CLAUDIUS enter behind.

GERTRUDE (to the King) I will not speak with her. How can I? 65

HORATIO I don’t know if she can speak with you.

GERTRUDE How is it with her?

HORATIO She is distracted … artless and unraveled … She speaks much of her father.

GERTRUDE Oh my sick soul …

HORATIO She sings, and says she hears there’s tricks in the world; and moans, and beats her heart; and speaks things in doubt, that carry but half sense. Her mood must needs be pitied.

Re-enter OPHELIA from SR, making them all jump

OPHELIA Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?

GERTRUDE How now, Ophelia!

OPHELIA (as she sings, she goes to the King, taking his crown and wearing it) How should I your true love know From another one? By his cockle hat and staff, And his sandals shun.

CLAUDIUS How long hath she been thus?

OPHELIA (singing) White his shroud as the mountain snow, Larded with sweet flowers Which bewept to the grave did go With true-love showers.

GERTRUDE Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

OPHELIA turns her gaze on the queen. 66

OPHELIA He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone; At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels … a stone.

CLAUDIUS How do you, pretty lady?

OPHELIA Well, God ‘ield you! They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.

CLAUDIUS Fathers and daughters …

OPHELIA (putting a finger to his lips) Pray you, let’s have no words of this. … I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him in the cold ground. … My brother shall know of it! (As if a decision has been made.) And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.

CLAUDIUS Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.

Exit HORATIO

O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs all from her father’s death. O Gertrude, Gertrude, when sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.

LAERTES (offstage) Where is this king?

GERTRUDE Alack, what noise is this?

CLAUDIUS Guard the door!

Enter LAERTES, armed – he bursts in, scattering guards and servants

LAERTES O thou vile king, give me my father! 67

GERTRUDE Calmly, good Laertes.

LAERTES That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard, cries cuckold to my father, and brands my mother a harlot, for if I am calm I am no true son!

CLAUDIUS What is the cause, Laertes, that thy rebellion looks so giant-like? Let him go, Marcellus; do not fear our person … Tell me, Laertes, why thou art thus incensed.

LAERTES Where is my father?

CLAUDIUS Dead.

GERTRUDE But not by him.

CLAUDIUS Let him demand his fill.

LAERTES How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with: To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil! Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit! I dare damnation, let come what comes, only I will be revenged most thoroughly for my father!

CLAUDIUS Who’s stopping you?

LAERTES Not all the world.

CLAUDIUS Good Laertes, if you desire to know the certainty of your dear father’s death, is it writ in your revenge that you must scythe down both friend and foe?

LAERTES None but his enemies.

CLAUDIUS Why, now you speak like a good child and a true gentleman. That I am guiltless of your father’s death, and am most sensible in grief for it, I shall presently leave to your judgment. Come, let us talk. 68

LAERTES How now! what noise is that?

Re-enter OPHELIA

OPHELIA (singing) They bore him barefaced on the bier; Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny; And in his grave rained many a tear:-- Fare you well, my dove!

She is carrying flowers, weeds, and sticks, all jumbled, and dripping dirt. He moves to her, touching her gently, peering into her eyes. She meets his look with a childlike smile.

LAERTES Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia! O heavens! Is it possible, a young maid’s wits should be as mortal as an old man’s life?

OPHELIA There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies. That’s for thoughts.

LAERTES (as she moves to the others) Hadst thou thy wits, and didst urge me to revenge, it could not move me thus.

OPHELIA There’s fennel for you, and columbines: there’s rue for you; and here’s some for me: we may call it herb-grace on Sundays. O you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy: I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died … They say he made a good end – (singing) For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.

LAERTES Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, she turns to favor and to prettiness.

OPHELIA (singing, as she exits) And will he not come again? And will he not come again? No, no, he is dead: Go to thy death-bed: He never will come again. His beard was as white as snow, All flaxen was his poll: He is gone, he is gone, And we cast away moan: God ha’ mercy on his soul! 69

LAERTES O rose of May! By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight, till our scale turn the beam!

CLAUDIUS Laertes, I must commune with your grief. Do this: go out, and make choice of your wisest friends, and let them judge the fault of your dear father’s death. If they believe I am touched by it, by direct or by indirect hand, then we will give over our kingdom, our crown, our life, to you for your satisfaction. But if not … Will you content to lend your patience to us? And we shall jointly labor with your soul to make it so content.

LAERTES Let this be so. But his means of death, and his obscure funeral – with no service, no stone, nor formal ostentation – these things cried out to be heard, from heaven to earth, so that I must call it to question.

CLAUDIUS And so you should. So you shall! And where the offence is let the great axe fall. I pray you, go with me.

Exeunt

SCENE VII. A room, somewhere in England.

ROSENCRANTZ sits in one of the upstage chairs, reading a newspaper. A bench or cot is placed downstage center, for Hamlet’s bed. HAMLET paces. Finally, he roars:

HAMLET How many days must I be imprisoned thus?

Enter GUILDENSTERN

GUILDENSTERN This is no prison, my lord. You may go where you like. It is merely suggested you stay close to this house, where you can be … attended.

ROSENCRANTZ It’s just until you are well, good Hamlet.

HAMLET (muttering) Confines, wards, and dungeons … England being another of the worst.

ROSENCRANTZ (with some amusement) All England is a prison?

No answer. The two exchange a look. 70

GUILDENSTERN The King would prefer you remain in England, for now.

HAMLET The ‘King’ would prefer I were dead.

Another look, more worried this time. Sensing this:

HAMLET Some time I shall sleep out. Leave me.

Exit ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.

HAMLET lies on the ‘bed’ DC. With a click, the full-stage lights are replaced with just a dim glow down center (as at the top of the show). HAMLET struggles to be comfortable, throws an arm over his eyes. He lies still for a moment.

GHOST (offstage, echoing) Remember …

HAMLET sits up. Then, as he slowly lies back down:

HAMLET I have bad dreams.

A quiet moment, then he stiffens, as he hears: a sharp tap-tapping of expensive shoes in the dark. They stop.

A heart-thudding moment or two, then BERNARDO steps into the dim light. He is visible to the audience, but it should be played as if the room is fully dark. BERNARDO stands upstage of the bed, and raises a knife above the ‘sleeping’ figure.

The knife comes down, but HAMLET rolls out of the way. He cries out once, and the two men fight. The fight ends out of the light, in the darkness downstage left, with a hoarse cry.

Click! Full stage lights come on, as ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN rush in. HAMLET crouches over the body, the blood on the dead man’s throat matching the stains on the knife in Hamlet’s hand.

GUILDENSTERN starts to go to the body, but pauses halfway, in reaction to something in Hamlet’s stance or expression. He is panting, his pulse rate is definitely up, his blood pounding in his ears.

GUILDENSTERN I know this man, do I not? Of the king’s personal guard? 71

HAMLET One Bernardo by name. I did think to call him friend.

ROSENCRANTZ Sent hither by the king?

HAMLET rises slowly. It may be noticed that he holds the bodyguard’s gun in his other hand. There is a strange look in his eye, hunted – paranoid, perhaps. He does not speak.

ROSENCRANTZ (after a moment, pulling out his phone) The king must know of this. Perhaps he can explain.

HAMLET raises the revolver to point at Rosencrantz.

HAMLET As you are my friends …

GUILDENSTERN, standing upstage between them, rushes them, protecting Rosencrantz. Maybe his sudden movement causes HAMLET to shoot. Maybe he would have shot anyway. GUILDENSTERN falls.

ROSENCRANTZ looks down in horror, then up to HAMLET. Both are frozen at what just happened. Then Rosencrantz, with a roar, pounces at Hamlet – knocking the gun aside as he moves. But he has forgotten the knife in Hamlet’s other hand.

HAMLET has not. It comes up between their bodies, instinctively. A gasp. Rosencrantz slides down Hamlet’s body, their eyes locked.

HAMLET looks at the two bodies in horror for a moment.

Lights out.

SCENE VIII. (4.7) Back at Elsinore – the king’s chambers again

CLAUDIUS is seated in his office; LAERTES paces.

CLAUDIUS Since you now have heard, and believed, that he who has slain your noble father hath also pursued my life - your conscience must now be laid to rest, and you may put me in your heart for friend.

LAERTES So it appears; but why have you not proceeded against these acts, so capital and so criminal? 72

CLAUDIUS (shrugging) The queen his mother lives and dies by his happiness. And I – whether my virtue or my plague, I know not which – find her so conjoined to my life and soul, I could not bear to see her in sorrow. You see the trap?

LAERTES But the people –

CLAUDIUS The general populace hold such love for him, they turn even his faults to virtues.

LAERTES I have a noble father lost! And a sister driven to desperation … !

CLAUDIUS Do not think I have been idle! I loved your father … moreover, we love ourself; we are not so dull-witted we will let our beard be shook by danger and think it sport.

LAERTES My lord, I am your servant. I beg that my arm might be the instrument of his fall.

CLAUDIUS My boy, I would have allowed no other.

LAERTES I bought a poison before I returned, so mortal that, but dip a knife in it, where it draws blood no medicine under the moon can save the thing from death that is but scratched with it.

CLAUDIUS (shaking his head, or his hand) Hamlet will not return from England.

A moment where they share a meaningful look.

LAERTES … A shame.

CLAUDIUS Even now, I only await word of his death.

LAERTES But how will –

Enter GERTRUDE, and CLAUDIUS jumps up quickly

CLAUDIUS How now, sweet queen! 73

GERTRUDE One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, they follow so fast.

The two men look at each other. She looks haunted, fragile, as she comes downstage, between them.

GERTRUDE There is a willow that grows across a brook, and shows its silvery leaves in the glassy stream. There fantastic garlands did your sister come to weave, of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and the long purple orchids that our maids do call dead men’s fingers … On the hanging willow boughs, her coronet weeds she clambered up to hang there – when one wicked branch broke; and down her flowery trophies and herself fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide; and, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up … which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, as one unaware of her own distress, or like a creature native to that element … But long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death.

LAERTES Ophelia is drowned?

GERTRUDE Drowned, drowned.

LAERTES struggles with himself.

LAERTES Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, and therefore I forbid my tears …

But it’s no use. He weeps. Fade out on Gertrude and Laertes embracing, as Claudius looks on.

SCENE IX. (4.6)

In a spotlight or downstage spot, HORATIO reads texts from Hamlet. This short interlude may serve to cover the removal of props or furniture upstage, in the dark.

HORATIO ‘Do not speak to the King, but repair thou to me with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death. I have words to speak in thine ear will strike thee dumb; yet even they are much too light for the weight of this matter.’ He grabs his jacket, preparing to leave. ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will remain in England. Of them I have much to tell thee.’ Exit / Lights Out 74

SCENE X. (5.1) A churchyard.

The stage is cleared, of chairs, desks, what have you. Enter two Gravediggers, with spades, etc.

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Is she to be buried in Christian burial, she that wilfully seeks her own salvation?

SECOND GRAVEDIGGER I tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave straight: the coroner hath considered the case, and finds it Christian burial.

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER How can that be? … unless she drowned herself in her own defense?

SECOND GRAVEDIGGER … That is the ruling.

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Drowned in self defense … That’s a new one … See, here’s the thing: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act …

SECOND GRAVEDIGGER (walking away, upstage) Oh, go along with you.

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER No, no, give me leave. Here lies the water – good. And here stands the man; good. If the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, like it or not, that he goes. Mark you that? He goes, therefore an act, therefore willing suicide.

The Second Gravedigger says nothing; he has moved upstage to climb into the grave, if we can manage such a thing.

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER (still downstage) I suppose if the water were to come to him and drown him, then he drowns not himself …

SECOND GRAVEDIGGER Will you have the truth of it? … If this had not been a gentlewoman, she would not be receiving Christian burial.

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Why, there thou says truth. And the more pity, that great folk should have leave in this world to drown or hang themselves, more than the common man … Come, my spade. (He picks up his shovel, but does not climb into the pit, but sits or leans, still thinking. The other continues pretending to dig.) There is no ancient gentleman but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers: they hold up Adam’s profession. 75

SECOND GRAVEDIGGER Wait, wait. Was he a gentleman?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Aye, he was the first gentleman!

SECOND GRAVEDIGGER He had no crest. What arms had he?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER He was the first that ever bore arms.

SECOND GRAVEDIGGER I tell you he had none.

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture? The Scripture says ‘Adam digged:’ could he dig without arms? (Shaking his head, the Second disappears into the hole.) I’ll put another question to thee.

SECOND GRAVEDIGGER (reappearing) Go on.

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

SECOND GRAVEDIGGER The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Ha! I like thy wit well, it is a good answer, the gallows does well … but not well enough! For the gallows may outlast those that do evil … but canst say the gallows is built stronger than the church? To it again, come.

SECOND GRAVEDIGGER ‘Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?’

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Ay, tell me that.

SECOND GRAVEDIGGER I cannot tell.

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating. When you are asked this question next, say ‘a grave-maker.’ For the houses that he makes, last till 76 doomsday! … Ah, this work makes me thirsty. Go, get thee to the pub, and fetch me strong drink.

The SECOND GRAVEDIGGER shrugs, climbs out of the hole, and exits DL. As the First picks up his shovel and hops into the grave, HORATIO and HAMLET enter DR.

HAMLET In my heart there was a kind of fighting, that would not let me sleep. I was awake when the assassin called. And that should teach us there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,--

HORATIO That is most certain.

The FIRST is digging and singing

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER In youth, when I did love, did love, Methought it was very sweet, To contract, O, the time, for, ah, my behove, O, methought, there was nothing meet.

HAMLET Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making?

HORATIO Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER (singing) But age, with his stealing steps, Hath clawed me in his clutch, And hath shipped me intil the land, As if I had never been such.

Throws up a skull

HAMLET That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain’s jaw-bone, that did the first murder! It might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o’er-reaches … Or of a courtier; which could say ‘Good morrow, sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?’ … This might be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord such-another’s horse, might it not?

HORATIO Ay, my lord. 77

HAMLET Why, even so: and now belongs to my Lady Worm; toothless, eyeless, and beaten about with a sexton’s spade: here’s a fine reversal of fortune, eh?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER (singing) A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet: O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet.

Throws up another skull

HAMLET There’s another: why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his cases, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not cry of ‘battery’? … (To the gravedigger) Whose grave is this?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Mine, sir. Sings: O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet.

HAMLET I think it be yours, indeed; for you lie in it.

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER You lie out of it, sir, and therefore it is not yours: for my part, I do not lie in it, and yet it is mine.

HAMLET You do lie in it – to be in it and say it is yours. It is for the dead, and not for the living, therefore you do lie … What man dost thou dig it for?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER For no man, sir.

HAMLET What woman, then?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER For none, neither.

HORATIO Who is to be buried in it?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she’s dead. 78

HAMLET How absolute the knave is!

HORATIO We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. How long have you been a grave- maker?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Of all the days in the year, I came to it on the very day that young Hamlet was born: he that is mad, and sent into England.

HAMLET Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Why, because he was mad! He shall recover his wits there … or, if he do not, it’s no great matter there.

HAMLET Why?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER ‘Twill not be seen in him there – for there, the men are as mad as he.

HAMLET How came he mad?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Very strangely, they say.

HAMLET How strangely?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Faith – from losing his wits.

HORATIO Upon what ground?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Why, here in Denmark. (As both men laugh:) I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.

HAMLET (who has been studying one of the skulls) How long will a man lie in the earth ere he rot? 79

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Well, … if he be not already rotten before he die … he will last you some eight year or nine year. A tanner will last you at least nine year.

HORATIO Why he more than another?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade, that he will keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. Here’s a skull now; this skull has lain in the earth three and twenty years.

HAMLET Whose was it?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER A whoreson mad fellow’s it was: whose do you think it was?

HAMLET Nay, I know not.

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! He poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the king’s jester.

HAMLET This?

FIRST GRAVEDIGGER Even that.

HAMLET Let me see.

He takes the skull, and moves downstage.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne 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 be your jokes now, eh … Your songs, your mad dances, those flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? … It’s … jaw- dropping … (a wan smile at his own weak joke) Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this end she must come. Make her laugh at that … Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing. 80

HORATIO What’s that, my lord?

HAMLET (moving back upstage) Dost thou think Alexander the Great looked like this, in the earth?

HORATIO Even so.

HAMLET And smelt so? pah!

He puts down the skull. The gravedigger, who is packing up, picks it up and puts it in his sack with the others, and exits under the next few lines.

HORATIO Just like that, I’m sure.

HAMLET To what base uses we may return, Horatio! To thus will pass those villains in England ...

HORATIO There was more than one assassin?

HAMLET I speak of all those who held me there. Villains and knaves, all.

HORATIO (after a pause) Then Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are no more.

HAMLET (not looking at him) They chose their side; and their own choices put them in the place of their defeat. He sees Horatio’s appalled look. Why, man, they did make love to this employment! 'Tis dangerous to come between the incensed points of mighty opposites. They are not near my conscience.

HORATIO You did love them once.

HAMLET Does it not, think’st thee, become now my duty – He that hath killed my king and whored my mother, popped in between the election and my hopes, thrown out his hook for my proper and deserved life, and with such vile deceit – Is it not perfect conscience, to quit him with this arm? And is it not to be damned, to let this cancer of our nature come into further evil? 81

HORATIO Your friends, your schoolmates! Your love's own father! A man's life –

HAMLET A man's life is nothing.

HORATIO Your faulty aim will slay all who stand near the target. Who else must perish before this ends?

HAMLET I am be-netted round with villains, Horatio! I can trust not one!

A pregnant pause. Perhaps HORATIO moves backward an inch or two. Then:

HAMLET But soft! Here comes the king.

Enter PRIEST with LAERTES, CLAUDIUS, GERTRUDE, and various mourners. We may or may not see the body carried on, or a coffin. I may try to do without, as if the body is just offstage.

The queen, the courtiers; but who do they follow? Quickly, hide.

They move to upstage left, and crouch, semi-concealed.

LAERTES What other rites will you perform?

HAMLET Laertes?!

LAERTES (as there was no answer) What ceremony else?

PRIEST Her obsequies have been as far given as we are allowed. Her death was … doubtful. If not for the king’s royal command, she should have lodged in unsanctified ground until the final trumpet. As it is, she will lie here, allowed her virgin crants, her maiden strewments and the bringing home of bell and burial.

LAERTES Must there no more be done?

PRIEST No more can I do, and no more will I do. We must preserve the sanctity of the holy rites offered to the others buried here. I would profane the service of the dead to sing a requiem and such rest 82 to her as to these peace-parted souls.

LAERTES (trembling with rage) Lay her in the earth: and from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest, a ministering angel shall my sister be, when thou liest howling.

HAMLET Sister!!

GERTRUDE Sweets to the sweet: farewell! (She scatters flowers into the grave.) I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife; I thought thy bride-bed to have decked with these blooms, sweet maid, and not have strewed thy grave.

Hamlet is slowly standing, in horror.

LAERTES Hold off the earth awhile, till I have caught her once more in mine arms – then pile your dust upon the living and the dead together, till of this flat earth a mountain you have made, to dwarf old Pelion, or the skyish head of blue Olympus.

HAMLET (roaring, as he advances) What is this grief, in such an emphasis? My sorrow must conjure the wandering stars, and beg them stand like wonder-wounded hearers!

LAERTES The devil take thy soul!

Grappling with him

HAMLET I have something in me dangerous – hold off thy hand!

CLAUDIUS Pluck them asunder.

GERTRUDE Hamlet, Hamlet!

PRIEST Gentlemen –

HORATIO Good my lord, be quiet.

The Attendants part them, but both men struggle against those holding them 83

HAMLET I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?

CLAUDIUS O, he is mad, Laertes.

GERTRUDE O my son, for love of God!

HAMLET Show me! What wilt thou do? Will you weep? Will you fight? Fast? Tear thyself? Drink vinegar? Eat a crocodile? I’ll do it! Dost thou come here to whine? To outdo me, in leaping in her grave and pulling the earth over you? Let me be buried alive with her as well, and let our mountain singe its head on heaven!

LAERTES Triple woes fall ten times triple on that cursed head, whose wicked deed deprived my sister of her most ingenious senses!

GERTRUDE Oh, this is mere madness: take him hence awhile, and let the fit work through him, til his silence sit drooping.

CLAUDIUS I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon him.

HORATIO goes to HAMLET, stage left. They look at each other a moment. Then Horatio slaps him across the face, turns, and exits stage right.

HAMLET (as he is dragged off left) Hear you, sir; what is the reason that you use me thus? I loved you ever! But it is no matter; let Hercules himself do what he may, the cat will mew and the dog will have his day!!

Exit HAMLET with ATTENDANTS

CLAUDIUS (to Laertes) Strengthen your patience; we’ll put the matter to the present push.

A hymn is sung for Ophelia. Mourners go to the grave, one after another. Horatio returns, gives a nod to Laertes, and pays his respects. Laertes, last, kneels beside the grave, as Claudius looks on. Hymn ends. Fade out. 84

SCENE XI. (4.7) Somewhere nearby.

Enter CLAUDIUS and LAERTES

CLAUDIUS Laertes, was your father dear to you? Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart?

LAERTES Why ask you this?

CLAUDIUS Not that I think you did not love your father; but that I know love may wax and wane with time. What would you undertake, to show yourself your father’s son in deed more than in words?

LAERTES To cut his throat in the church.

CLAUDIUS Well said! Good Laertes, keep close … (moving downstage) I will work him to an exploit, under which he must fall: and for his death no wind of blame shall breathe, but even his mother shall call it accident. He turns. Two months since, here there came a gentleman of Normandy, a gallant with a horse, as so many of the French are, but this one had witchcraft in his saddle.

LAERTES Upon my life, Lamond.

CLAUDIUS The very same. And he gave you such a masterly report for the arts and exercises! – but most especially for your rapier. That he had never seen another with motion, guard, nor eye, to oppose you. Sir, this report did pluck such envy from Hamlet that he could nothing do but wish and beg your sudden coming over, to test your fencing with his. Will you be ruled by me?

LAERTES Ay, my lord; so you will not overrule me, to seek peace.

CLAUDIUS To seek thine own peace … We shall bring you two together for a friendly wager and a match. He, being careless and noble minded, will not peruse the foils … so that, with ease, or with a little shuffling, you may choose the one sword that is sharpened, not blunted – and in an innocent thrust, may requite him for your father. 85

LAERTES (viciously) I shall run him through. (as a thought occurs to him) And even shall I not! I’ll anoint the sword with my poison. If I but graze him slightly with the contagion’d tip, it may be death.

CLAUDIUS And if this should fail – if he by chance should escape your venomed thrust … I will have prepared him a special chalice – so that when he calls for drink – If he but sips, our purpose will hold.

LAERTES Then are we agreed. My father’s murder will be avenged.

SCENE XII. (5.2) A hall in the castle.

HAMLET lies on the DS bench, his head in GERTRUDE’s lap. She strokes his forehead soothingly. He’s calm now.

HAMLET My father’s murder must be avenged.

GERTRUDE But not by warring with your fellows ‘mongst the graves.

HAMLET No … The height of his grief did put me into a towering passion … I am very sorry, good mother, that to Laertes I forgot myself. In the mirror of my own cause, I see the image of his. I’ll court his favors.

Enter OSRIC, followed by HORATIO, his arms still folded disapprovingly

OSRIC Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.

HAMLET I humbly thank you, sir.

OSRIC Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should impart a thing to you from his majesty.

He waves ‘go on.’

Sir, here is newly come to court Laertes; believe me, an absolute gentleman, full of most excellent differences, of the softest society and great showing: indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the very card of gentry, and the true expert with rapier and dagger. 86

HAMLET (sitting up) I am not ignorant of Laertes’ presence, nor his excellence.

OSRIC The king, sir, hath wagered with him six Barbary horses against six fine French swords, that in a dozen passes between yourself and him, he shall not exceed you three hits.

HAMLET (with perhaps a look toward Horatio) Rapiers, eh?

OSRIC The king would have it come to immediate trial, if your lordship would vouchsafe an answer.

HAMLET Sir, if it please his majesty, ‘tis all one. My customary exercise time is within this half hour. Let the foils be brought. The gentleman willing, and the king hold his purpose, I will win for him if I can; if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.

OSRIC I commend my duty to your lordship.

Exit OSRIC

GERTRUDE You shall pass some gentle entertainment with Horatio before you fall to play.

Exit GERTRUDE

A moment’s silence as they look at each other.

HAMLET She well instructs me.

Not a word.

HAMLET Give me your pardon, sir. What I have done, that unsettles your nature and honor, I here proclaim was madness. … (a little too lightly, too jokingly) You must have heard, how I am punished with sore distraction. Don’t you see? Hamlet is of the faction that is wronged; his madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy!

HORATIO (scathingly) Why, what a ‘king’ is this!

HAMLET (dropping it, nodding) Give me your pardon, old friend: I have done wrong; but pardon it, as you are a gentleman. 87

Horatio thaws, somewhat.

HORATIO You will lose this wager, my lord.

HAMLET I do not think so: since he went into France, I have been in continual practice: I shall win, I think … Though, you would be surprised by the illness about my heart …

HORATIO My dear old friend …

HAMLET It is but foolery; the kind of vague misgiving that might trouble a child … but it is no matter.

HORATIO If your mind dislike any thing, obey it: I will say you are not fit.

HAMLET Not a whit! We thumb our nose at superstition.

The stage begins to be set for the match – the benches are moved to stage left and stage right, the swords and other equipment are brought in.

There’s a special providence, even in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.

Enter CLAUDIUS, GERTRUDE, LAERTES, and OSRIC, with Lords, Attendants with foils, etc

CLAUDIUS Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.

Center stage, CLAUDIUS puts LAERTES’ hand into HAMLET’s, then goes to sit on a bench with GERTRUDE

HAMLET Sir, in this audience, let me proclaim I never meant any evil to you or any of your family – I beg you to free me in your most generous thoughts; for I have shot mine arrow over the house, and hurt my brother.

LAERTES I am satisfied in nature, whose motive, in this case, should stir me most to my revenge. But in my terms of honor I stand aloof; and can make no reconcilement till by some good advisement I can find a way to make this peace without losing my honor and my good name. 88

Till that time, I do receive your offered love like love, and will not wrong it.

HAMLET I embrace it freely; and will this brother’s wager frankly play. Give us the foils. Come on.

LAERTES Come, one for me.

CLAUDIUS Cousin Hamlet, you know the wager?

HAMLET Very well, my lord. Your grace hath laid the odds on the weaker side.

CLAUDIUS I do not fear it; I have seen you both.

LAERTES This is too heavy, let me see another.

HAMLET This likes me well. These foils have all a length?

They prepare to play

OSRIC Ay, my good lord.

CLAUDIUS Set me the wine upon that table. If Hamlet give the first or second hit, or quit in answer of the third exchange, the king shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath; and in the cup a pearl I’ll throw, a gift richer than that in Denmark’s crown! Give me the cups; the king drinks to Hamlet! Come, begin!

HAMLET Come on, sir.

LAERTES Come, my lord.

They play – I’ll have to leave this part to your imagination. Hamlet scores a hit.

HAMLET One. 89

LAERTES No.

HAMLET Judgment?

OSRIC A hit, a very palpable hit.

LAERTES Well – again.

CLAUDIUS Stay; give me drink. (He drinks.) Hamlet, this pearl is thine; here’s to thy health. He drops it in. Give him the cup.

HAMLET I’ll play this bout first; set it by awhile. Come.

They play

Another hit; what say you?

LAERTES A touch, a touch, I do confess.

CLAUDIUS Our son shall win.

GERTRUDE He’s fat, and scant of breath. Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows. (On the way to him, she goes to the cup.) The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.

HAMLET Good madam!

CLAUDIUS Gertrude, do not drink.

GERTRUDE I will, my lord; I pray you, pardon me.

She drinks, then walks to HAMLET with the cup. 90

CLAUDIUS (to LAERTES) It is the poisoned cup: it is too late.

HAMLET I dare not drink yet, madam; by and by.

GERTRUDE Come, let me wipe thy face.

LAERTES (to CLAUDIUS) My lord, I’ll hit him now.

CLAUDIUS (collapsing) It matters little anymore.

HAMLET (as GERTRUDE returns to her seat, perhaps stumbling slightly) Come, for the third, Laertes! I pray you, pass with your best violence!

LAERTES charges at him from behind, and slashes at his arm. HAMLET grabs at his arm, and instantly there’s a line of red. This enrages HAMLET instantly.

HAMLET Say you so? come on!

LAERTES Have at you now!

They fight, for real now. In scuffling, HAMLET gets Laertes’ poisoned rapier. Even as Laertes dives for Hamlet’s dropped weapon, he is fleeing any touch from the point of his opponent’s sword. But HAMLET gets in a vicious slash across Laertes’ belly.

CLAUDIUS Part them; they are incensed.

HAMLET Nay, come, again.

GERTRUDE falls

OSRIC Look to the queen!

HORATIO They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord? 91

OSRIC How is it, Laertes?

LAERTES (dropping to his knees) Caught in my own trap; I am justly killed with mine own treachery.

HAMLET How does the queen?

CLAUDIUS (desperately) She swoons to see them bleed.

GERTRUDE No! No, the drink, the drink – O my dear Hamlet … The drink, the drink! I am poisoned.

HAMLET O villainy! Ho! Let the door be locked. Treachery! Seek it out.

LAERTES It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain; no medicine in the world can do thee good; in thee there is not half an hour of life. The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, unbated and envenomed … the foul practice hath turned itself on me … Here I lie, never to rise again. Thy mother’s poisoned. I can no more. The king, the king’s to blame.

HAMLET The point envenomed too! Then, venom, to thy work.

He stabs CLAUDIUS. There is an uproar, people shouting “Treason!” etc. HAMLET grabs the poisoned cup, and forces the liquid down his throat.

Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, drink off this potion. Follow my mother!

CLAUDIUS dies

LAERTES He is justly served; it is a poison tempered by himself. (HAMLET goes to him.) Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet: mine and my father’s death come not upon thee, nor thine on me.

HAMLET Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.

LAERTES dies 92

HAMLET (as he struggles to stand) I am dead, Horatio. (leaning on Horatio, he looks around) You that look pale and tremble at this chance, that are but mutes or audience to this act, had I but time … (he is wracked with pain) Ohh! The potent poison quite overpowers my spirit … I could tell you … (another pain) … O, I die, Horatio! This sergeant of death is strict in his arrest … (With a gesture toward Gertrude) Help me …

HAMLET goes to his mother, kissing her forehead tenderly.

Wretched, wonderful queen, adieu!

As he crawls to center stage, HORATIO stands by the discarded cup.

Horatio, I am dead; thou livest; report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied.

HORATIO Never believe it: I am more an antique Roman than a Dane. Here’s yet some liquor left.

He moves as if to drink the last of the poison, but Hamlet puts out a hand from his spot on the floor, his voice breaking.

HAMLET As thou art a man, give me the cup. Let go. … (A moment of indecision by Horatio.) By heaven, I’ll have it!

With the last of his strength, HAMLET surges to his feet and rushes him, knocking the cup from Horatio’s hand. They collapse together, and Horatio cradles him gently as Hamlet lies on the floor.

O good Horatio, what a wounded name shall live behind me, things standing thus unknown! … If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story. The rest is silence.

HORATIO Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Slow fade to black