Hamlet Passages Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Act I - Scene II Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, Claudius To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once! 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, To give these mourning duties to your father: And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire. But, you must know, your father lost a father; That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound Act II - Scene I In filial obligation for some term To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever Ophelia In obstinate condolement is a course He took me by the wrist and held me hard; Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief; Then goes he to the length of all his arm; It shows a will most incorrect to heaven, And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow, Take it to heart? Fie! 'Tis a fault to heaven. He falls to such perusal of my face As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so; Hamlet At last, a little shaking of mine arm O, that this too too solid flesh would melt And thrice his head thus waving up and down, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! He raised a sigh so piteous and profound Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd As it did seem to shatter all his bulk His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! And end his being: that done, he lets me go: How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, And, with his head over his shoulder turn'd. Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, Act II - Scene II That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! Polonius But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: This business is well ended. So excellent a king; that was. My liege, and madam, to expostulate What majesty should be, what duty is, Act I - Scene III Why day is day, night night, and time is time, Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. Polonius Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, There; my blessing with thee! And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, And these few precepts in thy memory I will be brief: your noble son is mad: See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Mad call I it; for, to define true madness, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. What is't but to be nothing else but mad? Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. But let that go. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; Hamlet But do not dull thy palm with entertainment O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware Is it not monstrous that this player here, Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann'd, Polonius Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; A broken voice, and his whole function suiting Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; That he should weep for her? For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Hamlet Are of a most select and generous chief in that. Am I a coward? Neither a borrower nor a lender be; Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? For loan oft loses both itself and friend, Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face? And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat, This above all: to thine ownself be true. As deep as to the lungs? who does me this? Ha! Act I - Scene V 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall Ghost To make oppression bitter, or ere this Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, I should have fatted all the region kites My custom always of the afternoon, With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain! Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, O, vengeance! And in the porches of my ears did pour The leperous distilment; whose effect Hamlet Holds such an enmity with blood of man I'll have these players That swift as quicksilver it courses through Play something like the murder of my father The natural gates and alleys of the body, Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks; And with a sudden vigour doth posset I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench, And curd, like eager droppings into milk. I know my course. The spirit that I have seen May be the devil: and the devil hath power Ghost To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible! Out of my weakness and my melancholy, If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; As he is very potent with such spirits, Let not the royal bed of Denmark be Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds A couch for luxury and damned incest. More relative than this: the play 's the thing But, howsoever thou pursuest this act, Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. Act III - Scene I And, like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin, Hamlet And both neglect. What if this cursed hand To be, or not to be: that is the question: Were thicker than itself with brother's blood, Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, To wash it white as snow? Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; Act IV - Scene IV No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks Hamlet That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Witness this army of such mass and charge Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; Led by a delicate and tender prince, To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come Makes mouths at the invisible event, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil. Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death and danger dare, Hamlet Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a Is not to stir without great argument, breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; But greatly to find quarrel in a straw but yet I could accuse me of such things that it When honour's at the stake. were better my mother had not borne me: I am very O, from this time forth, proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at My thoughts be bloody or nothing worth! my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them Act IV - Scene V in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, Ophelia all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. And will he not come again? Where's your father? And will he not come again? No, no, he is dead: Act III - Scene II Go to thy death-bed: He never will come again. Hamlet His beard was as white as snow, Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to All flaxen was his poll: you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, He is gone, he is gone, as many of your players do, I had as lief the And we cast away moan: town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air God ha' mercy on his soul! too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be wi' ye. for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget Act V - Scene I a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious Hamlet periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings. of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how Player Queen abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know; it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know And as my love is sized, my fear is so: not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, Where little fears grow great, great love grows there. that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one O, confound the rest! now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Such love must needs be treason in my breast: Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let In second husband let me be accurst! her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must None wed the second but who kill'd the first. come; make her laugh at that. The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love: A second time I kill my husband dead, Act V - Scene II When second husband kisses me in bed. Hamlet Hamlet Give me your pardon, sir: I've done you wrong; Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of But pardon't, as you are a gentleman. me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know This presence knows, my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my And you must needs have heard, how I am punish'd mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to With sore distraction. What I have done, the top of my compass: and there is much music, That might your nature, honour and exception excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness. you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet: easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away, instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes, cannot play upon me. Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.

Act III - Scene III

Claudius O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, A brother's murder. Pray can I not, Though inclination be as sharp as will: My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;