Page 1 of 52 HAMLET Scn. 1 Opening: Ghost and Hamlet Scn. 2 Polonius finds the cause of Hamlet’s madness Scn. 3 G & R against Hamlet and towards King and Queen Scn. 4 Go to the Nunnery:Farewell Ophelia Scn. 5 Play in Play - Puppets Scn. 6 Queen’s Bedroom - Slain of Polonius Scn. 7 To England - Death of G & R / Homecoming Laertes - Revenge determined and Ophelia’s Death Scn. 8 At the grave of Ophelia: Homecoming Hamlet / Vengeful Laertes Scn. 9 Duel of Prince of Denmark and His Dead Lover’s Brother HAMLET Scene I House Lights Down Stage center spot starts to go down Voice 1 Ha--------(8 beats) Voice 2 Hamlet, Hamlet, Hamlet Voice 1 Hamlet, Hamlet, Hamlet (starts on last ‘Hamlet’ of Voice 2) Voices 1 and 2 Hamlet, Hamlet, Hamlet Ghost Hamlet. (8 beats) (From the first floor entrance of the audience: Noises of several men’s foots; rushing) HORATIO (Scream) Look, my lord, it comes! Page 2 of 52 HORATIO You shall not go, my lord. HAMLET Hold off your hands. HORATIO Be ruled; you shall not go. HAMLET My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve. Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen. By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me! I say, away! Go on; I'll follow thee. (Hamlet enters the theater from the 2nd floor entrance, comes down to the stage from the stairs.) HAMLET Angels and ministers of grace defend us! HAMLET Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, 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 Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me! (Echo Voice 1 & 2) Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre, Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd, Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws, To cast thee up again. What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous; and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do? Both Voice 1&2: Ha!! (Long inhale with furious surprise) Ghost (Long silence) Mark me. HAMLET I will. (Puts his sword down) Page 3 of 52 Ghost (Voice 1 & 2 echoes whichever the words underlined. Also, which ever Italic words, needs to be said together. ) My hour is almost come, When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself. HAMLET Alas, poor ghost! Ghost Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I shall unfold. HAMLET Speak; I am bound to hear. Ghost So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear. HAMLET What? Ghost I am thy father's spirit, Doom'd 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, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porpentine: 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 in the best it is; But this most foul, strange (only with voice 1) and unnatural (only with Voice 2). HAMLET Page 4 of 52 Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge. Ghost I find thee apt; Hamlet, hear: 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, with traitorous gifts,-- O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce! --won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen: KING CLAUDIUS Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death The memory be green, and that it us befitted To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom To be contracted in one brow of woe, Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature That we with wisest sorrow think on him, Together with remembrance of ourselves. Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, The imperial jointress to this warlike state, Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,-- With an auspicious and a dropping eye, With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole,-- Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone With this affair along. For all, our thanks. (To HAMLET) 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 colour off, And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. (She comes down the steps and pulls Hamlet to the side.) Do not for ever with thy vailed lids Seek for thy noble father in the dust: Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity. Page 5 of 52 HAMLET Ay, madam, it is common. QUEEN GERTRUDE If it be, Why seems it so particular with thee? 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 windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage, 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. KING 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: HAMLET O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the everlasting had not fix’d His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! KING CLAUDIUS but to persever In obstinate condolement is a course Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief; It shows a will most incorrect to heaven, HAMLET How weary, stale flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! Ah fie! ‘Tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; tings rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! KING CLAUDIUS Why should we in our peevish opposition Page 6 of 52 Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven, A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, HAMLET 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! KING CLAUDIUS We pray you, throw to earth This unprevailing woe, and think of us As of a father: for let the world take note, You are the most immediate to our throne; (Gertrude hugs King Claudius.) Ghost King O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there! From me, whose love was of that dignity That it went hand in hand even with the vow I made to her in marriage, and to decline Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor To those of mine! HAMLET Must I remember? Why, she would hang on hm. As if increase of appetite had grown By what is fed on: and yet, within a month– Let me not think on’t–Frailty, thy name is woman! The Ghost But virtue, as it never will be moved, Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven, So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd, Will sate itself in a celestial bed, And prey on garbage. HAMLET O, God! A beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn’d longer–married with my uncle. My father’s brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules: within a month: Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not nor it cannot come to good: But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue. Page 7 of 52 The Ghost 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 leperous distilment; CLAUDIUS (interrupting) 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 vigour doth posset And curd, like eager droppings into milk, The thin and wholesome blood The Ghost Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd: Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head: O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible! If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest.