Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
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For which they say your spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it, stay and speak.
[The cock crows.] Stop it, Marcellus.
MARCELLUS Shall I strike at it with my partisan?
HORATIO Do if it will not stand.
BARNARDO ’Tis here.
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HORATIO Exit Ghost.
MARCELLUS ’Tis gone.
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence,
For it is as the air, invulnerable,
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And our vain blows malicious mockery.
BARNARDO It was about to speak when the cock crew.
HORATIO And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
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Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day, and at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
Th’extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine; and of the truth herein
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This present object made probation.
MARCELLUS It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long;
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And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is that time.
HORATIO So have I heard and do in part believe it.
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But look, the morn in russet mantle clad
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.
Break we our watch up, and by my advice
Let us impart what we have seen tonight
Unto young Hamlet; for upon my life
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This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it
As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?
MARCELLUS
Let’s do’t, I pray, and I this morning know
Where we shall find him most convenient. Exeunt.
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1.2 Flourish. Enter Claudius KING of Denmark,
Gertrude the QUEEN, Council, including VOLTEMAND, CORNELIUS, POLONIUS and his son LAERTES, HAMLET dressed in black, with others.
KING 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
5
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy,
10
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
15
With this affair along. For all, our thanks.
Now follows that you know young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
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Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,
He hath not fail’d to pester us with message
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother. So much for him.
25
Now for ourself, and for this time of meeting,
Thus much the business is: we have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras –
Who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears
Of this his nephew’s purpose – to suppress
30
His further gait herein, in that the levies,
The lists, and full proportions are all made
Out of his subject; and we here dispatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway,
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Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the King more than the scope
Of these dilated articles allow.
Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.
CORNELIUS, VOLTEMAND
In that, and all things, will we show our duty.
40
KING We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell.
Exeunt Voltemand and Cornelius.
And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?
You told us of some suit: what is’t, Laertes?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane
And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
45
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 dread lord,
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Your leave and favour to return to France,
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark
To show my duty in your coronation,
Yet now I must confess, that duty done,
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France
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And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
KING
Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?
POLONIUS
He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
By laboursome petition, and at last
Upon his will I seal’d my hard consent.
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I do beseech you give him leave to go.
KING 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.
65
KING How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
HAMLET Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun.
QUEEN Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
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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.
QUEEN If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?
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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 forc’d breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
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Nor the dejected haviour 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 passes show,
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> These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
KING
’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
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In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness, ’tis unmanly grief,
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
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A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool’d;
For what we know must be, and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense –
Why should we in our peevish opposition
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Take it to heart? Fie, ’tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd, whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried
From the first corse till he that died today,
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‘This must be so’. We pray you throw to earth
This unprevailing woe, and think of us
As of a father; for let the world take note
You are the most immediate to our throne,
And with no less nobility of love
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Than that which dearest father bears his son
Do I impart toward you. 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
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Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
QUEEN Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.
I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.
HAMLET I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
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KING Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply.
Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come.
This gentle and unforc’d accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart; in grace whereof
No jocund health that Denmark drinks today
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But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.
Flourish. Exeunt all but Hamlet.
HAMLET O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,
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Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter. O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t, ah fie, ’tis an unweeded garden
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That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead – nay, not so much, not two –
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother
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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 –
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Let me not think on’t – Frailty, thy name is woman –
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow’d my poor father’s body,
Like Niobe, all tears – why, she –
O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
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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,
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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.
Enter HORATIO, MARCELLUS and BARNARDO.
HORATIO Hail to your lordship.
HAMLET I am glad to see you well.
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Horatio, or I do forget myself.
HORATIO
The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
HAMLET
Sir, my good friend, I’ll change that name with you.
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? –
Marcellus.
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The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 122