Franco Zeffirelli: The Art of Entertainment

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Hamlet, think of us as of a father...

for let the world take note:

You are the most immediate to our throne.

And with no less nobility of love...

than that which dearest father

bears his son...

do I impart toward you.

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 one auspicious

and one dropping eye...

with mirth in funeral

and with dirge in marriage...

taken to wife.

And now, Laertes,

what's the news with you?

You told us of some suit.

What wouldst thou beg, Laertes?

My dread lord, my thoughts and wishes

bend again toward France...

and bow them to your gracious leave

and pardon.

Have you your father's leave?

What says Polonius?

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.

Take thy fair hour, Laertes.

Time be thine,

and thy best graces spend it at thy will.

Farewell.

Hamlet?

And now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son.

A little more than kin, and less than kind.

How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun.

'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.

But to persever

in obstinate condolement...

is a course of impious stubbornness.

'Tis unmanly grief.

It shows a will most incorrect to heaven.

For your intent

in going back to school in Wittenberg...

it is most retrograde to our desire.

Be as ourself in Denmark.

Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

Good Hamlet...

cast thy nighted color off...

and let thine eye

look like a friend on Denmark.

Do not for ever with thy veiled lids...

seek for thy noble father in the dust.

Thou knowest 'tis common.

All that lives must die...

passing through nature to eternity.

Ay, madam, it is common.

If it be,

why seems it so particular with thee?

Seems, madam! Nay, it is.

I know not "seems."

'Tis not alone my inky cloak,

good mother...

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.

These but the trappings

and the suits of woe.

Let not thy mother

lose her prayers, Hamlet.

I pray thee, stay with us.

Go not to Wittenberg.

I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

This gentle and unforced accord

sits smiling to my heart.

That this too too solid flesh would melt...

thaw and resolve itself into a dew.

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed

his canon against self-slaughter.

O God!

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable...

seem to me all the uses of this world.

Fie on it!

'Tis an unweeded garden

that grows to seed.

Things rank and gross in nature

possess it merely.

That it should come to this.

But two months dead.

Nay, not so much, not two.

So excellent a king...

that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr.

So loving to my mother that he might not

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 it.

Frailty, thy name is woman!

Dear Ophelia,

my necessaries are embarked.

Farewell.

And, sister...

for Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor...

hold it a fashion and a toy in blood.

No more.

- No more but so?

- Think it no more.

Perhaps he loves you now,

but you must fear...

his greatness weighed,

his will is not his own...

for he himself is subject to his birth.

He may not, as unvalued persons do,

carve for himself...

for on his choice depends

the safety and health of this whole state.

Then weigh what loss

your honor may sustain...

if with too credent ear you list his songs.

Yet here, Laertes?

Aboard, aboard, for shame!

The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,

and you are stayed for.

There, my blessing with thee.

These few precepts in thy memory

look thou character.

Give thy thoughts no tongue,

nor any unproportioned thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Those friends thou hast,

and their adoption tried...

grapple them unto thy soul

with hoops of steel.

Beware of entrance to a quarrel...

but, being in, bear it

that the opposed may beware of thee.

Give every man thine ear,

but few thy voice.

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...

and borrowing

dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all:
To thine own self be true...

and it must follow, as the night the day...

thou canst not then be false to any man.

The time invites you.

Go, your servants tend.

Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well

what I have said to you.

'Tis in my memory locked,

and you yourself shall keep the key of it.

What is it, Ophelia, he hath said to you?

So please you,

something touching the Lord Hamlet.

Marry, well bethought.

'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late

given private time to you.

He hath, my lord, of late

made many tenders of his affection to me.

Affection?

Do you believe his tenders,

as you call them?

I do not know, my lord,

what I should think.

I will teach you.

Tender yourself more dearly.

My lord, he hath importuned me with love

in honorable fashion.

Ay, fashion you may call it. Go to!

And hath given countenance to his speech

with almost all the holy vows of heaven.

Ay, springes to catch woodcocks.

I do know, when the blood burns, how

prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows.

I would not, in plain terms,

from this time forth...

have you give words

or talk with the Lord Hamlet.

Look to it, I charge you! Come your ways.

I shall obey, my lord.

Hail to your lordship!

Horatio, or I do forget myself.

- How fare you, sirs?

- My lord.

I am very glad to see you.

But what, in faith,

make you from Wittenberg?

- A truant's disposition, good my lord.

- I would not hear your enemy say so.

I know you are no truant.

But what is your affair in Elsinore?

My lord, I came to see

your father's funeral.

I pray thee, do not mock me,

fellow student.

I think it was to see my mother's wedding.

Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.

Thrift, Horatio.

The funeral baked meats did

coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven

ere ever I had seen that day, Horatio.

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