Franco Zeffirelli: The Art of Entertainment Page #4

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different with variable objects...

shall expel this something-settled matter

in his heart.

Madness in great ones

must not unwatched go.

To be, or not to be. That is the question.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind

to suffer the slings and arrows...

of outrageous fortune...

or to take arms against a sea of troubles...

and by opposing end them?

To die...

to sleep no more.

And, by a sleep to say

we end the heartache...

and the thousand natural shocks

that flesh is heir to...

'tis a consummation...

devoutly to be wished.

To die...

to sleep.

To sleep, perchance to dream.

Ay, there's the rub.

For in that sleep of death

what dreams may come...

when we have shuffled off

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 proud man's contumely...

the pangs of disprized love,

the law's delay...

the insolence of office, and the spurns...

that patient merit of the unworthy takes...

when he himself might his quietus make...

with a bare bodkin?

Who would fardels bear...

to grunt and sweat under a weary life...

but that the dread

of something after death...

the undiscovered country...

from whose bourn no traveler returns...

puzzles the will...

and makes us

rather bear those ills we have...

than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience

does make cowards of us all...

and thus the native hue of resolution...

is sicklied over

with the pale cast of thought...

and enterprises of great pitch

and moment...

with this regard their currents turn awry...

and lose the name of action.

- My honored lord.

- My most dear lord.

My excellent good friends.

How dost thou, Guildenstern?

Rosencrantz?

Good lads, how do you both?

What have you, my good friends,

deserved at the hands of fortune...

that she sends you to prison hither?

- Prison, my lord?

- Denmark's a prison.

We think not so, my lord.

Why, then, 'tis none to you...

for there is nothing good or bad

but thinking makes it so.

To me it is a prison.

Why, then your ambition makes it one.

It is too narrow for your mind.

Oh, God.

I could be bounded in a nutshell,

and count myself a king of infinite space...

- were it not that I have had bad dreams.

- Which dreams, indeed, are ambition...

for the very substance of the ambitious

is merely the shadow of a dream.

Shall we away?

For, by my fay, I cannot reason.

What make you at Elsinore?

To visit you, my lord. No other occasion.

Beggar that I am,

I am even poor in thanks.

But, my dear friends,

were you not sent for?

Is it your own inclining?

Is it a free visitation?

Come, come, deal justly with me.

Come, come. Nay, speak.

- What should we say?

- Why, anything, but to the purpose.

There is a kind of confession in your looks.

I know the good King and Queen

have sent for you.

To what end?

That you must teach me.

Be even and direct with me,

whether you were sent for or no!

My lord, we were sent for.

I will tell you why.

So shall my anticipation

prevent your discovery...

and your secrecy to the king and queen

molt no feather.

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 overhanging firmament...

this majestical roof

fretted with golden fire...

Why, it appeareth nothing to me...

but a foul and pestilent

congregation of vapors.

What a piece of work is a man.

How noble in reason.

How infinite in faculties.

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.

No, nor woman neither...

though, by your smiling,

you seem to say so.

- There was no such stuff in my thoughts.

- Why laugh then...

- when I said, "Man delights not me"?

- To think, if you delight not in man...

what Lenten entertainment

the players shall receive.

Just the same as ever before. Come on.

Boys, take the horses.

Out of the way!

Masters, you are welcome to Elsinore.

Good my lord,

will you see the players well bestowed?

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.

- I shall use them according to their desert.

- God's bodkins, man, much better.

Use every man after his desert,

and who shall escape whipping?

Take them in.

Follow him, friends.

We'll hear a play tomorrow.

My lord Hamlet!

Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore.

But my uncle-father and aunt-mother

are deceived.

In what, my dear lord?

I am but mad north-north-west.

When the wind is southerly

I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Am I a coward?

'Swounds, it cannot be

but I am pigeon-livered...

and lack gall to make oppression bitter...

or ere this I should have fatted

all the region kites...

with this slave's offal!

Bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous,

lecherous, kindless villain!

O vengeance!

Why, what an ass am I.

This is most brave...

that I, the son of a dear father murdered...

prompted to my revenge

by heaven and hell...

must, like a whore,

unpack my heart with words...

and fall a-cursing

like a very drab, a scullion!

Fie! Foh!

About, my brains.

Give me that.

It's heavy!

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.

I'll have these players play something

like the murder of my father...

before mine uncle.

I'll observe his looks.

I'll tent him to the quick.

If he do blench, I know my course.

The spirit that I have seen may be a devil...

and the devil hath power

to assume a pleasing shape, yea.

And perhaps out of my weakness

and my melancholy...

as he is very potent with such spirits,

abuses me to damn me.

I'll have grounds more relative than this.

The play's the thing...

wherein I'll catch

the conscience of the king.

'Tis almost the time, my friends.

Haste you!

Observe my uncle.

If his occulted guilt

do not itself unkennel in one speech...

it is a damned ghost that we have seen,

and my imaginations all are foul.

- I must be idle. Get you a place.

- Well, my lord.

These are the best actors in the world...

either for tragedy, comedy, history...

pastoral, pastoral-comical,

historical-pastoral...

tragical-historical...

tragical-comical-historical-pastoral.

For the law of writ and the liberty...

these are the only men.

My lord, you played once

for the university, you say?

That did I, my lord,

and was accounted a good actor.

What did you enact?

I did enact Julius Caesar.

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