Hamlet Page #6

to think they lay him

in the cold ground.

My brother will know of this.

And so I thank you

for your good counsel.

Good night, good night,

sweet ladies. Good night!

How long has she been thus?

Calmly, good Laertes.

A drop of calm blood proclaims me

bastard, cuckold's my father,

brands the harlot even here

between the unsmirched brow

of my true mother.

What causes thy rebellion

to look so giantlike?

Let him go, Gertrude.

Do not fear our person.

Such divinity doth hedge a king.

Where is my father?

Dead.

But not by him.

How came he dead?

I'll not be juggled with.

- No, Laertes!

- To hell allegiance!

Conscience and grace

to the profoundest pit!

I dare damnation!

Let come what comes,

only I'll be revenged

most thoroughly for my father.

Who shall stay you?

My will,

not all the worid's.

For my means, I'll husband them so

well they will go foul with little.

Thou speaks like a good child

and a true gentleman.

That I am guiltless of

your father's death

and sensibly in grief for it,

I shall to your

level judgement peer

as day doth to your eye.

He will not come again?

No, no, he's dead.

Go to thy deathbed.

He will never come again.

O rose of May, dear maid.

Kind sister, sweet Ophelia.

Hadst thou thy wits to persuade

revenge, it could not move thus.

How is it possible

a young maid's wits

should be as mortal as

an old man's life?

There's rosemary,

that's for remembrances.

I pray you, love, remember.

And there's pansies,

that's for thoughts.

Fennel for you and columbine.

There's rue for you,

and some for me too.

We may call it herb

of grace of Sundays.

You must wear your rue

with a difference.

There's a daisy.

I would give you some violets,

but they withered all

when my father died.

They say he came to a good end.

Where the offence is

let the great axe fall.

Now must your conscience

my acquittal seal.

And you must put me

in your heart for friend.

Sith you heard

that he which hath your noble

father slain pursued my life.

Tell me why you proceed not

against these feats so...

crimeful and capital in nature.

The Queen, his mother,

lives almost by his looks.

And for myself, my virtue or

my plague, I know not which,

she is so conjunctive to my life

that as a star moves not

but in his sphere,

I could not but by her.

So I have a noble father lost,

a sister...

driven to desperate terms,

whose worth

stood challenger on mount of

all the age for her perfections.

But my revenge will come.

Break not your sleeps for that.

You must not think we are

made of stuff so flat and dull

that we can let our beard be shook

with danger and think it pastime.

You shortly shall hear more.

I loved your father

and we love ourself.

And that, I hope,

will teach you to imagine.

From Hamlet.

Laertes, you shall hear.

"High and mighty, you shall know

I am set naked on your kingdom.

Tomorrow I shall beg your leave

to your kingly eyes,

where I shall, asking your pardon,

there unto recount

the occasin of my sudden

and more strange return.

Hamlet."

"Naked"...

and in the postscript he says

"alone". Can you devise me?

I am lost in it, my lord.

But let him come.

It warms the very sickness

in my heart.

If he be now returned,

I shall work him to an exploit

now ripe in my device,

under the which he

shall not choose but fall.

And for his death,

no wind of blame shall breathe.

Not even his mother shall uncharge

and call it accident.

Was your father dear to you?

Or are you like a painting

of sorrow, a face without a heart?

Why ask you this, my lord?

There live within the flame of love

a kind of wick or snuff

that will abate it.

And nothing is as a

like goodness still.

Goodness, growing to a pleurisy,

dies in its own too much.

That we would do, we should

do when we would.

For that "would" changes

and hath abatements and delays

as many as there are tongues,

are hands, are accidents,

and then this "should"

is like a spendthrift sigh

that hurts by easing.

But to the quick of the ulcer.

What wouldst thou undertake to

show yourself your father's son

in deed more than in word?

One woe doth tread upon

another's heels,

so fast they follow.

Your sister is drowned, Laertes.

Drowned?

Drowned.

Drowned.

Not to have strewed

thy grave.

And but that great command

o'ersways the order, she should

in ground unsanctified have

lodged till the last trumpet.

Must there be no more done?

No more be done.

Lay her in the earth,

and from her fair

and unpolluted flesh...

Ophelia,

may violets spring.

Hold off the earth till I have

caught her once more in my arms.

Now pile your dust upon

the quick and dead

till of this flat

you have a mountain made.

What's he whose grief

bears such an emphasis,

whose phrase of sorrow

conjures the wandering stars

and makes them stand like

wonder-wounded hearers?

The devil take thy soul!

I loved Ophelia.

Forty thousand brothers with all

their love cannot make up my sum.

What wilt thou do for her?

Show me what thou wilt do.

Wilt thou weep, wilt fight,

wilt tear thyself,

wilt drink up easel,

eat a crocodile?

Dost thou come here to whine?

Pluck them asunder.

What is the reason you use me thus?

I loved you ever.

But it doth not matter.

In my heart there was a fighting

that would not let me sleep.

Praised be rashness, for it

lets us know our indiscretions...

do sometimes serve us well

when our deep plots do pall.

That should teach us there's

a divinity that shapes our ends,

rough-hew them how we will.

Will thou hear how I did proceed?

I do beseech you.

From my cabin, in the dark,

groped I,

to unseal their grand commissin.

I found, Horatio,

an exact command.

My head should be struck off.

Here's the commissin.

Read it at more leisure.

Thus rounded with villainies,

I sat me down,

devised a new commissin,

wrote it fair.

An earnest conjuration

from the King

that upon view and knowing

of these contents

he should these bearers

put to death.

So Guildenstern

and Rosencrantz go to it.

Why, man, they did make love

to this employment.

They are not near my conscience.

Their defeat is their insinuation.

'Tis dangerous when baser nature

comes between pass and fell

incense points of mighty opposites.

Think that he that killed my king,

whored my mother, it not conscience

to quit him with this arm?

It must be shortly known from

England what is the business there.

It will be short.

The interim is mine.

A man's life's no more

than to say "one".

But I am very sorry,

good Horatio,

that to Laertes I forgot myself.

For by the image of my cause

I see the portraiture of his.

I'll court his favours.

The King, sir.

He wagers that in a dozen passes

between yourself and Laertes

he shall not exceed you

three hits.

He hath laid on 12-9,

and it would come to immediate

trial if your lordship answer.

How if I answer no?

If it please His Majesty, it is

the breathing time of day with me.

You'll lose, my lord.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes