The Laurence Olivier Awards 1997 Page #2

---

to our desire,

and we beseech you,

bend you to remain...

here in the cheer

and comfort of our eye,

our chiefest courtier,

cousin and our son.

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.

Why, tis a loving

and a fair reply.

Be as ourself

in Denmark.

Madam, come. This gentle and unforced

accord of Hamlet...

sits smiling

to my heart.

In grace whereof, no jocund health

that Denmark drinks today...

but the great cannon

to the clouds shall tell,

and the kings carouse

the heavens shall roar again,

respeaking earthly thunder.

Come, away.

Oh, 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.

Oh, God.

God!

How weary, stale

flat and unprofitable...

seem to me all the uses

of this world.

Fie ont, ah, fie!

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 suffer 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.

A little month, or ere

those shoes were old,

with which she followed

my poor fathers body-

like Niobe, all tears.

Why, she-

Even she-

Oh, God, a beast that wants discourse

of reason would have mourned longer.

Marriage with my uncle.

My fathers brother, but no more

like my father than I to Hercules.

Within a month,

she married.

Oh, 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.

My necessaries

are embarked.

Farewell.

And sister, as the winds give benefit

and convoy is assistant,

do not sleep, but let me

hear from you.

Do you doubt that?

For Hamlet, and the trifling

of his favor,

hold it a fashion

and a toy in blood,

a violet in the youth

of primy nature,

forward,

not permanent,

sweet,

not lasting.

The perfume and suppliance

of a minute,

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 the health

of this whole state.

Then weigh what loss

your honor may sustain...

if with too willing ear

you list his songs...

or lose your heart...

or your chaste treasure open

to his unmastered importunity.

Be wary, then.

Best safety

lies in fear.

I shall the effect

of this good lesson keep...

as watchman

to my heart.

But, good my brother, do not

as some ungracious pastors do...

show me the steep

and thorny way to heaven...

whilst like a puffed

and reckless libertine...

himself the primrose path of dalliance

treads and minds not his own creed.

Oh, fear me not.

But here my father comes.

I stay too long.

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.

And 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 to thy soul

with hoops of steel,

but do not dull thy palm

with entertainment...

of each new-hatched,

unfledged comrade.

Beware an entrance

to a quarrel, but being in,

bear 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.

Farewell. My blessing season

this in thee.

Most humbly do I take

my leave, my lord.

The time invites you.

Go.

Farewell, Ophelia.

And remember well

what I said to you.

Tis in my memory locked, and you

yourself shall keep the key of it.

Farewell.

What ist, Ophelia,

he hath said to you?

So please you, something

touching the Lord Hamlet.

Marry, well bethought.

What is between you?

Give me up the truth.

He hath, my lord, of late made

many tenders of his affection to me.

Affection? Pooh!

You speak like a green girl,

unsifted in such

perilous circumstance.

Do you believe his tenders,

as you call them?

I do not know, my lord,

what I should think.

Marry, Ill teach you.

Think yourself a baby.

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.

Hail to your lordship.

Im glad

to see you well.

Horatio, or I do

forget myself.

The same, my lord,

and your poor servant ever.

Sir, my good friend,

Ill change that name with you.

- Marcellus.

- My good lord.

Im very glad to see you.

Good evening, sir.

But what is your affair in Elsinore? Well

teach you to drink deep ere you depart.

My lord, I came to see

your fathers funeral.

I pray you do not mock me,

fellow student.

I think it was to see

my mothers wedding.

Indeed, my lord,

it followed hard upon.

Thrift.

Thrift, Horatio.

The funeral baked meats did coldly

furnish forth the marriage tables.

Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven

or ever I had seen that day, Horatio.

My father.

Methinks I see my father.

Where, my lord?

In my minds eye,

Horatio.

I saw him once.

He was

a goodly king.

He was a man.

Take him for all in all, I shall not

look upon his like again.

My lord, I think

I saw him yesternight.

Saw?

- Who?

- My lord, the king. Your father.

The king,

my father.

Two nights together had these gentlemen

Marcellus and Bernardo,

on their watch in the dead, vast middle

of the night, been thus encountered.

A figure like your father,

armed, appears before them,

and with solemn march goes

slow and stately by them.

This to me in dread

and secrecy did they impart,

and I with them the third night

kept the watch,

where, as theyd reported

both in time,

form of the thing, each word made

true and good, the apparition comes.

I knew your father.

These hands

are not more like.

- But where was this?

- My lord, upon the platform where we watched.

- Did you not speak to it?

- My lord, I did, but answer made it none.

Yet once methought it lifted up

its head as it would speak.

But even then the morning cock

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes