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Your beauty was the cause of that effect; Your beauty, that did haunt me in my sleep To undertake the death of all the world,124 So might I live one hour in your sweet bosom.
They that stand high have many blasts to shake them, And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.
duty?173 Mar.
Horatio is a scholar and as such was sceptical of the reports of the sightings of a ghost seen by the guards on Watch, so he required to see the ghost himself. Upon seeing the spirit of the dead King Hamlet in battle dress he thinks that the ghost is come to give warning of some danger to the land as the warlike Fortinbras looks to reclaim the territory won by the dead King in battle and resolves to tell Prince Hamlet in the hope tht the spirit will speak to Hamlet. Horatio also makes mention tht the ghost may have evil portent or purpose as goodly spirits are not driven back at the coming of daybreak.
But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
impious stubbornness; ’tis unmanly grief: It shows a will most incorrect to heaven, A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,96 An understanding simple and unschool’d:
O! that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew; Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter!
My father’s brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules:
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!
If it assume my noble father’s person, I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape244 And bid me hold my peace.
Let it be tenable in your silence still; And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,248 Give it an understanding, but no tongue:
My father’s spirit in arms! all is not well; I doubt some foul play: would the night were come! Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise,256 Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.
Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.60
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment64 Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;68 Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
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.80
You do not understand yourself so clearly96 As it behoves my daughter and your honour.
I do not know, my lord, what I should think.104
Why, what should be the fear?64 I do not set my life at a pin’s fee; And for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself?
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff That beetles o’er his base into the sea, And there assume some other horrible form,72 Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason And draw you into madness? think of it; The very place puts toys of desperation, Without more motive, into every brain76
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confin’d to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purg’d away. But that I am forbid13 To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,16 Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
wicked wit and gifts, that have the power44 So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.
Unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d, No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head:
Ham. O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?92 And shall I couple hell? O fie! Hold, hold, my heart! And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up!
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,188 That ever I was born to set it right!
put on him What forgeries you please; marry, none so rank As may dishonour him; take heed of that;21 But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips As are companions noted and most known To youth and liberty.
See you now; Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth; And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,64 With windlasses, and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out:
My lord, I do not know; But truly I do fear it.
By heaven, it is as proper to our age To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions As it is common for the younger sort116 To lack discretion.
What it should be More than his father’s death, that thus hath put him8 So much from the understanding of himself, I cannot dream of: I entreat you both, That, being of so young days brought up with him, And since so neighbour’d to his youth and humour,12 That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court Some little time; so by your companies To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather, So much as from occasion you may glean,16 Whe’r aught to us unknown afflicts him thus, That, open’d, lies within our remedy.
A lack of will or want for open dialogue or communication from the older characters with the younger ones. Much talk of being unable to understand the minds of the young yet a complete lack of open and honest communication between the ages. and often repeated by Hamlet that he must not speak his thoughts, that he must hold his tongue and his peace. So much secrecy!
I doubt it is no-other but the main; His father’s death, and our o’erhasty marriage.
Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move;116 Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love. O dear Ophelia! I am ill at these numbers: I have not art to reckon my groans; but that I love thee best, O most best! believe it.
I will find Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed Within the centre.
Then I would you were so honest a man.177
Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.181
[Aside.] Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.
These tedious old fools!
you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so:
’tis too narrow for your mind.
O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
[Aside.] Nay, then, I have an eye of you. If you love me, hold not off.309
will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult 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 o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in
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Faith, there has been much to-do on both sides: and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy: there was, for a while, no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.381
’Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.
I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Happily he’s the second time come to them; for they say an old man is twice a child.
Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.
I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted; or, if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleased not the million; ’twas caviare to the general: but it was—as I received it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of mine—an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning.
remember one said there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of affectation; but called it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine.
