Hamlet

by William Shakespeare

Hic et ubique?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.--Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd.

My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. HAMLET Mother, you have my father much offended.

The death I gave him. So, again, good night. I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins and worse remains behind. One word more, good lady.

HAMLET A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm. KING CLAUDIUS What dost you mean by this? HAMLET Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

tears seven times salt, Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye! By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,

O heavens! is't possible, a young maid's wits Should be as moral as an old man's life?

OPHELIA There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts.

She's so conjunctive to my life and soul, That, as the star moves not but in his sphere, I could not but by her.

Why to a public count I might not go, Is the great love the general gender bear him; Who, dipping all his faults in their affection, Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone, Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows, Too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind, Would have reverted to my bow again, And not where I had aim'd them.

But that I know love is begun by time; And that I see, in passages of proof, Time qualifies the spark and fire of it. There lives within the very flame of love A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it; And nothing is at a like goodness still; For goodness, growing to a plurisy, Dies in his own too much: that we would do We should do when we would; for this '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 o' the ulcer:-- Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake, To show yourself your father's son in deed More than in words?

No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize; Revenge should have no bounds.

One woe doth tread upon another's heel, So fast they follow;

There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; There with fantastic garlands did she come Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them: There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke; When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide; And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up: Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes; As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indued Unto that element: but long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death.

Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, And therefore I forbid my tears: but yet It is our trick; nature her custom holds, Let shame say what it will: when these are gone, The woman will be out.

For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act: and an act hath three branches: it is, to act, to do, to perform: argal, she drowned herself wittingly.

if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,--mark

'Thou dost lie in't, to be in't and say it is thine: 'tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!

Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing. HORATIO What's that, my lord? HAMLET Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth? HORATIO E'en so. HAMLET And smelt so? pah! Puts down the skull HORATIO E'en so, my lord. HAMLET To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

Lay her i' the earth: And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering angel shall my sister be, When thou liest howling.

I loved you ever: but it is no matter; Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew and dog will have his day.

His purse is empty already; all's golden words are spent.

to know a man well, were to know himself.

Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?

That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house, And hurt my brother.

I'll be your foil, Laertes: in mine ignorance Your skill shall, like a star i' the darkest night, Stick fiery off indeed.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!