Hamlet: With an introduction, a list of further reading, commentary and a short account of the textual problems of the play. Used and recommended by the Royal Shakespeare Company

by William Shakespeare

I must be cruel only to be kind.

QUEEN Be thou assured, if words be made of breath, And breath of life, I have no life to breathe 200 What thou hast said to me.

O, ’tis most sweet When in one line two crafts directly meet. This man shall set me packing.

KING What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet? QUEEN Mad as the sea and wind when both contend Which is the mightier.

KING Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius? HAMLET At supper. KING At supper? Where? HAMLET Not where he eats, but where ’a is eaten. A cer- 20 tain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him.

Hammy you petty little thing hahahaha

What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed?

So full of artless jealousy is guilt 20 It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

KING Follow her close. Give her good watch, I pray you.

Okay so everyone is crazy - got it

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, 80 But in battalions:

Let come what comes, only I’ll be revenged Most throughly for my father.

LAERTES 170 Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, It could not move thus.

O, how the wheel becomes it!

My virtue or my plague, be it either which

HAMLET I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers Could not with all their quantity of love Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?

HAMLET The point envenomed too? Then, venom, to thy work.

HAMLET Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damnèd Dane, Drink off this potion.

HORATIO What is it you would see? If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.

Even while men’s minds are wild, lest more mischance On plots and errors happen.