Act I
Scene 1
Elsinore. A guard platform of the Castle
Enter Francisco and Bernardo, two sentinels.
BERNARDO Who's there?
FRANCISCO Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.
BERNARDO Long live the King!
FRANCISCO Bernardo?
BERNARDO He.
FRANCISCO You come most carefully upon your hour.
BERNARDO 'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.
FRANCISCO For this relief much thanks. 'Tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.
BERNARDO Have you had quiet guard?
FRANCISCO Not a mouse stirring.
BERNARDO Well, good night.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.
Enter Horatio and Marcellus.
FRANCISCO I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who is there?
HORATIO Friends to this ground.
MARCELLUS And liegemen to the Dane.
FRANCISCO Give you good night.
Exit.
Enter Ghost.
MARCELLUS Peace, break thee off. Look where it comes again.
MARCELLUS Holla, Bernardo!
BERNARDO SayWhat, is Horatio there ?
HORATIO A piece of him.
BERNARDO Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.
MARCELLUS What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?
BERNARDO I have seen nothing.
MARCELLUS Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy.
That, if again this apparition come HORATIO Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.
BERNARDO Sit down awhile,
And let us once again assail your ears,
What we two nights have seen.
HORATIO Well, sit we down,
And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.
BERNARDO Last night of all, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one-
Ghost
1 I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away.
2 But that I am forbid
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,
3 Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,
Thy knotty and combinèd locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, Hamlet, list, O list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love—
HAMLET
O that this too, too sullied 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!
That it should come to thisBut 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 beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth.
Must I remember? And yet, within a monthLet me not think on it. Frailty, thy name is woman.
O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer – married with my uncle,
My father’s brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it shall not come to good;
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.