HAMLET

Written
By

William Shakespeare

Adapted for the stage

by
Elliot Guerra

“To be or not to be…”

Edited
March 2016
 BARNARDO
Who’s there?

FRANCISCO
Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

BARNARDO
Long live the king!

FRANCISCO
Barnardo?

BARNARDO
He.

FRANCISCO
You come most carefully upon your hour.

BARNARDO
‘Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco

FRANCISCO
For this relief much thanks. ‘Tis bitter cold,

BARNARDO
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.

MARCELLUS
Farewell, honest soldier.

Exit FRANCISCO.

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 MARCELLUS
Bernardo!

BERNARDO
Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.

Horatio
What, has this thing appeared again tonight?

BARNARDO
I have seen nothing.

MARCELLUS
Horatio says ‘tis but our fantasy,
And will not let belief take hold of him
Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us to watch the minutes of this night,
That, if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

HORATIO
Tush, tush, ‘twill not appear.

MARCELLUS
Peace. Look where it comes again.

BARNARDO
In the same figure like the king that’s dead.

MARCELLUS
Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

BARNARDO
Looks a not like the king? Mark it, Horatio.

HORATIO
Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.

MARCELLUS
Speak to it, Horatio.

HORATIO
What art thou that usurp’st this time of night
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark

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Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee, speak.

MARCELLUS
It is offended.

BARNARDO
See, it stalks away.

HORATIO
Stay. Speak, speak. I charge thee, speak.

Exit GHOST.

MARCELLUS
‘Tis gone and will not answer.

BARNARDO
How now, Horatio? You tremble and look pale.
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on’t?

HORATIO
Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.

MARCELLUS
Is it not like the king?

HORATIO
As thou art to thyself.
Such was the very armor he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated.
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
Break we our watch up, and Let us impart what we have seen
tonight Unto young Hamlet, for upon my life
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.

CLAUDIUS
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,

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Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole.
Taken to wife.

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 ‘gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t, ah, fie, ‘tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed.
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.
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’t; frailty, thy name is woman-
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body
All tears, why she-
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,
It is not nor cannot come to good.
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

CLAUDIUS
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son -

HAMLET
A little more than kin, and less than kind!

CLAUDIUS
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET
Not so, my lord. I am too much in the sun

GERTRUDE

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Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.

HORATIO
Hail to your lordship!
My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.

HAMLET
I prithee do not mock me, fellow student.
I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.

HORATIO
Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon

HAMLET
My father - methinks I see my father.

HORATIO
Where, my lord?

HAMLET
In my mind's eye, Horatio.

HORATIO
I saw him once. A was a goodly King.
My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

HAMLET
Saw? Who?

HORATIO
My lord, the king your father.

HAMLET
The King my father?
For god's love let me hear!

LAERTES
My necessaries are embarked.
let me hear from you.

Ophelia
Do you doubt that?

LAERTES
For Hamlet,
Think it no more.

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Perhaps he loves you now,
but you must fear,
His greatness weighed, his will is not his own.
On his choice depends
The safety and health of this whole state,
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head.
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,

OPHELIA
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,
Whiles like a puffed and reckless libertine
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede.

Enter POLONIUS.

LAERTES
I stay too long. But here my father comes.

POLONIUS
Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory.
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend.
This above all: to thine ownself 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!

HAMLET
The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.

HORATIO

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Look, my lord, it comes!
It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.

HAMLET
Where wilt thou lead me? speak; I'll go no further.

GHOST
Mark me.

HAMLET
I will.

GHOST
My hour is almost come,
When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.

HAMLET
Alas, poor ghost!

GHOST
Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.
I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd 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. If thou didst ever thy dear
father love—
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET
Murder!

GHOST
Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

HAMLET
Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation May sweep to my revenge.

GHOST
The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown.

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 HAMLET
O my prophetic soul! My uncle!

GHOST
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast.
Hamlet, remember me.

HAMLET
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark

CLAUDIUS
Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!

GERTRUDE
Good gentlemen, he hath much talk'd of you;
And sure I am two men there are not living
To whom he more adheres. If it will please you
To show us so much gentry and good will
As to expend your time with us awhile,
For the supply and profit of our hope,
Your visitation shall receive such thanks
As fits a king's remembrance.

GUILDENSTERN
We both obey,
And here give up ourselves, in the full bent
To lay our service freely at your feet,
To be commanded.

CLAUDIUS
Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

GERTRUDE
I beseech you instantly to visit
My too much changed son.

CLAUDIUS and GERTRUDE exit.

GUILDENSTERN
My honored lord!

ROSENCRANTZ
My most dear lord!

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 HAMLET
My excellent good friends! How dost thou,
Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz What news?

ROSENCRANTZ
None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.

HAMLET
Your news is not true.
fortune,sends you to prison.

GUILDENSTERN
Prison, my lord!

HAMLET
Denmark's a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ
To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what
lenten entertainment the players shall receive from
you: we coted them on the way; and hither are they
coming, to offer you service.

GUILDENSTERN
There are the players.

HAMLET
Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN exit.

HAMLET
About, my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul.
I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
the play 's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

The PLAYERS ready to perform, CLAUDIUS and GERTRUDE take

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 PLAYER KING
Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been,
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

PLAYER QUEEN
So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o'er ere love be done!

PLAYER KING
'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
My operant powers their functions leave to do:

PLAYER QUEEN
O, confound the rest!
Such love must needs be treason in my breast:
The instances that second marriage move
Are base respects of thrift, but none of love:
A second time I kill my husband dead,
When second husband kisses me in bed.

PLAYER KING
I do believe you think what now you speak;
But what we do determine oft we break.
So think thou wilt no second husband wed;
But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

PLAYER QUEEN
Here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
If, once a widow, ever I be wife!

PLAYER KING
'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile;
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.

Sleeps

PLAYER QUEEN
Sleep rock thy brain,
And never come mischance between us twain!

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 CLAUDIUS
What do you call the play?

HAMLET
The Mouse-trap. (Enter LUCIANUS.) This is one Lucianus,
nephew to the king.

LUCIANUS
Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;
Confederate season, else no creature seeing;
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
Thy natural magic and dire property,
On wholesome life usurp immediately.

Pours the poison into the sleeper's ears.

OPHELIA
The king rises.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
How fares my lord?

KING CLAUDIUS
Give me some light: away!

ALL
Lights, lights, lights!

All leave except HAMLET and HORATIO.

HAMLET
O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a
thousand pound. Didst perceive?

HORATIO
Very well, my lord.

HAMLET
Upon the talk of the poisoning?

HORATIO
I did very well note him.

HORATIO exits.

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 HAMLET
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia!

Enter OPHELIA.

OPHELIA
My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver.

HAMLET
No, not I;
I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA
My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;

HAMLET
I did love you once.

OPHELIA
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET

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You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of
it: I loved you not.

OPHELIA
I was the more deceived.

HAMLET
Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? Go thy ways to a nunnery!

HAMLET exits.

OPHELIA
O, help him, you sweet heavens! O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

All exit. Enter CLAUDIUS and LAERTES.

CLAUDIUS
O heavy deed!
His liberty is full of threats to all;
To you yourself, to us, to every one!

LAERTES
It well appears: but tell me
Why you proceeded not against these feats,

CLAUDIUS
O. The queen his mother

LAERTES
revenge will come.

CLAUDIUS
Can you advise me?

LAERTES
My lord, if you could devise it so
That I might be the organ.

CLAUDIUS
Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,
Will you do this

LAERTES

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I will do't: And, for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank,
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death

CLAUDIUS
this project Should have a back or second, Soft! let me
see: We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings I'll have
prepared him A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venom'd stuck,
Our purpose may hold there.

All exit. HORATIO and HAMLET approach a gravesite.

HAMLET
Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he
sings at grave-making?

HORATIO
Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

GRAVEDIGGER sings. Throws up a skull.

HAMLET
That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once:
how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were
Cain's jaw-bone,

HORATIO
Ay, my lord.

HAMLET
Whose grave's this, sirrah?

GRAVEDIGGER
One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she's dead.

HAMLET
How long hast thou been a grave-maker?

GRAVEDIGGER
Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day
that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.

HAMLET

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How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot?

GRAVEDIGGER
I' faith, if he be not rotten before he die--as we
have many pocky corses now-a-days, that will scarce
hold the laying in--he will last you some eight year
or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year.

HAMLET
Why he more than another?

GRAVEDIGGER
Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade, that
he will keep out water a great while.
Here's a skull now; this skull has lain in the earth
three and twenty years.

HAMLET
Whose was it?

GRAVEDIGGER
A mad fellow's it was: a pestilence on him for a mad rogue!
a' poured aflagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same
skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester.

HAMLET
Let me see.(Takes the skull.)
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! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Horatio, tell
me one thing.

HORATIO
What's that, my lord?

HAMLET
Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i'
the earth?

HORATIO

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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?

HORATIO
'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

HAMLET
No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with
modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as
thus: 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!

Enter OSRIC.

OSRIC
Sweet lord, I should impart a thing to you from his
majesty.

HAMLET
I will receive it.

OSRIC
Sir, here is newly come to court Laertes;
The king, sir, hath laid, that in a dozen passes
between yourself and him, he shall not exceed you
three hits: he hath laid on twelve for nine; and it
would come to immediate trial, if your lordship
would vouchsafe the answer.

HAMLET
Let the foils be brought, I will win.

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 OSRIC
I commend my duty to your lordship.

Exit OSRIC.

HORATIO
You will lose this wager, my lord.

HAMLET
I do not think so: since he went into France,

HORATIO
If your mind dislike any thing, obey it: I will
forestall their repair hither, and say you are not
fit.

HAMLET
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.

All are set for the match.

CLAUDIUS
Come, begin! And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.
Give him the cup.

HAMLET
I'll play this bout first; set it by awhile. (They play.)
Another hit; what say you?

LAERTES
A touch, a touch, I do confess.

GERTRUDE
He's fat, and scant of breath.
Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows;
The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.

CLAUDIUS
Gertrude, do not drink.

GERTRUDE
I will, my lord; I pray you, pardon me.

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 CLAUDIUS
(Aside.) It is the poison'd cup: it is too late.

LAERTES
My lord, I'll hit him now.
Have at you now!

LAERTES wounds HAMLET; then in scuffling, they change

CLAUDIUS
Part them; they are incensed.

HAMLET
Nay, come, again.

GERTRUDE falls.

OSRIC
Look to the queen there!

HORATIO
They bleed on both sides.

LAERTES
I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery.

HAMLET
How does the queen?

CLAUDIUS
She swounds to see them bleed.

GERTRUDE
No, no, the drink, the drink,--O my dear Hamlet,--
The drink, the drink! I am poison'd.

Dies.

HAMLET
O villany! Ho! let the door be lock'd:
Treachery!

LAERTES
It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art slain;
No medicine in the world can do thee good;

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The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
Unbated and envenom'd: the foul practise
Hath turn'd itself on me lo, here I lie,
Never to rise again: thy mother's poison'd:
I can no more: the king, the king's to blame.

HAMLET
The point!--envenom'd too!
Then, venom, to thy work.(Stabs CLAUDIUS.)
Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.

CLAUDIUS dies.

LAERTES
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet:

Dies.

HAMLET
Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.
I am dead, Horatio. I am dead;
Thou livest; my dying voice;
So tell, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.

Dies.

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

Enter FORTINBRAS and AMBASSADOR.

FORTINBRAS
Where is this sight?
This quarry cries on havoc. O proud death,
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes at a shot
So bloodily hast struck?

AMBASSADOR
The sight is dismal;
And our affairs from England come too late:
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,

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 FORTINBRAS
Let four captains
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royally: and, for his passage,
The soldiers' music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies: such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.

THE END

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