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Hamlet: Act I, Scene 2

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Hamlet
Act I, Scene 2

Elsinore. A room of state in the castle., The next day

Hamlet

Hamlet

John Seymour Lucas

  1. Flourish. Enter Claudius, King of Denmark, Gertrude the
    Jul 9, 2019 Zyzigus
    fanfare
  2. Queen; Council: as Polonius; and his son Laertes, Hamlet,
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    Hamlet Junior
  3. cum aliis including Voltemand and Cornelius.
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    with others

Claudius

1 - 39
  1. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
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    Hamlet Senior
    Jul 9, 2019 Zyzigus
    As king, Claudius uses the “royal we” (the first person plural pronouns, “we” “our” “us,” in place of the first person singular, “I” “my” “me.”)
  2. The memory be green, and that it us befitted
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    fresh
  3. To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
  4. To be contracted in one brow of woe,
  5. Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
  6. That we with wisest sorrow think on him
  7. Together with remembrance of ourselves.
  8. Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
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    previous sister-in-law
  9. Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state,
  10. Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy,
  11. With an auspicious, and a dropping eye,
  12. With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
  13. In equal scale weighing delight and dole,
  14. Taken to wife; nor have we herein barr’d
  15. Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
  16. With this affair along. For all, our thanks.
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    Claudius thanks the council for approving his marriage to Gertrude.
  17. Now follows that you know young Fortinbras,
  18. Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
  19. Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death
  20. Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
  21. Co-leagued with this dream of his advantage,
  22. He hath not fail’d to pester us with message
  23. Importing the surrender of those lands
  24. Lost by his father, with all bands of law,
  25. To our most valiant brother. So much for him.
  26. Now for ourself, and for this time of meeting,
  27. Thus much the business is: we have here writ
  28. To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras—
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    King of Norway
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    King of Norway
  29. Who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears
  30. Of this his nephew’s purpose—to suppress
  31. His further gait herein, in that the levies,
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    to curtail young Fortinbras' plans to attack Denmark
  32. The lists, and full proportions are all made
  33. Out of his subject; and we here dispatch
  34. You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,
  35. For bearers of this greeting to old Norway,
  36. Giving to you no further personal power
  37. To business with the King, more than the scope
  38. Of these delated articles allow.
  39. Giving a paper.
  40. Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.

Both Cornelius and Voltemand

40
  1. In that, and all things, will we show our duty.

Claudius

41 - 50
  1. We doubt it nothing; heartily farewell.
  2. Exeunt Voltemand and Cornelius.
  3. And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?
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    Notice Claudius uses a connecting conjunction here.
  4. You told us of some suit, what is’t, Laertes?
  5. You cannot speak of reason to the Dane
  6. And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
  7. That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
  8. The head is not more native to the heart,
  9. The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
  10. Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
  11. What wouldst thou have, Laertes?
    Jul 9, 2019 Zyzigus
    In his book “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” Dale Carnegie said, “Remember that a person’s name is to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language."

Laertes

51 - 57
  1.                                  My dread lord,
  2. Your leave and favor to return to France,
  3. From whence though willingly I came to Denmark
  4. To show my duty in your coronation,
  5. Yet now I must confess, that duty done,
  6. My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France,
  7. And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
King Claudius

King Claudius

John Seymour Lucas

Claudius

58
  1. Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?

Polonius

59 - 62
  1. H’ath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
  2. By laborsome petition, and at last
  3. Upon his will I seal’d my hard consent.
  4. I do beseech you give him leave to go.

Claudius

63 - 65
  1. Take thy fair hour, Laertes, time be thine,
  2. And thy best graces spend it at thy will!
  3. But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—
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    Notice Claudius uses a contrasting conjunction here.

Hamlet

66
  1. Aside.
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    No one but the audience hears this.
  2. A little more than kin, and less than kind.

Claudius

67
  1. How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

Hamlet

68
  1. Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun.
    Jul 10, 2019 Zyzigus
    Do you see the pun?

Gertrude

69 - 74
  1. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,
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    Hamlet is dressed in black.
  2. And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
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    Claudius
  3. Do not forever with thy vailed lids
  4. Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
  5. Thou know’st ’tis common, all that lives must die,
  6. Passing through nature to eternity.

Hamlet

75
  1. Ay, madam, it is common.

Gertrude

76 - 77
  1.                          If it be,
  2. Why seems it so particular with thee?

Hamlet

78 - 88
  1. Seems, madam? Nay, it is, I know not “seems.”
  2. ’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
  3. Nor customary suits of solemn black,
  4. Nor windy suspiration of forc’d breath,
  5. No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
  6. Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
  7. Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
  8. That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
  9. For they are actions that a man might play,
  10. But I have that within which passes show,
  11. These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

Claudius

89 - 119
  1. ’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
  2. To give these mourning duties to your father.
  3. But you must know your father lost a father,
  4. That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
  5. In filial obligation for some term
  6. To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever
  7. In obstinate condolement is a course
  8. Of impious stubbornness, ’tis unmanly grief,
  9. It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
  10. A heart unfortified, or mind impatient,
  11. An understanding simple and unschool’d:
  12. For what we know must be, and is as common
  13. As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
  14. Why should we in our peevish opposition
  15. Take it to heart? Fie, ’tis a fault to heaven,
  16. A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
  17. To reason most absurd, whose common theme
  18. Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
  19. From the first corse till he that died today,
    Jul 10, 2019 Zyzigus
    The first corpse was Abel killed by his brother Cain.
  20. “This must be so.” We pray you throw to earth
  21. This unprevailing woe, and think of us
  22. As of a father, for let the world take note
  23. You are the most immediate to our throne,
    Jul 10, 2019 Zyzigus
    Claudius names Hamlet as his successor, but shouldn't Hamlet already be wearing the crown, being the son of the previous king?
  24. And with no less nobility of love
  25. Than that which dearest father bears his son
  26. Do I impart toward you. For your intent
  27. In going back to school in Wittenberg,
  28. It is most retrograde to our desire,
  29. And we beseech you bend you to remain
  30. Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
  31. Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
Theatrical design for Hamlet

Theatrical design for Hamlet

Dimitri Tavadze, 1974

Gertrude

120 - 121
  1. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet,
  2. I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.

Hamlet

122
  1. I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

Claudius

123 - 130
  1. Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply.
  2. Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come.
  3. This gentle and unforc’d accord of Hamlet
  4. Sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof,
  5. No jocund health that Denmark drinks today,
  6. But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
  7. And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
  8. Respeaking earthly thunder. Come away.
    Jul 10, 2019 Zyzigus
    When the king takes a drink, trumpets blare and cannons are shot off, and the sound bounces off the clouds so that every one who hears it will know that the king is taking a drink.
  1. Flourish. Exeunt all but Hamlet.

Hamlet

131 - 161
  1. O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
  2. Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
  3. Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
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    God
  4. His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God, God,
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    law
  5. How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
  6. Seem to me all the uses of this world!
  7. Fie on’t, ah fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden
  8. That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature
  9. Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
  10. But two months dead, nay, not so much, not two.
  11. So excellent a king, that was to this
  12. Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother
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    a mythological Greek god
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    a lascivious, mythological Greek creature
  13. That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
  14. Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth,
  15. Must I remember? Why, she should hang on him
  16. As if increase of appetite had grown
  17. By what it fed on, and yet, within a month—
  18. Let me not think on’t! Frailty, thy name is woman!—
  19. A little month, or ere those shoes were old
  20. With which she followed my poor father’s body,
  21. Like Niobe, all tears—why, she, even she—
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    Mother in Greek mythology noted for the tears she shed over the death of her many children.
  22. O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
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    lacks
  23. Would have mourn’d longer—married with my uncle,
  24. My father’s brother, but no more like my father
  25. Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
  26. Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
  27. Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
  28. She married—O most wicked speed: to post
  29. With such dexterity to incestuous sheets,
  30. It is not, nor it cannot come to good,
  31. But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
  1. Enter Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo.

Horatio

162
  1. Hail to your lordship!

Hamlet

163 - 164
  1.                        I am glad to see you well.
  2. Horatio—or I do forget myself.

Horatio

165
  1. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.

Hamlet

166 - 168
  1. Sir, my good friend—I’ll change that name with you.
  2. And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?
  3. Marcellus.

Marcellus

169
  1. My good lord.

Hamlet

170 - 172
  1. I am very glad to see you.
  2. To Barnardo.
  3. Good even, sir.—
  4. But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
Gertrude

Gertrude

John Seymour Lucas

Horatio

173
  1. A truant disposition, good my lord.

Hamlet

174 - 179
  1. I would not hear your enemy say so,
  2. Nor shall you do my ear that violence
  3. To make it truster of your own report
  4. Against yourself. I know you are no truant.
  5. But what is your affair in Elsinore?
  6. We’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.

Horatio

180
  1. My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.

Hamlet

181 - 182
  1. I prithee do not mock me, fellow student,
  2. I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.

Horatio

183
  1. Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.

Hamlet

184 - 188
  1. Thrift, thrift, Horatio, the funeral bak’d-meats
  2. Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
  3. Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
  4. Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
  5. My father—methinks I see my father.

Horatio

189
  1. Where, my lord?

Hamlet

190
  1.                 In my mind’s eye, Horatio.

Horatio

191
  1. I saw him once, ’a was a goodly king.

Hamlet

192 - 193
  1. ’A was a man, take him for all in all,
  2. I shall not look upon his like again.

Horatio

194
  1. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

Hamlet

195
  1. Saw, who?

Horatio

196
  1. My lord, the King your father.

Hamlet

197
  1.                                The King my father?

Horatio

198 - 201
  1. Season your admiration for a while
  2. With an attent ear, till I may deliver,
  3. Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
  4. This marvel to you.

Hamlet

202
  1.                     For God’s love let me hear!

Horatio

203 - 219
  1. Two nights together had these gentlemen,
  2. Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch,
  3. In the dead waste and middle of the night,
  4. Been thus encount’red: a figure like your father,
  5. Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,
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    head to foot
  6. Appears before them, and with solemn march
  7. Goes slow and stately by them; thrice he walk’d
  8. By their oppress’d and fear-surprised eyes
  9. Within his truncheon’s length, whilst they, distill’d
    Jul 12, 2019 Zyzigus
    short stick or shaft of a spear
  10. Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
  11. Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me
  12. In dreadful secrecy impart they did,
  13. And I with them the third night kept the watch,
  14. Where, as they had delivered, both in time,
  15. Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
  16. The apparition comes. I knew your father,
  17. These hands are not more like.

Hamlet

220
  1.                                But where was this?

Marcellus

221
  1. My lord, upon the platform where we watch.

Hamlet

222
  1. Did you not speak to it?

Horatio

223 - 229
  1.                          My lord, I did,
  2. But answer made it none. Yet once methought
  3. It lifted up it head and did address
  4. Itself to motion like as it would speak;
  5. But even then the morning cock crew loud,
  6. And at the sound it shrunk in haste away
  7. And vanish’d from our sight.

Hamlet

230
  1.                              ’Tis very strange.
Selwyn & Blount edition of Hamlet

From: Selwyn & Blount edition of Hamlet

John Austen, 1922

Horatio

231 - 233
  1. As I do live, my honor’d lord, ’tis true,
  2. And we did think it writ down in our duty
  3. To let you know of it.

Hamlet

234 - 235
  1. Indeed, indeed, sirs. But this troubles me.
  2. Hold you the watch tonight?

Both Barnardo and Marcellus

236
  1.                             We do, my lord.

Hamlet

237
  1. Arm’d, say you?

Both Barnardo and Marcellus

238
  1. Arm’d, my lord.

Hamlet

239
  1. From top to toe?

Both Barnardo and Marcellus

240
  1.                  My lord, from head to foot.

Hamlet

241
  1. Then saw you not his face.

Horatio

242
  1. O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.
    Jul 12, 2019 Zyzigus
    face plate on a helmet

Hamlet

243
  1. What, look’d he frowningly?

Horatio

244 - 245
  1.                             A countenance more
  2. In sorrow than in anger.

Hamlet

246
  1.                          Pale, or red?

Horatio

247
  1. Nay, very pale.

Hamlet

248
  1.                 And fix’d his eyes upon you?

Horatio

249
  1. Most constantly.

Hamlet

250
  1.                  I would I had been there.

Horatio

251
  1. It would have much amaz’d you.

Hamlet

252
  1. Very like, very like. Stay’d it long?

Horatio

253
  1. While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.
    Jul 12, 2019 Zyzigus
    count

Both Barnardo and Marcellus

254
  1. Longer, longer.

Horatio

255
  1. Not when I saw’t.

Hamlet

256
  1.                   His beard was grisl’d, no?
    Jul 12, 2019 Zyzigus
    streaked with grey

Horatio

257 - 258
  1. It was, as I have seen it in his life,
  2. A sable silver’d.

Hamlet

259 - 260
  1.                   I will watch tonight,
  2. Perchance ’twill walk again.

Horatio

261
  1.                              I warr’nt it will.
    Jul 12, 2019 Zyzigus
    wager

Hamlet

262 - 271
  1. If it assume my noble father’s person,
  2. I’ll speak to it though hell itself should gape
  3. And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
  4. If you have hitherto conceal’d this sight,
  5. Let it be tenable in your silence still,
    Jul 12, 2019 Zyzigus
    held
  6. And whatsomever else shall hap tonight,
  7. Give it an understanding but no tongue.
  8. I will requite your loves. So fare you well.
  9. Upon the platform ’twixt eleven and twelve
  10. I’ll visit you.

Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo

272
  1.                 Our duty to your honor.

Hamlet

273 - 277
  1. Your loves, as mine to you; farewell.
  2. Exeunt all but Hamlet.
  3. My father’s spirit—in arms! All is not well,
  4. I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come!
  5. Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise,
  6. Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.
  1. Exit.
Polonius

Polonius

John Seymour Lucas

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