What does laertes say must govern hamlet's marriage choice

Folger Shakespeare Library

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Front Matter

From the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library Textual Introduction Synopsis Characters in the Play

ACT 1

Scene 1 Scene 2 Scene 3 Scene 4 Scene 5

ACT 2 Scene 1Scene 2

ACT 3 Scene 1 Scene 2 Scene 3 Scene 4

ACT 4

Scene 1 Scene 2 Scene 3 Scene 4 Scene 5 Scene 6 Scene 7

ACT 5 Scene 1Scene 2

Contents

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Michael Witmore Director, Folger Shakespeare Library

It is hard to imagine a world without Shakespeare. Since their composition four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s plays and poems have traveled the globe, inviting those who see and read his works to make them their own.

Readers of the New Folger Editions are part of this ongoing process of “taking up Shakespeare,” finding our own thoughts and feelings in language that strikes us as old or unusual and, for that very reason, new. We still struggle to keep up with a writer who could think a mile a minute, whose words paint pictures that shift like clouds. These expertly edited texts are presented to the public as a resource for study, artistic adaptation, and enjoyment. By making the classic texts of the New Folger Editions available in electronic form as Folger Digital Texts, we place a trusted resource in the hands of anyone who wants them.

The New Folger Editions of Shakespeare’s plays, which are the basis for the texts realized here in digital form, are special because of their origin. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is the single greatest documentary source of Shakespeare’s works. An unparalleled collection of early modern books, manuscripts, and artwork connected to Shakespeare, the Folger’s holdings have been consulted extensively in the preparation of these texts. The Editions also reflect the expertise gained through the regular performance of Shakespeare’s works in the Folger’s Elizabethan Theater.

I want to express my deep thanks to editors Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine for creating these indispensable editions of Shakespeare’s works, which incorporate the best of textual scholarship with a richness of commentary that is both inspired and engaging. Readers who want to know more about Shakespeare and his plays can follow the paths these distinguished scholars have tread by visiting the Folger either in-person or online, where a range of physical and digital resources exists to supplement the material in these texts. I commend to you these words, and hope that they inspire.

From the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library

Until now, with the release of the Folger Digital Texts, readers in search of a free online text of Shakespeare’s plays had to be content primarily with using the Moby™ Text, which reproduces a late- nineteenth century version of the plays. What is the difference? Many ordinary readers assume that there is a single text for the plays: what Shakespeare wrote. But Shakespeare’s plays were not published the way modern novels or plays are published today: as a single, authoritative text. In some cases, the plays have come down to us in multiple published versions, represented by various Quartos (Qq) and by the great collection put together by his colleagues in 1623, called the First Folio (F). There are, for example, three very different versions of Hamlet, two of King Lear, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, and others. Editors choose which version to use as their base text, and then amend that text with words, lines or speech prefixes from the other versions that, in their judgment, make for a better or more accurate text.

Other editorial decisions involve choices about whether an unfamiliar word could be understood in light of other writings of the period or whether it should be changed; decisions about words that made it into Shakespeare’s text by accident through four hundred years of printings and misprinting; and even decisions based on cultural preference and taste. When the Moby™ Text was created, for example, it was deemed “improper” and “indecent” for Miranda to chastise Caliban for having attempted to rape her. (See The Tempest, 1.2: “Abhorred slave,/Which any print of goodness wilt not take,/Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee…”). All Shakespeare editors at the time took the speech away from her and gave it to her father, Prospero.

The editors of the Moby™ Shakespeare produced their text long before scholars fully understood the proper grounds on which to make the thousands of decisions that Shakespeare editors face. The Folger Library Shakespeare Editions, on which the Folger Digital Texts depend, make this editorial process as nearly transparent as is possible, in contrast to older texts, like the Moby™, which hide editorial interventions. The reader of the Folger Shakespeare knows where the text has been altered because editorial interventions are signaled by square brackets (for example, from Othello: “ If she in

Textual Introduction By Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine

chains of magic were not bound, ”), half-square brackets (for example, from Henry V: “With blood and sword and fire to win your right,”), or angle brackets (for example, from Hamlet: “O farewell, honest soldier. Who hath relieved/you?”). At any point in the text, you can hover your cursor over a bracket for more information.

Because the Folger Digital Texts are edited in accord with twenty-first century knowledge about Shakespeare’s texts, the Folger here provides them to readers, scholars, teachers, actors, directors, and students, free of charge, confident of their quality as texts of the plays and pleased to be able to make this contribution to the study and enjoyment of Shakespeare.

Events before the start of Hamlet set the stage for tragedy. When the king of Denmark, Prince Hamlet’s father, suddenly dies, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, marries his uncle Claudius, who becomes the new king.

A spirit who claims to be the ghost of Hamlet’s father describes his murder at the hands of Claudius and demands that Hamlet avenge the killing. When the councilor Polonius learns from his daughter, Ophelia, that Hamlet has visited her in an apparently distracted state, Polonius attributes the prince’s condition to lovesickness, and he sets a trap for Hamlet using Ophelia as bait.

To confirm Claudius’s guilt, Hamlet arranges for a play that mimics the murder; Claudius’s reaction is that of a guilty man. Hamlet, now free to act, mistakenly kills Polonius, thinking he is Claudius. Claudius sends Hamlet away as part of a deadly plot.

After Polonius’s death, Ophelia goes mad and later drowns. Hamlet, who has returned safely to confront the king, agrees to a fencing match with Ophelia’s brother, Laertes, who secretly poisons his own rapier. At the match, Claudius prepares poisoned wine for Hamlet, which Gertrude unknowingly drinks; as she dies, she accuses Claudius, whom Hamlet kills. Then first Laertes and then Hamlet die, both victims of Laertes’ rapier.

Synopsis

THE GHOST HAMLET, Prince of Denmark, son of the late King Hamlet

and Queen Gertrude QUEEN GERTRUDE, widow of King Hamlet, now married to Claudius KING CLAUDIUS, brother to the late King Hamlet

OPHELIA LAERTES, her brother POLONIUS, father of Ophelia and Laertes, councillor to King Claudius REYNALDO, servant to Polonius

HORATIO, Hamlet’s friend and confidant

FORTINBRAS, Prince of Norway A Captain in Fortinbras’s army

Ambassadors to Denmark from England

Players who take the roles of Prologue, Player King, Player Queen, and Lucianus in The Murder of Gonzago

Two Messengers Sailors Gravedigger Gravedigger’s companion Doctor of Divinity

Attendants, Lords, Guards, Musicians, Laertes’s Followers, Soldiers, Officers

Characters in the Play

courtiers at the Danish court

VOLTEMAND CORNELIUS ROSENCRANTZ GUILDENSTERN OSRIC Gentlemen A Lord

Danish soldiers FRANCISCO BARNARDO MARCELLUS

BARNARDO FRANCISCO

BARNARDO FRANCISCO BARNARDO FRANCISCO

BARNARDO

FRANCISCO

BARNARDO FRANCISCO BARNARDO

FRANCISCO

HORATIO

Enter Barnardo and Francisco, two sentinels.

Who’s there?

Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself. Long live the King! Barnardo. He.

You come most carefully upon your hour.

’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.

For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart.

Have you had quiet guard? Not a mouse stirring. Well, good night.

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

Enter Horatio and Marcellus.

I think I hear them.—Stand ho! Who is there?

Friends to this ground. 7

ACT 1

Scene 1

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9 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

FRANCISCO MARCELLUS

FRANCISCO

Francisco exits. MARCELLUS BARNARDO HORATIO BARNARDO

HORATIO

BARNARDO MARCELLUS

HORATIO

BARNARDO

HORATIO

BARNARDO

MARCELLUS And liegemen to the Dane. Give you good night.

O farewell, honest soldier. Who hath relieved you?

Barnardo hath my place. Give you good night.

Holla, Barnardo. Say, what, is Horatio there?

A piece of him.

Welcome, Horatio.—Welcome, good Marcellus.

What, has this thing appeared again tonight? I have seen nothing.

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.

Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.

Sit down awhile, And let us once again assail your ears, That are so fortified against our story, What we have two nights seen.

Well, sit we down, And let us hear Barnardo speak of this.

Last night of all, When yond same star that’s westward from the pole Had made his course t’ illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, The bell then beating one—

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11 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

MARCELLUS

BARNARDO

MARCELLUS

BARNARDO

HORATIO

BARNARDO

MARCELLUS HORATIO

MARCELLUS

BARNARDO HORATIO

Ghost exits. MARCELLUS BARNARDO

HORATIO

Enter Ghost.

Peace, break thee off! Look where it comes again.

In the same figure like the King that’s dead.

, to Horatio Thou art a scholar. Speak to it, Horatio.

Looks he not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.

Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.

It would be spoke to.

Speak to it, 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 Did sometimes march? By heaven, I charge thee,

speak.

It is offended. See, it stalks away.

Stay! speak! speak! I charge thee, speak!

’Tis gone and will not answer.

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

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

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13 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

HORATIO

MARCELLUS

HORATIO

MARCELLUS

HORATIO

MARCELLUS Is it not like the King? As thou art to thyself.

Such was the very armor he had on When he the ambitious Norway combated. So frowned he once when, in an angry parle, He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice. ’Tis strange.

Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour, With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

In what particular thought to work I know not, But in the gross and scope of mine opinion This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows, Why this same strict and most observant watch So nightly toils the subject of the land, And why such daily cast of brazen cannon And foreign mart for implements of war, Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task Does not divide the Sunday from the week. What might be toward that this sweaty haste Doth make the night joint laborer with the day? Who is ’t that can inform me?

That can I. At least the whisper goes so: our last king, Whose image even but now appeared to us, Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway, Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride, Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet (For so this side of our known world esteemed him) Did slay this Fortinbras, who by a sealed compact, Well ratified by law and heraldry, Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror.

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15 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

BARNARDO

HORATIO

Against the which a moiety competent Was gagèd by our king, which had returned To the inheritance of Fortinbras Had he been vanquisher, as, by the same comart And carriage of the article designed, His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras, Of unimprovèd mettle hot and full, Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes For food and diet to some enterprise That hath a stomach in ’t; which is no other (As it doth well appear unto our state) But to recover of us, by strong hand And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands So by his father lost. And this, I take it, Is the main motive of our preparations, The source of this our watch, and the chief head Of this posthaste and rummage in the land.

I think it be no other but e’en so. Well may it sort that this portentous figure Comes armèd through our watch so like the king That was and is the question of these wars.

A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye. In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets; As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star, Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands, Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. And even the like precurse of feared events, As harbingers preceding still the fates And prologue to the omen coming on,

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17 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

It spreads his arms.

The cock crows.

MARCELLUS

HORATIO BARNARDO HORATIO

Ghost exits. MARCELLUS

BARNARDO

HORATIO

Have heaven and Earth together demonstrated Unto our climatures and countrymen.

Enter Ghost.

But soft, behold! Lo, where it comes again! I’ll cross it though it blast me.—Stay, illusion!

If thou hast any sound or use of voice, Speak to me. If there be any good thing to be done That may to thee do ease and grace to me, Speak to me. If thou art privy to thy country’s fate, Which happily foreknowing may avoid, O, speak! Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, Speak of it.

Stay and speak!—Stop it, Marcellus.

Shall I strike it with my partisan? Do, if it will not stand.

’Tis here. ’Tis here.

’Tis gone. We do it wrong, being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence, For it is as the air, invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery.

It was about to speak when the cock crew.

And then it started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons. I have heard

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19 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 1

MARCELLUS

HORATIO

MARCELLUS

They exit.

The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the god of day, and at his warning, Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, Th’ extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine, and of the truth herein This present object made probation.

It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated, This bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad, The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallowed and so gracious is that time.

So have I heard and do in part believe it. But look, the morn in russet mantle clad Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill. Break we our watch up, and by my advice Let us impart what we have seen tonight Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life, This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

Let’s do ’t, I pray, and I this morning know Where we shall find him most convenient.

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21 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

KING

Flourish. Enter Claudius, King of Denmark, Gertrude the Queen, the Council, as Polonius, and his son Laertes,

Hamlet, with others, among them Voltemand and Cornelius.

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, Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state, Have we (as ’twere with a defeated joy, With an auspicious and a dropping eye, With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole) Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barred Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone With this affair along. For all, our thanks. Now follows that you know. Young Fortinbras, Holding a weak supposal of our worth Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death Our state to be disjoint and out of frame, Colleaguèd with this dream of his advantage, He hath not failed to pester us with message Importing the surrender of those lands Lost by his father, with all bonds of law, To our most valiant brother—so much for him. Now for ourself and for this time of meeting. Thus much the business is: we have here writ To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras, Who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears

Scene 2

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23 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

Giving them a paper.

CORNELIUS/VOLTEMAND

KING

Voltemand and Cornelius exit.

LAERTES

KING

Of this his nephew’s purpose, to suppress His further gait herein, in that the levies, The lists, and full proportions are all made Out of his subject; and we here dispatch You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand, For bearers of this greeting to old Norway, Giving to you no further personal power To business with the King more than the scope Of these dilated articles allow.

Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.

In that and all things will we show our duty.

We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell.

And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you? You told us of some suit. What is ’t, Laertes? You cannot speak of reason to the Dane And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg,

Laertes, That shall not be my offer, not thy asking? The head is not more native to the heart, The hand more instrumental to the mouth, Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father. What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

My dread lord, Your leave and favor to return to France, From whence though willingly I came to Denmark To show my duty in your coronation, Yet now I must confess, that duty done, My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?

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25 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

KING

HAMLET

KING

HAMLET

QUEEN

HAMLET

QUEEN

HAMLET

POLONIUS Hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave By laborsome petition, and at last Upon his will I sealed my hard consent. I do beseech you give him leave to go.

Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine, And thy best graces spend it at thy will.— But now, my cousin Hamlet and my son—

, aside A little more than kin and less than kind.

How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

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

Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off, And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. Do not forever with thy vailèd lids Seek for thy noble father in the dust. Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.

Ay, madam, it is common.

If it be, Why seems it so particular with thee?

“Seems,” madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems.” ’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected havior of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly. These indeed “seem,” For they are actions that a man might play;

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27 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

KING

But I have that within which passes show, These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature,

Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father. But you must know your father lost a father, That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound In filial obligation for some term To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever In obstinate condolement is a course Of impious stubbornness. ’Tis unmanly grief. It shows a will most incorrect to heaven, A heart unfortified, a mind impatient, An understanding simple and unschooled. For what we know must be and is as common As any the most vulgar thing to sense, Why should we in our peevish opposition Take it to heart? Fie, ’tis a fault to heaven, A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, To reason most absurd, whose common theme Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, From the first corse till he that died today, “This must be so.” We pray you, throw to earth This unprevailing woe and think of us As of a father; for let the world take note, You are the most immediate to our throne, And with no less nobility of love Than that which dearest father bears his son Do I impart toward you. For your intent In going back to school in Wittenberg, It is most retrograde to our desire, And we beseech you, bend you to remain Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye, Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

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29 Hamlet ACT 1. SC. 2

HAMLET

KING

Flourish. All but Hamlet exit. HAMLET

QUEEN Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet. I pray thee, stay with us. Go not to Wittenberg.

I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply. Be as ourself in Denmark.—Madam, come. This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet Sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof No jocund health that Denmark drinks today But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell, And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again, Respeaking earthly thunder. Come away.

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. Things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. 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; 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? 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,

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