Hamlet - David Tennant, Patrick Stewart, Penny Downie. Act 3, Scene 2. - Pt.1

Hamlet: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced

it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,

as many of your players do,

I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.

Nor do not saw the air too much with your hands

thus, but use all gently;

for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,

the whirlwind of passion,

you must acquire and beget a temperance

that may give it smoothness.

O, it offends me to the soul

to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow

tear a passion to tatters,

to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings,

who for the most part are capable of nothing

but inexplicable dumbshows and noise:

I would have such a fellow whipped

for o'erdoing Termagant;

it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

Player King: I warrant your honour.

Hamlet: Be not too tame neither,

but let your own discretion be your tutor:

suit the action to the word,

the word to the action;

with this special observance that

you o'erstep not the modesty of nature:

for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing,

whose end, both at the first and last,

was and is, to hold,

as 'twere, the mirror up to nature;

to show virtue her own feature,

scorn her own image,

and the very age and body of the time

his form and pressure.

Now this overdone, or come tardy off,

though it make the unskilful laugh,

cannot but make the judicious grieve;

the censure of the which one must in your allowance

o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.

Player King: I hope we have reformed

that indifferently with us, sir.

Hamlet: O, reform it altogether.

And let those that play your clowns

speak no more than is set down for them;

for there be of them that will themselves laugh,

to set on some quantity

of barren spectators to laugh too;

though, in the mean time,

some necessary question of the play

be then to be considered:

that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition

in the fool that uses it.

Go, make you ready.

How now, my lord!

Will the king hear this piece of work?

Polonius: And the queen too, and that presently.

Hamlet: Bid the players make haste.

Men: Ta-da!

Hamlet: Will you two help to hasten them?

Man: We will, my lord.

Hamlet: What ho! Horatio!

Horatio: Here, sweet lord, at your service.

Hamlet: Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man

As e'er my conversation coped withal.

Horatio: O, my dear lord,--

Hamlet: Nay, do not think I flatter; dost thou hear?

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice

And could of men distinguish, her election

Hath seal'd thee for herself;

Give me that man

That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him

In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,

As I do thee.-- Something too much of this.--

There is a play to-night before the king;

One scene of it comes near the circumstance

Which I have told thee of my father's death:

I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,

Even with the very comment of thy soul

Observe mine uncle: if his occulted guilt

Do not itself unkennel in one speech,

It is a damned ghost that we have seen,

And my imaginations are as foul

As Vulcan's smithy.

Horatio: Well, my lord:

If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,

And 'scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

They are coming to the play;I must be idle

Get you a place.

[Hamlet whistling along with music]

Claudius: How fares our cousin Hamlet?

Hamlet: Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish:

I eat the air, promise-crammed:

Claudius: I have nothing with this answer,

Hamlet; these words are not mine.

Hamlet: No, nor mine now.

My lord, you played once i' the university, you say?

Polonius: That did I, my lord;

and was accounted a good actor.

Hamlet: What did you enact?

Polonius: I did enact Julius Caesar: I was killed i' the

Capitol; Brutus killed me.

Hamlet: It was a brute part of him to kill

so capital a calf there. Be the players ready?

Man: Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.

Gertrude: Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

Hamlet: No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.

Polonius: O, ho! do you mark that

Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

Ophelia: No, my lord.

Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap?

Ophelia: Ay, my lord.

Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?

Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.

Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.

Ophelia: What is, my lord?

Hamlet: Nothing.

Ophelia: You are merry, my lord?

Hamlet: Who, I?

Ophelia: Ay, my lord.

Hamlet: O God, your only jig-maker.

What should a man do but be merry?

for, look, how cheerfully my mother looks,

and my father died within these two hours.

Ophelia: Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.

Hamlet: So long?

Nay then, let the devil wear black,

for I'll have a suit of sables.

O heavens!

die two months ago, and not forgotten yet?

[actors speaking gibberish]

Actor: Dead!

Actor: [screaming/crying]

[clapping]

[laughing]

[clapping]

Ophelia: What means this, my lord?

Hamlet: Marry, this is miching mallecho;

it means mischief.

Ophelia: Belike this show imports the argument of the play.

Hamlet: We shall know by this fellow:

the players cannot keep counsel;

they'll tell all.

Man: For us, and for our tragedy,

Here stooping to your clemency,

We beg your hearing patiently.

Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

Ophelia: 'Tis brief, my lord.

Hamlet: As woman's love.

[clapping]

King [actor]: Full thirty years have passed in sacred ban

Since love our hearts and Hymen joined our hands

Queen [actor]: So many journeys may the sun and moon

Make us again count o'er ere love be done!

King [actor]: 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;

My operant powers their functions leave to do:

And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,

Honour'd, beloved; and haply one as kind

For husband shalt thou--

Queen [actor]: O, confound the rest!

Such love must needs be treason in my breast: