By laboursome petition, and at last

Upon his will I sealed my hard consent.

I do beseech you give him leave to go.

KING CLAUDIUS

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—

HAMLET

A little more than kin and less than kind.

KING CLAUDIUS

How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET

Not so, my lord, I am too much i’th’ sun.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Good Hamlet, cast thy nightly colour off,

And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.

Do not for ever 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.

HAMLET

Ay, madam, it is common.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

If it be,

Why seems it so particular with thee?

HAMLET

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 haviour of the visage,

Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief

That can denote me truly. These indeed ‘seem’,

For they are actions that a man might play;

But I have that within which passeth show—

These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

KING CLAUDIUS

‘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 corpse 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 towards 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.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.

I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.

HAMLET

I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

KING CLAUDIUS

Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply.

Be as ourself in Denmark. (To Gertrude) 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 heavens shall bruit again,

Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come, away.

⌈Flourish.^⌉ pmlmmmExeunt all but Hamlet

HAMLET

O that this too too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed

His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God, O God,

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on’t, ah fie, 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,

Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she—

O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason

Would have mourned longer!—married with mine

uncle,

My father’s brother, but no more like my father

Than I to Hercules; within a month,

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears

Had left the flushing of her gallèd eyes,

She married. O most wicked speed, to post