HAMLET 1! of 4!

Enter behind columns, see imaginary couple on bench

A little more than kin and less than kind.
Hamlet at the bench
O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
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.
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 mourn'd 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, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue!
Hamlet to ghost (kneel to pillar in the center)
King, father, royal Dane. O, answer me?
Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell
Why thy canoniz'd bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements;
What? Murder?
Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.
O my prophetic soul! My uncle?
crawl to face the audience
O most pernicious woman!
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;
Now to my word

HAMLET 2! of 4!

at center of stage, put on the scarf, swear on the sword

How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself
(As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on),
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me.
Swear.
transition-on back on the couch, laugh, roll over
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 sleepNo more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, 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,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after deathThe 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,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
And lose the name of action.- Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia!- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembred.
transition: end standing on couch, cross behind pillar, poised to stab king at pillows

HAMLET 3! of 4!
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven,
And so am I reveng'd. That would be scann'd.
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
No.
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
transition: to Gertrude on the bench
You are the Queen, your husband's brother's wife,
And (would it were not so!) you are my mother.
draws How now? a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!
A bloody deed- almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
Do you not come your tardy son to chide?
Do you see nothing there?
My father, in his habit as he liv'd!
Ecstasy?
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have utt'red.
transition: pressed against the couch
I prithee take thy fingers from my throat;
For, though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I in me something dangerous,
Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand!
I lov'd Ophelia.
transition: fold and present scarf as madness to Laertes from behind the couch
Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong;
And you must needs have heard, how I am punish'd
With sore distraction. What I have done
I here proclaim was madness.
Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet.
If Hamlet from himself be taken away,
And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then? His madness.
collapse onto couch

HAMLET 4! of 4!
I am dead, Horatio.
Thou liv'st; report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.
The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit.
- the rest is silence.