Module 1: "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare, Act 4

Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend
Which is the mightier.

Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered?
It will be laid to us, whose providence
Should have kept short, restrained, and out of haunt,
This mad young man.

But so much was our love,
We would not understand what was most fit,
But, like the owner of a foul disease,
To keep it from divulging, let it feed
Even on the pith of life.

Come, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends
And let them know both what we mean to do
And what’s untimely done.

My soul is full of discord and dismay.

Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A
certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at
him.

Tell him that by his license Fortinbras
Craves the conveyance of a promised march
Over his kingdom.

Now whether it be
Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th’ event
(A thought which, quartered, hath but one part
wisdom
And ever three parts coward), I do not know
Why yet I live to say “This thing’s to do,”
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do ’t.

Now whether it be
Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th’ event
(A thought which, quartered, hath but one part
wisdom
And ever three parts coward), I do not know
Why yet I live to say “This thing’s to do,”
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do ’t.

Now whether it be
Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th’ event
(A thought which, quartered, hath but one part
wisdom
And ever three parts coward), I do not know
Why yet I live to say “This thing’s to do,”
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do ’t.

Examples gross as Earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed
Makes mouths at the invisible event
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an eggshell.

She is importunate,
Indeed distract; her mood will needs be pitied.

'Twere good she were spoken with; for she may
strew
Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.

So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

O Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions: first, her father slain;
Next, your son gone, and he most violent author
Of his own just remove; the people muddied,
Thick, and unwholesome in their thoughts and
whispers
For good Polonius’ death, and we have done but
greenly
In hugger-mugger to inter him...

Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France,
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father’s death,
Wherein necessity, of matter beggared,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear.

O, my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murd’ring piece, in many places
Gives me superfluous death.

The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impiteous haste
Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
O'erbears your officers.

The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impiteuous haste
Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
O'erbears your officers.

The rabble call him “lord,”
And, as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props of every word,
They cry “Choose we, Laertes shall be king!”

That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me
bastard,
Cries "cuckold" to my father, brands the harlot
Even here, between the chaste unsmirchèd brow
Of my true mother.

Tell me, Laertes,
Why thou art thus incensed.

To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms
And, like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,
Repast them with my blood.

There’s fennel for you, and columbines.
There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we
may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays.

If by direct or by collateral hand
They find us touched, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
To you in satisfaction; but if not,
Be you content to lend your patience to us,
And we shall jointly labor with your soul
To give it due content.

His means of death, his obscure funeral
(No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones,
No noble rite nor formal ostentation)
Cry to be heard, as ’twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call ’t in question.

If he be now returned,
As checking at his voyage, and that he means
No more to undertake it, I will work him
To an exploit, now ripe in my device,
Under the which he shall not choose but fall;
And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe,
But even his mother shall uncharge the practice
And call it accident.

That we would do
We should do when we would; for this “would”
changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this “should” is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.

That we would do
We should do when we would; for this “would”
changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this “should” is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.

He, being remiss,
Most generous, and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils, so that with ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
A sword unbated, and in a pass of practice
Requite him for your father.

He, being remiss,
Most generous, and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils, so that with ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
A sword unbated, and in a pass of practice
Requite him for your father.

He, being remiss,
Most generous, and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils, so that with ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
A sword unbated, and in a pass of practice
Requite him for your father.

I bought an unction of a mountebank
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death
That is but scratched withal.

When in your motion you are hot and dry
(As make your bouts more violent to that end)
And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepared
him
A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venomed stuck,
Our purpose may hold there.

Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,
As one incapable of her own distress
Or like a creature native and endued
Unto that element.