College Prep English for Homeschoolers at EIE, November 6, 2014

Let’s also explore online language search tools this week: Setting up the Dictionary Search browser tool for custom searches and sampling

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Recitation and quotes from Hamlet:

HAMLET
129 O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
130 Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
131 Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
132 His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
133 How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
134 Seem to me all the uses of this world!
135 Fie on’t! ah fie! ’tis an unweeded garden,
136 That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
137 Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
138 But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
139 So excellent a king; that was, to this,
140 Hyperion to a satyr;

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POLONIUS
55 Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
56 The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
57 And you are stay’d for. There, my blessing with thee!
58 And these few precepts in thy memory
59 See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
60 Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
61 Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
62 Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
63 Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
64 But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
65 Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged courage. Beware
66 Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
67 Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
68 Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
69 Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
70 Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
71 But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy,
72 For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
73 And they in France of the best rank and station
74 Or of a most select and generous chief in that.
75 Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
76 For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
77 And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
78 This above all: to thine ownself be true,
79 And it must follow, as the night the day,
80 Thou canst not then be false to any man.
81 Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

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GHOST
9 I am thy father’s spirit,
10 Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,
11 And for the day confined to fast in fires,
12 Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
13 Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
14 To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
15 I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
16 Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
17 Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
18 Thy knotted and combined locks to part
19 And each particular hair to stand on end,
20 Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
21 But this eternal blazon must not be
22 To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
23 If thou didst ever thy dear father love— HAMLET
24 O God!

GHOST
25 Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET
26 Murder!

GHOST
27 Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
28 But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

HAMLET
29 Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift
30 As meditation or the thoughts of love,
31 May sweep to my revenge.

GHOST
31 I find thee apt;
32 And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
33 That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
34 Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear:
35 ‘Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
36 A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
37 Is by a forged process of my death
38 Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth,
39 The serpent that did sting thy father’s life
40 Now wears his crown.

HAMLET
40 O my prophetic soul!
41 My uncle?

GHOST
42 Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
43 With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts—
44 O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
45 So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust
46 The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen:
47 ...

59 Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
60 My custom always of the afternoon,
61 Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
62 With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
63 And in the porches of my ears did pour
64 The leperous distillment; whose effect
65 Holds such an enmity with blood of man
66 That swift as quicksilver it courses through
67 The natural gates and alleys of the body,
68 And with a sudden vigor doth posset
69 And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
70 The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine;
71 And a most instant tetter bark’d about,
72 Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
73 All my smooth body.
74 Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand
75 Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch’d:
76 Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
77 Unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d,
78 No reckoning made, but sent to my account
79 With all my imperfections on my head:
80 O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
81 If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
82 Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
83 A couch for luxury and damned incest.
84 But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,
85 Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
86 Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven
87 And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
88 To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
89 The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
90 And ‘gins to pale his uneffectual fire:
91 Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me.

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HORATIO
164 O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

HAMLET
165 And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
166 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
167 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
168 But come—
169 Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
170 How strange or odd soe’er I bear myself,
171 As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
172 To put an antic disposition on,
173 That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
174 With arms encumber’d thus, or this headshake,
175 Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
176 As “Well, well, we know,” or “We could, an if we would,”
177 Or “If we list to speak,” or “There be, an if they might,”
178 Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
179 That you know aught of me—this not to do,
180 So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.

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KING
1 Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!
2 Moreover that we much did long to see you,
3 The need we have to use you did provoke
4 Our hasty sending. Something have you heard
5 Of Hamlet’s transformation; so call it,
6 Sith nor the exterior nor the inward man
7 Resembles that it was. What it should be,
8 More than his father’s death, that thus hath put him
9 So much from th’ understanding of himself,
10 I cannot dream of. I entreat you both,
11 That, being of so young days brought up with him,
12 And sith so neighbor’d to his youth and havior,
13 That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court
14 Some little time, so by your companies
15 To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather,
16 So much as from occasion you may glean,
17 Whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus,
18 That, open’d, lies within our remedy.

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HAMLET
56 To be, or not to be: that is the question:
57 Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
58 The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
59 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
60 And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep—
61 No more—and by a sleep to say we end
62 The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
63 That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
64 Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
65 To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
66 For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
67 When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
68 Must give us pause: there’s the respect
69 That makes calamity of so long life;
70 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
71 The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
72 The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
73 The insolence of office and the spurns
74 That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
75 When he himself might his quietus make
76 With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
77 To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
78 But that the dread of something after death,
79 The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
80 No traveller returns, puzzles the will
81 And makes us rather bear those ills we have
82 Than fly to others that we know not of?
83 Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
84 And thus the native hue of resolution
85 Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
86 And enterprises of great pitch and moment
87 With this regard their currents turn awry,
88 And lose the name of action.

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Pivotal quotes from Hamlet

Act 1 Quotes

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,

Act 5 Quotes

Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. — Horatio, 5.2.3