Hamlet, Act 1, Scene V
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Act 1, Scene I: The Crazy Occult Forays of Marcellus and Horatio.
Act 1, Scene II: Claudius is the villain, but he's still hotter than you.
Act 1, Scene III: Ophelia's virginity is a national treasure. Just ask her dad and brother.
Act 1, Scene IV: That a ghoooooooooost?
Ghost
My hour is almost come,
When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.
I have a thing in common with Shakespeare's earliest audiences that a modern director can no longer count on---which is to say, the memory of a time when I believed in hell as surely and literally as I believed in the bed I slept in. I don't now, but the memory of that belief is enough to make this scene, with all the ghost's allusions to his damnation, really and truly horrible to me on a completely non-symbolic level.
HAMLET
Speak; I am bound to hear.
Ghost
So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.
Huh. You know, for some reason I always forget about that line of the Ghost's. I usually have the impression that the Ghost simply tells Hamlet of his murder, and the thought of revenge suggests itself to Hamlet naturally. Maybe old Hamlet knows his son too well for that. In the Ghost's presence, Hamlet becomes a different person, more so, I think, than dread of the supernatural accounts for---I see it as the natural effect of coming face to face with a parent he loves but can never satisfy, whose death fell as half a blow, half a relief, only with the relief hidden and repressed. You think you're free of it, and then up he comes, with more demands and expectations. Sucks to be Hamlet.
Ghost
I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.
Well, I guess that explains why we don't hear anything more about Hamlet offing himself for the rest of the play. (Or---wait, do we? I don't think we do. Could be wrong, though.) It is a horrible picture. On the other hand, Purgatory was, ah, discontinued, you might say, by the Reformed religion that prevailed in Shakespeare's time, so the audience gets to feel a touch of pity and superiority for the ancient, benighted Danes. The fact that a lot of the poorer classes weren't quite as Protestant as they pretended to be and their shudders might have been more genuine than they wanted to let on...well, that's just a bonus.
Ghost
List, list, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love--
HAMLET
O God!
Ghost
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
HAMLET
Murder!
Two commands to revenge sandwiching a monologue full of horrors. Old Hamlet really must have known his son.
HAMLET
Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.
Ghost
I find thee apt;
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this.
See above re: knowing his son.
Now, Hamlet, hear:
'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown.
HAMLET
O my prophetic soul! My uncle!
I know that he mentioned foul play in Scene II, but is Hamlet suggesting that he actually suspected Claudius of killing the king prior to now? Or is he just saying "I always hated that guy, I knew there must have been a reason,"?
Ghost
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,--
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce!--won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen
HAHAHA, WHAT DID I TELL YOU. Claudius is brilliant, his brother knew it. And there is no surer path to evil than being too clever by half. At least, it's likely to appear that way to someone who's just smart enough to sense he's never going to come out ahead in a battle of wits, as old Hamlet seems to have been.
O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!
From me, whose love was of that dignity
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage, and to decline
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine!
You know, Your Highness, you just got done telling us Claudius is smarter than you---so, by "natural gifts", do you perhaps mean "penis"?
But virtue, as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage.
Someone's bitter. Also, you've got three guesses where Hamlet came by his very special attitudes regarding his mother's sexuality, and the first two don't count.
But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
Brief let me be.
Too late.
Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine;
And a most instant tetter bark'd about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body.
That is both brilliant and unbelievably disgusting. I mean, excellent job with creating a vivid picture in the brain there, Bill, but did you HAVE to go there? I guess this is meant to fetch in all the people who weren't that impressed with the fact that he died unshriven---now they know he died all gross and scabbed over, they're on his side. Or something.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand
Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd:
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head:
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest.
But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire:
Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.
"If thou hast nature in thee"---I think that means, "if you're REALLY my son". Fathers can never be 100% sure, can they. Specially when realize someone planted a cuckoo in the form of a smart ass in their family nest. Am I actually suggesting Claudius is Hamlet's real father? No. I'm not that sleep-deprived yet. Fun to think about, though, isn't it?
HAMLET
O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?
And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe.
Madness affects memory; if you're willing to be loose in your interpretation as to what degree of Hamlet's madness is strictly performative and how much begins to cross the line into something more genuine, you could almost make the argument that in madness Hamlet finds a reprieve from his vow to his father's ghost.
Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter:
"Dear Mom and Uncle Claudius: sry 2 say all the dough you spent on university tuition just got flushed down the crapper, but it's your own fault for KILLING DAD." It's a stirring statement, coming from a young man already established to be bookish and studious. "I came back to Elsinore on the trail of the killers of my father---"
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;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:
Writing
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me.'
I have sworn 't.
Look, all I'm saying is, if he really did just stop to write that down, then maybe the crazy he's about to put on for Horatio and company isn't as much of an act as he'd like to pretend it is.
HORATIO
[Within] Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!
HAMLET
Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come, bird, come.
Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS
I can't find my print copy---that line of Horatio's, is it ever printed as being Marcellus'? I could have sworn when I was reading the scene this morning I read that line as Marcellus.
Although, honestly, I can't think whether Marcellus or Horatio calling to Hamlet like a falconer to his bird is stranger.
MARCELLUS
How is't, my noble lord?
HORATIO
What news, my lord?
HAMLET
O, wonderful!
HORATIO
Good my lord, tell it.
HAMLET
No; you'll reveal it.
HORATIO
Not I, my lord, by heaven.
MARCELLUS
Nor I, my lord.
HAMLET
How say you, then; would heart of man once think it?
But you'll be secret?
I think he really wants to tell them. If Marcellus hadn't been there, if he could have talked to Horatio alone, maybe he would have.
HAMLET
There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he's an arrant knave.
HORATIO
There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this.
I feel like Hamlet started to say one thing and then changed course halfway through and ended differently than he began.
HAMLET
Why, right; you are i' the right;
And so, without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part:
You, as your business and desire shall point you;
For every man has business and desire,
Such as it is; and for mine own poor part,
Look you, I'll go pray.
HORATIO
These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.
HAMLET
I'm sorry they offend you, heartily;
Yes, 'faith heartily.
"You're the one who dragged our asses out into the freezing cold on this creepy fucking battlement or whatever. You don't start making some sense, sorry ain't even gonna cut it." Actually, that's not Horatio at all. That's what I'd be saying if I were where Horatio is. Which is probably why I'm not friends with the heirs to any royal houses.
HORATIO
There's no offence, my lord.
HAMLET
Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
And much offence too. Touching this vision here,
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you:
For your desire to know what is between us,
O'ermaster 't as you may.
I love that image of Hamlet, so desperate and outraged that he forgets his game for a moment. Again, he seems for a second on the point of telling Horatio, only to draw back and ask Horatio not to ask, as though his will not to confide in him is weak and uncertain.
And now, good friends,
As you are friends, scholars and soldiers,
Give me one poor request.
HORATIO
What is't, my lord? we will.
HAMLET
Never make known what you have seen to-night.
HORATIO MARCELLUS
My lord, we will not.
HAMLET
Nay, but swear't.
HORATIO
In faith,
My lord, not I.
MARCELLUS
Nor I, my lord, in faith.
HAMLET
Upon my sword.
MARCELLUS
We have sworn, my lord, already.
HAMLET
Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.
Ghost
[Beneath] Swear.
This business of the repeated vows is, as Horatio says, very strange and a little occult. Hamlet is freaking out hardcore: he makes them swear four times, three times upon his sword in three different locations---I wonder in the staging if the places formed a cross or some other significant outline. Hamlet's demeanor with the ghost, who probably freaked everyone right the fuck out when he started saying "Swear," is no longer overawed---more antic, clownish, in the sense that Shakespeare's clown are usually weird as hell.
HORATIO
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
HAMLET
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come;
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
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 arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,'
Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,'
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me: this not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.
"Therefore as a stranger give it welcome"---Horatio is the only person around other than Hamlet himself who might be able to hear the truth of the situation without absolutely losing his shit, only Hamlet doesn't dare tell anyone yet, because then Horatio might give him advice and make him deal with the situation.
And he advises them he's going to act mad from time to time in the future. Forwarned is forearmed, I suppose, though come right down to it I don't think we ever see Hamlet play mad in front of anyone but Polonius and Claudius, although there's a sharp, knowing edge to that playacting that suggests he knows Claudius sees through him and is enjoying the fact that Claudius can't do a thing about it.'
So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you:
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do, to express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let's go together.
And that's that. The next time we see Hamlet, a scene and a half later, he'll be with Polonius and almost unrecognizable as the person we knew in Act I, and apart from his last scene with Horatio just before he dies, he doesn't speak a sincere and unguarded word again for the rest of what remains of his life.
ZOMG THAT'S THE END OF ACT ONE. That was cheerful. But hey, the next scene has Ophelia in it.
I spent an hour or so before bed reading Richard II, which, combined with Hamlet, produced some very...odd dreams. I'm not sure I recommend it.
Anyway. Only fifteen days of Hamlet left! What shall we read next?
Act 1, Scene I: The Crazy Occult Forays of Marcellus and Horatio.
Act 1, Scene II: Claudius is the villain, but he's still hotter than you.
Act 1, Scene III: Ophelia's virginity is a national treasure. Just ask her dad and brother.
Act 1, Scene IV: That a ghoooooooooost?
Ghost
My hour is almost come,
When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.
I have a thing in common with Shakespeare's earliest audiences that a modern director can no longer count on---which is to say, the memory of a time when I believed in hell as surely and literally as I believed in the bed I slept in. I don't now, but the memory of that belief is enough to make this scene, with all the ghost's allusions to his damnation, really and truly horrible to me on a completely non-symbolic level.
HAMLET
Speak; I am bound to hear.
Ghost
So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.
Huh. You know, for some reason I always forget about that line of the Ghost's. I usually have the impression that the Ghost simply tells Hamlet of his murder, and the thought of revenge suggests itself to Hamlet naturally. Maybe old Hamlet knows his son too well for that. In the Ghost's presence, Hamlet becomes a different person, more so, I think, than dread of the supernatural accounts for---I see it as the natural effect of coming face to face with a parent he loves but can never satisfy, whose death fell as half a blow, half a relief, only with the relief hidden and repressed. You think you're free of it, and then up he comes, with more demands and expectations. Sucks to be Hamlet.
Ghost
I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.
Well, I guess that explains why we don't hear anything more about Hamlet offing himself for the rest of the play. (Or---wait, do we? I don't think we do. Could be wrong, though.) It is a horrible picture. On the other hand, Purgatory was, ah, discontinued, you might say, by the Reformed religion that prevailed in Shakespeare's time, so the audience gets to feel a touch of pity and superiority for the ancient, benighted Danes. The fact that a lot of the poorer classes weren't quite as Protestant as they pretended to be and their shudders might have been more genuine than they wanted to let on...well, that's just a bonus.
Ghost
List, list, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love--
HAMLET
O God!
Ghost
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
HAMLET
Murder!
Two commands to revenge sandwiching a monologue full of horrors. Old Hamlet really must have known his son.
HAMLET
Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.
Ghost
I find thee apt;
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this.
See above re: knowing his son.
Now, Hamlet, hear:
'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown.
HAMLET
O my prophetic soul! My uncle!
I know that he mentioned foul play in Scene II, but is Hamlet suggesting that he actually suspected Claudius of killing the king prior to now? Or is he just saying "I always hated that guy, I knew there must have been a reason,"?
Ghost
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,--
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce!--won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen
HAHAHA, WHAT DID I TELL YOU. Claudius is brilliant, his brother knew it. And there is no surer path to evil than being too clever by half. At least, it's likely to appear that way to someone who's just smart enough to sense he's never going to come out ahead in a battle of wits, as old Hamlet seems to have been.
O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!
From me, whose love was of that dignity
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage, and to decline
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine!
You know, Your Highness, you just got done telling us Claudius is smarter than you---so, by "natural gifts", do you perhaps mean "penis"?
But virtue, as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage.
Someone's bitter. Also, you've got three guesses where Hamlet came by his very special attitudes regarding his mother's sexuality, and the first two don't count.
But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
Brief let me be.
Too late.
Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine;
And a most instant tetter bark'd about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body.
That is both brilliant and unbelievably disgusting. I mean, excellent job with creating a vivid picture in the brain there, Bill, but did you HAVE to go there? I guess this is meant to fetch in all the people who weren't that impressed with the fact that he died unshriven---now they know he died all gross and scabbed over, they're on his side. Or something.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand
Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd:
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head:
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest.
But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire:
Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.
"If thou hast nature in thee"---I think that means, "if you're REALLY my son". Fathers can never be 100% sure, can they. Specially when realize someone planted a cuckoo in the form of a smart ass in their family nest. Am I actually suggesting Claudius is Hamlet's real father? No. I'm not that sleep-deprived yet. Fun to think about, though, isn't it?
HAMLET
O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?
And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe.
Madness affects memory; if you're willing to be loose in your interpretation as to what degree of Hamlet's madness is strictly performative and how much begins to cross the line into something more genuine, you could almost make the argument that in madness Hamlet finds a reprieve from his vow to his father's ghost.
Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter:
"Dear Mom and Uncle Claudius: sry 2 say all the dough you spent on university tuition just got flushed down the crapper, but it's your own fault for KILLING DAD." It's a stirring statement, coming from a young man already established to be bookish and studious. "I came back to Elsinore on the trail of the killers of my father---"
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;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:
Writing
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me.'
I have sworn 't.
Look, all I'm saying is, if he really did just stop to write that down, then maybe the crazy he's about to put on for Horatio and company isn't as much of an act as he'd like to pretend it is.
HORATIO
[Within] Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!
HAMLET
Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come, bird, come.
Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS
I can't find my print copy---that line of Horatio's, is it ever printed as being Marcellus'? I could have sworn when I was reading the scene this morning I read that line as Marcellus.
Although, honestly, I can't think whether Marcellus or Horatio calling to Hamlet like a falconer to his bird is stranger.
MARCELLUS
How is't, my noble lord?
HORATIO
What news, my lord?
HAMLET
O, wonderful!
HORATIO
Good my lord, tell it.
HAMLET
No; you'll reveal it.
HORATIO
Not I, my lord, by heaven.
MARCELLUS
Nor I, my lord.
HAMLET
How say you, then; would heart of man once think it?
But you'll be secret?
I think he really wants to tell them. If Marcellus hadn't been there, if he could have talked to Horatio alone, maybe he would have.
HAMLET
There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he's an arrant knave.
HORATIO
There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this.
I feel like Hamlet started to say one thing and then changed course halfway through and ended differently than he began.
HAMLET
Why, right; you are i' the right;
And so, without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part:
You, as your business and desire shall point you;
For every man has business and desire,
Such as it is; and for mine own poor part,
Look you, I'll go pray.
HORATIO
These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.
HAMLET
I'm sorry they offend you, heartily;
Yes, 'faith heartily.
"You're the one who dragged our asses out into the freezing cold on this creepy fucking battlement or whatever. You don't start making some sense, sorry ain't even gonna cut it." Actually, that's not Horatio at all. That's what I'd be saying if I were where Horatio is. Which is probably why I'm not friends with the heirs to any royal houses.
HORATIO
There's no offence, my lord.
HAMLET
Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
And much offence too. Touching this vision here,
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you:
For your desire to know what is between us,
O'ermaster 't as you may.
I love that image of Hamlet, so desperate and outraged that he forgets his game for a moment. Again, he seems for a second on the point of telling Horatio, only to draw back and ask Horatio not to ask, as though his will not to confide in him is weak and uncertain.
And now, good friends,
As you are friends, scholars and soldiers,
Give me one poor request.
HORATIO
What is't, my lord? we will.
HAMLET
Never make known what you have seen to-night.
HORATIO MARCELLUS
My lord, we will not.
HAMLET
Nay, but swear't.
HORATIO
In faith,
My lord, not I.
MARCELLUS
Nor I, my lord, in faith.
HAMLET
Upon my sword.
MARCELLUS
We have sworn, my lord, already.
HAMLET
Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.
Ghost
[Beneath] Swear.
This business of the repeated vows is, as Horatio says, very strange and a little occult. Hamlet is freaking out hardcore: he makes them swear four times, three times upon his sword in three different locations---I wonder in the staging if the places formed a cross or some other significant outline. Hamlet's demeanor with the ghost, who probably freaked everyone right the fuck out when he started saying "Swear," is no longer overawed---more antic, clownish, in the sense that Shakespeare's clown are usually weird as hell.
HORATIO
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
HAMLET
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come;
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
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 arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,'
Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,'
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me: this not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.
"Therefore as a stranger give it welcome"---Horatio is the only person around other than Hamlet himself who might be able to hear the truth of the situation without absolutely losing his shit, only Hamlet doesn't dare tell anyone yet, because then Horatio might give him advice and make him deal with the situation.
And he advises them he's going to act mad from time to time in the future. Forwarned is forearmed, I suppose, though come right down to it I don't think we ever see Hamlet play mad in front of anyone but Polonius and Claudius, although there's a sharp, knowing edge to that playacting that suggests he knows Claudius sees through him and is enjoying the fact that Claudius can't do a thing about it.'
So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you:
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do, to express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let's go together.
And that's that. The next time we see Hamlet, a scene and a half later, he'll be with Polonius and almost unrecognizable as the person we knew in Act I, and apart from his last scene with Horatio just before he dies, he doesn't speak a sincere and unguarded word again for the rest of what remains of his life.
ZOMG THAT'S THE END OF ACT ONE. That was cheerful. But hey, the next scene has Ophelia in it.
I spent an hour or so before bed reading Richard II, which, combined with Hamlet, produced some very...odd dreams. I'm not sure I recommend it.
Anyway. Only fifteen days of Hamlet left! What shall we read next?