Hamlet
1603
Hamlet
1603
Translated by François Guizot
Denmark is a prison, and Prince Hamlet is its most reluctant inmate. When his father dies unexpectedly and his mother remarries within weeks, the young prince discovers the unthinkable: his uncle Claudius murdered the king and stole the crown. The ghost of his father appears on the castle battlements with a demand for vengeance, but Hamlet is not a simple avenger. He is a man paralyzed by the impossibility of knowing anything for certain in a world where appearance disguises reality, where friends betray, and where the act of revenge might be the very thing that destroys him. What follows is Shakespeare's deepest reckoning with grief, madness, moral corruption, and the terrible cost of action when the mind cannot trust its own perceptions. The play builds toward a blood-soaked finale where nearly everyone falls, leaving only the grim machinery of state to continue. Four centuries later, Hamlet remains the most searching examination of what it means to be human in an uncertain world.
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“Doubt thou the stars are fire;Doubt that the sun doth move;Doubt truth to be a liar;But never doubt I love.””
— William Shakespeare
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.””
— William Shakespeare
“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.””
— William Shakespeare
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;No more; and by a sleep to say we endThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummationDevoutly 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 comeWhen we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause: there's the respectThat makes calamity of so long life;For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,The insolence of office and the spurnsThat patient merit of the unworthy takes,When he himself might his quietus makeWith a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,To grunt and sweat under a weary life,But that the dread of something after death,The undiscover'd country from whose bournNo traveller returns, puzzles the willAnd makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of?Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pith and momentWith this regard their currents turn awry,And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisonsBe all my sins remember'd!””
— William Shakespeare
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.””
— William Shakespeare
“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 respectThat makes calamity of so long life;””
— William Shakespeare
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.””
— William Shakespeare
“Listen to many, speak to a few.””
— William Shakespeare
“Brevity is the soul of wit.””
— William Shakespeare
