Hamlet: A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623
1603
Hamlet: A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623
1603
The Prince of Denmark is dead. His brother has seized the throne and married the widow within weeks. And now the ghost walks. Hamlet, scholar and wit, finds himself unable to act, a man whose mind becomes both his greatest weapon and his cruelest prison. Shakespeare's masterpiece isn't simply a revenge tragedy. It is an excavation of consciousness itself, where thought spirals into doubt and certainty crumbles beneath scrutiny. The play asks whether thought can ever translate to action, whether justice exists in a corrupt world, whether the living are any less ghostly than the dead. As Denmark collapses into madness and murder, Hamlet's famous indecision becomes less a character flaw than an existential condition: the terrible weight of knowing too much, feeling too deeply, seeing too clearly. This is the role every actor dreams of, the play every reader must encounter, the work that has haunted audiences for four centuries because it asks the question we cannot answer: what does it mean to be alive when we know we must die?
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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
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Shakespeare, William. Hamlet: A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623. Lex, lex-books.com/book/hamlet-a-study-with-the-text-of-the-folio-of-1623-1122ea58-7fb2-4e9e-a24a-87add65bb51e.Shakespeare, W. (1603). Hamlet: A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/hamlet-a-study-with-the-text-of-the-folio-of-1623-1122ea58-7fb2-4e9e-a24a-87add65bb51eShakespeare, William. Hamlet: A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/hamlet-a-study-with-the-text-of-the-folio-of-1623-1122ea58-7fb2-4e9e-a24a-87add65bb51e.
