Hamlet
Act IV, Scene 5
Elsinore. A room in Elsinore castle.
There’s rosemary
Costume design for Ophelia
John Seymour Lucas
- Enter Horatio, Queen Gertrude, and a Gentleman.
Gertrude
1- I will not speak with her.
Gentleman
2 - 3- She is importunate, indeed distract.
- Her mood will needs be pitied.
Gertrude
4- What would she have?
Gentleman
5 - 14- She speaks much of her father, says she hears
- There’s tricks i’ th’ world, and hems, and beats her heart,
- Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt
- That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
- Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
- The hearers to collection; they yawn at it,
- And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,
- Which as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,
- Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
- Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
Horatio
15 - 16- ’Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew
- Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
Gertrude
17 - 21- Let her come in.
- Exit Gentleman.
- Aside.
- To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is,
- Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss,
- So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
- It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
- Enter Ophelia distracted, with her hair down, playing on a
- lute.
Ophelia
22- Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?
Gertrude
23- How now, Ophelia?
Ophelia
24 - 27- She sings.
- “How should I your true-love know
- From another one?
- By his cockle hat and staff,
- And his sandal shoon.”
Gertrude
28- Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
Ophelia
29 - 34- Say you? Nay, pray you mark.
- Song.
- “He is dead and gone, lady,
- He is dead and gone,
- At his head a grass-green turf,
- At his heels a stone.”
- O ho!
Gertrude
35- Nay, but, Ophelia—
Ophelia
36 - 37- Pray you mark.
- Sings.
- “White his shroud as the mountain snow”—
- Enter King.
Gertrude
38- Alas, look here, my lord.
Ophelia
39 - 41- Song.
- “Larded all with sweet flowers,
- Which bewept to the ground did not go
- With true-love showers.”
Claudius
42- How do you, pretty lady?
Ophelia
43 - 45- Well, God dild you! They say the owl was a baker’s daughter.
- Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God
- be at your table!
Claudius
46- Conceit upon her father.
Ophelia
47 - 55- Pray let’s have no words of this, but when they ask you what it means, say you this:
- Song.
- “Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
- All in the morning betime,
- And I a maid at your window,
- To be your Valentine.
- Then up he rose and donn’d his clo’es,
- And dupp’d the chamber-door,
- Let in the maid, that out a maid
- Never departed more.”
Claudius
56- Pretty Ophelia!
Ophelia
57 - 65- Indeed without an oath I’ll make an end on’t.
- Sings.
- “By Gis, and by Saint Charity,
- Alack, and fie for shame!
- Young men will do’t if they come to’t,
- By Cock, they are to blame.
- Quoth she, “Before you tumbled me,
- You promis’d me to wed.’”
- He answers.
- “‘So would I ’a’ done, by yonder sun,
- And thou hadst not come to my bed.’”
There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace a’ Sundays.
E. Goodwyn Lewis, 1864
Claudius
66- How long hath she been thus?
Ophelia
67 - 71- I hope all will be well. We must be patient, but I cannot
- choose but weep to think they would lay him i’ th’ cold
- ground. My brother shall know of it, and so I thank you for
- your good counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies, good
- night. Sweet ladies, good night, good night.
- Exit.
Claudius
72 - 94- Follow her close, give her good watch, I pray you.
- Exit Horatio.
- O, this is the poison of deep grief, it springs
- All from her father’s death—and now behold!
- 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; poor Ophelia
- Divided from herself and her fair judgement,
- Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts;
- Last, and as much containing as all these,
- Her brother is in secret come from France,
- Feeds on this 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 beggar’d,
- 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.
- A noise within.
Gertrude
95- Alack, what noise is this?
Claudius
96 - 98- Attend!
- Where is my Swissers? Let them guard the door.
- Enter a Messenger.
- What is the matter?
Messenger
99 - 109- Save yourself, my lord!
- The ocean, overpeering of his list,
- Eats not the flats with more impetuous 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!”
- Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,
- “Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!”
- A noise within.
Gertrude
110 - 111- How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
- O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!
- Enter Laertes with others.
Claudius
112- The doors are broke.
Laertes
113- Where is this king? Sirs, stand you all without.
Laertes’s Followers
114- No, let ’s come in.
Laertes
115- I pray you give me leave.
Laertes’s Followers
116- We will, we will.
Laertes
117 - 119- I thank you, keep the door.
- Exeunt Laertes’ followers.
- O thou vile king,
- Give me my father!
Gertrude
120- Calmly, good Laertes.
Laertes
121 - 124- That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard,
- Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
- Even here between the chaste unsmirched brow
- Of my true mother.
Claudius
125 - 132- What is the cause, Laertes,
- That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?
- Let him go, Gertrude, do not fear our person:
- There’s such divinity doth hedge a king
- That treason can but peep to what it would,
- Acts little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,
- Why thou art thus incens’d. Let him go, Gertrude.
- Speak, man.
From: The Flowers of Shakspeare
Viola, 1883
Laertes
133- Where is my father?
Claudius
134- Dead.
Gertrude
135- But not by him.
Claudius
136- Let him demand his fill.
Laertes
137 - 143- How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with.
- To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!
- Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
- I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
- That both the worlds I give to negligence,
- Let come what comes, only I’ll be reveng’d
- Most throughly for my father.
Claudius
144- Who shall stay you?
Laertes
145 - 147- My will, not all the world’s:
- And for my means, I’ll husband them so well,
- They shall go far with little.
Claudius
148 - 152- Good Laertes,
- If you desire to know the certainty
- Of your dear father, is’t writ in your revenge
- That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe,
- Winner and loser?
Laertes
153- None but his enemies.
Claudius
154- Will you know them then?
Laertes
155 - 157- To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms,
- And like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,
- Repast them with my blood.
Claudius
158 - 164- Why, now you speak
- Like a good child and a true gentleman.
- That I am guiltless of your father’s death,
- And am most sensibly in grief for it,
- It shall as level to your judgment ’pear
- As day does to your eye.
- A noise within:
- “Let her come in!”
Laertes
165 - 175- How now, what noise is that?
- Enter Ophelia.
- O heat, dry up my brains! Tears seven times salt
- Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
- By heaven, thy madness shall be paid with weight
- Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
- Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
- O heavens, is’t possible a young maid’s wits
- Should be as mortal as an old man’s life?
- Nature is fine in love, and where ’tis fine,
- It sends some precious instance of itself
- After the thing it loves.
Ophelia
176 - 179- Song.
- “They bore him barefac’d on the bier,
- Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny,
- And in his grave rain’d many a tear”—
- Fare you well, my dove!
Laertes
180 - 181- Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge,
- It could not move thus.
Ophelia
182 - 185- You must sing, “A-down, a-down,”
- And you call him a-down-a.
- O how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that
- stole his master’s daughter.
Laertes
186- This nothing’s more than matter.
Ophelia
187 - 188- There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray you, love,
- remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.
Laertes
189- A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.
Ophelia
190 - 196- To Claudius.
- There’s fennel for you, and columbines.
- To Gertrude.
- There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we may call it
- herb of grace a’ Sundays. You may wear your rue with a
- difference. There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets,
- but they wither’d all when my father died. They say ’a made
- a good end—
- Sings.
- “For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.”
Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.
Ernest Hébert, 19th century
Laertes
197 - 198- Thought and afflictions, passion, hell itself,
- She turns to favor and to prettiness.
Ophelia
199 - 209- Song.
- “And will ’a not come again?
- And will ’a not come again?
- No, no, he is dead,
- Go to thy death-bed,
- He never will come again.
- His beard was as white as snow,
- All flaxen was his pole,
- He is gone, he is gone,
- And we cast away moan,
- God ’a’ mercy on his soul!”
- And of all Christians’ souls, I pray God. God buy you.
- Exit.
Laertes
210- Do you see this, O God?
Claudius
211 - 221- Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
- Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
- Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,
- And they shall hear and judge ’twixt you and me.
- If by direct or by collateral hand
- They find us touch’d, 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.
Laertes
222 - 227- Let this be so.
- 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.
Claudius
228 - 230- So you shall,
- And where th’ offense is, let the great axe fall.
- I pray you go with me.
- Exeunt.
Julia Arthur as Ophelia
B. J. Falk, circa 1900