The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare [book recommendations based on other books txt] 📗

in answer of the third exchange, Let all the battlements their ordnance fire; The King shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath, And in the cup an union shall he throw Richer than that which four successive kings In Denmark’s crown have worn. Give me the cups; And let the kettle to the trumpet speak, The trumpet to the cannoneer without, The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth, ‘Now the King drinks to Hamlet.’ Come, begin.

And you the judges, bear a wary eye.

Ham. Come on, sir.

Laer. Come, my lord. They play.

Ham. One.

Laer. No.

Ham. Judgment!

Osr. A hit, a very palpable hit.

Laer. Well, again!

King. Stay, give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine; Here’s to thy health.

[Drum; trumpets sound; a piece goes off [within].

Give him the cup.

Ham. I’ll play this bout first; set it by awhile.

Come. (They play.) Another hit. What say you?

Laer. A touch, a touch; I do confess’t.

King. Our son shall win.

Queen. He’s fat, and scant of breath.

Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows.

The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.

Ham. Good madam!

King. Gertrude, do not drink.

Queen. I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me. Drinks.

King. [aside] It is the poison’d cup; it is too late.

Ham. I dare not drink yet, madam; by-and-by.

Queen. Come, let me wipe thy face.

Laer. My lord, I’ll hit him now.

King. I do not think’t.

Laer. [aside] And yet it is almost against my conscience.

Ham. Come for the third, Laertes! You but dally.

pray You Pass with your best violence; I am afeard You make a wanton of me.

Laer. Say you so? Come on. Play.

Osr. Nothing neither way.

Laer. Have at you now!

[Laertes wounds Hamlet; then] in scuffling, they change rapiers, [and Hamlet wounds Laertes].

King. Part them! They are incens’d.

Ham. Nay come! again! The Queen falls.

Osr. Look to the Queen there, ho!

Hor. They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?

Osr. How is’t, Laertes?

Laer. Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric.

I am justly kill’d with mine own treachery.

Ham. How does the Queen?

King. She sounds to see them bleed.

Queen. No, no! the drink, the drink! O my dear Hamlet!

The drink, the drink! I am poison’d. [Dies.]

Ham. O villany! Ho! let the door be lock’d.

Treachery! Seek it out.

[Laertes falls.]

Laer. It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain; No medicine in the world can do thee good.

In thee there is not half an hour of life.

The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, Unbated and envenom’d. The foul practice Hath turn’d itself on me. Lo, here I lie, Never to rise again. Thy mother’s poison’d.

I can no more. The King, the King’s to blame.

Ham. The point envenom’d too?

Then, venom, to thy work. Hurts the King.

All. Treason! treason!

King. O, yet defend me, friends! I am but hurt.

Ham. Here, thou incestuous, murd’rous, damned Dane, Drink off this potion! Is thy union here?

Follow my mother. King dies.

Laer. He is justly serv’d.

It is a poison temper’d by himself.

Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.

Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee, Nor thine on me! Dies.

Ham. Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.

I am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu!

You that look pale and tremble at this chance, That are but mutes or audience to this act, Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death, Is strict in his arrest) O, I could tell you-But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;

Thou liv’st; report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied.

Hor. Never believe it.

I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.

Here’s yet some liquor left.

Ham. As th’art a man,

Give me the cup. Let go! By heaven, I’ll ha’t.

O good Horatio, what a wounded name

(Things standing thus unknown) shall live behind me!

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. [March afar off, and shot within.]

What warlike noise is this?

Osr. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland, To the ambassadors of England gives

This warlike volley.

Ham. O, I die, Horatio!

The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit.

I cannot live to hear the news from England, But I do prophesy th’ election lights On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice.

So tell him, with th’ occurrents, more and less, Which have solicited-the rest is silence. Dies.

Hor. Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

[March within.]

Why does the drum come hither?

 

Enter Fortinbras and English Ambassadors, with Drum, Colours, and Attendants.

 

Fort. Where is this sight?

Hor. What is it you will see?

If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.

Fort. This quarry cries on havoc. O proud Death, What feast is toward in thine eternal cell That thou so many princes at a shot

So bloodily hast struck.

Ambassador. The sight is dismal;

And our affairs from England come too late.

The ears are senseless that should give us bearing To tell him his commandment is fulfill’d That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

Where should We have our thanks?

Hor. Not from his mouth,

Had it th’ ability of life to thank you.

He never gave commandment for their death.

But since, so jump upon this bloody question, You from the Polack wars, and you from England, Are here arriv’d, give order that these bodies High on a stage be placed to the view; And let me speak to the yet unknowing world How these things came about. So shall You hear Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts; Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters; Of deaths put on by cunning and forc’d cause; And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall’n on th’ inventors’ heads. All this can I Truly deliver.

Fort. Let us haste to hear it,

And call the noblest to the audience.

For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune.

I have some rights of memory in this kingdom Which now, to claim my vantage doth invite me.

Hor. Of that I shall have also cause to speak, And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more.

But let this same be presently perform’d, Even while men’s minds are wild, lest more mischance On plots and errors happen.

Fort. Let four captains

Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage; For he was likely, had he been put on, To have prov’d most royally; and for his passage The soldiers’ music and the rites of war Speak loudly for him.

Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this Becomes the field but here shows much amiss.

Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

Exeunt marching; after the which a peal of ordnance are shot off.

 

THE END

 

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1598

 

THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH

 

by William Shakespeare

 

Dramatis Personae

 

King Henry the Fourth.

Henry, Prince of Wales, son to the King.

Prince John of Lancaster, son to the King.

Earl of Westmoreland.

Sir Walter Blunt.

Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester.

Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland.

Henry Percy, surnamed Hotspur, his son.

Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March.

Richard Scroop, Archbishop of York.

Archibald, Earl of Douglas.

Owen Glendower.

Sir Richard Vernon.

Sir John Falstaff.

Sir Michael, a friend to the Archbishop of York.

Poins.

Gadshill

Peto.

Bardolph.

 

Lady Percy, wife to Hotspur, and sister to Mortimer.

Lady Mortimer, daughter to Glendower, and wife to Mortimer.

Mistress Quickly, hostess of the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap.

 

Lords, Officers, Sheriff, Vintner, Chamberlain, Drawers, two Carriers, Travellers, and Attendants.

 

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SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS

PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE

WITH PERMISSION. ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE

DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS

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SCENE.—England and Wales.

 

ACT I. Scene I.

London. The Palace.

 

Enter the King, Lord John of Lancaster, Earl of Westmoreland, [Sir Walter Blunt,] with others.

 

King. So shaken as we are, so wan with care, Find we a time for frighted peace to pant And breathe short-winded accents of new broils To be commenc’d in stronds afar remote.

No more the thirsty entrance of this soil Shall daub her lips with her own children’s blood.

No more shall trenching war channel her fields, Nor Bruise her flow’rets with the armed hoofs Of hostile paces. Those opposed eyes

Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven, All of one nature, of one substance bred, Did lately meet in the intestine shock And furious close of civil butchery,

Shall now in mutual well-beseeming ranks March all one way and be no more oppos’d Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies.

The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife, No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends, As far as to the sepulchre of Christ-Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross We are impressed and engag’d to fight-Forthwith a power of English shall we levy, Whose arms were moulded in their mother’s womb To chase these pagans in those holy fields Over whose acres walk’d those blessed feet Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d For our advantage on the bitter cross.

But this our purpose now is twelvemonth old, And bootless ‘tis to tell you we will go.

Therefore we meet not now. Then let me hear Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland, What yesternight our Council did decree In forwarding this dear expedience.

West. My liege, this haste was hot in question And many limits of the charge set down But yesternight; when all athwart there came A post from Wales, loaden with heavy news; Whose worst was that the noble Mortimer, Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight Against the irregular and wild Glendower, Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken, A thousand of his people butchered;

Upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse, Such beastly shameless transformation, By those Welshwomen done as may not be Without much shame retold or spoken of.

King. It seems then that the tidings of this broil Brake off our business for the Holy Land.

West. This, match’d with other, did, my gracious lord; For more uneven and unwelcome news

Came from the North, and thus it did import: On Holy-rood Day the gallant Hotspur there, Young Harry Percy, and brave Archibald, That ever-valiant and approved Scot,

At Holmedon met,

Where they did spend a sad and bloody hour; As by discharge of their artillery

And shape of likelihood the news was told; For he that brought them, in the very heat And pride of their contention did take horse, Uncertain of the issue any way.

King. Here is a dear, a true-industrious friend, Sir Walter Blunt, new lighted from his horse, Stain’d with the variation of each soil Betwixt that Holmedon and this seat of ours, And he hath brought us smooth and welcome news.

The Earl of Douglas is discomfited;

Ten thousand bold Scots,