2

Polonius

My liege and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night, night, and time is time —
Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, 
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief. Your noble son is mad.
Mad call I it, for to define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go.

Gertrude

Polonius

[He reads from a letter.]

Gertrude

Polonius

[He reads.]

Claudius 

Polonius 

Claudius

Polonius

Claudius 

Gertrude

Polonius

Claudius

Polonius     

[Indicating his head and shoulder]

Claudius

Polonius

Gertrude

Polonius

Claudius 

[Enter Hamlet reading a book].

Gertrude

Polonius

[Exit Claudius and Gertrude.]
[Enter four or five Players.]

Hamlet

You are welcome, masters, welcome all. I am glad to see thee well.
Welcome, good friends. [To a young actor] Oh, my old friend!
Thy face is valanced since I saw thee last. Com'st
thou to beard me in Denmark? [To a young boy actor] What,
my young lady and mistress! By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer
heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. 
Pray God your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not
cracked within the ring.  [To all]  Masters, you are all 
welcome. We'll e'en to't like French falconers — fly at
anything we see. We'll have a speech straight. Come, give
us a taste of your quality. Come, a passionate speech.

Horatio

My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.

Hamlet 

I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow student.
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.

Horatio 

Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.

Hamlet 

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. 
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Ere I had ever seen that day, Horatio.
[The throne room of Elsinore castle. King Claudius enters with his newly wed Queen, Hamlet's recently widowed mother. They are followed by the king's chief counselor Polonius, Polonius' son Laertes, his daugher Ophelia, and other nobles.]

Claudius 

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death,
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe;
Yet so far has discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometimes sister, now our queen,
Th' imperial jointress of this warlike state,
Have we (as 'twere with a defeated joy,
With one auspicious and one dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole) 
Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barred  

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