Franco Zeffirelli: The Art of Entertainment

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Hamlet, think of us as of a father...

for let the world take note:

You are the most immediate to our throne.

And with no less nobility of love...

than that which dearest father

bears his son...

do I impart toward you.

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 hath discretion fought

with nature...

that we with wisest sorrow think on him...

together with remembrance of ourselves.

Therefore our sometime sister,

now our queen...

the imperial jointress

to 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...

taken to wife.

And now, Laertes,

what's the news with you?

You told us of some suit.

What wouldst thou beg, Laertes?

My dread lord, my thoughts and wishes

bend again toward France...

and bow them to your gracious leave

and pardon.

Have you your father's leave?

What says Polonius?

He hath, my lord, wrung from me

my slow leave by laborsome petition...

and at last upon his will...

I sealed my hard consent.

I do beseech you, give him leave to go.

Take thy fair hour, Laertes.

Time be thine,

and thy best graces spend it at thy will.

Farewell.

Hamlet?

And now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son.

A little more than kin, and less than kind.

How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun.

'Tis sweet and commendable

in your nature, Hamlet...

to give these mourning duties

to your father.

But, you must know,

your father lost a father.

That father lost, lost his.

But to persever

in obstinate condolement...

is a course of impious stubbornness.

'Tis unmanly grief.

It shows a will most incorrect to heaven.

For your intent

in going back to school in Wittenberg...

it is most retrograde to our desire.

Be as ourself in Denmark.

Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

Good Hamlet...

cast thy nighted color off...

and let thine eye

look like a friend on Denmark.

Do not for ever with thy veiled lids...

seek for thy noble father in the dust.

Thou knowest 'tis common.

All that lives must die...

passing through nature to eternity.

Ay, madam, it is common.

If it be,

why seems it so particular with thee?

Seems, madam! Nay, it is.

I know not "seems."

'Tis not alone my inky cloak,

good mother...

together with all forms, moods,

shapes of grief, that can denote me truly.

These indeed seem, for they are actions

that a man might play...

but I have that within which passes show.

These but the trappings

and the suits of woe.

Let not thy mother

lose her prayers, Hamlet.

I pray thee, stay with us.

Go not to Wittenberg.

I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

This gentle and unforced accord

sits smiling to my heart.

That this too too solid flesh would melt...

thaw and resolve itself into a dew.

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed

his canon against self-slaughter.

O God!

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable...

seem to me all the uses of this world.

Fie on it!

'Tis an unweeded garden

that grows to seed.

Things rank and gross in nature

possess it merely.

That it should come to this.

But two months dead.

Nay, not so much, not two.

So excellent a king...

that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr.

So loving to my mother that he might not

beteem the winds of heaven...

visit her face too roughly.

Heaven and earth, must I remember?

Why, she would hang on him...

as if increase of appetite

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