The Laurence Olivier Awards 1997 Page #3

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Not two.

So excellent a king that was to this

Hyperion to a satyr,

so loving to my mother that he

might not suffer 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...

had grown by what

it fed on.

And yet, within a month-

Let me not think on it.

Frailty, thy name

is woman.

A little month, or ere

those shoes were old,

with which she followed

my poor fathers body-

like Niobe, all tears.

Why, she-

Even she-

Oh, God, a beast that wants discourse

of reason would have mourned longer.

Marriage with my uncle.

My fathers brother, but no more

like my father than I to Hercules.

Within a month,

she married.

Oh, most wicked speed, to post with

such dexterity to incestuous sheets.

It is not, nor it

cannot come to good.

But break, my heart,

for I must hold my tongue.

My necessaries

are embarked.

Farewell.

And sister, as the winds give benefit

and convoy is assistant,

do not sleep, but let me

hear from you.

Do you doubt that?

For Hamlet, and the trifling

of his favor,

hold it a fashion

and a toy in blood,

a violet in the youth

of primy nature,

forward,

not permanent,

sweet,

not lasting.

The perfume and suppliance

of a minute,

no more.

- No more, but so?

- Think it no more.

Perhaps he

loves you now,

but you must fear his greatness

weighed, his will is not his own.

For he himself

is subject to his birth.

He may not, as unvalued persons do,

carve for himself.

For on his choice

depends the safety...

and the health

of this whole state.

Then weigh what loss

your honor may sustain...

if with too willing ear

you list his songs...

or lose your heart...

or your chaste treasure open

to his unmastered importunity.

Be wary, then.

Best safety

lies in fear.

I shall the effect

of this good lesson keep...

as watchman

to my heart.

But, good my brother, do not

as some ungracious pastors do...

show me the steep

and thorny way to heaven...

whilst like a puffed

and reckless libertine...

himself the primrose path of dalliance

treads and minds not his own creed.

Oh, fear me not.

But here my father comes.

I stay too long.

Yet here, Laertes.

Aboard, aboard, for shame!

The wind sits in the shoulder

of your sail and you are stayed for.

There, my blessing

with thee.

And these few precepts

in thy memory look thou character.

Give thy thoughts no tongue nor any

unproportioned thought his act.

Be thou familiar,

but by no means vulgar.

Those friends thou hast,

and their adoption tried,

grapple them to thy soul

with hoops of steel,

but do not dull thy palm

with entertainment...

of each new-hatched,

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