Act 1, Scene 2

Elsinore. A room of state in the Castle.

[Enter the King, Queen, Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes, Voltimand, Cornelius, Lords, and Attendant.]
King Claudius
191 Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
192 The memory be green, and that it us befitted
193 To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
194 To be contracted in one brow of woe;
195 Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
196 That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
197 Together with remembrance of ourselves.
198 Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
199 Th' imperial jointress to this warlike state,
200 Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,—
201 With an auspicious and one dropping eye,
202 With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
203 In equal scale weighing delight and dole,—
204 Taken to wife; nor have we herein barr'd
205 Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
206 With this affair along:—or all, our thanks.
207 Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,
208 Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
209 Or thinking by our late dear brother's death
210 Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
211 Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,
212 He hath not fail'd to pester us with message,
213 Importing the surrender of those lands
214 Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
215 To our most valiant brother. So much for him,—
216 Now for ourself and for this time of meeting:
217 Thus much the business is:—we have here writ
218 To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,—
219 Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears
220 Of this his nephew's purpose,—to suppress
221 His further gait herein; in that the levies,
222 The lists, and full proportions are all made
223 Out of his subject:—and we here dispatch
224 You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand,
225 For bearers of this greeting to old Norway;
226 Giving to you no further personal power
227 To business with the king, more than the scope
228 Of these dilated articles allow.
229 Farewell; and let your haste commend your duty.
Cor. and Volt
230 In that and all things will we show our duty.
King Claudius
231 We doubt it nothing: heartily farewell.
[Exeunt Voltimand and Cornelius.]
King Claudius
232 And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?
233 You told us of some suit; what is't, Laertes?
234 You cannot speak of reason to the Dane,
235 And lose your voice: what wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
236 That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
237 The head is not more native to the heart,
238 The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
239 Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
240 What wouldst thou have, Laertes?
Laertes
241 Dread my lord,
242 Your leave and favour to return to France;
243 From whence though willingly I came to Denmark,
244 To show my duty in your coronation;
245 Yet now, I must confess, that duty done,
246 My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France,
247 And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
King Claudius
248 Have you your father's leave? What says Polonius?
Polonius
249 He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave
250 By laboursome petition; and at last
251 Upon his will I seal'd my hard consent:
252 I do beseech you, give him leave to go.
King Claudius
253 Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine,
254 And thy best graces spend it at thy will!—
255 But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—
[Aside.]
Hamlet
256 A little more than kin, and less than kind!
King Claudius
257 How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Hamlet
258 Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun.
Queen Gertrude
259 Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
260 And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
261 Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
262 Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
263 Thou know'st 'tis common,—all that lives must die,
264 Passing through nature to eternity.
Hamlet
265 Ay, madam, it is common.
Queen Gertrude
266 If it be,
267 Why seems it so particular with thee?
Hamlet
268 Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not seems.
269 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
270 Nor customary suits of solemn black,
271 Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath,
272 No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
273 Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
274 Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief,
275 That can denote me truly: these, indeed, seem;
276 For they are actions that a man might play;
277 But I have that within which passeth show;
278 These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
King Claudius
279 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
280 To give these mourning duties to your father;
281 But, you must know, your father lost a father;
282 That father lost, lost his; and the survivor bound,
283 In filial obligation, for some term
284 To do obsequious sorrow: but to persevere
285 In obstinate condolement is a course
286 Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
287 It shows a will most incorrect to heaven;
288 A heart unfortified, a mind impatient;
289 An understanding simple and unschool'd;
290 For what we know must be, and is as common
291 As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
292 Why should we, in our peevish opposition,
293 Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
294 A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
295 To reason most absurd; whose common theme
296 Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
297 From the first corse till he that died to-day,
298 'This must be so.' We pray you, throw to earth
299 This unprevailing woe; and think of us
300 As of a father: for let the world take note
301 You are the most immediate to our throne;
302 And with no less nobility of love
303 Than that which dearest father bears his son
304 Do I impart toward you. For your intent
305 In going back to school in Wittenberg,
306 It is most retrograde to our desire:
307 And we beseech you bend you to remain
308 Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
309 Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
Queen Gertrude
310 Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet:
311 I pray thee stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.
Hamlet
312 I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
King Claudius
313 Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply:
314 Be as ourself in Denmark.—Madam, come;
315 This gentle and unforc'd accord of Hamlet
316 Sits smiling to my heart: in grace whereof,
317 No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day
318 But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell;
319 And the king's rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
320 Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.
[Exeunt all but Hamlet.]
Hamlet
321 O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
322 Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
323 Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
324 His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
325 How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
326 Seem to me all the uses of this world!
327 Fie on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
328 That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
329 Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
330 But two months dead!—nay, not so much, not two:
331 So excellent a king; that was, to this,
332 Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,
333 That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
334 Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
335 Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
336 As if increase of appetite had grown
337 By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,—
338 Let me not think on't,—Frailty, thy name is woman!—
339 A little month; or ere those shoes were old
340 With which she followed my poor father's body
341 Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she,—
342 O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason,
343 Would have mourn'd longer,—married with mine uncle,
344 My father's brother; but no more like my father
345 Than I to Hercules: within a month;
346 Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
347 Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
348 She married:— O, most wicked speed, to post
349 With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
350 It is not, nor it cannot come to good;
351 But break my heart,—for I must hold my tongue!
[Enter Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo.]
Horatio
352 Hail to your lordship!
Hamlet
353 I am glad to see you well:
354 Horatio,—or I do forget myself.
Horatio
355 The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
Hamlet
356 Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you:
357 And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?—
358 Marcellus?
Marcellus
359 My good lord,—
Hamlet
360 I am very glad to see you.—Good even, sir.—
361 But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
Horatio
362 A truant disposition, good my lord.
Hamlet
363 I would not hear your enemy say so;
364 Nor shall you do my ear that violence,
365 To make it truster of your own report
366 Against yourself: I know you are no truant.
367 But what is your affair in Elsinore?
368 We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
Horatio
369 My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.
Hamlet
370 I prithee do not mock me, fellow-student.
371 I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
Horatio
372 Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon.
Hamlet
373 Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak'd meats
374 Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
375 Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
376 Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!—
377 My father,—methinks I see my father.
Horatio
378 Where, my lord?
Hamlet
379 In my mind's eye, Horatio.
Horatio
380 I saw him once; he was a goodly king.
Hamlet
381 He was a man, take him for all in all,
382 I shall not look upon his like again.
Horatio
383 My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
Hamlet
384 Saw who?
Horatio
385 My lord, the king your father.
Hamlet
386 The King my father!
Horatio
387 Season your admiration for awhile
388 With an attent ear, till I may deliver,
389 Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
390 This marvel to you.
Hamlet
391 For God's love let me hear.
Horatio
392 Two nights together had these gentlemen,
393 Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch
394 In the dead vast and middle of the night,
395 Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father,
396 Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,
397 Appears before them and with solemn march
398 Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd
399 By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes,
400 Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distill'd
401 Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
402 Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me
403 In dreadful secrecy impart they did;
404 And I with them the third night kept the watch:
405 Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,
406 Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
407 The apparition comes: I knew your father;
408 These hands are not more like.
Hamlet
409 But where was this?
Marcellus
410 My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd.
Hamlet
411 Did you not speak to it?
Horatio
412 My lord, I did;
413 But answer made it none: yet once methought
414 It lifted up it head, and did address
415 Itself to motion, like as it would speak:
416 But even then the morning cock crew loud,
417 And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
418 And vanish'd from our sight.
Hamlet
419 'Tis very strange.
Horatio
420 As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true;
421 And we did think it writ down in our duty
422 To let you know of it.
Hamlet
423 Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
424 Hold you the watch to-night?
Mar. and Ber
425 We do, my lord.
Hamlet
426 Arm'd, say you?
Both
427 Arm'd, my lord.
Hamlet
428 From top to toe?
Both
429 My lord, from head to foot.
Hamlet
430 Then saw you not his face?
Horatio
431 O, yes, my lord: he wore his beaver up.
Hamlet
432 What, look'd he frowningly?
Horatio
433 A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
Hamlet
434 Pale or red?
Horatio
435 Nay, very pale.
Hamlet
436 And fix'd his eyes upon you?
Horatio
437 Most constantly.
Hamlet
438 I would I had been there.
Horatio
439 It would have much amaz'd you.
Hamlet
440 Very like, very like. Stay'd it long?
Horatio
441 While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.
Mar. and Ber
442 Longer, longer.
Horatio
443 Not when I saw't.
Hamlet
444 His beard was grizzled,—no?
Horatio
445 It was, as I have seen it in his life,
446 A sable silver'd.
Hamlet
447 I will watch to-night;
448 Perchance 'twill walk again.
Horatio
449 I warr'nt it will.
Hamlet
450 If it assume my noble father's person,
451 I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape
452 And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
453 If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight,
454 Let it be tenable in your silence still;
455 And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,
456 Give it an understanding, but no tongue:
457 I will requite your loves. So, fare ye well:
458 Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve,
459 I'll visit you.
All
460 Our duty to your honour.
Hamlet
461 Your loves, as mine to you: farewell.
[Exeunt Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo.]
Hamlet
462 My father's spirit in arms! All is not well;
463 I doubt some foul play: would the night were come!
464 Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise,
465 Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
[Exit.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 199archaic vocab
“Th' imperial jointress to this warlike state”
A 'jointress' is a woman who holds a jointure — a legal settlement of lands or income made on her by her (deceased) husband's estate. By calling Gertrude the 'jointress' of Denmark, Claudius frames her not as a romantic choice but as a legal/political fixture: she holds a prior claim on the kingdom, and marrying her gives Claudius a claim to legitimacy.
TLN 202rhetorical device
“With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage”
Claudius packs two oxymorons into one line — joy at a funeral, a dirge at a wedding — to acknowledge that his hasty marriage to Gertrude looks contradictory. The figure is called oxymoron (Greek: 'sharp-dull'); here it performs the ideological work of making the obscene seem reasonable.
TLN 234cultural context
“the Dane”
'The Dane' is the standard Elizabethan way of referring to the reigning King of Denmark — the same idiom as 'the Turk' for the Ottoman Sultan or 'the Tartar' for the Mongol Khan. Claudius's phrasing here marks his kingship as an impersonal institution: speaking to him is speaking to Denmark itself.
TLN 256wordplay
“A little more than kin, and less than kind”
Hamlet's first words in the play exploit two near-homophones. 'Kin' means blood relation (Claudius is now his uncle-stepfather — doubly related). 'Kind' carried two senses: (1) kindly, affectionate; (2) of the same natural kind or species. Hamlet says Claudius is over-related yet not truly natural — the punning compression signals wit under grief.
TLN 258wordplay
“I am too much i' the sun”
Hamlet puns on 'sun' / 'son': Claudius has just called him 'my son' (TLN 255), and Hamlet is over-exposed to this unwanted fatherhood. The homophone also gestures toward Claudius's royal position — the monarch was conventionally figured as the sun — making Hamlet say he is too close to a king he despises.
TLN 283archaic vocab
“In filial obligation, for some term / To do obsequious sorrow”
'Obsequious' here does not mean fawning or servile (its modern sense). In Elizabethan English it meant 'pertaining to obsequies' — i.e., funeral rites. Claudius's argument is that filial duty requires a period of mourning ('obsequious sorrow'), but that prolonging it beyond what custom demands is impious. The irony is rich: the murderer is lecturing the son on the proper limits of grief.
TLN 305historical topical
“going back to school in Wittenberg”
Wittenberg was the German university city where Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses in 1517, launching the Protestant Reformation. For an Elizabethan audience it signaled Protestant learning and Lutheran theology — Hamlet and Horatio are framed as students of that reforming, questioning tradition, which shapes Hamlet's intellectual skepticism throughout the play.
historical Wittenberg
TLN 324biblical allusion
“His canon 'gainst self-slaughter”
'Canon' here means divine law, not a cannon. Hamlet wishes he could die but says God has made suicide a sin ('self-slaughter'). The Sixth Commandment ('Thou shalt not kill') was interpreted in Elizabethan theology as forbidding suicide, a reading reinforced by the Church's refusal of Christian burial to suicides — which becomes relevant in Act 5 when Ophelia's drowning is debated.
biblical The Sixth Commandment and self-slaughter
TLN 327classical allusion
“'tis an unweeded garden, / That grows to seed”
The image of the world as a garden gone to rank weeds echoes the biblical idea of Eden corrupted after the Fall (Genesis 3), and recalls the classical commonplace of an untended field overtaken by weeds (as in Virgil's Georgics). Denmark is a fallen garden where corruption ('things rank and gross') has ousted right order.
TLN 332classical allusion
“Hyperion to a satyr”
Hyperion was the Titan of blazing light in Greek myth, sometimes identified with the sun itself. A satyr was a half-human, half-goat woodland creature known for lust and drunkenness. Hamlet collapses the gap between his father (radiant, godlike) and Claudius (bestial, lecherous) into a single contemptuous comparison.
classical Hyperion
TLN 333archaic vocab
“beteem the winds of heaven”
'Beteem' means to allow or permit (an archaic word rare even in Shakespeare's time). Hamlet says his father loved his mother so tenderly that he would not allow even the winds of heaven to blow too roughly on her face. The word is recorded only in this passage and a few other early modern texts.
TLN 341classical allusion
“Like Niobe, all tears”
In Greek myth, Niobe boasted that she was superior to the goddess Leto because she had more children. Apollo and Artemis punished her by killing all fourteen of her children; Niobe wept until the gods turned her into a rock that still weeps water. Hamlet uses her as the archetype of a grieving mother — making Gertrude's swift remarriage all the more shocking by contrast.
classical Niobe
TLN 349cultural context
“incestuous sheets”
In Elizabethan canon law (derived from Leviticus), marriage to a deceased brother's wife was classified as incest. Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon (his brother Arthur's widow) had been annulled on precisely this ground in 1533. Shakespeare's audience would immediately recognize the charge: Gertrude's union with Claudius is legally, theologically, and morally incestuous.
TLN 373rhetorical device
“The funeral bak'd meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables”
Bitter zeugma and dark irony: the same food (literally the cold cuts left over from a funeral feast) serves the wedding banquet — 'bak'd meats' yokes the two events with savage economy. 'Coldly' doubles as a temperature description and a comment on Gertrude's cold indifference to her first husband's memory.
TLN 394archaic vocab
“the dead vast and middle of the night”
'Vast' here is used as a noun, not an adjective: it means a wide, empty, desolate expanse (cognate with 'waste'). The phrase means the deep, empty stillness at the midpoint of the night — the hour when ghosts were believed to walk. The Second Quarto reads 'waste' in the same spot, confirming the meaning.
TLN 396cultural context
“Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe”
'Cap-a-pe' (also 'cap-à-pie') is a French heraldic term meaning from head to foot. The Ghost appears in full plate armor, not the robes of a peaceful king — a visual sign that the dead king comes with a martial purpose and a grievance, not just to say farewell.
TLN 416cultural context
“the morning cock crew loud”
Elizabethan ghost-lore held that spirits of the dead were confined to darkness and must vanish at cockcrow, which heralded dawn. The belief is explicitly discussed in Act 1, Scene 1 of the same play and has roots in both classical literature and early Christian writing (the cock as symbol of Christ's light dispersing demons). The Ghost's reaction to the cock confirms it operates by these rules.
TLN 431cultural context
“he wore his beaver up”
A 'beaver' is the lower, movable face-guard of a helmet — the part that pivots up to allow breathing and eating. With it raised, the Ghost's face was visible. The detail is dramatically important: it establishes that Horatio could identify the face (and therefore the person) despite the armor, lending credibility to his report.
TLN 463wordplay
“I doubt some foul play”
'Doubt' means suspect, not disbelieve — an Elizabethan usage opposite to the modern one. And 'foul play' carries its modern meaning (treachery, murder) plus the older sense of play that is foul, i.e., corrupt and ungodly — a hint at the demonic question of whether the Ghost is a devil in disguise. Hamlet has arrived at the threshold of the revenge plot on the strength of this one compressed phrase.