Hamlet Act 3 Scene 1 Lyrics

Exit QUEEN GERTRUDE

LORD POLONIUS
Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious, so please you,
We will bestow ourselves.


To OPHELIA

Read on this book;
That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness.
We are oft to blame in this,--
'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.


KING CLAUDIUS
[Aside]

O, 'tis too true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!

The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word:
O heavy burthen!


LORD POLONIUS
I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord.

Exeunt KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS

Enter HAMLET

HAMLET
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.


OPHELIA
Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?


HAMLET
I humbly thank you; well, well, well.


OPHELIA
My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver;
I pray you, now receive them.


HAMLET
No, not I;
I never gave you aught.


OPHELIA
My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
As made the things more rich:
their perfume lost,
Take these again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.

HAMLET
Ha, ha! are you honest?

OPHELIA
My lord?

HAMLET
Are you fair?

OPHELIA
What means your lordship?


HAMLET
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should
admit no discourse to your beauty.


OPHELIA
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than
with honesty?


HAMLET
Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
force of honesty can translate beauty into his
likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the
time gives it proof.
I did love you once.

OPHELIA
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET
You should not have believed me;
for virtue cannot
so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of
it:
I loved you not.

OPHELIA
I was the more deceived.

HAMLET
Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners?
I am myself indifferent honest;
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me:
I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious,
with more offences at
my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
between earth and heaven?
We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us.
Go thy ways to a nunnery.
Where's your father?

OPHELIA
At home, my lord.

HAMLET
Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
fool no where but in's own house.
Farewell.

OPHELIA
O, help him, you sweet heavens!

HAMLET
If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for
thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
snow, thou shalt not escape calumny
. Get thee to a
nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs
marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough
what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go,
and quickly too.
Farewell.

OPHELIA
O heavenly powers, restore him!

HAMLET
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God
has given you one face, and you make yourselves
another:
you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
nick-name God's creatures,
and make your wantonness
your ignorance.
Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
made me mad.
I say, we will have no more marriages:
those that are married already, all but one, shall
live; the rest shall keep as they are.
To a
nunnery, go.


Exit

OPHELIA
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form
,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh
;
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy:
O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Re-enter KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS

KING CLAUDIUS
Love! his affections do not that way tend;
Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,
Was not like madness.
There's something in his soul,
O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;
And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
Will be some danger:
which for to prevent,
I have in quick determination
Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England,
For the demand of our neglected tribute.

Haply the seas and countries different
With variable objects shall expel
This something-settled matter in his heart,
Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
From fashion of himself.
What think you on't?

LORD POLONIUS
It shall do well:
but yet do I believe
The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love
. How now, Ophelia!
You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said;
We heard it all.
My lord, do as you please;
But, if you hold it fit, after the play
Let his queen mother all alone entreat him
To show his grief: let her be round with him;
And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear
Of all their conference. If she find him not,
To England send him, or confine him where
Your wisdom best shall think.


KING CLAUDIUS
It shall be so:
Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.


Exeunt

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About

Genius Annotation

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern confess that they cannot understand the reasons for Hamlet’s strange behavior. The two of them exit with the Queen as the King and Polonius hide, leaving Ophelia to approach Hamlet and try to find out more.

Hamlet enters and delivers the iconic “To be or not to be” speech before confronting Ophelia. In a tense exchange, she returns his love gifts and he says, in rapid succession, that he once loved her and that he never loved her. He berates her–and women in general–in the famous “Get thee to a nunnery” rant, then exits, leaving her in distress.

The King tells Polonius he will send Hamlet to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Polonius advises that they continue keeping watch on the Prince in the meantime, and says that he will arrange to spy on a conversation between Hamlet and Gertrude after the Players' performance.


Act 3, Scene 1 is the single most famous scene in Hamlet, and probably in all of dramatic history. It contains the best known speech in English literature: the “To be or not to be” soliloquy. Even audiences completely unfamiliar with Shakespeare have heard these words. And yet there remains much debate as to whether Hamlet is contemplating suicide, and how seriously if so. (The question is further complicated if we take revenge against Claudius to be a kind of suicide mission.)

Critics who have questioned the “contemplating suicide” theory include Isaac Asimov (see Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare) and Harold Bloom, who argues in Hamlet: Poem Unlimited that the real subject of the speech is the power of the poet’s mind over a “sea of troubles” and death. (Should one merely suffer stoically in the face of insurmountable troubles, or oppose those troubles and likely end one’s life earlier than one otherwise would?)

The heated exchange between Hamlet and Ophelia has likewise prompted endless questions and commentary. Why does Hamlet tell her both that “I did love you once” and “I loved you not”? What are his true feelings toward her, and vice versa? Does Hamlet realize they are being watched, and if so, when? There have been as many interpretations of these enigmas as there have been Hamlets and Ophelias–and audiences reading and watching them–in the 400-year history of the play.

(For a more extensive exploration of the central soliloquy, see the “To Be or Not to Be” page.)


“To be or not to be”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjuZq-8PUw0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Up-oGfiosE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO-wxlavDQI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ks-NbCHUns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsrOXAY1arg

“Get thee to a nunnery”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-npeKi_AKU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzxET3KpvSM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72gfYvDnEiA

https://youtu.be/lsrOXAY1arg?t=2m30s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATOEQYV4LgM

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

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