“your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not: let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.”
#hamlet_2026

“No, no, they do but jest; poison in jest;
no offence i’the world.”
#hamlet_2026

HAMLET

Tis a knavish piece of work, but what o' that? Your Majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not.

#Hamlet_2026
III,2,237-239

Eugène Delacroix
Hamlet Has the Players Enact the Scene of His Father's Poisoning, 1835
Detroit Institute of Arts

#Hamlet_2026 Day 16, 4/11- Act III s2 from 193

HAMLET.
Wormwood, wormwood!

to 306

HAMLET.
Aha! Come, some music! Come, the recorders!
For if the King like not the comedy,
Why then, belike he likes it not, perdy.
Come, some music!

[Enter Ros. and Guild.]

*perdy: par dieu (Fr.)

(1/2)

#Hamlet_2026

Player King:
And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honored, beloved, and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou—
(III.2.172-174)

#Hamlet_2026 Week 3 begins 4/10-
Like S’s other highly intellectual drama, Troilus & Cressida, [Hamlet] debates the great questions of epistemology, ethics & metaphysics. ‘Humanism’, the dominant educational theory of the 16th c, proposed that wisdom was to to be derived from book learning. … (1/2)

#Hamlet_2026 Day 15, 4/10- Act III s2 from 92

HAMLET.
They are coming to the play: I must be idle.

to line 192,

QUEEN [in the play].
None wed the second but who killed the first.

(1/2)

#Hamlet_2026

Hamlet:
Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man
As e’er my conversation coped withal.
(III.2.53-54)

HAMLET
O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise.

#Hamlet_2026
III,2,1ff

I like Hamlet's theory of acting.

HAMLET

And blest are those
Whose blood and judgement are so well co-meddled
That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart’s core, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.
#Hamlet_2026

#Hamlet_2026 Day 14, 4/9- Act III s2

HAMLET.
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced

to line 91,

HORATIO.
If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,
And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

[Flourish, enter trumpets, kettledrums, King, Qn, Pol, Oph, Ros, Guild et al]

#Hamlet_2026

Hamlet:
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 pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
(III.1.92-97)

“The fair Ophelia!—Nymph in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.”
#hamlet_2026

“I hear him coming; let’s withdraw, my lord.”
#hamlet_2026

“He does confess he feels himself distracted;
But from what cause he will by no means speak.”
#hamlet_2026

HAMLET

Get thee to a nunnery.

#Hamlet_2026
III,1,121

Eugène Delacroix, 1798-1863
Hamlet and Ophelia, 1835–43
Art Institute Chicago

OPHELIA

O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword;
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
Th’ observed of all observers, quite, quite down!

#Hamlet_2026
Act III s1 (146-150)

#Hamlet_2026 Day 13, 4/8- Act III s1

Location. Elsinore, a room in the castle.

KING.
And can you by no drift
of circumstance

to end of sc.,

KING.
It shall be so.
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.
[Exeunt]

(1/2)

“The spirit that I have seen
May be a devil, and the devil hath power
T’assume a pleasing shape”
#hamlet_2026

#Hamlet_2026

Hamlet:
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.
(II.2.597-598)

The play's the thing...
(II.2.608)

HAMLET

and perhaps,
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me.

#Hamlet_2026
II,2,595-598

Pondering, yes, and such shame. Shame for his lack of action and passion.

But jeez, wasn't he just so full of passion and play and ACTING and THOUGHT dealing with Polonius, dialoguing with R&G?? I don't know what he's on about ...

"Though this be madness, yet there is method in't."

#Hamlet_2026

HAMLET

Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better to have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

#Hamlet_2026
Act II s2 (498-501)

#Hamlet_2026 Day 12, 4/7- Act II s2 from 475

1. Play.
Anon he finds him
Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls

to end of sc.,

HAMLET.
...The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King. [Exit]

(1/2)

Michael Spencer-Davis as Polonius in Stratfest 2022 production of Hamlet

#Hamlet_2026

Polonius:
The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical,
tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable,
or poem unlimited.
(II.2.401-405)

POLONIUS
The actors are come hither, my lord.

HAMLET
Buz, buz!

POLONIUS
Upon my honour,—

HAMLET
Then came each actor on his ass,—

#Hamlet_2026
Act II s2 (363-376)

HAMLET

One speech in't I chiefly loved - 'twas Aeneas tale to Dido - and thereabout of it especially when he speaks of Priam‘s slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at this line

#Hamlet_2026
II,2,440 ff

Eugene Delacroix
Self-portrait as Hamlet
1821
Musée national Eugène Delacroix, Paris

#Hamlet_2026 Day 11, 4/6- Act II s2 from 379

[Flourish for the Players.]

GUIL.
There are the players.

to 474

POL.
and good discretion.

(1/2)

#Hamlet_2026

Hamlet:
In the secret parts of Fortune? Oh, most true. She is a
strumpet.
(II.2.246-247)

#Hamlet_2026
II,2,250
William Shakespeare
Arden London/ New York 1982

HAMLET

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Montaigne, Essais, III, 13
„Notre grand et glorieux chef-d’œuvre c’est vivre à propos.“