No Fear Shakespeare
Hamlet
Get this No Fear to go!
Act 1, Scene 1, Page 6
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And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost. And this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch, and the chief head
Of this posthaste and rummage in the land.
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As far as I understand, that’s why we’re
posted here tonight and why there’s such a commotion in
Denmark lately.
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BARNARDO
I think it be no other but e'en so.
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armèd through our watch so like the king
That was and is the question of these wars.
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BARNARDO
I think that’s exactly right—that explains
why the ghost of the late king would haunt us now, since he caused
these wars.
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HORATIO
A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun, and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of feared events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.
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HORATIO
The ghost is definitely something to worry about. In the high and
mighty Roman Empire, just before the emperor Julius Caesar was
assassinated, corpses rose out of their graves and ran through the
streets of Rome speaking gibberish. There were shooting stars, and
blood mixed in with the morning dew, and threatening signs on the
face of the sun. The moon, which controls the tides of the sea, was
so eclipsed it almost went completely out. And we’ve had
similar omens of terrible things to come, as if heaven and earth
have joined together to warn us what’s going to
happen.
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Enter GHOST
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The GHOST
enters. |
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| 125 |
But soft, behold! Lo, where it comes again.
I’ll cross it though it blast me.—Stay,
illusion!
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Wait, look! It has come again. I’ll meet it if
it’s the last thing I do. —Stay here, you
hallucination!
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GHOST spreads his arms |
The GHOST spreads his
arms. |
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If thou hast any sound or use of voice,
Speak to me.
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If you have a voice or can make sounds, speak to me.
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