No Fear Shakespeare
Hamlet
Get this No Fear to go!
Act 1, Scene 5
Original Text |
Modern Text |
|
Enter GHOST and
HAMLET
|
The GHOST and HAMLET
enter. |
|
|
HAMLET
Where wilt thou lead me? Speak, I’ll go no
further.
|
HAMLET
Where are you taking me? Speak. I’m not going any
farther.
|
|
|
GHOST
Mark me.
|
GHOST
Listen to me.
|
|
|
HAMLET
I will.
|
HAMLET
I will.
|
|
|
|
GHOST
My hour is almost come
When I to sulfurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.
|
GHOST
The hour has almost come when I have to return to the horrible
flames of purgatory.
|
|
HAMLET
Alas, poor ghost!
|
HAMLET
Ah, poor ghost!
|
|
|
5 |
GHOST
Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.
|
GHOST
Don’t pity me. Just listen carefully to what I have to
tell you.
|
|
HAMLET
Speak. I am bound to
hear.
|
HAMLET
Speak. I’m ready to hear you.
|
|
|
GHOST
So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear.
|
GHOST
You must be ready for revenge, too, when you hear me out.
|
|
|
HAMLET
What?
|
HAMLET
What?
|
|
|
10 15 |
GHOST
I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
|
GHOST
I’m the ghost of your father, doomed for a certain
period of time to walk the earth at night, while during the day
I’m trapped in the fires of purgatory until
I’ve done penance for my past sins. If I
weren’t forbidden to tell you the secrets of purgatory, I could tell you stories that would slice through your
soul, freeze your blood,
|
