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Enter CLAUDIUS, king of Denmark;
GERTRUDE the queen; HAMLET;
POLONIUS; his son LAERTES; and his
daughter OPHELIA; LORDS attendant
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CLAUDIUS, the king of Denmark, enters,
along with GERTRUDE the queen, HAMLET,
POLONIUS, POLONIUS ’s
son LAERTES and daughter OPHELIA, and
LORDS who wait on the king.
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CLAUDIUS
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
5Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
Th' imperial jointress to this warlike state,
10Have we—as ’twere with a defeated joy,
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole—
Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barred
15Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along. For all, our thanks.
Now follows that you know. Young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth
Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death
20Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleaguèd with the dream of his advantage,
He hath not failed to pester us with message
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
25To our most valiant brother. So much for him.
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CLAUDIUS
Although I still have fresh memories of my brother the elder
Hamlet’s death, and though it was proper to mourn him
throughout our kingdom, life still goes on—I think
it’s wise to mourn him while also thinking about my own
well being. Therefore, I’ve married my former
sister-in-law, the queen, with mixed feelings of happiness and
sadness. I know that in marrying Gertrude I’m only doing
what all of you have wisely advised all along—for which I
thank you. Now, down to business. You all know what’s
happening. Young Fortinbras, underestimating my strength or
imagining that the death of the king has thrown my country into
turmoil, dreams of getting the better of me, and never stops
pestering me with demands that I surrender the territory his father
lost to the elder Hamlet, my dead brother-in-law. So much for
Fortinbras.
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