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Enter HORATIO,
GERTRUDE, and a GENTLEMAN
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HORATIO, GERTRUDE,
and a GENTLEMAN enter.
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GERTRUDE I will not speak with her.
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GERTRUDE I won’t speak to her.
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GENTLEMAN She is
importunate,
Indeed distract. Her mood will needs be pitied.
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GENTLEMAN She’s insistent. In fact, she’s crazed. You
can’t help feeling sorry for her.
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GERTRUDE What would she have?
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GERTRUDE What does she want?
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GENTLEMAN She speaks much of her father, says she hears
5There’s tricks i' th' world, and
hems, and beats her heart,
Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt
That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
The hearers to collection. They aim at it,
10And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,
Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,
Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
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GENTLEMAN She talks about her father a lot, and says she hears there are
conspiracies around the world, and coughs, and beats her breast, and
gets angry over tiny matters, and talks nonsense. Her words
don’t mean anything, but her babbling causes her
listeners to draw conclusions. They hear what they want to hear. Her
winks and nods and gestures do suggest that she means to convey a
message, and not a happy one.
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HORATIO 'Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew
15Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
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HORATIO It’s a good idea to speak to her, since she might lead
those with evil intentions to dangerous conclusions.
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GERTRUDE Let her come in.
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GERTRUDE Show her in.
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Exit GENTLEMAN
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The GENTLEMAN
exits.
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(aside) To my sick soul
(as sin’s true nature is)
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
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(to herself) To my sick soul (since
sin is always a sickness), every detail looks like an omen of
disaster to come. Guilt makes you so full of stupid suspicions that
you give yourself away because you’re trying so hard not
to.
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Enter OPHELIA, distracted
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OPHELIA enters,
insane.
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