Hamlet Mariofied: Act 1 Scene 3
Bolded names refer to the Mario characters playing the roles. The character role names remain unchanged in the context of the play and its dialogue.
Kamek = Polonius
Larry = Laertes
Wendy = Ophelia
Act I, Scene 3
Elsinore. A room in the house of Kamek.
Enter Larry and Wendy. Cue the first few seconds of the Super Mario Bros 3 boss music, then change to Space Junk Galaxy before Larry begins speaking.
Larry. My necessaries are embark'd. Farewell.
And, sister, as the winds give benefit
And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,
But let me hear from you.
Wendy. Do you doubt that?
Larry. For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour,
Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood;
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent- sweet, not lasting;
The perfume and suppliance of a minute;
No more.
Wendy. No more but so?
Larry. Think it no more.
For nature crescent does not grow alone
In thews and bulk; but as this temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
The virtue of his will; but you must fear,
His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own;
For he himself is subject to his birth.
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself, for on his choice depends
The safety and health of this whole state,
And therefore must his choice be circumscrib'd
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed; which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain
If with too credent ear you list his songs,
Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
To his unmast'red importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough
If she unmask her beauty to the moon.
Virtue itself scopes not calumnious strokes.
The canker galls the infants of the spring
Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd,
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary then; best safety lies in fear.
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.
Wendy. I shall th' effect of this good lesson keep
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede.
Larry. O, fear me not!
[Enter Kamek.] Play Kamek’s Theme from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
I stay too long. But here my father comes.
A double blessing is a double grace;
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.
Kamek. Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for. There- my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all- to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!
Larry. Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
Kamek. The time invites you. Go, your servants tend.
Larry. Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well
What I have said to you.
Wendy. 'Tis in my memory lock'd,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
Larry. Farewell. Exit. Begin playing the tune to Lost Kingdom.
Kamek. What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?
Wendy. So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.
Kamek. Marry, well bethought!
'Tis told me he hath very oft of late
Given private time to you, and you yourself
Have of your audience been most free and bounteous.
If it be so- as so 'tis put on me,
And that in way of caution- I must tell you
You do not understand yourself so clearly
As it behooves my daughter and your honour.
What is between you? Give me up the truth.
Wendy. He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.
Kamek. Affection? Pooh! You speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?
Wendy. I do not know, my lord, what I should think,
Kamek. Marry, I will teach you! Think yourself a baby
That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly,
Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus) you'll tender me a fool.
Wendy. My lord, he hath importun'd me with love
In honourable fashion.
Kamek. Ay, fashion you may call it. Go to, go to!
Wendy. And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
Kamek. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks! I do know,
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both
Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time
Be something scanter of your maiden presence.
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him, that he is young,
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
The better to beguile. This is for all:
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth
Have you so slander any moment leisure
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to't, I charge you. Come your ways.
Wendy. I shall obey, my lord.
Exeunt.
2 notes
·
View notes
Book Review: Hamlet, William Shakespeare
This week's blossoming book review is nothing less than Hamlet by Shakespeare!
"(...) and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?"
What fascinated me about Hamlet when I read it for the first time as a 14 year old was mostly the character of Hamlet himself, with all of his psychological intensity. Many years have passed and it has kept its place as my favorite Shakespearean tragedy, but revisiting it allowed me to have a brand new look upon it.
For instance, I realized things about the character of Hamlet that had passed me by before. Not only is he much wittier (and sassier) than I remembered, he is also extremely existentialist. This play has such deep philosophical levels that I still don't feel like I've grasped it all, and I'll eventually have to revisit it again. Hamlet's inability to deal with death and his reflections upon the frailty of human existence are probably the most universal aspect of the play and what makes it so utterly timeless. There is a moment when his mother tells him "all that live must die, / Passing through nature to eternity" but he cannot fathom the concept of death ("How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable/ Seem to me all the uses of this world!"). On his famous speech on act II, scene II, we see how disenchanted he is about everything around him: "this godly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory".
At the same time, he meditates on the human condition with an almost nihilistic tone, demonstrating the contrast between what men aspire to be and how they behave or what they actually are. This idea is recalled later by Ophelia when she says, amid her ravings, "we know what we are, but know not what we may be". Hamlet also refers to men as "the quintessence of dust", an expression that really intrigued me by its strongly poetic paradox. "Quintessence" means "the fifth essence" or element, something higher to the other elements, almost sublime. "Quintessence of dust" would then be the highest form of dust; we are the highest form of life and yet this is all we are — something as ephemeral as dust. There’s a strong absence of God in this, an existential despair that's way ahead of its time.
These concepts come up again on the famous speech of "to be, or not to be" — which, weirdly enough, I had never thought of as being about the idea of suicide, and I was mind-blown once I realized how obvious that was. He studies the possibility of ending "the heartache and the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to" by dying, but ultimately dismisses it because of "the dread of something after death, — / The undiscovered country, from whose bourn / No traveler returns".
Another thing about Hamlet that I realized by revisiting the play was how (in his own words) "very proud, revengeful, ambitious" he is, cunningly planning his actions and pretending to be mad in order to achieve his end. There is a very interesting quote said by Guildenstern which I think represents Hamlet very well: "for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream" (to which he poetically responds: "a dream itself is but a shadow").
The most recurring theme in this play is, of course, madness, and we can find telltale signs of its tragic ending already on Act I. Horatio warns Hamlet about the ghost of his father, "which might deprive your sovereignty of reason, / And draw you into madness"; whilst Laertes warns Ophelia to be wary because "in the morn and liquid dew of youth / Contagious blastments are most imminent".
These two tragic characters actually contrast with each other in a very interesting way; the motif of insanity oscillates between the two of them throughout the play. Firstly it was thought (specially by herself) that Hamlet's apparent madness was caused by Ophelia. That was not the case, his insanity was artificial; but she, in turn, goes truthfully mad, and in part because of him. In my personal opinion, her lunatic ravings are not only a response to the death of her father but also to the effect of Hamlet's troubled mind and emotional instability on her.
Considering all of this, I've always felt that the true tragic character on this play was not Hamlet himself but Ophelia — the most doomed and utterly innocent of all characters. Innocent because she had no part on the madness and wickedness of the men around her, and yet she paid for it. Her madness at the end contrasts with her character at the beginning: lucid, honest and extremely wise. The beautiful imagery of her drowning amid long streams of flowers is so remarkable I could even go further and say that she represents Nature itself, and demonstrates how the violence of mankind wrongs and corrupts its fragile beauty.
I’ll leave you with one more beautiful parallel of Ophelia’s flower imagery. In the beginning, Laertes tells her that love is "a violet in the youth of primy nature, / Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting" - which also seems to be casting a shadow on her tragic ending. Later on, she says: "I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died". Ophelia withered in the youth of primy nature, "fantastically dressed with straws and flowers"; and, "like a creature native and indued" unto the waters, she transcended the patriarchal universe of the play and became an aesthetic subject and artistic muse for the centuries...
2 notes
·
View notes