Woodward Shakespeare Festival
2008 Season
presents
Hamlet
ACT V
Scene 1 - Ophelia's Funeral
Photos by John Sanchez
Additional photos by
Arlene and Dick Schulman
Therefore make her grave straight. The crowner hath sat on her and finds it Christian burial.
How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence?
Here lies the water - good. Here stands the man - good.
If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he nil he, he goes.
But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself.
Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.
For my part, I do not lie in't, and yet it is mine
It is for the dead, not the quick; therefore thou liest.
One that was a woman, sir, but, rest her soul, she's dead!
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.
This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the King's jester.
Her obsequies have been as far enlarged
As we have warrenty. Her death was doubtful.
But soft awhile. Here comes the King, the Queen, the courtiers. Who is this they follow? And with such maimed rites?
What is he whose grief
Bears such an emphasis?
...This is I, Hamlet the Dane!
Lay her i' the earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring.
I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat,
For, though I am not spenitive and rash,
Yet I have something in me dangerous...
I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum.
Your bonnet to his right use:
'Tis for the head.
Ah, royal knavery! - an exact command...
That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,
No,not to stay the grinding of the axe,
My head should be struck off.
I do receive your offer'd love like love,
And will not wrong it.
Part them; they are incensed!
No, no, the drink, the drink! O, my dear Hamlet!
I am poison'd!
Hamlet, thou art slain...
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
Unbated and envenom'd.
The King - the King's to blame.
The point envenom'd too!
Then, venom, to thy work.
Let me speak to the yet unknowing world
How these things came about.