Go, Captain, from me greet the Danish king.
Tell him that by his license, Fortinbras
Craves the conveyance of a promis’d march
Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.
If that his Majesty would aught with us,
We shall express our duty in his eye;
And let him know so.
Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king; tell him that, by his license, Fortinbras craves the conveyance of a promised march over his kingdom.
Tell the Danish king that Fortinbras is passing through on his way to attack Poland.
fortinbras passing through to attack poland
I will do’t, my lord.
The young prince, Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland, to the succession of your father he hath a warlike voice.
Fortinbras is coming. He's going to take the throne of Denmark.
fortinbras coming taking the throne
Go softly on.
How all occasions do inform against me and spur my dull revenge! What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
I'm ashamed. Look at Fortinbras—he acts. He takes what he wants. And I sit here, paralyzed by thought, while he conquers my kingdom. What is a man if he only sleeps and eats? A beast. Less.
i'm paralyzed fortinbras acts he conquers i sit thinking i'm a beast
Good sir, whose powers are these?
Sir, whose army is this?
Whose troops are these?
whose forces
They are of Norway, sir.
They're from Norway, sir.
Norwegian.
norway
How purpos’d, sir, I pray you?
What's their purpose, if I may ask?
Where are they headed?
where are they going
Against some part of Poland.
Against part of Poland.
Against Poland.
against poland
Who commands them, sir?
Who commands them, sir?
Who's commanding?
who's in command
The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.
The old Norwegian's nephew, Fortinbras.
Fortinbras. The Norwegian prince.
fortinbras
Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
Or for some frontier?
Are they attacking the whole of Poland or just the border?
Are they going for all of Poland or just hitting the borders?
the whole country or just the frontier
Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.
Honestly, to be straight with you—we're fighting over a worthless patch of land. I wouldn't rent it for five ducats. It's not worth anything to Norway or Poland, not even if they sold it outright.
To be honest, it's not worth anything. A small strip of empty ground. I wouldn't farm it for five ducats. It's worthless.
just an empty patch worthless nobody even wants it
Why, then the Polack never will defend it.
Then the Polish won't bother defending it.
So Poland won't even fight for it.
why would poland even defend it
Yes, it is already garrison’d.
No—it's already fortified.
Actually, it's already garrisoned.
it is defended
Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw!
This is th’imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.
Two thousand soldiers and twenty thousand ducats will be spent fighting over a piece of straw. This is what happens when a country is fat with wealth and peace—something breaks inside it, and the disease shows no symptoms until the man dies. I thank you, sir.
Twenty thousand dollars and two thousand soldiers are going to die for a worthless scrap. This is what happens when a country gets too rich and too comfortable—something rots inside and you don't see it until you're already dying.
thousands of men thousands of dollars for nothing for a patch of dirt and no one stops it
God b’ wi’ you, sir.
God be with you, sir.
Goodbye, sir.
goodbye
Fortinbras appears three times in Hamlet — briefly here, as a letter writer in 4-6, and finally as a conqueror in 5-2 — and he is never a fully developed character. He doesn't need to be. His function is structural: he is the action-figure to Hamlet's thought-figure, the man who does what Hamlet cannot. But Shakespeare is careful not to simply endorse Fortinbras. Hamlet himself says the campaign is absurd — twenty thousand men dying for a straw. The captain confirms it: the land is not worth five ducats. Fortinbras is not wise; he is driven by something the text consistently calls 'honor' but which looks a great deal like the desire for reputation. What shames Hamlet is not that Fortinbras is right, but that Fortinbras acts on a motive far thinner than Hamlet's own. The prince has everything — cause, will, strength, means — and Fortinbras has almost nothing, yet Fortinbras moves. That is the knife in the comparison.
Will’t please you go, my lord?
Will you come, my lord?
Ready?
let's go
I’ll be with you straight. Go a little before.
I'll catch up with you. Go ahead.
In a moment. Go on ahead.
i'll be right there just go
Hamlet has seven soliloquies in the play. This is the last. The choice is significant: after 4-4, Hamlet stops explaining himself to us. He comes back from England changed — faster, less philosophical, more capable of decisive speech. The sea voyage, the pirates, the rewriting of the letters, the killing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's futures — all of this happens offstage, in the gap between 4-4 and 5-1. The soliloquy form, which has been the play's instrument for getting inside Hamlet's hesitation, disappears because something in Hamlet has closed. He stops needing to explain his delays because he has either stopped delaying or stopped being able to analyze his delays. The readiness that arrives in 5-2 — 'the readiness is all' — is a different register entirely from the tortured self-interrogation of 'How all occasions do inform against me.' The final soliloquy marks the end of a Hamlet who watches himself with horror and the emergence of a Hamlet who simply acts.
The Reckoning
This is Hamlet's last soliloquy and his most honest one. In the earlier soliloquies, he has been discovering things about himself he didn't know. Here, he knows exactly what is wrong: he overthinks, he philosophizes, he delays, and men who think far less than he does accomplish far more. Fortinbras is the mirror he can't look away from. Fortinbras marches twenty thousand men across Europe to die for a piece of ground not worth five ducats — and that is honor, that is greatness. Hamlet finds this both absurd and shaming. The argument is not that Fortinbras is right. It is that Fortinbras acts, and Hamlet does not. The soliloquy ends with what sounds like a resolution — 'my thoughts be bloody' — but the audience may already feel that resolutions have been made and broken before. The word 'from this time forth' is doing enormous work. The question is whether this time it will hold.
If this happened today…
A man who has been putting off a difficult confrontation for months watches a colleague pick a pointless fight in a meeting and win — not because the argument was good, but because he was willing to push. On his way out of the building, the first man thinks: I have every reason to act. I have the motive, the cause, the justification. And I keep thinking about it instead of doing it. That's not intellect. That's cowardice dressed up as philosophy.