[9:34] Hamlet Episode 54 English Listening Practice: Authentic Dialogue and Shakespeare's Original Lines

Learning English is not only about mastering grammar and vocabulary but also about using it naturally in real situations. However, sentences in textbooks are often too formal and quite different from how people actually speak. To speak authentic and natural English, exposure to real-life dialogues is essential. Here, we’ve selected frequently used English expressions from everyday scenarios such as socializing, working, and traveling. These help you break free from 'textbook English' and learn the phrases native speakers really use. Below is the content from this episode (Episode 54 of Season 5: Hamlet). Keep practicing and bring your English closer to life!

Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet, in a new stereophonic production by John Tideman. With Ronald Pickup as Hamlet, Robert Lang as Claudius, Maxine Ordley as Gertrude, William Squire as Polonius, and Angela Presence as Ophelia. But now, my cousin Hamlet and my son, a little more than kin and less than kind, why do you still look so clouded? Not so, my Lord, I am too much in the sun.

Good Hamlet, cast thy knighted color off and let thy eye look like a friend on Denmark. Do not forever with thy veiled lids seek for thy noble father in the dust. Thou know'st ’tis common; all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity. Ay, madam, it is common. If it is, why seems it so particular with thee? Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not 'seems.' It is not alone my inky cloak, good mother, nor customary suits of solemn black, nor windy suspiration of forced breath, no, nor the fruitful river in the eye, nor the dejected havior of the visage, together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief that can denote me truly.

These indeed 'seem,' for they are actions that a man might play, but I have that within which passeth show—these but the trappings and the suits of woe. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet. I pray thee stay with us; go not to Wittenberg. I shall in all my best obey you, madam. Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply. Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come, this gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet sits smiling to my heart. In grace whereof, no jocund health that Denmark drinks today but the great cannon to the cloud shall tell, and the king’s rouse the heavens shall brew again, resounding through the earth. Come away!

Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew. Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ’gainst self-slaughter. O God, God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! ah fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.

That it should come to this! But two months dead—nay, not so much, not two. So excellent a king, that was to this Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother that he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly. Heaven and Earth! Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on. And yet, within a month—let me not think on’t!

Frailty, thy name is woman! A little month, or ere those shoes were old with which she followed my poor father’s body, like Niobe, all tears—why she, even she—O God!—a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer—married with my uncle, my father’s brother, but no more like my father than I to Hercules. Within a month! Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears had left the flushing in her galled eyes, she married. O, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not, nor it cannot come to good. But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

I have stayed too long. But see, my father comes. A double blessing is a double grace. Occasion smiles upon a second leave. Yet here, Laertes! Aboard, aboard, for shame! The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail, and you are stayed for. There—my blessing with thee! And these few precepts in thy memory see thou character.

Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned 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-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear't that the opposer may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not expressed in fancy—rich, not gaudy. For the apparel oft proclaims the man, and they in France of the best rank and station are of a 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! But some little time I take my leave, my lord. The time invites you. Go! Your servants tend. Farewell. And remember well what I have said to you. It is locked in my memory, and you yourself shall keep the key of it.

Farewell. Farewell. Farewell. Farewell. Farewell. Farewell. Farewell. Farewell. Farewell. My hour is almost come, when I to sulfurous and tormenting flames must render up myself. Alas, poor ghost! Give thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold.

Speak, I am bound to hear. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear. What? I am thy father's spirit, doomed for a certain term to walk the night and for the day confined to fast in fires, till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul.

But this eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list! If thou didst ever thy dear father love—revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. Murder? Murder most foul, as in the best it is; but this most foul, strange and unnatural. Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge.

I find thee apt. And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed that roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear: ’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, a serpent stung me—so the whole ear of Denmark is by a forged process of my death rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth: the serpent that did sting thy father's life now wears his crown. O, my prophetic soul!

Above is the content of Episode 54 of Season 5: Hamlet, curated by Qicaiwang. We hope it has been helpful to you!