THE PLAYERS

INT. BACKSTAGE – NIGHT

Hamlet opens the door to the player’s dressing room. We see a beautiful naked female ass from Hamlet’s POV. When the actress turns around, we see that she has a cock. Hamlet is surprised. The other players laugh. Hamlet speaks to the players as though they are children. Throughout the speech, they react by over-enthusiastic head-nodding and overdone gestures. As he talks to them, the players change from their hospital type gowns into very tightly wrapped gauze and violent, strange clownish make-up.

HAMLET
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
as many of your players do, I had as lief the
town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;
for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to
very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who
for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such
a fellow whipped ---

The players howl and moan in terror.

 HAMLET (CONT)
Pray you, avoid it. Hold the mirror up to nature, show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

Hamlet directs this part of the speech to the clown.

And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.

The clown is very nervous until Hamlet smiles and pats him on the head.

HAMLET
Go, make you ready.

INT. OPHELIA’S ROOM SAME

Ophelia is being encased in a metal bustier by servant women as Polonius supervises and attends to details.

INT. GERTRUDE’S ROOM SAME

Claudius looks worried and Gertrude kisses him very sensually.

INT. BACKSTAGE SAME

Hamlet demonstrates to the players how to put the poison in the ear of the King.

The montage speeds up

Servants apply make-up and work on Ophelia’s hands and details of her dress.

Claudius and Gertrude get wilder as Gertrude tries to calm him with sex.

Hamlet builds his poisoning demonstration to a point that frightens even the players by its intensity.

INT. THRONE ROOM - NIGHT

The stage where the play will take place seen from Hamlet’s POV as he makes sure that everything is all right. Claudius gets his attention.

KING CLAUDIUS 
How fares our cousin Hamlet?

HAMLET
Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.

KING CLAUDIUS
I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

HAMLET
No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.

LORD POLONIUS (To KING CLAUDIUS)
O, ho! Do you mark that?

HAMLET
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

Lying down at Ophelia's feet

OPHELIA
No, my lord.

HAMLET
I mean, my head upon your lap?

OPHELIA 
Ay, my lord.

HAMLET 
Do you think I meant country matters?

 OPHELIA 
I think nothing, my lord.

HAMLET 
That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.

 Polonius looks at Hamlet. Ophelia pretends she does not understand.

 OPHELIA 
What is, my lord?

 HAMLET 
Nothing.

 OPHELIA 
You are merry, my lord.

 HAMLET 
Who, I?

OPHELIA 
Ay, my lord.

 HAMLET 
O God, your only jig-maker. What should a man do
but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my
mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.

 Claudius and Gertrude stare at him. Ophelia tries to cover for him.

 OPHELIA 
Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.

 HAMLET 
So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens! Die two months ago, and not forgotten yet?
Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year.

 The dumb-show enters

 Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing him, and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers: she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The Poisoner, with some two or three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner woos the Queen with gifts: she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love.