Well maybe not if you like well edited manuscripts…but far nicer than most of the previous first folio options online.
Check it out if the long s (ſ) blocked you from reading the typeset versions.
Hamlet, First Quarto, 1603.
British Library Shelfmark: C.34.k.1
Cor. Now my good Lord, do you know me? Enter Hamlet .
Ham. Yea very well, y'are a fishmonger.
Cor. Not I my Lord.
Ham. Then sir, I would you were so honest a man,
For to be honest, as this age goes,
Is one man to be pickt out of tenne thousand
Cor. What doe you reade my Lord?
Ham. Wordes, wordes.
Cor. What's the matter my Lord?
Ham. Betweene who?
Cor. I meane the matter you reade my Lord.
Ham. Mary most vile heresie:
For here the Satyricall Satyre writes,
That olde men haue hollow eyes, weake backes,
Grey beardes, pittifull weake hammes, gowty legges,
All which sir, I most potently beleeue not:
For sir, your selfe shalbe olde as I am,
If like a Crabbe, you could goe backeward.
Cor. How pregnant his replies are, and full of wit:
Yet at first he tooke me for a fishmonger:
All this comes by loue, the vemencie of loue,
And when I was yong, I was very idle,
And suffered much extasie in loue, very neere this
For some reason I just can’t get into the flow modern edited versions.
I am posting this here because everyone who cares about this probably already knows about it. As my current SO is mildly bothered that I find so amusing to read.
Polonius would have made a good twit of the year in the Monty Python series.