“I will play the swan. And die in music.”

“I will make thee think thy swan a crow.”

“I was too young that time to value her,But now I know her. If she be a traitor, Why, so am I. We still have slept together,Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together,And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,Still we went coupled and inseparable.”

“I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?GUILDENSTERN: My lord, I cannot.HAMLET: I pray you.GUILDENSTERN: Believe me, I cannot.HAMLET: I do beseech you.GUILDENSTERN: I know no touch of it, my lord.HAMLET: It is as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with our fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.GUILDENSTERN: But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony. I have not the skill.HAMLET: Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass, and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.”

“Thus I die. Thus, thus, thus.Now I am dead,Now I am fled,My soul is in the sky.Tongue, lose thy light.Moon take thy flight.Now die, die, die, die.”

“Keep time! How sour sweet music is when time is broke and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men's lives. I wasted time and now doth time waste me.”

“If music be the food of love, play on;Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,The appetite may sicken, and so die.That strain again! it had a dying fall:O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,That breathes upon a bank of violets,Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,That, notwithstanding thy capacityReceiveth as the sea, nought enters there,Of what validity and pitch soe'er,But falls into abatement and low price,Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancyThat it alone is high fantastical.”