"Aye, so, God buy you. Now I am alone.
O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is is not monstrous that this player here,
but in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
could force his soul so to his whole conceit
that from her workings all his visage did wanned,
tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
a broken voice, and his whole function suiting
with forms to his conceit? And all for nothing,
for Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
that he must weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
that I have? He would drown the stage in tears
and cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
the very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
and can say nothing; no, not for a king
upon whose property and most dear life
a damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across,
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face,
Tweaks me by th' nose, gives me the lie i'th' throat
as deep as to the lings? Who does me this?
Ha! 'Swounds, I should take it. For is cannot be
but I am pigeon-livered and lack gall
to make opression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
with this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous lecherous, kindless villain!
O vengeance!
Why, what an a** am I! Aye, sure. This is most brace,
That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
and fall a-cursing like a very drab,
a scullion! Fie upon't, foh!
About my brain.-I have heard
that guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
been struck so to the soul that presently
they have proclaimed their malefactions;
For murder, thought it have no tongue, will speak
with most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
play something like the murder of my father
before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks,
I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blenches,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
may be the devil, and the devil hath power
t'assume a pleasing shape;yea, and perhaps
out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
as he is very potent with such spirits,
abuses me to damn me. I'll have my grounds
more relative than this. The play's the thing
wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King."
---------------------Hamlet
O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is is not monstrous that this player here,
but in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
could force his soul so to his whole conceit
that from her workings all his visage did wanned,
tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
a broken voice, and his whole function suiting
with forms to his conceit? And all for nothing,
for Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
that he must weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
that I have? He would drown the stage in tears
and cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
the very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
and can say nothing; no, not for a king
upon whose property and most dear life
a damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across,
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face,
Tweaks me by th' nose, gives me the lie i'th' throat
as deep as to the lings? Who does me this?
Ha! 'Swounds, I should take it. For is cannot be
but I am pigeon-livered and lack gall
to make opression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
with this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous lecherous, kindless villain!
O vengeance!
Why, what an a** am I! Aye, sure. This is most brace,
That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
and fall a-cursing like a very drab,
a scullion! Fie upon't, foh!
About my brain.-I have heard
that guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
been struck so to the soul that presently
they have proclaimed their malefactions;
For murder, thought it have no tongue, will speak
with most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
play something like the murder of my father
before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks,
I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blenches,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
may be the devil, and the devil hath power
t'assume a pleasing shape;yea, and perhaps
out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
as he is very potent with such spirits,
abuses me to damn me. I'll have my grounds
more relative than this. The play's the thing
wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King."
---------------------Hamlet
