O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! | Is it not monstrous that this player, here |
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, | Could force his soul so to his own conceit |
That from her working all his visage wann’d | 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 should weep for her? What would he do, | Had he the motive and cue for passion that I have? |
He would drown the stage with tears | And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, |
Make mad the guilty and appal the free, | Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed |
The very faculties of eyes and ears! Yet I, | A dull and muddy-meddled 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 damn’d defeat was made. Am I a coward? |
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? | Plucks my beard, and blows it in my face? |
Tweaks me by the nose? Gives me the lie i’ the throat, | As deep as the lungs? Who does me this? |
Ha! | Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be |
But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall | To make oppression bitter, or ere this |
I should have fatted all the region kites | With this slave’s offal: blood, bawdy villain! |
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! | O, vengeance! |
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave | That I, the son of a dear father murder’d, |
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell | Must, like a *****, 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, though 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 blench, |
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen | May be the devil: and the devil hath power |
To assume a pleasant shape; yea, and perhaps | Out of my weakness and my melancholy, |
As he is a very potent with such spirits, | Abuses to damn me: I’ll have grounds |
More relative than this: the play’s the thing | Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king. |
Hamlet, Rogue and Peasant Slave Soliloquy
August 16, 2019