Hamlet, Rogue and Peasant Slave Soliloquy

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.
August 16, 2019