HamletNow I am alone.
Oh, 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 histo his whole conceit
That, from her working, all the visage warmed,
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 the 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 appall the free,


Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed








The very faculty 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 lungs? Who does me this?










Ha, why, 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. Bloody, bawdy villain!








Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!








Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dead 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, 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 a 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 grounds








More relative than this. The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.