HAMLET                     For it cannot be But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall To make oppression bitter, or ere this I should ha’ 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 dear murdered, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must like a whore unpack my heart with words And […]

HAMLET                                 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 the nose, gives me the lie i’th’ throat As deep as to […]

HAMLET         What’s Hecuba to him, or he to her, 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 appal the free, Confound the ignorant and amaze indeed The very faculties of eyes and ears. (2.2.494-501) I mean, […]

HAMLET                     Now I am alone. 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 the visage wanned – Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit – and […]

POLONIUS      Come, sirs. HAMLET         Follow him, friends. We’ll hear a play tomorrow. [aside to First Player] Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play The Murder of Gonzago? 1 PLAYER       Ay, my lord. HAMLET         We’ll ha’t tomorrow night. You could for need study a speech of some dozen lines, or sixteen lines, which I […]

HAMLET         ’Tis well. I’ll have thee speak out the rest of this soon. [to Polonius] Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than […]

1 PLAYER       But if the gods themselves did see her then, When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport In mincing with his sword her husband limbs, The instant burst of clamour that she made (Unless things mortal move them not at all) Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven And passion in the gods. POLONIUS      Look where he has […]

1 PLAYER       But who – ah woe – had seen the mobled queen – HAMLET         ‘The mobled queen’! POLONIUS                              That’s good. 1 PLAYER       – Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames With bisson rheum, a clout upon that head Where late the diadem stood and, for a robe, About her lank and all-o’erteemed loins, A blanket in the alarm of fear caught up. Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped, ’Gainst […]

1 PLAYER       Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods In general synod take away her power, Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven As low as to the fiends. POLONIUS      This is too long. HAMLET         It shall to the barber’s with your beard. Prithee say on – he’s for a jig, or […]

1 PLAYER                   For lo, his sword Which was declining on the milky head Of reverend Priam seemed i’th’ air to stick. So as a painted tyrant Pyrrhus stood Like a neutral to his will and matter, Did nothing. But as we often see against some storm A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still, The bold winds speechless and the orb below As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder Doth rend the […]