hamlet
Key Passage Analysis: Hamlet 2.2.576-617
The Passage:
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, 580 Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit—and all for nothing! 585 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
590 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
595 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?
600 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 the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha! ’Swounds, I should take it. For it cannot be
But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall
605 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! 610 O, vengeance! Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
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
615 And fall a-cursing like a very drab, A scullion! Fie upon ’t! Foh!
About, my brains!
Explication and Commentary
Context: In Act 2, scene 2, a troupe of traveling players visits Elsinore, and Hamlet convinces one
The Passage:
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, 580 Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit—and all for nothing! 585 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
590 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
595 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?
600 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 the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha! ’Swounds, I should take it. For it cannot be
But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall
605 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! 610 O, vengeance! Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
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
615 And fall a-cursing like a very drab, A scullion! Fie upon ’t! Foh!
About, my brains!
Explication and Commentary
Context: In Act 2, scene 2, a troupe of traveling players visits Elsinore, and Hamlet convinces one