Hamlet Act II, Scene ii First Folio
Hamlet Act II, Scene ii Hamlet
(First Folio edition)
This text is featured in our interview with Markus Potter. And with Colin David Reese. and with Dakin Matthews.
Click here to open up an Arden version in a new window to compare texts. (For the Potter Interview)
Click here to open up a version with NO PUNCTUATION in a new window. (For the Reese Interview)
- I so God buy’ ye: Now I am alone.
- Oh what a Rogue and Pesant slave am I?
- Is it not monstrous that this Player heere,
- But in a fixtion, in a dreame of passion,
- Could force his soule so to his whole conceit,
- That from her working, all his visage warm’d;
- Teares in his eyes, distraction in’s Aspect,
- A broken voyce, and his whole Funcion suiting,
- With formes to his Conceit? And all for nothing?
- For Hecuba?
- What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
- That he should weepe for her? What would he doe,
- Had he the Motive and the Cue for passion
- That I have? He would drowne the Stage in teares,
- And cleave the generall eare with horrid speech:
- Make mad the guilty and apale the free,
- Confound the ignorant and amaze indeed
- The very faculty of Eyes and Eares. Yet I,
- A dull and muddy-mettled Rascall, peake
- Like John-a-dreames unpregnant of my cause,
- And can say nothing: No, not for a King,
- Upon whose property, and most deere life,
- A damn’d defeate was made. Am I a Cow-ard?
- Who calls me villaine? Breaks my pate acrosse?
- Pluckes off my Beard, and blowes it in my face?
- Tweakes me by’th’Nose? Gives me the Lye I’the’Throate,
- As deep as to the Lungs? Who does me this?
- Ha? Why I should take it: for it can not be,
- But I am Pigeon liver’d and lacke Gall
- To make Opression bitter, or ere this,
- I should have fatted all the Region Kites
- With this Slave’s Offal, bloudy: a Bawdy villain,
- Remorseless, Trecherous, Letcherous Kindless villaine!
- O, Vengeance!
- Who? What an Asse am I? I sure, this is most brave,
- That I, the Sonne of the Deere Murthered,
- Prompted to my Revenge by Heaven, and Hell,
- Must (like a Whore) unpacke my heart with words,
- And fall a-Cursing like a very Drab,
- A Scullion? Frye upon’t Foh! About my Braine.
- I have heard that guilty Creatures sitting at a Play
- Have by the very cunning of the Scene,
- Been stroke so to the sould that presently
- They have proclaim’d their malefactions
- For murther, thought it have no tongue, will speake
- With most miraculous organ. Ile have these Players,
- Play something like the murder of my Father,
- Before mine Unkle. Ile observe his lookes,
- Ile tent him to the Quicke: If he but blench
- I know my course. The Spirit that I have seene
- May be the Divell, and Divell hath power
- To assume a pleasing shape; yea and perhaps
- Out of my Weaknesse, and my melancholy
- As he is very potent with such spirits,
- Abuses me to damne me. I’ll have grounds
- More Relative then this: The Play’s the thing,
- Wherein Ile catch the Conscience of the King.