Act II, Scene 2
Line 547 from the Folger Library edition
HAMLET
‘Tis well: I’ll have thee speak out the rest of
This soon. 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 their ill report while you live.
LORD POLONIUS
My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
HAMLET
God’s bodykins, man, much better! Use every
Man after his desert, and who should ‘scape
Whipping? Use them after your own honour and
Dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in
Your bounty. Take them in.
Line 563 from Folger Library edition
HAMLET [speaking to First Player alone PLAYERS and POLONIUS exeunt]
…Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can
you play “The Murder of Gonzago”?
FIRST PLAYER
Ay, my lord.
HAMLET
We’ll ha’t tomorrow night. You could, for a
Need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen
Lines, which I would set down and insert in’t,
Could you not?
FIRST PLAYER
Ay, my lord.
HAMLET
Very well. Follow that lord; and look you mock him not.
EXIT FIRST PLAYER
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 his visage wann’d,
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!
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 faculties 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 the nose? gives me the lie i’ the 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
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!
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,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion! Fie upon’t! Foh!
About, my brain!—Hum, 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 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.
End of Act II