Page:Hamlet (1917) Yale.djvu/73

Prince of Denmark, II. ii

First Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. Very well. Follow that lord; and look

you mock him not. [''Exit First Player. To Ro''-

sencrantz and Guildenstern.] My good friends,

I'll leave you till night; you are welcome

to Elsinore.

Ros. Good my lord!

Exeunt [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' ye! 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 '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 appal 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,

 584 peasant: base

587 conceit: imagination

590 function: action of the body

suiting: fitting

591 forms: bodily expression

595 cue; cf. n.

597 horrid: horrible

598 free: free from offence, guiltless

602 muddy-mettled: dull-spirited

peak: mope about

603 John-a-dreams: dreamy fellow; cf. n.

unpregnant of: not quickened by

