Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play 'The Murder of
Gonzago' ?
I Play.
Ay, my lord.
Ham.
We'll ha't to-morrow 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?
I Play.
Ay, my lord.
Ham.
Very well.Follow that lord; and look you mock him not.
[Exit First Player.]
My good friends [to Ros. and Guild.], I'll leave you till
night: you are welcome to Elsinore.
Ros.
Good my lord!
[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]
Ham.
Ay, so, God b' 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 wan'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.