Hamlet Character Essay Example For Students

Hamlet Character Essay A monologue from the play by William ShakespeareHAMLET: 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 conceitThat from her working all his visage wanned,Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,A broken voice, and his whole function suitingWith forms to his conceit? And all for nothing,For Hecuba!Whats Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,That he should weep for her? What would he doHad he the motive and the cue for passionThat I have? He would drown the stage with tearsAnd cleave the general ear with horrid speech,Make mad the guilty and appal the free,Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeedThe very faculties of eyes and ears.Yet I,A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peakLike John-a-dreams, unpregnant for my cause,And can say nothing. No, not for a king,Upon whose property and most dear lifeA 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 throatAs deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?Ha, swounds, I should take it, for it cannot beBut I am pigeon-livered and lack gallTo make oppression bitter, or ere thisI should ha fatted all the region kitesWith this slaves 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 wordsAnd fall a-cursing like a very drab,A stallion! Fie upont, foh! About, my brains.Hum I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a playHave by the very cunning of the sceneBeen struck so to the soul that presentlyThey have proclaimed their malefactions.For murder, though it have no tongue, will speakWith most miraculous organ. Ill have these playersPlay something like the murder of my fatherBefore mine uncle. Ill observe his looks.Ill tent him to the quick. If a do blench,I know my course. The spirit that I have seenMay be a devil, and the devil hath powerT assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhapsOut of my weakness and my melancholy,As he is very potent with such spirits,Abuses me to damn me. Ill have groundsMore relative than this. The plays the thingWherein Ill catch the conscience of the king.