Page:Hamlet (1917) Yale.djvu/73

First Play. Ay, my lord. 576

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. 581

Ros. Good my lord!

Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' ye! Now I am alone.
O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I: 584
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 587
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! 592
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, 596
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. 600
Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,