Now I am alone

Well, I tested myself yesterday with all my speeches and I'm happy to report I knew every one with minimal to no prompting; a definite improvement from the last time I quizzed myself. I promise to keep reciting them everyday, but before that, I shall embark upon a new speech this week. It's been a long while since I've memorized something from scratch.

The decision was a no-brainer. I want to complete my set of the four major Hamlet soliloquies. There are other, less prominent ones, but if you want a cross section of Hamlet's psyche throughout the play, the big four will provide you with it. Weighing in at ~55 lines (depending on your edition of the play), the Act II, Scene II speech is the longest of his soliloquies, but no where near as long as the one with which Richard Gloucester has blessed me.

It has been nearly a year since I turned my well-honed fangirling instrument toward Sir Kenneth Branagh. I started with realizing that Thor was directed by him, then moved on to seeing the screen graced with his countenance and voice through King Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing and finally, the movie that changed my life, his complete and epic 4-hour masterpiece of Hamlet. On July 10th, not halfway through my first viewing of that glorious film, I clearly recall my heart o'erflowing with love and inspiration. So of course, to cap off my unlocked achievements, I shall embark upon this emotional thrill ride of a speech. It still makes me melt and my ovaries quiver to hear it.

A week from now, I hope to have some more insight into what it's like to occupy and live through these enthralling words.


Hamlet, Act II, Sc. II
Hamlet: 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, an' 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,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd 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-liver'd 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 murder'd,
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! 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 proclaim'd 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.