My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

I have long desired to feel Hamlet's fourth soliloquy inside me--and thanks to Sir Ken's admittedly zealous but equally exhilarating delivery of said speech, all kinds of feelings are inside me--so I said to myself, "This thing's to do!" and just fucking did it. Just now.

After approximately 60 minutes of stomping around my room in hobbit feet and doing the occasional push-up, I unlocked another achievement. My skillz have improved since I first embarked on this endeavor; it took me as long to learn ten lines of Richard III's 42-line speech. Turns out, cold repetition was going about it all wrong. 

Enter, Patsy Rodenburg, voice coach extraordinaire. As a non-actress, reading her book has been a challenge for me, but the multitudinous exercises she suggests for tackling any speech in Shakespeare have informed me greatly, and inspired me to do the seemingly asinine activities I described above. Joining physicality to the words by breathing, turning, and pushing them out with the voice help with initial practice. Decoding the language, beating out the iambic, and reading the full thoughts without terminating at line breaks has definitely increased understanding and decreased average memorization time. There are many more skills she imparts in her book, Speaking Shakespare, that I have found worthy of devoting time toward in order to enrich my project. And if tonight's marathon of speaking is any indication, it's been $15 well spent.

Exit Patsy, Enter Hamlet. 

In the wilderness with R&G escorting him toward England (after having mistakenly murdering Polonius), Hamlet hears news of Prince Fortinbras' military plans. Hamlet has an epiphany of sorts, and his beautifully-formed nine sentences of pure thought reveal just how much a man of action he shall become in the last scenes of the play. 

Compared to his last three soliloquies, this one is noticeably more solid and slightly more brief, with less room for questions and more for definitive answers. It's sharp, sparkling, hard, and clear like polished crystal, a prism through which Hamlet's thoughts split into crisply defined intentions and shine upon the promise of his actions. He sees and comments upon the very tangible Norwegian army before him, compares the delicate prince's motives to his own, then, presuming he has far more reason than Fortinbras to have excitements in his blood, lights his own fire under his ass to pursue his revenge. 

It's a heroic declaration, but still true to Hamlet's deep philosophical soul, and it quivers my ovaries just to mouth the words.

Hamlet, Act IV, Sc. IV

Hamlet: How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event--
A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward--I do not know
Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do,
’Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep, while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!