HAMLET

A monologue from Act I, Scene ii

by: William Shakespeare

NOTE: Hamlet was first published in 1603. It is now a public domain work and may be performed without royalties.

HAMLET: O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon [1] 'gainst self slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't, ah, fie, 'tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely [2]. That it should come to this,
But two months dead, nay, not so much, not two,
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion [3] to a satyr, so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem [4] the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet within a month --
Let me not think on't; frailty, thy name is woman --
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body
Like Niobe [5], all tears, why she, even she --
O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason [6]
Would have mourned longer -- married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing of her gallèd [7] eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good.
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.


1 divine law

2 possess it completely

3 the sun god

4 allow

5 the daughter of Tantalus and wife of Amphion of Thebes. She provoked Apollo and Artemis to vengeance by taunting their mother, Leto, with the number and beauty of her own children; Niobe's children were slain and Zeus turned her into stone, in which state she continued to weep over her loss.

6 that lacks understanding of propriety

7 irritated from crying

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