Oh 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 whole conceit, 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? 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 faculty 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 th' nose? Gives me the lie i' th' throat, as deep as to the lungs? Who does me this? Ha? Why, 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? Ay sure, this is most brave, that I, the son of my dear murthered, 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.
- William Shakespeare, 'Hamlet' act two, scene two
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