Hamlet Solliloquy Act 2 Scene 2 Prose Prompt

1

In this speech from Act 2 Scene 2, Hamlet contemplates his complicated situation. Read the speech carefully. Then, write a well-organized and developed essay in which you analyze how Shakespeare employs literary devices such as figurative language, syntax, and tone to convey Hamlet’s complexity of character and inner conflict.

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, 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 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.