Literature Foundation 2009
Week 5
For week 7:
129 O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
130 Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
131 Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
132 His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
133 How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
134 Seem to me all the uses of this world!
135 Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
136 That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
137 Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
138 But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
139 So excellent a king; that was, to this,
140 Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
141 That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
142 Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
143 Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
144 As if increase of appetite had grown
145 By what it fed on: and yet, within a month—
146 Let me not think on't—Frailty, thy name is woman!—
147 A little month, or ere those shoes were old
148 With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
149 Like Niobe, all tears:—why she, even she—
150 O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
151 Would have mourn'd longer—married with my uncle,
152 My father's brother, but no more like my father
153 Than I to Hercules: within a month:
154 Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
155 Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
156 She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
157 With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
158 It is not nor it cannot come to good:
159 But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2. Probably written about 1600.
Please could each group read closely the whole speech, with attention to the meaning, to its function in the context of the play, the scansion, and the characterisation. To help with the scansion, here is a recording of me reading it. I apologise for the cough at the beginning.
Please consider too the following: what is the difference between reading a poem and reading an extract from a poetic drama, like this one?
