Monologue

“Hamlet” in The Tragedy of Hamlet Act I, Scene 2
Oh that this too too solid flesh, would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew:
Or that the everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God, O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seems to me all the uses of this world?
Fie on't? Oh fie, fie, 'tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed: things rank, and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this:
But two months dead: nay, not so much; not two,
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hiperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem 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, all tears. Why she, even she.
(O Heaven! A beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer) married with mine uncle,
My father's brother: but no more like my father,
Then I to Hercules. Within a month?
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing of her galled 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.