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Hamlet
Lesson 10: "What A Rogue, Peasant Slave am I" Soliloquy
Aim: How does Hamlet perceive himself?
Do now: From the first two acts we have read, what is your impression of Hamlet's character? Write for about 4 minutes to describe Hamlet's character.
Procedures:
1. Read around line by line.
2. Read around by the period or exclamation markss, or question marks.
3.How does Hamlet comment on the player's acting of  the speech from Aeneid?
4. How does the player express Hecuba's feelings and reactions to her husband, Priam's murder?
5. How, according to Hamlet, will the player act like if the player  knows Hamlet's feelings towards his father's murder?
6. Make a list of names that he called himself in the soliloquy.
*How does Hamlet characterize himself at this point? How accurate a description is it of his character (second section)? Find lines and phrases that explain why Hamlet thinks himself a coward. Do you think he is a coward, or is he acting by looking for external evidence to prove Claudius' guilt?
7.At what line does Hamlet's self-castigation reach its peak?
8. Why is "O vengeance!" a line by itself? How does this line deflate Hamlet's pent-up emotions?
9. What plan does Hamlet reveal to the audience at the end of this soliloquy? Use the Paint Shop to illustrate Hamlet's state of mind and his emotions using various colors and images.
Homework Assignment:
Interpret Hamlet's 2nd soliloquy using your own words and illustration.

Text:
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.