HAMLET BETRAYED
(Hamlet’s First Soliloquy: Act 1, Scene 2)
O that this too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into pearly dew!
Or that the dice of fate had not fix’d me
To lonely self-pleasure!
O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seems it to me all such solo uses
When I recall him that was mine.
Fie on’t! O fie! my cock an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely, with no horny hand it to reap.
That it should come to this!
But two months gone! – nay, not so much, not two.
So excellent a lover; he was to me,
Titan, father of sun, moon and dawn,
A satyr, yet so loving to me,
His beard and bush ever chafed my hot cheeks.
Heaven and earth! Must I remember?
That Titan now hangs on another,
As if an increase in appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month –
Let me not think on it – traitor, thy name is Titan! –
My suspicious mind whispers to me,
That ere Titan from my bed departed -
Crying crocodile, all false tears – why he already –
He and my brother! O God!
A beast that lacks knowledge and reason,
Would have drawn back, chosen another –
But Titan is now with my brother.
My very brother; but no more like a brother.
So fore the salt of his most unrighteous tears
Had dried on his traitorous cheeks,
He scampered to my brother’s bed – O, most wicked speed,
To post with such dexterity to inc3stuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good;
Both break my heart – brother and Titan -
And leave me lone with my too solid flesh.
(With apologies to William Shakespeare)
O that this too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into pearly dew!
Or that the dice of fate had not fix’d me
To lonely self-pleasure!
O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seems it to me all such solo uses
When I recall him that was mine.
Fie on’t! O fie! my cock an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely, with no horny hand it to reap.
That it should come to this!
But two months gone! – nay, not so much, not two.
So excellent a lover; he was to me,
Titan, father of sun, moon and dawn,
A satyr, yet so loving to me,
His beard and bush ever chafed my hot cheeks.
Heaven and earth! Must I remember?
That Titan now hangs on another,
As if an increase in appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month –
Let me not think on it – traitor, thy name is Titan! –
My suspicious mind whispers to me,
That ere Titan from my bed departed -
Crying crocodile, all false tears – why he already –
He and my brother! O God!
A beast that lacks knowledge and reason,
Would have drawn back, chosen another –
But Titan is now with my brother.
My very brother; but no more like a brother.
So fore the salt of his most unrighteous tears
Had dried on his traitorous cheeks,
He scampered to my brother’s bed – O, most wicked speed,
To post with such dexterity to inc3stuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good;
Both break my heart – brother and Titan -
And leave me lone with my too solid flesh.
(With apologies to William Shakespeare)
11 months ago