TEXT:
HAMLET (continued)
Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn
And reason panders will.
GERTRUDE
O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.
HAMLET
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty,
GERTRUDE
O, speak to me no more;
These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet!
HAMLET
A murderer and a villain;
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket!
GERTRUDE
No more!
NOTES:
Amleth (Also written as Amlethus, or, in Icelandic, Amlóði) is a figure from Scandinavian legend, and is the foundational myth that led to Shakespeare’s version of the story in Hamlet. The main source for the legend of Amleth is Saxo Grammaticus, who writes the story in his 13h century work, the Acts of the Danes - or Gesta Danorum.
Motley is the patterned style of clothing usually worn by medieval court fools.