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First Soliloquy ('O that this too too sullied flesh.....' -Act 1, sc 2) | |
| Commentary
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O that this too too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God! God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't, ah 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 Hyperion 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 follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears - why, she - O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason Would have mourn'd longer - married with my uncle, My father's brother - but no more like my father Than I to Hercules. Within a month, Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in 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. |
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