Monologue

King Monologue from Hamlet

From Hamlet by William Shakespeare

1:10 min

Not that I think you did not love your father, But that I know love is begun by time, And that I see, in passages of proof, Time qualifies the spark and fire of it. There lives within the very flame of love A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it; And nothing is at a like goodness still, For goodness, growing to a pleurisy, Dies in his own too much. That we would do, We should do when we would; for this ‘would’ changes, And hath abatements and delays as many As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; And then this ‘should’ is like a spendthrift sigh That hurts by easing. But to the quick o’ th’ulcer: Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake To show yourself your father’s son in deed, More than in words?

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