Hamlet

Act II Scene II. Lines 283-301

283 I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation

284 prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king

285 and queen moult no feather. I have of late–but

286 wherefore I know not–lost all my mirth, forgone all

287 custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily

288 with my disposition that this goodly frame, the

289 earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most

290 excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave

291 o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted

292 with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to

293 me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

294 What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!

295 how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how

296 express and admirable! in action how like an angel!

297 in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the

298 world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,

299 what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not

300 me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling

301 you seem to say so.

Hamlet delivers this speech in the scene two of the second act of the play. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have just arrived, and Hamlet is explaining to them the reasons that the king and queen summoned them to Elsinore. He tells them that he has recently lost his happiness for some reason unknown to him, and that the earth doesn’t appear to him in the same way that it used to. He finishes his speech with a description of the lofty nature and glory of man which he then contrasts with his new found realization that man is in truth nothing more than dust. I am not sure why Hamlet feels the need to say this to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Although his musings here seem highly cynical, it is unclear at this point whether Hamlet truly feels this way or whether he is merely attempting to give his friends something to report to the king and queen. However, we do see a pattern of cynical verses spoken by Hamlet both while alone and when speaking to others as the play progresses.

This speech is interesting because it seems to be written primarily in prose. There is no apparent rhyme scheme, and each line contains a different amount of syllables and stresses. Although many of the conversations between Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are written without meter, the use of prose here is quite striking because of the highly poetic phrasing that Hamlet uses to describe the nature of man and the world. It is interesting to see Shakespeare use prose in this manner because Hamlet and his speech are far from the lowly and uneducated characters that we commonly see distinguished by lines of prose.