—My good friends, I'll leave you till night;
you are welcome to Elsinore.
Ros. Good my lord!
Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' ye![a 1]
[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.[a 2]
—Now I am alone. 585
Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave[b 1] am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own[a 3] conceit
That from her working all his visage[a 4] wann'd;[a 5] 590
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's
[a 6] aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function[b 2] suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing![a 7]
For Hecuba?[a 8]
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,[a 9] 595
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for[a 10] passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,[b 3] 600
- ↑ 585. God be wi' ye] God buy to you Q, God buy 'ye F.
- ↑ Exeunt . . .] Globe Sh.; Exeunt after line 584 Q, F.
- ↑ 589. own] Q, whole F.
- ↑ 590. his visage] F, the visage Q.
- ↑ 590. wann'd] wand Q, warm'd F.
- ↑ 591. in 's] F, in his Q.
- ↑ 593. nothing!] Capell, nothing, Q, nothing? F.
- ↑ 594. Hecuba?] F, Hecuba. Q, Hecuba! Capell.
- ↑ 595. to Hecuba] Q 1, F; to her Q.
- ↑ 597. the cue for]F, that for Q.
- ↑ 586. peasant slave] Furness: "It is shown by Furnivall in Notes and Queries, 12th April and 3rd May 1873, that it was possible for Shakespeare to have seen in the flesh some of the bondmen or 'peasant slaves' of England."
- ↑ 592. function] operation of the faculties, as in Macbeth, I. iii. 140; conceit, conception.
- ↑ 600. free] innocent, as in III. ii. 254.
