Hamlet: ACT III, SCENE I *paraphrased*

ACT III, SCENE 1. A room in the castle. (PART C)

OPHELIA
My lord, I have memories of you,
That I wish to give to you
Please, take them

HAMLET
No, not me
I never gave you anything

OPHELIA
My honored lord, you very well know you have;
And, with them, your sweet, romantic words,
Has made the memories more rich, although fading
Take these letters; they have lost their value to me

HAMLET
HA, HA! Are you sincere?

OPHELIA
Excuse me?

HAMLET
Are you beautiful?

OPHELIA
What do you mean?

HAMLET
That if you are sincere, your honesty
should give no approach to your beauty.

OPHELIA
So could beauty and honesty be related?

HAMLET
Sure, since beauty's power can easily
change a decent girl into a whore,
than the power of decency can change
a beautiful girl into something pure.
This used to be a great puzzle to me,
but time has solved it. I loved you once.

OPHELIA
At least you led me to believe you did.

HAMLET
You shouldn't have believed me,
no matter how hard we try to be virtuous.
I never loved you.

OPHELIA
I have been deceived

HAMLET
Get yourself to a nunnery at once.
Why would you produce more sinners like yourself?
I'm fairly good myself, however,
I could accuse myself of such horrible crimes
that it would've been better if my mother
had never given birth to me.
I am conceited, vengeful, and ambitious,
with more bad thoughts in me than
I can fit into my own head, and more
than I have time to carry it out in.
Why should people like me be creeping around
between earth and heaven?
Every one of us is a criminal.
Don't believe any of us.
Get yourself to a nunnery.
Where's your father?

OPHELIA
He’s home

HAMLET
Lock him in, so he can play the fool
in his own home only. Good bye.

OPHELIA
Please, God, help him!

HAMLET
I have heard, well enough, of the makeup you wear
God gave you one face and you paint over it:
You dance and lisp and blame your maliciousness on ignorance.
I’ll have no more of this. It’s making me mad.
I say there should be no more marriages:
All those who are married already, but one, shall
Stay married. The ones that aren’t will never marry,
Get yourself to a nunnery.

Hamlet's Plan

I've decided to blog about the section of Act II I paraphrased. I was given Hamlet's monologue in scene ii on page 71 (lines 563-615). After Hamlet sees the player's performance he has his own idea for Claudius. He asks the player if he can act out a play called "The Murder of Gonzago" which plays similar to the death of his own father. In his monologue, you can tell the passion he has as he expresses his reaction to the player's performance. However he doesn't have the power to express his own passion as the player does as he says, "Is it not monstrous that this player, but in a fiction, in a dream of passion, could force his soul so to his own conceit that, from her working, all his visage wanned, tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, a broken voice, and his whole function suiting with forms to his conceit?" He only wishes to express his feelings while an actor expressing fiction can do it better. As he explains how the player might act out his feelings with words like drown the stage, horrid speech, and make mad the guilty the reader can only imagine how much passion he has inside. With this in mind and his father's unavenged death he uses the "Murder of Gonzago" to catch Claudius in his conscience. With the similarity to the death of the late Hamlet's, Hamlet hopes that Claudius will show a guilty face during the premiere during the play.
The best part of this monologue is the ending when Hamlet says, "The spirit that I have seen may be the devil; and the devil hath power t' assume a pleasing shape." He fears that Claudius may not have a reaction at all and calls it the power of the devil.
I ask myself: Is he really out of his mind or does he have too much bottled up that he just needs to get out?


Well, if anyone's interested my paraphrased monologue is below:


Ah, alone at last
I’m such a scoundrel!
Isn’t terrifying that that player,
Acts only in fiction, but with so much passion?
How can he exert how he wants to feel
With tears, a chocked up voice, and body language,
If that is not how he truly feels? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What Hecuba to him?
Or he to Hecuba, that he cried over her?
How would he REALLY feel if he had a true reason to
And the passion that I have?
He would soak the floor with his tears,
And draw the crowd’s ear with his horrid voice,
Make the guilty go crazy, and shock the free
Perplex the ignorant, and amaze, indeed,
Very pair of eyes and ears.
Only I, a dull-spirited rascal, peak,
Like a day dreamer, inactive of my cause,
And says nothing; no, not for a king whose property
A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?

Who calls me the bad guy?
Breaks my pate across?
And plucks off the hairs on my beard and blows it right back in my face?
Yanks me by the nose? And lies through their teeth?
Who does this to me?
Ha!

Goddammit I should take it; cause I cannot
Take matters in my own hands; I should have feed all the vultures with this slave's corpse: bloody villain!
Remorseless, inconsiderate villain!
Vengence!
What an ass I am! I should be brave
I am the son of my dear murdered father.
I will prompt my revenge by heaven and hell,
Poor my heart out with words with a curse.
A scullion!

Guilty animals sitting at a play would be struck through the soul and physically react to cunningness of a scene ;
Though he will not admit murder he will speak with his reaction.
I’ll have these actors act out something similar to my father’s death to my uncle:
I will observe his reaction and take it from there.
I may see the spirit of the devil: who has the power to act differently than expected
And possibly out of weakness and with his “powers” might damn me to the truth: I’ll have more evidence than this: this is where I’ll catch his conscience.