Hamlet: An Attempt to Ascertain Whether the Queen Were an Accessory, Before the Fact, in the Murder of Her First Husband

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J. R. Smith, 1856 - 48 pages

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Page 8 - 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!
Page 28 - Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits devil, is angel yet in this, That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock or livery, That aptly is put on.
Page 10 - Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest. But, howsoever thou pursuest this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her.
Page 5 - And let me speak, to the yet unknowing world, How these things came about : so shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts ; Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters ; Of deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause : And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on the inventors' heads : all this can I Truly deliver.
Page 8 - Like Niobe, all tears; why she, even 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...
Page 15 - And, like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin, And both neglect. What if this cursed hand Were thicker than itself with brother's blood, Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens To wash it white as snow?
Page 13 - 11 observe his looks ; I '11 tent him to the quick : if he but blench, I know my course. The spirit that I have seen May be the devil ; and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy, As he is very potent with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me.
Page 18 - Hamlet he seems to have wished to exemplify the moral necessity of a due balance between our attention to the objects of our senses, and our meditation on the workings of our minds, — an equilibrium between the real and the imaginary worlds.
Page 15 - O, what form of prayer Can serve my turn ? " Forgive me my foul murder ?" That cannot be ; since I am still possess'd Of those effects for which I did the murder, My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
Page 10 - Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once. The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire; Adieu, adieu, adieu, remember me.

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