Audio Performance by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode
A troupe of traveling players have come to Hamlet's castle at Elsinore. Prince Hamlet greets them with gusto, even beginning to recite a speech of Aeneas' tale to Dido he once heard the head of the troupe perform. After delivering a handful of lines with vigor, Hamlet then asks the First Player to continue from where he left off.
Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2, lines1542-1592
First Player
'Anon he finds him
Striking too short
at Greeks; his antique sword,
Rebellious to his
arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to
command: unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam
drives; in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff
and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved
father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel
this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his
base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner
Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo! his sword,
Which was
declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam,
seem'd i' the air to stick:
So, as a painted
tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
And like a neutral
to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
But, as we often
see, against some storm,
A silence in the
heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds
speechless and the orb below
As hush as death,
anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the
region, so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
Arouséd vengeance
sets him new a-work;
And never did the
Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour
forged for proof eterne
With less remorse
than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on
Priam.
Out, out, thou
strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod - take away her power; [council]
Break all the
spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round
nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the
fiends!'
...
'But who, O, who
had seen the mobled queen--'
...
First Player
'Run barefoot up
and down, threatening the flames
With bisson rheum;
a clout upon that head [“blinding tears”][bandage]
Where late the
diadem stood, and for a robe,
About her lank and
all o'er-teeméd loins, [slender]
A blanket, in the
alarm of fear caught up;//
Who this had seen,
with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst Fortune's
state would treason have
pronounced:
But if the gods
themselves did see her then
When she saw
Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with
his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst
of clamour that she made,
Unless things
mortal move them not at all,
Would have made milch
the burning eyes of heaven, [yielding milk]
And passion in the gods.'
This performance was created for an unabridged audio production of Hamlet now in progress on
LibriVox.org.
