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"Hamlet and the Player"
Context and Language Videos
Act 2,
Scene 2
Lines 548-554

A discussion of Hamlet and the player in Act 2, Scene 2 of myShakespeare's Hamlet. 

myShakespeare | Hamlet 2.2 Discussion: Hamlet and the Player

Hamlet

That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,     
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty, and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculty of eyes and ears. Yet I,    
Video Transcript: 

RALPH: Hamlet is here imagining the effect that this great actor would have, if he had the motivation that Hamlet himself has — that is, if the actor were driven by the knowledge of his own father's murder, or his mother's remarriage to the murderer, and so on.

SARAH: Hamlet imagines such an actor's impact on an audience: criminals would be driven mad by their guilt, the innocent people, or the free, as Shakespeare says, would be shocked, and the naive would be utterly dumbfounded.