My Shakespearean Monologue

One of the best classes I ever took – hands down – was a public speaking class. It was actually a required course at Seton Hall in the early 90s, and it was well worth it. I heartily recommend it to any undergraduate. It turned me from someone who was paralyzingly shy to someone who is still quiet but can talk in front of a group if need be. I wrote a small bit about that, here.

Anyway, as part of the desensitization, about midway through the course, we had to pick a monologue to read up at the podium in front of the class. Not being a Shakespearean buff back then, I went to my local bookstore and picked up Hamlet, because I had at least a passing fancy of the plot. Plus it had that “To be or not to be” speech. But since that was clichéd even to my ill-informed ears, I figured on skimming around the play looking for the requisite two dozen lines to read in front of my younger peers.

I didn’t look very far. Probably because I had a ton of physics and calculus homework. Or had to work that long, 13-hour Tuesday shift at the day job. Or had to get to the rehearsal studio. In any event, seven pages into Hamlet I came across a short passage of Horatio imploring the “ghost” at the castle walls to speak. Seemed interesting. Something I could handle without feeling foolish or phoning it in. Twenty-seven lines, no crazy words. We weren’t required to memorize it, but I did, though I printed it out on a small sheet of lined paper to carry with me just in case.

Here it is:

A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye:
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of feared events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.

But soft, behold, lo where it comes again!
I’ll cross it, though it blast me. – Stay, illusion.

If thou hast any sound or use of voice,
Speak to me.
If there be any good thing to be done
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me.
If thou art privy to thy country’s fate,
Which happily foreknowing may avoid,
O, speak!
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it. Stay and speak. Stop it, Marcellus.

- Hamlet, I. i. 112-139


Though there were other exercises in the course I had extreme difficulty with (sharing personal information and stories up in front of the class, for example) I really enjoyed the minute or two of the monologue. If I remember correctly, I got an A for this assignment.

I wouldn’t mind trying to memorize other monologues if my memory wasn’t shot to pieces from insomnia, stress, and Diet Coke. And I’d perform it for the little ones, captive strapped into their car seats, as we drove from errand to errand on Saturday mornings.