-creature to death was in itself odious and
terrible to a disposition naturally so gentle as Hamlet's was. His
very melancholy, and the dejection of spirits he had so long been in,
produced an irresoluteness and wavering of purpose, which kept him
from proceeding to extremities. Moreover, he could not help having
some scruples upon his mind, whether the spirit which he had seen
was indeed his father, or whether it might not be the devil, who he
had heard has power to take any form he pleases, and who might have
assumed his father's shape only to take advantage of his weakness and
his melancholy, to drive him to the doing of so desperate an act as
murder. And he determined that he would have more certain grounds to
go upon than a vision, or apparition, which might be a delusion.

While he was in this irresolute mind, there came to the court
certain players, in whom Hamlet formerly used to take delight, and
particularly to hear one of them speak a tragical speech, describing
the death of old Priam, king of Troy, with the grief of Hecuba, his
queen. Hamlet welcomed his old friends, the players, and remembering
how that speech had formerly given him pleasure, requested the player
to repeat it; which he did in so lively a manner, setting forth the
cruel murder of the feeble old king, with the destruction of his
people and city by fire, and the mad grief of the old queen, running
barefoot up and down the palace, with a poor clout upon that head
where a crown had been, and with nothing but a blanket upon her loins,
snatched up in haste, where she had worn a royal robe: that not only
it drew tears from all that stood by, who thought they saw the real
scene, so livelily was it represented, but even the player himself
delivered it with a broken voice and real tears. This put Hamlet upon
thinking, if that player could so work himself up to passion by a mere
fictitious speech, to weep for one that he had never seen, for Hecuba,
that had been dead so many hundred years, how dull was he, who having
a real motive and cue for passion, a real king and a dear father
murdered, was yet so little moved, that his revenge all this while had
seemed to have slept in dull and muddy forgetfulness! And while he
meditated on actors and acting, and the powerful effects which a good
play, represented to the life, has upon the spectator, he remembered
the instance of some murderer, who seeing a murder on the stage,
was by the mere force of the scene a