1

Then he took me out to dinner, an' he axed me about the house,

About you an' Sally's baby, an' the chickens, pigs, an'

cows;

He axed about his brothers, addin' that 'twas ruther queer, But he hadn't seen one uv 'em fur mighty nigh a year.

Then he took me to his lodgin', in an attic four stairs high

He said he liked it better 'cause 'twas nearer to the sky. An' he said: "I've only one room, but my bed is pretty wide;"

An' so we slep' together, me an' Charley, side by side.

Next day we went together to the great Mechanics's Fair, An' some o' Charley's picters was on exhibition there. He said if he could sell 'em, which he hoped to, pretty

soon,

He'd make us all a visit, an' "be richer than Muldoon."

An' so two days an' nights we passes, an', when I come

away,

Poor Charley said the time was short, an' begged me fur to stay,

Then he took me in a buggy an' druv' me to the train, An' said in just a little while he'd see us all again.

You know we thought our Charley would never come to much;

He was always readin' novels an' poetry an' such. There was nothing on the farm he ever seemed to want to do,

An' when he took to paintin' he disgusted me clear through!

So we gave to Rob and Dan all we had to call our own, An' left poor Charley penniless to make his way alone; He's only a poor painter; Rob and Dan are rich as sin; But Charley's worth the pair of 'em, with all their gold thrown in.

Those two grand men, dear wife, were once our prattling babes-an' yet

It seems as if a mighty gulf 'twixt them an' us is set;

An' they'll never know the old folks till life's troubled

journey's past,

An' rich an' poor are equal underneath the sod at last.

An' maybe when we all meet on the resurrection morn, With our earthly glories fallen, like the husks from the ripe corn,

When the righteous Son of Man the awful sentence shall have said,

The brightest crown that's shining there may be on Charley's head.

XI. The Soliloquy

Soliloquy, closely related to monologue, is a man thinking aloud, and in so far as his consciousness is concerned, he should be, and ever is, to himself, alone, for the conscious presence of any person, imaginative or otherwise, makes it either a drama or a monologue. The soliloquy must be studied well, and the cause which brings about the soliloquy, in order to know exactly the kind of character and what state of mind the character is in, which causes him to thus express his thoughts aloud. It is the external rising in concrete form of activities of the sub-conscious mind. The soliloquy should be rendered wholly regardless of the audience, and many times carries the speaker back directly to the audience. So, as the man feels, he should be the passive vehicle through which his sub-conscious mind is speaking.

HAMLET

Shakespeare.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

O that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead! nay, not so much, not two;
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!-
A little month! or ere those shoes were old

With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears;-why she, even she,-

O God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,

my

father

Would have mourned longer,-married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like
Than I to Hercules; within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good!-

But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!

Now I am alone.

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

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 faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?

Ha!

'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall,

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
O vengeance!

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a trull, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,

A scullion!

Fie upon't! foh! About my brain! Hum, I have heard

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,

Have by the very cunning of the scene

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim'd their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,

I know my course. The spirit that I have seen