Hamlet's Emotional Rollercoaster

Hamlet's Act 2 Soliloquy:

 1. Shock bewilderment: what’s wrong with me?

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 appal the free,

 Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed

 The very faculties of eyes and ears.

 

2. Self-deprecation / suicidal depression: I’m useless.

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.

 

3. Anger / defensive aggression: are you looking at me?

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!

 

4. Resignation / acceptance: ok, I’m a wimp.

 '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:

 

5. Fury / rage: bastard!

bloody, bawdy villain!

 Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

 O, vengeance!

 

6. Sarcasm: oh right, brilliant!

 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 whore, unpack my heart with words,

 And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,

 A scullion!

 

7. Irritation / frustration: pull yourself together.

 Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain!

 

8. Calculating / plotting / scheming: ok, let’s see...
 

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.

 

9. Fear / nervousness: it could all be a set-up.
 

The spirit that I have seen

 May be the devil: and the devil hath power

 To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps

 Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

 As he is very potent with such spirits,

 Abuses me to damn me:

10.  Decisive: here’s what I’ll do.

I'll have grounds

 More relative than this: the play 's the thing

 Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.