Hamlet - Act I Scene ii (Kevin Kline) "too too solid flesh"

Hamlet's first soliloquy, by William Shakespeare. T.S. Eliot famous wrote of it:

"His disgust is occasioned by his mother, but....his mother is not an adequate eqivalent for it; his disgust envelops and exceeds her. It is thus a feeling which he cannot understand; he cannot objectify it, and therefore it remains to poison life and obstruct action."



"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!"


Peter Francis James ... Horatio
Dana Ivey ... Gertrude
Brian Murray ... Claudius
Kevin Kline ... Hamlet

from a 1990 TV broadcast

from "Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare" (1849) by Coleridge:

This "taedium vitae" is a commom oppression on minds cast in the Hamlet mould, and is caused by disproportionate mental exertion, which necessitates exhaustion of boldily feeling. Where there is a just coincidence of external and internal action, pleasure is always the result; but where the former is deficient, and the mind's appetency of the ideal is unchecked, realities will seem cold and unmoving. In such cases passion combines itself with the indefinite alone.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• performing
• arts
• William
• Shakespeare
• Hamlet
• Kevin-Klein
• soliloquy
• drama
• theatre
• Kevin
• Klein

[SusieQ121]

It's KLINE, not Klein. Learn how to spell his name before you post clips of him. Sheesh.

[ShakespeareAndMore]

Sorry! Corrected it. Studying too much German I guess...

[a1z58o]

hamlet is mourning in these private soliloqueys. he in these moments shows us in the play how he truley feels. kevin kline's crying simply makes it so real and not just writing

[fuzzyjw]

how the fuck does this video have 26 thousand views!?! oh and NOC is gay.

[gohuckyourself21]

@souprfarmergirl its debatable. Each has a different meaning obviously but both work within the context of the speech. The controversy, that has not been resolved to this day, stems from the translation of the first folio and the progression of the ones that came after and how they were translated in turn.

[souprfarmergirl]

it's sallied not solid.

[mrflippy77]

this is poop in a can man

[thleggett1]

anyone who says that Kevin Kline is "some guy" or "This guy" has no understanding of actual acting. Have you seen the tears the are shed from his eyes, from the tone that he uses in order to convey one tone and another? Kevin Kline is the best Hamlet I have yet to see!

[wainscottbl]

@SusieQ121

Gee, get over yourelf. I bet you're too illiterate to even appreciate this, so go worship your moive stars and get lost.

[for3v3rn3rd]

this isn't that great of a performance...Hamlet, should be full of emotion, not as monotone as this guy...He gives Shakespeare a bad name