verbosity city

this is a found poem resulting from a playthrough of my game THELMA, a Hamlet soliloquy generator which helps you grab random lines from the play to form into something new. I've done some slight editorialising to make it make sense, but other than that these are all lines straight out of Hamlet, in the random order generated for me by THELMA. (the only line I discarded was one right from the beginning of the play: "Barnardo?")

I've decided that this soliloquy belongs to Horatio, speaking to Ophelia's grave while Hamlet is still at sea. he's haunted by thoughts of Hamlet's madness, of his aimless pursuit of Claudius, of his growing vitriol towards his mother. it's with mixed feelings that he bears his soul to the earth that holds Ophelia; in many ways, this speaks to some prescience, that Horatio sees Hamlet's trajectory in hers.

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As level as the cannon to his blank,
so please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet —

Elsinore,
your skill shall, like a star i’ th’ darkest night,
show his grief. Let her be round with him;
howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.
“A villain kills my father; and for that,
boarded them on the instant they got clear of our ship.” So I —

Who is’t that can inform me?
Demanded of a sponge, what replication should be made by the son?
E’en so, my lord,
but yet to me they are strong. The Queen his mother
is but variable service — two dishes, but to one table. That’s the —

Believe what?
That for a fantasy and trick of fame,
of general assault,
do you see nothing there?

I hop’d thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife.