Abstract
The quotation in the title comes from one of Hamlet's famous soliloquies (‘O what a rogue and peasant slave am I…’); it expresses his reaction to the fact that the Player reciting Aeneas' tale of the sack of Troy has broken down in tears as he describes the fate of this classicalmater dolorosa:Is it not monstrous that this Player here,But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,Could force his soul so to his whole 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 suitingWith 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?
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