Another under-appreciated but amazing moment in Hamlet occurs in 2.2 - the spectacular scene that allows us to see many of Hamlet's personas, as he encounters and converses with Polonius; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; Polonius again; and ultimately, the players. After greeting them, he asks the first player if he will "do a request", a scene probably based on Marlowe and Nashe's Dido, Queen of Carthage, which entails a description of the events concerning Pyrrhus, a Greek soldier who was among the ones hidden in the Trojan Horse, and who eventually slays Priam, the king of Troy. Hamlet begins by reciting the first part of the speech, which refers to Pyrrhus' being dressed in black (for the purpose of nocturnal camouflage) but who is at this moment covered in blood and gore (its description is another example of Shakespeare's consistent anti-war message) as he looks for the king:

One speech in it I

chiefly loved: 'twas Aeneas' tale to Dido; and

thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of

Priam's slaughter: if it live in your memory, begin

at this line: let me see, let me see--

'The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,'--

it is not so:--it begins with Pyrrhus:--

'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,

Black as his purpose, did the night resemble

When he lay couched in the ominous horse,

Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd

With heraldry more dismal; head to foot

Now is he total gules; horridly trick'd

With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,

Baked and impasted with the parching streets,

That lend a tyrannous and damned light

To their lord's murder: roasted in wrath and fire,

And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,

With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus

Old grandsire Priam seeks.'

So, proceed you.

The first player then takes over, and the entire scene, we come to realize, is another contrast (i.e. foil) for Hamlet. Pyrrhus, wearing black as Hamlet did earlier for a different reason, with a mission to kill a king, who hesitates (though briefly), before the fatal moment. And like yesterday, the declamatory style is meant to off-set the rest of the play, with its innovation that shows characters actually thinking, and making decisions. Or not.