Shakespeare's Fools: The Grave-Diggers in Hamlet London: Methuen, 1982.Īn Excuse for Doing Nothing: Hamlet's Delayįoul Deeds Will Rise: Hamlet and Divine Justiceĭefending Claudius - The Charges Against the King See also A Midsummer Night's Dream 2.1.245, 4.1.132 Two Gentlemen of Verona 5.4.12. Q1 was likely a product of the memories of actors who had staged Hamlet and, in 1604, a new version appeared (Q2), based on Shakespeare's own manuscript, complete with the soliloquy as we know it.įor an absolutely remarkable interpretation of Hamlet's soliloquy, please watch the BBC production starring Sir Derek Jacobi, available in its entirety from the BBC on YouTube. I, that, O this conscience makes cowards of us all. Which makes us rather beare those evilles we have, Which pusles the braine, and doth confound the sence, With a bare bodkin, who would this indure, To grunt and sweate under this weary life, The taste of hunger, or a tirants raigne. The widow being oppressed, the orphan wrong'd, Scorned by the right rich, the rich curssed of the poore? Whol'd beare the scornes and flattery of the world, The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd, No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there is goes,įor in that dreame of death, when we awake, To be, or not to be, I there's the point. It is fascinating to compare Shakespeare's finished masterpiece to the version found in the First Quarto (or Q1) published by Nicholas Ling and John Trundell in 1603: However, others claim that Hamlet, emerging from his moment of intense personal reflection, genuinely implores the gentle and innocent Ophelia to pray for him. Some critics argue that Hamlet's greeting is strained and coolly polite, and his request that she remembers him in her prayers is sarcastic. Hamlet addresses her as Nymph, a courtly salutation common in the Renaissance 1. Hamlet's soliloquy is interrupted by Ophelia who is saying her prayers. Hamlet is well aware that suicide is condemned by the church as a mortal sin. The rub or obstacle Hamlet faces is the fear of what dreams may come (74), i.e. Hamlet asks the question for all dejected souls - is it nobler to live miserably or to end one's sorrows with a single stroke? He knows that the answer would be undoubtedly yes if death were like a dreamless sleep. He speaks explicitly of us all, of what flesh is heir to, of what we suffer at the hands of time or fortune - which serves incidentally to indicate what for Hamlet is meant by to be" (Jenkins 489). He uses the pronouns we and us, the indefinite who, the impersonal infinitive. "Yet nothing anywhere in the speech relates it to Hamlet's individual case. Some scholars limit Hamlet's discussion to a deliberation of whether he should take his own life. Unable to do little but wait for completion of his plan to "catch the conscience of the king", Hamlet sparks an internal philosophical debate on the advantages and disadvantages of existence, and whether it is one's right to end his or her own life. Unlike Hamlet's first two major soliloquies, his third and most famous speech seems to be governed by reason and not frenzied emotion. Hamlet's Soliloquy: To be, or not to be: that is the question (3.1) Commentary Hamlet Soliloquy To be or not to be with Commentary
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