Hamlet and his Soliloquies
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet the reader finds a chain of soliloquies, seven in total, involving the protagonist and extending from beginning to end of the drama. In this essay let us examine the soliloquy-approach which the hero uses.
Harry Levin comments on Hamlet’s penchant for soliloquies in the General Introduction to The Riverside Shakespeare:
Comparably, Hamlet has been taken to task – or, perhaps more often, sentimentalized – for an alleged inability to make up his mind. Actually, both the testimony about him and his ultimate heroism show that his hesitations are uncharacteristic. It is a measure of the baffling predicament in which he finds himself that
the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought (III.i.84)
If Hamlet’s personality seems peculiarly elusive, if his different interpreters can endow him with such widely differing characteristics, it is because his part is presented subjectively, much of it confided to us through soliloquies. (24)
The first soliloquy, or “act of talking to oneself, whether silently or aloud” (Abrams 289), occurs when the hero is left alone after the royal social gathering in the room of state in the castle of Elsinore. He is dejected by the “o’erhasty marriage” of his mother to his uncle less than two months after the funeral of Hamlet’s father (Gordon 128). His first soliloquy emphasizes the frailty of women – an obvious reference to his mother’s hasty and incestuous marriage to her husband’s brother:
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-...
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... An Impulsive but Earnest Young Aristocrat.” Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Masks of Hamlet. Newark, NJ: Univ. of Delaware Press, 1992.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html
West, Rebecca. “A Court and World Infected by the Disease of Corruption.” Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Court and the Castle. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957.
Wright, Louis B. and Virginia A. LaMar. “Hamlet: A Man Who Thinks Before He Acts.” Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Ed. Louis B. Wright and Virginia A. LaMar. N. p.: Pocket Books, 1958.
After demolishing the theories of other critics, Bradley concluded that the essence of Hamlet’s character is contained in a three-fold analysis of it. First, that rather than being melancholy by temperament, in the usual sense of “profoundly sad,” he is a person of unusual nervous instability, one liable to extreme and profound alterations of mood, a potential manic-depressive type. Romantic, we might say. Second, this Hamlet is also a person of “exquisite moral sensibility, “ hypersensitive to goodness, a m...
N. p. : n.p., n.d. : n.p., 1981. Rosenberg, Marvin. A. A. “Laertes: An Impulsive but Earnest Young Aristocrat.” Readings on Hamlet.
Hamlet's first words are rhetorically complicated, and also challenging and puzzling. Does he pretend to be flippant or boorish in order to keep his thoughts to himself, or to contain his pain? Or does he express rational criticism in savagely sarcastic comments spoken only to himself? Or is the energy of his mind such that he thinks and speaks with instinctive ambiguity? Words are restless within his mind, changing meaning, sh...
...on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Excerpted from Stories from Shakespeare. N. p.: E. P. Dutton, 1956.
Boklund, Gunnar. "Hamlet." Essays on Shakespeare. Ed. Gerald Chapman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.
Soliloquies are one of the most important techniques used within Hamlet. Soliloquies give the audience a deeper insight into the emotions and mental state of the character. Shakespeare uses soliloquies to allow the audience to feel the depth of emotion in Hamlets character. In Hamlets perhaps most famous soliloquy he cries out, to be or not to be, that is the question/Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, /Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, /And by opposing end them (Act III, I, 56). This quote furthermore reveals a part of the story that would be otherwise hidden to the reader, for example, his state of mind and also his desire to commit suicide in order to escape the pain of his life. The readers response, in result, is altered as it is made clear that Hamlet is obviously struggling to come to ter...
Rosenberg, Marvin. "Laertes: An Impulsive but Earnest Young Aristocrat." Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Masks of Hamlet. Newark, NJ: Univ. of Delaware P., 1992.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html
The appeal of fascism is often wondered about and discussed when looking at fascism. Because of the historically savage fascist regimes, people tend to believe that fascism cannot reoccur and often don’t understand how, for example, the people of Germany were so easily swayed by the “obvious” Nazi regime. These ignorant people are usually the most susceptible to the transition to a ...
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is arguably one of the best plays known to English literature. It presents the protagonist, Hamlet, and his increasingly complex path through self discovery. His character is of an abnormally complex nature, the likes of which not often found in plays, and many different theses have been put forward about Hamlet's dynamic disposition. One such thesis is that Hamlet is a young man with an identity crisis living in a world of conflicting values.
Findlay, Alison. "Hamlet: A Document in Madness." New Essays on Hamlet. Ed. Mark Thornton Burnett and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1994. 189-205.
Fascism is considered to be one of the ideological products of the 20th century and it was established as a political regime by Benito Mussolini, in Italy, after the First World War. It represents a broad concept, a radical and authoritarian nationalistic political ideology, notoriously hard to define. It is based on ideas such as anti-democracy, anti-liberalism, anti-communism, anti-capitalism and anti-semitism. Fascism can be defined in many ways but in its overall view Fascism is a nationalistic complex ideology that a nation essentially owes itself. Absolutely anti democratic, fascism involves a one man government that seeks complete self rule with limited outside connection. It strips citizens of their rights and allows the state to be
Corum, Richard. Understanding Hamlet: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998. Print.
The perfection of Hamlet’s character has been called in question - perhaps by those who do not understand it. The character of Hamlet stands by itself. It is not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can be. He is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility - the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune and refining on his own feelings, and forced from his natural disposition by the strangeness of his situation.
Rosenberg, Marvin. “Laertes: An Impulsive but Earnest Young Aristocrat.” Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Masks of Hamlet. Newark, NJ: Univ. of Delaware P., 1992.