The Soliloquies of Shakespeares Hamlet - To be or not to be Soliloquy

The To be or not to be Soliloquy within Hamlet The fame of one particular soliloquy by the hero in Shakespeares Hamlet logically requires that special consideration be given to said speech. And such is the intent of this essay. In Superposed Plays Richard A. Lanham discusses this most celebrated of all the soliloquies The King and Polonius swing out Ophelia as bait and watch. Hamlet sees this. He may even be, as W. A. Bebbington suggested, reading the To be or not to be speech from a book, development it, literally, as a stage prop to bemuse the spyers-on, convince them of his now-become-suicidal-madness. No one in his right mind would fault the poetry. besides it is irrelevant to anything that precedes. It fools Ophelia no difficult matter but it should not fool us. The question is whether Hamlet will act directly or through drama? Not at all. Instead, is he going to end it in the river? I put it thus familiarly to penetrate the serious numinosity surrounding this passage. Hamlet anatomizes grievance for all time. But does he suffer these grievances? He has a complaint indeed against the King and one against Ophelia. Why not do something about them instead of meditating on felo-de-se? (93) Marchette Chute in The Story Told in Hamlet describes just how close the hero is to suicide while reciting his most famous soliloquy Hamlet enters, awful enough by this time to be thinking of suicide. It seems to him that it would be such a sure way of escape from torment, just to cease existing, and he gives the famous speech on suicide that has never been worn thin by repetition. To be, or not to be . . . It would be easy to stop living. To die, to sleep No more. And by a sl... ...in, Harry. An Explication of the Players Speech. Modern Critical Interpretations Hamlet. Ed. Harold Bloom. fresh York Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. Rpt. from The Question of Hamlet. Oxford Oxford University Press, 1959. Nevo, Ruth. Acts III and IV Problems of Text and Staging. Modern Critical Interpretations Hamlet. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. Rpt. from Tragic Form in Shakespeare. N.p. Princeton University Press, 1972. 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 University 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