Hamlet is one of the deepest and most complex works by William Shakespeare and the most debated and analyzed in every time and country. Written during the first part of the seventeenth century the tragedy deals with the story of a Danish prince whose uncle murders the prince's father, marries his mother, and claims the throne. Hamlet, the prince, pretends to be mad and refuses the love of Ophelia but puts off his revenge to the end. The play ends with the death of Hamlet after stabbing the king and making him drink off the rest of a poisoned cup prepared for him.
The play is based on uncertainty and ambiguity. It focuses on the complications arising from love, death, and betrayal, without offering the audience a decisive and positive resolution to these complications. For Hamlet, there can be no definitive answers to life's most daunting questions, he wonders if he would be morally justified in taking revenge on his uncle but the actions of the characters bring disaster upon an entire kingdom. At the end of the play it is not even clear whether justice has been achieved.
To be or not to be
Act 3 scene 1 Hamlet's Soliloquy
Watch the sequence from Hamlet (1996) Director: Kenneth Branagh
Text:
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? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.--Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd.
Tasks:
1. Underline the words connected to life and death an write down a list of them.
2. Consider the attitude to the idea of life and the idea of death and explain.
3. Define in your words Hamlet's vision of life and death.
4. What are, according to Hamlet, the advantages and disadvantages of human existence?
Commentary
In this soliloquy, Hamlet reasons out whether the unknown beyond of death is easier to bear than life. He shows his frustration at his inactions and weaknesses, he is depressed and thinking about killing himself as a means to end his "sea of troubles." This philosophical soliloquy builds on a recurrent theme throughout the play—the afterlife. The afterlife permeates the play, whether it's the ghost's appearance, or the controversy over Ophelia's burial rites at the graveyard.
Hamlet is one of the deepest and most complex works by William Shakespeare and the most debated and analyzed in every time and country. Written during the first part of the seventeenth century the tragedy deals with the story of a Danish prince whose uncle murders the prince's father, marries his mother, and claims the throne. Hamlet, the prince, pretends to be mad and refuses the love of Ophelia but puts off his revenge to the end. The play ends with the death of Hamlet after stabbing the king and making him drink off the rest of a poisoned cup prepared for him.
