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

The To be or not to be Soliloquy of settlement Does the hero in Shakespeares Hamlet deliver a monologue that does not fit the dramatic context? Does the soliloquy suggest that suicide is imminent? This essay proposes to answer these and other questions relevant to the To be or not to be soliloquy. Lawrence Danson in the essay Tragic Alphabet discusses the most famous of soliloquies as involving an eternal dilemma The problem of convictions discrediting effects upon human actions and intentions is what makes Hamlets To be, or not to be soliloquy eternal dilemma rather than fulfilled dialectic. Faced with the uncertainness of any action, an uncertainty that extends even to the afterlife, Hamlet, too, finds the wick or snuff of which Claudius speaks Thus conscience by which Hamlet means, I take it, not only hesitate but all thoughts concerning the future does make cowards of us all And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied oer with the pale cast of thought, And enter prises of capacious pitch and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry And lose the name of action. (III.i.83). (75) Considering the context of this most notable soliloquy, the speech appears to be a reaction from the determination which ended the rapscallion and peasant slave soliloquy. In fact, in the Quarto of 1603 the To be speech comes BEFORE the players scene and the nunnery scene and is thus more logically positioned to show its worked up connection to the previous soliloquy (Nevo 46). Marchette Chute in The Story Told in Hamlet describes just how close the hero is to suicide while reciting his famous soliloquy Hamlet enters, desperate enough b... ... Levin, Harry. An Explication of the Players Speech. Modern hypercritical Interpretations Hamlet. Ed. Harold Bloom. New 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 Interpret ations 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 Univ. of Delaware P., 1992. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts establish of Technology. 1995. http//www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html