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Hamlet Soliloquy Essay

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A Discussion of 3 Messages from To be or not to be Soliloquy
The “to be or not to be” soliloquy in “Hamlet” is one of Shakespeare’s most famous soliloquies. “There are more than 300 soliloquies in Shakespeare’s plays and we find them in every play, but their frequency in the individual plays varies,”(Clemen) A soliloquy is when an actor in a performance speaks their thoughts out loud. Actors usually speak their soliloquies when they are by themselves and sometimes around others. The words spoken within a soliloquy is the actor’s thoughts only and no other actors can hear them speaking their thoughts. In “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare, there are three messages from the to be or not to be soliloquy. The first message in Shakespeare’s …show more content…

This soliloquy has relations to other soliloquies from the play. When Hamlet becomes a thinker, he calls himself a coward for not taking action. “Even if he depreciates himself sometimes as a coward for not killing Claudius, Hamlet demonstrates his bravery in these two confrontations.”(De-yan) Just like the soliloquy in Act II, Hamlet beats himself up for not being able to go forth with his actions of killing his uncle, Claudius. “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,”(Act III, Scene 1, Lines 90-92) The idea of overthinking is what caused Hamlet to become a coward. He thought about precise details which lead to him not taking action at the …show more content…

Why does one suffer when they can choose to die? One can choose to put up with suffering or choose to do something about it. Hamlet discusses the option of ending suffering because his life is a wreck, his father is dead, his mother remarried, and his new father is guilty of killing his old father. He has the option of putting up with this suffering or end it. “To die, to sleep-- no more-- and by a sleep to say we end the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”(Act III, Scene 1, Lines 67-70) Hamlet is ready to kill himself, kill his uncle Claudius. He contemplates whether suicide is a reasonable answer or not. Hamlet longs for death and wishes to end his suffering. “...to feel the hero’s suffering, to see with his eyes. But in Hamlet this is not so. We need not see through Hamlet’s eyes.”(Knight) He is afraid to commit suicide though due to the fact that he will be sent to hell if he chooses

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During this conversation, Hamlet ends up killing another innocent man, thinking that it was Claudius. From hatred came murder, and not even the kind of murder that might be justified, out of blind rage Hamlet stabbed another. One thing led to another, and Hamlet was forced to flee as a consequence of wanting to send him off where he wouldn’t be seen, out of fear that he was insane. When Hamlet later returns he is thrown into a duel with the sister of a woman who loved him that went mad and killed herself after Hamlet previously killed her father, thinking it was his stepfather. So everything finally comes full circle, and Hamlet is met with consequences for his actions.

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To die- to sleep- No more; and by a sleep to say we end the heartache. ”(ACT III scene i) In this quote we see Hamlet debate his own life and consider whether dying would be better than to

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644 Words | 3 Pages

Hamlet’s “To be or Not to be” soliloquy, played by Kenneth Branagh, is threatening. Branagh’s character seems as though he is speaking to those behind the mirror, as he is addressing the mirror. His desire is for his speech to sound like a threat. To accomplish this tone, Branagh speaks in a slow, effective whisper and uses serious facial expressions throughout the scene. This casts an eerie presence over the audience and depicts Hamlet’s mental state.

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When applied correctly, soliloquies successfully allow the reader to experience characters in their most vulnerable state: within their own minds. Hamlet is no exception to this principle, as Shakespeare’s mastery of rhetoric in establishing the main character’s inner conflict provides depth and rawness to his complex character. In this well-known soliloquy, Shakespeare employs logos to acknowledge that death can be both a relief and nightmare due to natural human emotions; accordingly, Hamlet personifies a severe case of teenage depression by simultaneously wishing for an end to suffering yet remaining hesitant to act on his own thoughts due to his fear of the unknown.         Throughout this passage, Hamlet attempts to rationalize ending his life over continuing to endure the painful reality of his existence. The parallelism in this particular soliloquy serves several rhetorical purposes, including the development of an implicit contrast between Hamlet’s mental state and the actual organization of his thoughts.

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1105 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the play, Hamlet has various points where he is confronted with suicidal thoughts or attempts. Throughout Hamlet’s first soliloquy “Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, / Thaw resolve itself into a dew, / Or that the Everlasting had not fixed/ His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! Oh God, God!”

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We already know that he’s grieving for his father, but this is the first time we see how much he’s suffering. It’s very clear he is struggling to cope with his father’s death and his mother and uncle's’ marriage. Hamlet no longer wants to live, and he says that if it was not a sin, he would take his own life. “O that this too, too sullied flesh would melt … Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd / his canon ‘gainst self slaughter”(1.2.133,135-136). These are three lines that clearly illustrate his state of mind.

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Hamlet no longer wanted to live in this life despair and pain. Another illustration of his indecisiveness is during the play when he had a clear chance to avenge his father by killing Claudius but choose not to do so, because he thought that Claudius was repenting for his

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In this soliloquy, the talk of death and decay is prominent, with the occasional hint at suicide thrown in with it. However, hidden in this soliloquy is a familiar “call to arms”, as Hamlet struggles with the decision to fight or flee he gives this statement: “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/ Or to take arms against a sea of troubles” (3. 1. 58-60). Hamlet gives himself the option to fight back against Claudius, and his aggressiveness resembles that of Martin Luther, who gave himself the same option.

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Hamlet's Outrageous Thoughts In the play Hamlet by Shakespeare, Hamlet speaks with passion. In his two very long soliloquies that represents his despair and inferiority. Soliloquies present the idea of a character's feeling and thoughts out loud despite the fact that there are either crowds during the speaking of the soliloquy or rather, alone. The tone and content of the two soliloquies are represented as negative and full of hatred towards specific characters in the play.

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Throughout Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, displaying the acts of suicide as an attempt to escape reality, religiously, and morally. Standing with two well-known soliloquies Hamlet, questions should I be alive, or should I be dead. Indecisive he wavers on the fact of the religious and classical perspective of suicide. Opening Act Three, Hamlets first known soliloquy “To be or not to be”, suggest the idea of suicide. “The sling and arrows of outrageous fortune” (3.1. 1-3).

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370 Words | 2 Pages

This passage, Hamlet expresses his extreme irritation that he deeply wounded by the death of his father, and he also demonstrates that how badly he feels about the new marriage of his mother with his own uncle. Earlier, the king and queen (His mother & his uncle) were asking him not to return to Witenberg for his education but to stay in Denmark, and it was against his wishes. Here, he speaks precisely about suicide. He desires his flesh to melt and whishing that God had not made a sin for suicide. He also says that the suicide seems like a desirable alternative to life in a painful world.

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569 Words | 3 Pages

Everyone goes through trials and rough patches in their life, this Hamlet knew, but what if there was a way to get around them? Death could be the solution to all of his problems. Death comes to snatch people up at some point in everyone’s life, so why not let death come sooner? Hamlet moved to his bed and sat down to look out his window. The night might seem bad, but

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880 Words | 4 Pages

Hamlet’s ability to overthink situations or decisions makes him conclude that committing suicide might be the easy way out of his indecisiveness. Hamlet overthinks every problem that is happening. He overthinks so much that he cannot make up his decision about what to do with the problem. The cluelessness that is going on within his mind makes him lose his mental status, life and the love of his life. Hamlets actions are hypnotized by his thoughts: “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 pitch and moment, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action” (3.1.85-90).

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847 Words | 4 Pages

In his soliloquy, he is asking himself whether it is better to live or to die, which he is considering to commit suicide. Also, in the soliloquy, Hamlet states that “Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?” (3.1.84-90). He explains that no one would like to live in an exhausting life, unless they don’t know what is going to happen after they die because they are afraid of what their after life is going to be. Both these quotes prove that the death symbol is always surrounded by Hamlet and he has a hard time to choose between life and

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In Hamlet a play composed by William Shakespeare, Shakespeare uses multiple soliloquies throughout his play to delineate the thoughts and feelings of a character (Hamlet) at a key point during a characters climax. Within the second soliloquy in Act two scene two Hamlet seems to question his existence and states himself as “alone” as well as a “peasant slave” which indicates how his intellectual self is grieving towards the death of his father (the king). Hamlet had once seen his father as his hero, his role model and luminary. However, due to his father’s death his mother decided to incestually marry Hamlet’s uncle in which had aflittered him and had made many believe that he was “mad”.

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