Hamlet observes religion, but it has been shown that he is hypocritical of it because he is inconsistant with his beliefs (As shown by Schlegel), for example, when the ghost enters, he believes that it truely is his father, and when it leaves, it appears to him as he has been decieved: "Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned.../That i will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet."
Hamlet, in his first soliloquy also refers to the 6th Biblical commandment "Thou shalt not kill" which he understands forbids suicide and murder:"His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God, God." Shakespeare has also given Hamlet the habit of thinking in religious terms, e.g: "For God's Love, Let me hear!" , "Angels and Ministers of grace defend us!"
Hamlet's soliloquy before act 3 shows the audience the endless debate that Hamlet goes through, and Shakespeare delays the end to express how Hamlet is abzorbing the news and whether or not to accept the challenge. Shakespeare does this to shape Hamlet's character in the eyes of the audience. A tragic theme is shown through Hamlet's quotations by firstly, Hamlet having to celebrate his Mother's marriage with his uncle, and at the same time having to mourne his Father's death. Hamlet reveals his loneliness when his Mother asks him why his father's death seems so important, he replies by saying "Seems, madam? Nay it is. I know not 'seems'." Shakespeare, here shows another source of Hamlets sadness, where he has only Ophelia, who has also rejected him due to the 'advice' given to her by her father. He reveals this in another one of his soliloquys: "Now I am alone. O, what a rouge and peasant slave am I!" Hamlets sorrow mulitiplys when he finds out that Ophelia had died, where he states that "Forty thousand brothers/Could not (with all their quantity and love) Make up my sum." However, these feelings of sorrow quickly get replaced with anger, where he expresses them early on in Act 1: "I with wings as swift as thought...sweep to my revenge." He does this again in his conversation with Ophelia where he finds out that she has been lying to him, where he exposes her and commands her to "Get thee to a nunnery", and that "I loved you once". This speech indirectly shows his hatred for women, i.e. his mother, where Hamlet exposes Claudius' plan of killing the Late Hamlet and dethroning him for becoming king himself. He appreciates that he needs to act out his anger by saying: "O Heart, lose thy nature, let me be cruel", showing that Hamlet has a soft side, and that he actually wants to kill Claudius to avenge his Fathers death.
During Act 3, Hamlet asks some players to act out a speech that he "Chiefly Loved", where he reads out the first 13 lines from memory, signifying the link to his fathers death. The story that Hamlet expects is the fall of Troy and the killing of King Priam by his own son, and to Hamlet, this is what he wants to do to Polonius, where in his soliloquy after the speech, Hamlet rebukes himself for not having the same motivation and passion that Pyrrhus did: "What would he do/ Had he the motive and the cue for passion/ That i have?...horrid speech/...appal the free/... confound the ignorant..."
Hamlet then turns his fury back on by talking to himself and showing that if he were not a coward, Claudius would be dead, "...ere this/ I should ha' fatted all the region kites/ With this slave's offal" refering to kites as vultures picking off dead bodies (of claudius?) and he then explains: "Why, what an ass i am! This is most brave/ That i, the son of a dear father murdered, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell/ must like a whore unpack my heart with words/And fall a-cursing like a very drab." Hamlet here explains that he lines of the speech performed by the Player were just actions performed without soul, "like a whore" and that Pyrrhus was destined to kill Priam, and he chose to fill his destiny by matching his fury and causing bloodshed. Shakespeare explains through Hamlet that intensifications are what fantasy craves when it becomes a substitute for the life of the heart.
During the play, we find that Hamlet has been given a different voice when his brain thinks about a situation, because his speech becomes clearer and more direct, where when his "heart" speaks, we find that he spews out his feelings of sadness. An example of his more direct speech comes in when he plans a play to be acted out to Claudius: "I have heard/ That guilty creatures sitting at a play...I'll have these players/ Play something like the murder of my father/ Before mine uncle.../ ... I know my course. In doing this, he hopes to expose Claudius by force.
Schlegel argued that Hamlet passes from "religious confidence" to "sceptical doubts", where Hamlet is keep to avenge his Father, "Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell", where in his soliloquy in act 2 shows that he is not so sure: "The spirit that i have seen/ May be a devil, and the devil hath power/ T'assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps/ Out of my weakness and my melancholy/ As he is very potent with such spirits/ Abuses me to damn me."
Sir Thomas Browne suggested from this that apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not souls, but walks of devils which prompt us into devilism and stray us from the path of God, where Hamlet is demanded by the Ghost to "Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder" and revenge is forbidden to Christians (Where Hamlet is a Christian prince). Hamlet's job was to make sure that Claudius was guilty, so that his reason for revenge could remain neutral. The debate in which he found himself stuck in was that Death is the punishment/relief of God, and if he was to murder Claudius, he would be putting himself in Gods place, i.e blaspheming. Hamlet questioned if assassination was the only way of punishing in practice?
Shakespeare gives Hamlet an alternative plan, based on his religious view that murderers "proclaimed their malefactions", and proclaim meaning to state publicly, which would ultimately dethrone Claudius and save Hamlet from damnation. However, this plan would fail the final request from the Ghost and would oppose his fury. Shakespeare didn't let Hamlet follow his own mind because the play would fail as a tragedy.
In conclusion, Hamlet's soliloquys are significant because he, being the main character, has time to explore and share his deepest emotions, ultimately showing how the play is a tragedy, and ideas such as religion within Hamlet's mind when making decisions such as whether to murder Claudius or not, and lastly his soliloquys show how he consults his heart and his mind, showing his self-discipline and power which in the end makes Hamlet a hero.
Bibliography:
- "Hamlet" - William Shakespeare - Heinemann Advanced Shakespeare, 1996
- "Shakespearian Tragedy" - John Drakakis - Longman Critical readers, 1992
- "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark" - William Shakespeare - Penguin Books, 2002
- "York notes on Hamlet" - Longman Critical Guides, 1980
- "Schlegel" - www.wikipedia.com, Shakespeare and Tragedy
- "Sir Thomas Browne" - www.wikipedia.com, Ghosts and apparitions in literature