Another apt and revealing soliloquy is in act two scene two. It is written in iambic pentameter, which gives it a sense of importance and throughout helps to establish Hamlet as the hero. We can now see Hamlet waking up to the task that he faces and we can understand the vast task that Hamlet, a naturally passive person, has now to face up to. The soliloquy once again begins with the sound O, displaying the way Hamlet feels. And then begins with the sentence ‘O what a rogue and peasant slave am I’. This line is a very interesting one to open with. He has just watched an actor cry for absolutely nothing and has obviously been personally affected by the fact. He responds by putting himself down. It shows us that he really is stuck in a nasty dilemma and wished that he could act on what he sees as someone almost making fun of the fact that he is unable to act on what he knows he has to do. We see the dilemma openly, he is caught in the crossfire of a battle between himself alongside his thoughtful and passive character against what he knows he has to do in the name of his viciously murdered father. He is really caught up in this and is wishing that he was able to act. Having been instructed by a ghost who can’t sleep until the deed was done you would imagine that he’d have enough of a mandate to murder, yet he is still searching. His frustration at the situation comes out in this soliloquy. He is irritated at the fact that this actor could act with ‘Tears in his eyes’, ‘A broken voice’ and ‘his whole function suiting’ ‘and all for nothing’ and yet he can’t act upon the instructions of his dead father, a man who he genuinely loved. We begin to see a bit of a change in the way he feels in this soliloquy, his anger is directed in the direction of his uncle as it goes on and he describes his uncle as a ‘Bloody, bawdy, villain, remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain.’. Here Shakespeare has used alliteration in the words ‘Bloody, bawdy’ and has rhymed the words ‘treacherous, lecherous’; this poetic edge gives the play a more dramatic feel and brings out his emotions in speech. In this soliloquy we also see a bit of the recurring imagery which is evident throughout the play. Hamlet describes himself as ‘dull and muddy’, this theme of dirty and sickening imagery is visible all the way through and adds depth to the play – it is the continuation of the observation that there is something wrong in Denmark and everything seems rotten. Shakespeare has used alliteration here in a clever place as it once again makes us sit up and we notice the theme. We can tell now that he is really angry and wants to get revenge for his dad but he is battling with himself. One might see this as a potential turning point for Hamlet but the irony of the situation is that he is still talking and doing nothing. The whole soliloquy seems angry and I would present it angrily if I were acting but the anger clearly stems from the self-hatred illustrated in the first line, you can imagine how something like seeing an actor cry over nothing would bring the incredible frustration and anger which you would feel to a head and it would be apparent in this soliloquy.
The next soliloquy raises the dilemma that I mentioned earlier about Hamlet killing himself. It comes in act three scene one and is one of the most famous bits of Shakespeare’s works. ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question’, an appropriate line. I feel he’s questioning whether or not he should exist any more. He is considering whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles’. This is a very dramatic piece of writing and one that asks the question of whether it is nobler to live or to kill oneself in a way that relates to Hamlet’s situation and the way he’s feeling; he talks about ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ which sum up nicely the situation that faces Hamlet; when I read this I stepped back and looked at what had happened to Hamlet so far in the story and it is crazy. It is the sort of thing that could only happen in a story yet the play seems like a reflection of how a real person, not some storybook hero, would be in this situation and is part of what makes Hamlet seem so real and the soliloquies are one of the devices that make us feel like Hamlet is just another guy - we get to see how he really feels and we can empathise with these feelings and understand. This is also a question ‘Whether tis nobler…’. This is clever in that it reads as a rhetorical question but could also be taken as a question for the audience to ask themselves, I did and it brought significance to Hamlet’s situation. The line ‘To die, to sleep – to sleep perchance to dream’ is superbly relevant as it brings out the thing that everyone fears about death - what happens if I don’t just sleep and dream. No one knows what will happen when we die and so we don’t want to die. Shakespeare put this in this soliloquy because it is a common thought and helps us understand Hamlet’s feelings better. It made me consider whether I would kill myself in his situation and helped me to empathise with this particular dilemma, which Hamlet was facing.
By the next soliloquy Hamlet has seen his uncle’s reaction to the play and has seen his uncles guilt-ridden face. We get to see that Hamlet now has no choice but to face up to his task in avenging his father’s death but we also see once again how he detests the fact that he has to kill his uncle. He feel’s angry enough to ‘drink hot blood’. This is a wicked and sinister image, when we consider the historical context and think about the great belief in witches, hell and damnation – one of the major talking points of Macbeth another of Shakespeare’s famous works. He talks of how ‘hell itself breathes out’. This is another dark image and can be related to the recent uncanny events of his life and the morose and morbid task that he now had no choice but to endeavour to carry out. He says that he cannot be cruel to his mother but he has to do something: ‘O heart lose not thy nature’, ‘Let me be cruel, not unnatural’. His mother comes into this speech again, something which once again helps us to relate as, because of the unique bond which everyone builds up with their mother, anyone would be concerned that they didn’t want to hurt their mother. Although he is angry and wants to do something he is still busy worrying about his mother, because he is Hamlet and cannot act without much careful contemplation. Although he seems ready to act in this next soliloquy he is still merely talking about what he plans to do, we can’t think he will actually do it because he seems unable to act like that. We see he is still only talking but is perhaps trying to convince himself that he is right. The whole idea of him being unable to act upon the numerous mandates he gets, help us to empathise with him as his unwillingness to toil with the unknown darkness of sin and death is something that everyone can relate to. I think that still today one of the main constraints on people’s behaviour is the fear of the unknown and the mysterious darkness that walks hand in hand with death and murder. This is why I would rush to contradict T.S. Elliot in his comment that ‘Hamlet is an artistic failure’. To me this comment is completely unfounded and is disproved by the fact that still today some of the most captivating art and writing, such as biographies, are praised for the real life quality that a play like Hamlet has. If I can still relate to the character of Hamlet, and see through the difficult language and the unrecognisable social context, in the twenty-first century then it cannot be an artistic failure – rather an artistic success which people have and will, for generations to come, been able to relate to due to the human instinct of fear of death which Shakespeare personified in the character of Hamlet.
Hamlet’s soliloquies are a vital part of the play and are one of the major ways for us to relate to his situations and empathise with the situation that our hero, or perhaps just another Tom, Dick or Harry, faces. They make him seem like a real person as we see openly his emotions and we see that he isn’t a storybook hero but he’s like us, he doesn’t want to meddle with death and he doesn’t want to hurt his mother. Shakespeare’s visual language using the theme’s of dirty and rotting matter and an unweeded garden bring another dimension to our understanding of how Hamlet is really feeling. We understand the numerous dilemmas he faces by his constant thinking and inaction and his frustration at these characteristics. Shakespeare’s very dramatic language once again ensures this and his use of prose in the soliloquies gives them an extra dramatic and hitting depth. My essay itself bares witness to how the soliloquies make us empathise with his situation as I have constantly had to check myself to ensure that I haven’t been too emotive in the language I used because as I read the soliloquies I myself have been a victim of Shakespeare’s oh so dramatic and effective soliloquies.
Sam Pollard
