Hamlet's Key Soliloquies

Hamlet's Key Soliloquies

The purpose of a soliloquy is to outline the thoughts and feelings of

a certain character at a point in the play. It reveals their innermost

beliefs and offers an unbiased perspective said to themselves and not

to any other characters that may cause them to withhold their true

opinions. The character of Hamlet is very intriguing; without

soliloquies Shakespeare would be unable to give the audience such an

insight into his personality and motivations - They play a key role in

making Hamlet Prince of Denmark a notoriously famous and well

appreciated play. The three soliloquies I am going to explore are Act

1 Scene 2, Act 2 Scene 2, and Act 3 Scene 1.

Hamlet's passionate first soliloquy (Act 1, Scene 2) is essential to

the play as it highlights his inner conflict caused by the events of

the play. It reveals his true feelings and provides a striking

contrast to the controlled and artificial dialogue that he must

exchange with Claudius as previously seen.

Hamlet begins the soliloquy with a very dramatic and shocking debate

on whether to take his own life:

'O that this too too solid flesh would melt…Or that the everlasting

had not fixed his canon 'gainst self slaughter."(1.2.129-132)

It gives us an insight as to the importance given to religion and the

idea of hell-one of the key themes throughout the play. He wishes that

God never made the commandment 'thou shall not kill' so it would be

easier for him to kill himself. The image that is expressed serves to

reveal not only the tragic nature of his problem, also highlighted by

his reference to suicide, but also create a link between him and the

audi...

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...flesh and not as

mere shadows of their previous selves.

The major question 'To be or not to be' is believed by some to be a

question of whether Hamlet should take his own life. The argument put

against this view is that Hamlet never specifically uses 'I', he is

actually pondering the worth of human existence as a whole. Both

alternatives would have been shocking to the deeply religious

Elizabethan audience.

Hamlets mood is much calmer, again he is procrastinating by waiting

for the play to expose Claudius' guilt- Hamlet is the thinker, not the

doer. It is perhaps the most disturbing form of melancholy Hamlet has

displayed because he remains calm, and collected throughout. His

thoughts on suicide are not over-dramatised as in previous

soliloquies. The soliloquy as a whole then is an exercise in bitter

irony.