MB UNIUD

Textual Analyses of Hamlet’s Monologue [Act III, scene I]

 

 

Hamlet is talking on his own in one of palace’s room.
He reflects about his future and he realized to have two possibilities: to take revenge on his father for his murder, to fight against the fate and to be a man, or accepting it and his destiny.

It is clear that Hamlet is living an inner conflict, perfectly conveyed by the first line of the soliloquy: To be or not to be: that is the question.
Hamlet is confused: he had to decide whether to be a man or the contrary, not to be a man.
Being a man means to perform the duties imposed by the renaissance code of values and to kill his uncle, as his father asked him. But Hamlet could also cohabit with the awareness of the crime committed by his parent, and slowly forgot the dramatic episode, as his mother was doing.

The dilemma is so complicated that the Shakespearian hero thinks about other possible solutions: To die or to sleep.
These are realy particular actions because they let you run off from the real life and from all problems, doubts and thoughts.
Unfortunately Hamlet found in both cases a problem.
Man is afraid of dying because he don’t know what there is after death. He asks himself: “Why should I run the risk to live something worse that the real life?”
Sleeping, you may dream the real life, so also in this dimension you are persecute by questions and troubles.
At the end of the monologue Hamlet resolves his question.
The conscience and the action of thinking make us cowards because we realize what is the crime without having the possibility to correct us or to make the correct choice.
Considering the semantic level, the words disclose Hamlet suffering.
Shakespeare used images of a body suffering to convey the suffering of the soul.
He said: “slings, whips, scorns, pangs, spurns”, all strikes visible on the body.
This use of the language is forceful: the reader feels Hamlet’s frame of mind.