THE MONOLOGUE from ACT III SCENE I.

A room in the castle.

 

The famous monologue, or soliloquy in the best way to say, belongs to act III scene I and it is set in a room in the castle.

 

Shakespeare devises the idea of the soliloquy to give the audience the occasion to have direct access to the protagonist's mind.

 

Hamlet has to make a decision about putting an end to his life and as/consequently stop suffering 'The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' that is suffering because of a negative destiny: this is one option. Or the other option: to go on living, fight against difficulties and win the battle.

So the question is to go on living or to stop living. But to stop living means commit suicide.

 

The technique he uses in posing the question is that he moves from the specific to the general because all that he's expelling in the first four lines is synthesize in the opposition 'To be, or not to be'.

And we can understand 'to be or not to be' if and whether we go on reading because 'to be' means 'to go on', 'living', and face all the dangerous, all the problems, all the suffering that life will give us. And on the other we have 'to die' which means to stop living and in this way to put an end to his life.

 

As you can see there is a colon here which means that all that comes up the colon is the explanation of what is before the colon.

 

The slings and arrows of a negative fortune, that is accept the problems, accept the difficulties, accept the pain, remembered that here Hamlet is using a metaphoric use of language because he speaks of 'slings'.

So the question is if it is better to suffer, fiscally, emotionally, spiritually, because of a lack of luck or to decide to fight against the problems of life.

Fighting which is expressing in a metaphorical use of language that is 'to fight' is 'to take arms against', and life is render in a metaphorical way with the hyperbola 'a sea of troubles'.

The choose of 'a sea of troubles'  is indicative of his mood.

Life is as a sea: enormous, huge, never-ending. But it is not a pleasant sea where you take the Sun, it is a sea of troubles.

The choose of such metaphor underlines Hamlet's inner conflict: his inability to make a decision, his inability to take action.

 

So as you can see, the first line is the introduction to the problem, to the monologue. The introduction synthesizes the problem. And then the problem is developed along the soliloquy.

 

After discussing the effects of fighting against life, which is expressing in term of the sea of troubles, Hamlet thinks about what may derive, what the consequence is if you fight against the troubles. And if you fight against the troubles you can end them, if you oppose to the sea of troubles (you can see the verb 'opposing' which means fighting against the troubles) you may end the troubles, that is bring the troubles to an end.

 

Hamlet takes into consideration the possibility to die, that is the possibility to put an end to his life by committing suicide.

And he compares 'To die', or 'dying', to a perennial eternal sleep.

If you sleep you don't feel any trouble. If you sleep you don't feel the pain. If you sleep your suffering, that is spirit or physical, seems to pause/to come to a pause.

And he says 'by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache': when we sleep we don't feel the pains of the heart and also the problems that may derive from our body. Nothing hurts.

 

And so people often desire to sleep or to put an end to their life if they consider that they're life is too difficult to face because it employs a lot of problems. And so the human being sometimes wishes to die because it thinks that dying will bring end for the pains, for the suffering, or the conflicts whatever.

 

But after a second thought/on a second thought Hamlet comes to the idea that when we sleep we may have dreams. And dreams may be positive or negative. And also such dreams may turn into nightmares. This is a problem because when we have a nightmare we don't feel well.

So when we die and we can compare our death to a dream, we can, in a way or another, have the idea/the feeling that we have get rid off our body and therefore our suffering or pain. And this seems to give us a pause from that suffering.

 

calamity - hyperbolization of speech

 

Hamlet develops, expands the previous considerations turning to think in a more detail way. He considers what kind of person/what person could be one 'who would bear the whips and scorns of tim'

Our body does not respond to our need as we like and so we feel scorned by time.

 

This list of evils gives an example of what the difficulties of life are. The difficulties of life are connected to all ages.

 

The oppressor's wrong - to the oppression.

the proud man's contumely - to the ambition of proud people.

The pangs of despised love - the suffering that may come to the human being when his/her love is not returned.

the law's delay - we can see that whenever we need the law, to take a lot of time, so we don't have the result immediately and we suffer because we are worried about the result.

The insolence of office - the rude behavior of the people who're in the offices, they don't create a good relationship with us and we feel oppressed, we feel weak, we feel not respected.

the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes - the pain that may derive being aware that merit is not appreciated but it is felt as unworthy. So the inability to have a fair treatment.

 

This are all the consideration that render life very difficult to live.

All this employs living, living employs all this. Living employs a lot of kinds of suffering: body suffering because of age, diseases, despited love, law, a lot.

 

If life is so difficult, and it employs so many problems, so many difficulties, so which Shakespeare through Hamlet's voice has given as examples, why doesn't human being commit suicide? Why don't people kill themselves? Or why do only few people kill themselves? What is the man keep tide to the Earth or to life?

This is what Hamlet wants to find out.

 

In order to express what life after death may be Hamlet says 'The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns'.

 

It is our ignorance of what happen after life that makes us go on living because we are afraid, we are scared about the unknown.

And since we don't exactly know our will, since we are scared our will is stuck, is puzzled.

So our will is puzzled by the fear we don't know, our will is weakened by the unknown and therefore it compels the human being to bear what we know, all the evils, make us accept all the evils of life rather then commit suicide, put an end to our life and face the ills we do not to know, the ills that might be after death, that we might only know if we have died.

So it is the fear of unknown that prevents the human being through committing suicide.

 

Human beings are not ready to put themselves to test, they prefer to stay here, in the field, in the area of what they know.

The awareness of our ignorance after death that makes us cowards.

 

We become weak and weak because we think to much. And if we think to much, we don't act.

 

This is Hamlet's great answer.