Hamlet’s Soliloquies: Exploring Themes of Revenge, Inaction, and Morality
Hamlet’s Soliloquies
This extract from William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is from Act 1. It is Hamlet’s first soliloquy, and it deals with his extreme emotions regarding his father’s recent death. Shakespeare uses negative diction, allusions to Greek mythology, and punctuation to highlight how Hamlet’s emotions constantly shift from anger to depression.
This extract from William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is from Act 2, Scene 2. It is Hamlet’s second soliloquy, and it deals with his self-loathing due to his hesitation to avenge his father’s murder. Punctuation plays a huge role in indicating a shift in Hamlet’s mood and the mood of the entire soliloquy. Demeaning diction is also used to portray Hamlet’s deteriorating view of himself.
Hamlet’s Self-Loathing
Hamlet uses a lot of demeaning diction to express the anger and self-loathing he has over his inaction in regards to avenging his father’s murder. This self-loathing is established from the very beginning of the soliloquy, the second line in fact, as Hamlet calls himself a “peasant slave” (535). Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark, yet here he is calling himself a simple peasant, or a person of lower class. He also refers to himself as a slave, indicating that he feels a heavy burden by the mission his father’s ghost gave him. A slave is someone who has no power or free will. Hamlet further degrades himself when later on he calls himself “pigeon-liver’d” and that he “lack[s] gall” (564). Hamlet’s self-loathing is even stronger as he has now slid further down the Great Chain of Being, going from the lower class all the way to an animal. He outright states that he has no anger to help propel him on his mission of revenge, which is what makes him less than human.
“O that this too solid flesh would melt”
He wished that his body would just melt, turn to water and become like the dew. Or that the Almighty hadn’t made a law forbidding suicide. Oh God! God! How weary, stale, flat and useless everything about life seemed! He moaned. It was terrible. The whole world was like an unweeded garden that had gone to seed – only ugly disgusting things thrived. He couldn’t believe what had happened. Only two months dead; no, not even two. Such an excellent king he had been, compared with this one. It was like Hyperion, the sun god, compared to a lecherous satyr. He’d been so loving to his mother that he wouldn’t even allow the gentle breeze of heaven to blow too roughly on her face. He lifted his hands and blocked his ears as though to shut his father’s memory out. She had loved him so much, adored him, as though the more she had of him the more she wanted him. And yet, within a month! He couldn’t bear to think about it. Women were so inconsistent! Only a month, even before the shoes with which she had followed his father’s body were old, all flowing with tears, she, even she…
“Oh God! Even an animal that doesn’t have reason, would have mourned longer…”
…she married his uncle! His father’s brother, but no more like his father than he was like Hercules. Even before the salt of those hypocritical tears had left her swollen eyes, she married. Oh, most wicked speed, to hurry so enthusiastically to incestuous sheets! It couldn’t end happily. But he would just have to break his heart, because he had to hold his tongue.
The question for him was whether to continue to exist or not – whether it was more noble to suffer the slings and arrows of an unbearable situation, or to declare war on the sea of troubles that afflict one, and by opposing them, end them. To die. He pondered the prospect. To sleep – as simple as that. And with that sleep we end the heartaches and the thousand natural miseries that human beings have to endure. It’s an end that we would all ardently hope for. To die. To sleep. To sleep. Perhaps to dream. Yes, that was the problem, because in that sleep of death the dreams we might have when we have shed this mortal body must make us pause. That’s the consideration that creates the calamity of such a long life. Because, who would tolerate the whips and scorns of time; the tyrant’s offences against us; the contempt of proud men; the pain of rejected love; the insolence of officious authority; and the advantage that the worst people take of the best, when one could just release oneself with a naked blade? Who would carry this load, sweating and grunting under the burden of a weary life if it weren’t for the dread of the after life – that unexplored country from whose border no traveller returns? That’s the thing that confounds us and makes us put up with those evils that we know rather than hurry to others that we don’t know about. So thinking about it makes cowards of us all, and it follows that the first impulse to end our life is obscured by reflecting on it. And great and important plans are diluted to the point where we don’t do anything.
“O my office is rank”
His offence was rank, it smelt to heaven. It had the most primal ancient curse on it. A brother’s murder! He tried to kneel but couldn’t. He couldn’t pray, even though his need to was as powerful as it could be. His guilt outweighed his strong desire. He didn’t know where to begin as there were two main considerations: his crime against a human being and his sin against God. And so he could only stand there doing nothing. What if this cursed hand of his were thicker than itself with brother’s blood; wasn’t there enough rain in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow? What was mercy for if not to help him fight the effects of his crime? And what was prayer for if not to prevent his fall before it happened? Or if it did happen, to pardon him when it did? Then he would be able to look up because his sin would be behind him. He prepared to kneel but still, what kind of prayer would help him? ‘Forgive me my foul murder?’ That was no good because he still possessed those things that he had done the murder for: his crown, his ambition, and his queen.
Could one be pardoned for a sin and still keep the benefits of it? In the corrupt ways of the world one could shove justice aside and the power and wealth one achieved by one’s crimes could be used to bribe the dispensers of law. But that wasn’t the case in heaven. There’s no crooked dealing there. Our actions’ true nature is laid bare before God and we ourselves are forced to give full and true evidence. What should he do then? What could he do? Only try what repentance he could. It couldn’t do any harm. But it wouldn’t help if one simply couldn’t repent. Oh wretched condition! Oh heart as black as death! Oh soul trapped in sticky lime, that struggling to free itself, was becoming even more entangled! Help angels! Make him do it! Make his stubborn knees bow, and make the steel strings of his heart as soft as the sinews of a newborn baby! It may work. He knelt slowly in front of the altar, bowed his head and clasped his hands together.
“Now might I do it pat”
As Hamlet passed the chapel on his way to his mother’s room he saw the light in the chapel. He paused and stood silently at the door. He saw the still form of his uncle kneeling before the altar. He drew his sword and tiptoed into the chapel and stood at the back. He could do it, right now, easily, while he was praying. And he would. Right now. He took a step forward then stopped. And so he would go to heaven, and what kind of revenge would that be? That was something to think about. A villain kills his father; and for that his son sends that villain to heaven. Oh, that would be a service he was giving that villain, not revenge. He killed his father most grossly, full of unresolved sins himself, with all his crimes in blossom, like the flowers of May. And no-one knew how his father’s audit stood in heaven. As far he knew it stood seriously. So would he be revenged if he took his uncle while he was purging his soul, when he was fit and ready for his death? No! He put his sword back. He would find a more suitable occasion, when he was drunk, or asleep, or in a rage, or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed, or gambling, swearing, or some other act that had no taste of salvation in it. Then he would trip him so that his heels would kick out at heaven. His soul would then be damned as black as the hell it was destined for. His mother was waiting, but this delay would only prolong his uncle’s last sickly days. He turned and went out quietly.
“How all occasions do inform against me”
How the examples provided by everything around him denounced him and reminded him of his inability to sweep to his revenge! What was a man if his most profitable employment was to eat and sleep? Nothing more than an animal. He who made us with that vast capacity for understanding, that ability to reflect on experience and learn from it, didn’t give us that god-like reason just to let it go mouldy from disuse. He didn’t know what it was that was stopping him. Whether it was animal-like inability to understand or some cowardly nit-picking – thinking too precisely about it, analysing his thoughts, which were one quarter wisdom and always three quarters cowardice. He didn’t know why he was saying, ‘this still has to be done’ since he had the reason and the desire and the strength and the means to do it. Examples as weighty as the earth keep urging him. Look at the way this inexperienced young prince, puffed with divine ambition and scorning everything that fortune, death and danger could throw at him, was leading this huge expensive army on a campaign to gain a piece of land that was nothing more than an eggshell.
True greatness wasn’t a matter of rushing into action for any trivial cause but when honour was at stake it was noble to act, no matter how trivial the cause was. Where did he stand, then, his father murdered, his mother stained – two huge incentives – and not do anything? It was to his shame that he was watching the imminent death of twenty thousand men who were going to their deaths as easily as one would go to bed, for almost no reason, fighting for a plot of land that was so small that they wouldn’t even fit on it, that wasn’t even big enough for the fallen to be buried on.
Oh, from now on his thoughts would be bloody, or not worth having!
“‘How all occasions do inform against me’ (Act Four, Scene Four)”
Hamlet talks with the captain sent by Fortinbras and utters this soliloquy. He is informed that Fortinbras is willing to risk his own life and the lives of twenty thousand soldiers by invading Poland for the sake of his honor. This information gives a jolt to Hamlet’s mind. It triggers in Hamlet a reaction and he laments his own inaction. It pains him to see that he has a better cause for action, yet remains inert. Now he makes a firm decision that “from this time forth my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.” By comparison with Fortinbras, who is ready to risk his life for the sake of honor, his own attitude was nothing but self-degrading and inexcusable. So he becomes resolute for revenge. This soliloquy reveals his philosophizing nature, his guilt complex, and his determination to take revenge come what may.