Friday, March 14, 2014

Could I please have an analysis (soliloquy) of lines 56 to 90 in Act 3 Scene 1 in Hamlet by William Shakepeare?

In the Folio and the 2nd Quarto the 2B soliloquy occurs in
3.1 between the plan to catch the conscience of the King and The Mousetrap/Murder of
Gonzago. In the Bad Quarto it is placed near the beginning of 2.2. This is an odd
placement and lends itself to the common misconception of suicidal ideation. In the Bad
quarto the soliloquy has no motivation except despondency. In the Folio and the 2nd
Quarto the soliloquy is in the perfect place for one to ponder the wisdom of the plan to
catch the King.

As it is, the soliloquy is about the difficulties in
translating thought to action.  So, we have Hamlet second guessing himself. The plan to
catch the conscience of the king if allowed to fully develop is going to signal to
Claudius that Hamlet is a dangerous person. It will set in motion a course of events
that will be beyond Hamlet's control and may well be designed to bring about Hamlet's
end. Which of course is what happens.

The speech is delivered in the
3rd person. No where does Hamlet actually refer to himself. One argument for this manner
of delivery is that Hamlet knows or suspects that he has an audience. So his verbal
pondering is cryptic. Another is Hamlet's faulty inductive reasoning. Suffice it to say
the speech is given as a universal.

The 2B speech addresses two
concepts. First, whether life is worth having and second the impediments of turning
resolution into action. The second concept naturally flows from the first because Hamlet
realizes that though we just can "be" without doing anything, we can't simply "not be".
Hamlet's exploration of "not being" involves 2 ways to "not be". The first is taking
arms against a sea of troubles. The second is making your own quietus with a bare
bodkin. "Not being" requires some forward action beyond the mere resolution to do so.
This is the second part of his soliloquy. Turning resolution into any action is
generalized from the specific example of doing something to "not
be".

In light of life's burdens is life worth having or not. As
nobility Hamlet has had his preconceived notions of what it is to be noble. The chink in
the armor is his realization that nobility is not a state of mind bestowed at birth
rather it must be acquired. The ultimate conclusion he draws by the end of the soliloquy
is that if one settles on being only noble of mind and nothing more then he is a coward
-- a paradox, hardly keeping with nobility. We see this expanded in Hamlet's last
soliloquy in 4.4. "How all occasions do inform against me..." where Hamlet watches
Prince Fortinbras resolve to act for an "eggshell". Again the dichotomy of passive
forbearance versus the nobility of action.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the meaning of the 4th stanza of Eliot's Preludes, especially the lines "I am moved by fancies...Infinitely suffering thing".

A century old this year, T.S. Eliot's Preludes raises the curtain on his great modernist masterpieces, The Love...