Notes for lines 1018-2022 ed. Eric Rasmussen
1829 Farren
Farren
1710-1742]
Farren (1829, pp. 647-652): <p. 647> “This celebrated soliloquy has been so highly extolled as a fine specimen of right reasoning proceeding from a vigorous and virtuous mind, that any attempt to treat it as an incongruous assemblage of intruding thoughts, springing from a morbid sensibility, will probably alarm the prejudices of those who have held it in veneration; but as a great outrage against popular opinion has already been committed in speaking of
Hamlet as a man suffering mental aberrations, possibly the minor offence, of contrasting a former soliloquy in the same play with that which is the subject of present remark, and pointing attention to the unsoundness of
Hamlet’s arguments in the latter,
as evidence of the progress of his disease, may be considered as adding but little to the original transgression.
“When
Hamlet is first left alone, and before he is informed of his father’s murder, he displays a disrelish of life, but controls his feelings by the pious reflection that, ‘
the Everlasting had fixed his canon ‘gainst self slaughter.’ ‘O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter—God! o God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fye on’t! O fye! ‘tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely.’
It may be observed, that Shakspeare has seized the first opportunity to represent
Hamlet as a man
impressed with the truths of revealed religion. At the time
Hamlet thus moralized, the theory, which he afterwards cherished, and which ultimately produced mental alienation, had not entered his mind; consequently his opinions on a future state proceeded from a full and free exercise of his intellectual faculties; and as his train of reasoning was sound, so his conclusions are justified by religion and philosophy. How far the same praise can with justice be given to his second soliloquy on the same subject,
after he had received the awful communication of his father’s murder, remains to be considered. On the first visitation
Hamlet promises that the Ghost’s commandment ‘all alone shall live within the book and volume of his brain, unmixed with baser matter;’ and so anxious is he to take full revenge on the murderer, that when it is in his power to ‘
do it pat,’ he rejects the opportunity, lest by killing the king when
at prayer he should send him to
heaven instead of to
hell. (TLN 2360-2370, and...goes)
Those, who are of opinion that
Hamlet is in the full enjoyment of a vigorous and virtuous mind throughout the whole play, must needs admit his
religious creed to have been a very singular one, since it made the Amighty fix his canon ‘gainst
self-slaughter, but not against
murder, and murder too in malice of the deepest dye, seeking not only to kill the
body of the victim, but his
soul also. Indeed, the only canon against self-slaughter is that which says ‘Thou shalt do no
murder.’ This,
Hamlet, when he was of sound mind, properly construed to mean,— Thou shalt not take the life of any human being— and not merely— one man shall not kill another. This was a wholesome construction of the commandment— all men being creatures of the same Maker, who holds the lives of all— and the continuance or extinction of any, is not a question between mortal and mortal, or affecting the right of either, but be-</p. 647><p. 648>tween the man and his God, to whom all are due. The canon in terms expressing a commandment against
murder, and that commandment having been construed by
Hamlet himself in the first soliloquy to extend to self-slaughter, it would be difficult to believe that the same man, if he were in the same state of mind, could subsequently infer that the canon applied to self-slaughter
only, and
not to murder, in the ordinary acceptation of the word— yet
Hamlet comes to this conclusion, and thinks it ‘perfect conscience’ to kill his uncle, and that it is ‘to be damn’d,’ to let him live any longer: ‘This is more strange than such a murder is.’
Having promised to take vengeance on his uncle, he determines to
assume madness, the better to gratify his revenge and to provide for his own safety, of which he is thenceforth
remarkably careful, having a strong
motive for which to live. Indeed there is no circumstance affecting
Hamlet that should prompt him to entertain a thought of self destruction; on the contrary, revenge towards his father’s murderer and the usurper of his throne— love for the fair Ophelia, and the ambition of reigning, all concurred to render life desirable. On each of these points
Hamlet is very explicit in the course of the play. That he sought revenge, and loved Ophelia, will not be questioned; and that he was anxious to
reign, is made perfectly clear by his urging ‘the stepping between him and his hopes,’ as one of the causes for which he hated his uncle.
(TLN 3568-3574)
Thus, so far from wishing to die
after he had received the Ghost’s commandment,
Hamlet was anxious to preserve his own life, and to take the life of the king.
As evidence of
Hamlet’s wish for life, it has been observed that, when he had an
opportunity of dying without being
accessary to his own death, when he had nothing to do but, in obedience to his uncle’s command, to allow himself to be quietly conveyed to England,
where he was sure of suffering death, instead of amusing himself with meditations on mortality, he very wisely consulted the means of self-preservation, turned the tables upon his attendants, and returned to Denmark.
(TLN 3512-3525, 3530-3533, 3537-3540, 3546-3549*, 3552-3558)
Hamlet having every motive to wish for life, and being extremely
* Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who were his school-fellows and friends, who, for anything that appears in the play, were perfectly ignorant of the king’s design.— This was either the cunning of madness, or a most cold-blooded murder. </p. 648>
<p. 649> anxious for its preservation, is nevertheless found debating on suicide in the third act of the play, as if his condition were so desperate, that he saw no possibility of repose but in the uncertain harbour of death.
Will it be believed, that the studious and virtuous prince, who in the first scene considered this world as an unweeded garden, and looked to other realms for a more blissful state of being, but was deterred from seeking those realms by his steady belief in the revelation which awards punishments for those who shall be guilty of self-slaughter, could be so entirely divested of his religious impressions, and, indeed, of his philosophy, as to utter in the third act a soliloquy in which his very existence in a future state is made a subject of doubt? Will it find belief, that in two acts such a change in the mind of man could be wrought without supervening malady to effect the change! Nay, that the same man could talk of ‘salvation’ through ‘prayer,’ of ‘heaven,’ and ‘hell,’ ‘no shriving-time allowed,’ and afterwards speak of his mother’s offence as a deed which from the sacred ceremony of ‘—contraction plucks The very soul: and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words.’
If the images in the soliloquy were connected, and the train of reasoning consistent, still the mere
debating of such a question by a scholar, who believed in a ‘canon ‘gainst self-slaughter,’ and salvation through prayer, would induce an opinion that disease
alone could have strained his mind to such a consideration; but when the soliloquy
itself shall be found to be false in metaphor, incongruous in reasoning, and impotent in conclusion; when ‘sweet religion’ is
indeed ‘made a rhapsody of words,’ it must
force a belief, that the poet
intended to mark the growth of
Hamlet’s mental disorder, by contrasting the
present with the
former state of his thoughts
in the two soliloquies. It may not be unimportant to call to recollection the
period at which Shakspeare wrote the play of
Hamlet. Is it probable that an author, in
the reign of Elizabeth, when England was straightlaced in religious bands, should draw a scholar and a prince
confessing that the Everlasting had fixed his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter, but
doubting the truth of revelation, and the existence of a future state? Would Shakspeare, considering
for whom he wrote, have put such arguments into the mouth of a man whom he meant to represent as in his right senses; and, that too after he had deviated from the historical fact, by making him a
Christian instead of a
Pagan? It is confidently contended that he would
not, but, on the contrary, that he has
designedly given an unconnected train of reasoning to
Hamlet, in the following soliloquy, on
purpose to display the unsoundness of his intellect.
(TLN 1710-1742)
The question is
to be, that is, to </p. 649><p. 650> exist— or,
not to be, that is, to
cease to exist, which
Hamlet in a paraphrase thus explains: ‘Whether ‘tis
nobler in the mind to
suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms
against a sea of troubles And by
opposing,
end them?’
Here the inquiry is, whether it is nobler to
continue to
be and
endure the ills of life, or
cease to
be and
get rid of them?— the consideration goes no further than to ascertain whether ‘tis
nobler to
suffer ills than to
end them by an act of violence. Now it is a very curious fact, that
Hamlet, instead of debating the question which he has taken so much pains to explain, drops it altogether, and proceeds to consider a
perfectly distinct question— not whether it is
nobler to
suffer than to
end the ills, but whether it is
possible to end them,— a problem which could only be solved by
Hamlet’s
belief, but of which that belief would furnish an
immediate solution. If
Hamlet did
not believe in a
future state, he could not doubt that death
would terminate the ills of life, for if there were no
future state, there could be no
future ills; and, putting
religion out of the argument, there could be no
question on the propriety of
terminating evils rather than
enduring them.
If
Hamlet did believe in the truth of revealed religion, and that ‘The Everlasting
had fix’d his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter,’ he must have felt assured that he could
not terminate his sufferings by an act of suicide. In neither event, therefore, could any advantage be derived from reasoning; as the
want of a belief in a future state would have
prevented a doubt in the
one case, and the
revelation would have
satisfied doubt in the
other. Thus the only point on which
Hamlet seems to have debated, namely, whether in death he should rest from his misery? could not be settled or explained by reasoning or discussion; and the question originally proposed stands altogether unanswered, and unconsidered. But, to endeavour to make a chain of reasoning in
Hamlet’s own way,— ‘To die’ is ‘no more’ than ‘to sleep,’ ‘and by a sleep to say we end the heartache,— a consummation devoutly to be wished.’ Now
Hamlet knew well enough that sleep would
not always end the heartache, as we frequently
dream in our
sleep of that which oppresses us when we are
awake. This, afterwards, occurs to
Hamlet, and he accordingly says, ‘aye,
there’s the rub;’ for what
dreams may come in that sleep of death
must give us pause.
‘There’s the respect,’ he adds, ‘that makes calamity of so long life.’ For who, he asks, would bear the whips and scorns of time, if it were so easy to get rid of them that even a bare bodkin would effect the object? who would bear the burdens of life, if it were not for the dread of something after death— if ignorance of the future— the undiscovered country, did not puzzle the will? Thus, so far from weighing whether it was nobler to suffer or to take arms against calamities, he asks who would be so silly as to endure them if it were possible to oppose them successfully?
All
religion is quite kicked out of doors in the debate, but
philosophy rejects his conclusion as unsound, when he declares that ‘it is better to suffer the
ills we
have, than fly to
others that we know not of.’ To pursue
Hamlet’s own metaphor,— suppose a man suffering under
extreme pain, on being advised to go to
sleep, should say, ‘
No, although it is probable that sleep would give me
ease, yet, as it is possible that I might
dream of
other pains, I think it is better by remaining awake, to make certain of torments that are almost insupportable, than take the chance of dreaming in sleep of
other torments of which I have at present no conception. I admit that in coming to this determination, I am unswayed by any
belief that I shall ever dream at
all, and am altogether
ignorant whether dreams would cause me
pain or
pleasure.’ Would a man in his
senses argue thus? or would his hearers believe in his sanity if he should add, ‘
Thus conscience makes
cowards of
us all,’ and ‘
thus the natural colour of my
courage (a singular instance of courage certainly to be frightened with the fear of a dream) is sicklied o’er by the pale cast of my thought,’ and
thus ‘enterprises of great pith and moment
with this regard (that is, with this contemplation of the fear of a dream) </p. 650><p. 651> their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.’ It certainly would be extremely difficult to paint as a metaphor on canvass—
Enterprises of pith, taking regard of the fear of a dream, and turning their currents awry. This is merely trying the force of
Hamlet’s reasoning by ordinary rules; for as
he turns religion out of doors, it would be unfair to try the merits of his soliloquy by Christian tenets. Christians do not doubt as to their existence in a future state (nay
philosophers, since the days of Plato, have not doubted). Christians have a
higher motive than the fear of
other evils to make them suffer their afflictions with patience.
They do not consider the future as an
undiscovered country, nor talk of
conscience making
cowards of us all; on the contrary, they believe that a
good conscience will make a man
brave. Indeed it is difficult to find out what
conscience has to do with the matter.
Sane Christians do not use such arguments, nor did
Hamlet himself when
he was sane, as is clearly shown by his first soliloquy.
It would be tedious to pursue this consideration further, ‘Thus it remains and the remainder thus.’
Hamlet in the first act describes all the uses of this world as ‘stale, flat, and unprofitable;’ and, fancying that he has nothing to do in life, wishes for death, but is fully impressed with a belief in a future state, and in the punishments awarded against self-murderers. At this period he is studious, religious, and virtuous.
The appearance of his father’s spirit unsettles his reason. ‘His dead corse in complete steel,’ makes a communication which ‘shakes his disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches of his soul.’ Thenceforth his mind takes ‘a more horrid hent;’ but in the third act he endeavours
to recover his original train of thought— and to be, if possible,
his former self.
This is a very common effort with those who have suffered mental aberrations; and the result is the same in most cases, the sufferer either reasons
correctly on
false premises, or makes
erroneous deductions from
correct premises—
so it was with Hamlet. Forgetting at the moment the object he had promised to accomplish, he starts for debate a question which, immediately before he was told his father’s spirit was in arms, and when he was in the state of mind he wishes to resume, he had fully considered. Scarcely however has he proposed the question before he loses the connection, is unmindful of all his former impressions and religious persuasions, doubts every thing which he had previously believed, and takes up another and distinct consideration on which his reasoning and his deduction are alike defective. Nay, he even doubts whether there is an hereafter, and whether there may not be some ugly dreams in the
undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveller returns,— although the ghost (whose word he admits may be taken ‘for a thousand pounds’) had returned
from that bourne on purpose to tell him that there
is an hereafter in which he may be ‘doomed for the day to fast in fires,’ and of which a tale
could be told— ‘(TLN 700-705, whose...Porpentine).’
Shakspeare has been praised for the correctness of metaphor, closeness of reasoning, and soundness of deduction, displayed in this soliloquy— he is held in the
highest veneration by the author of these remarks for a very
different reason— for the consummate art with which he has given the appearance of rationality to the impertinence of insanity. He has proved himself a perfect master of the human mind both in its sound and morbid conditions. A less skilful poet would have thrown an extravagance into the soliloquy
foreign to the
disease under which
Hamlet laboured; whereas the great master with pathological correctness and with exquisite judgment, has given to
Hamlet ‘a happiness of reply that often madness hits on.’
It is difficult to imagine how the poet’s intention could ever have been mistaken; as, from the
first scene of the play to the
last, he seizes every </p. 651><p. 652> occasion to prepare his audience for a display of insanity by
Hamlet, and when the mental eclipse has commenced, loses no opportunity in which he can fix their belief in the nature of the malady. He makes him melancholy in the first scene for the loss of his father, brings a ghost
six times from the grave to
goad him to a
murder, and actually makes
Horatio,
prophet-like, warn
Hamlet not to follow the ghost, lest he should— ‘(TLN 661-663, assume...madnes).’
Lord Ogleby would say ‘If this be not plain the devil’s in it.’” </p. 652>
-1845 mhun1
mhun1
1710-42 To be...action.] Hunter (-1845, f. 244v-245r): <f. 244v>“Meditations such as these are scarcely suitable to the situation in which the poet has placed his character:— having formed a depth by which in his opinion ashast, the [true] character of the hifen human visitation was to be determined & the point of time nearly arrived at which it was to be executed.— He could not then, when his auriority was awake & his mind deeply in trusted, then coolly deliberate—concerning suicide— Again the notion of Inconsistency will be applied.
Nor is this a suitable time for the scene which follows where he has the interview with Ophelia. Both seem to me better placed in the original quarto early in the scene & cut. The soliloquy on his first appearance after the Ghost scene when the [margins--particular?] state of his mind was to be exhibited, and the interview with Ophelia among the [margins] scenes in which the state of his mind & thoughts was to be made visible to the audience.
I shall give the arrangement of the quarto & of the later Editions.
Later Editions First Quarto.
Ophelia’s description of
Hamlet in his distracted state & conversation with her father upon it.
—The same.
Conversation of the King & Queen upon it. —The same.
Determination to send Rosencrantz & Guildenstern to him. —The same.
Polonius assures them he has found out the cause of the lunacy. —The same.
Embassador arrives from Norway. —The same.
Polonius shews the letter. —The same.
He proposes that Ophelia &
Hamlet shall meet & he behind the arras.
—The same.
Hamlet enters reading.
Hamlet enters reading* & then speaks to her.[margins]
Interview with Ophelia.
The King is of opinion that
Hamlet is not distracted through love & Polonius engages to search [margins] him deeper.
Polonius enters into conversation with him.
—Interview of
Hamlet & Polonius.
Next Rosencrantz & Guildenstern. —Next with Rosencrantz & G.
They announce the appearance of the Players. —The same.
Polonius also announces the Players. —The same.
The Players enter. —The same.
Hamlet engages them to play The Murder of Gonzago.
—The same.
Hamlet’s comparison of the Players
Salary & his own
supineness.
—The same.
</f. 244v><f, 245r>
[in margins] of Polonius, Rosencrantz & Guildnstern to the King. —The same.
The King & Queen assent to see the play. —The same.
The design of
Hamlet meeting Ophelia & the King & Polonius behind the arras again mentioned.
Hamlet enters while
quizing on Suicide.
Interview with Ophelia.
Discourse of the King & Polonius on what they heard &
propose of a few Luecan from his view with him & of sending him to England.
Polonius proposes that the Queen shall send for
Hamlet to her alone, & be behind the arras.2
Advice to the Players. Advice to the Players.
On the whole, the variation in the order of the scenes is not great, & it consistently
in [in margin]ing back the soliloquy & discourse with Ophelia, to what I cannot but consider a better point in the drama. It was the Poet’s intention to let the spectators in to a view [of?--in margin] the moody state of his hero’s mind immediately after the visitation, as it really was; and next the assumed state in strong contrast. This was the more necessary as the state of his mind when alone & when in company had not been lucidly distinguished in the preceding scene: He
appears to me [of?--in margins] a powerful mind working on a great purpose in
deef. &
rattled energy in
reality— sporting & jocose in the eye of others— except
Horatio with whom he practiced
confidence.
In I.5. I take all to be serious to ‘I have sworn it.’ He then sports with
Horatio and then at random, Marcellus being present.
But though the original quarto presents us with a very interesting view of what may have been & doubtless was, the original arrangement of the scenes— it extends us no [in margin] respect of the internal structure of the speech itself. Iwholling can be scene corrupt the [in margin] state in which it appears in that impression.
1. This is worthy of observation. The reflection he next makes might arise out of the matter of [off in margin]. As the play now stands he comes in to say the speech.
2. “She they
shake not
meet.” This clause oddly introduced.— It shows
his wanto hadly the old fit;
was [in margin]. It seems to point at the meeting of
Hamlet & Ophelia.”</f. 245r>
1845 Hunter
Hunter
1710-42 To be...action.]
Hunter (1845, p. 236-44): <p. 236>“I have already observed that in the copy of 1603 this celebrated soliloquy is placed near the beginning of what according to the present distribution is the second act. It </p. 236><p. 237>stands there most appropriately, and most beautifully. We have seen at the close of the first act the state of
Hamlet’s mind immediately on having received the dread information and the solemn command of the Ghost; we are next presented with what was the state of his mind after a few days’ reflection. He enters
solus, in a meditative mood, and the subjects of his meditations are among the most awful which can engage mortal thoughts. This is to shew his
natural mind. Then follows the dialogue with Ophelia, which is intended to shew us his
artificial mind—that idle wandering folly which he assumed, the better to accomplish his object. I can conceive nothing more dramatically proper than this. It prepares for all the succeeding action in which the natural and the artificial
Hamlet are so wildly combined.
“Why there was a change in the arrangement, or by whom it was made, I can no more explain than I can account for many other things connected with the publication of these dramas. But that the play is greatly injured by the change I feel a confident conviction; for not only is this soliloquy wanting in the place most appropriate to it, but it is now found in a place not suitable to it. Such meditations as these are not such as were likely to arise in the mind of one who had just conceived a design by which he hoped to settle a doubt of a very serious kind, and which must have been full of curiosity about the issue of his plot. If this speech is to indicate deliberation concerning suicide, or is even allied to suicide, such deliberation is surely out of place when curiosity was awake, and his mind deeply intent on something that he must do. To be sure the hypothesis of Inconsistency will explain all; but then it will explain anything.
“Another very material effect is produced by the change in the point at which this
solus speech is introduced. The line ‘But look where sadly the poor wretch comes
reading,’ </p. 237><p. 238>immediately precedes his entry, when, supposing himself to be unobserved, he gives utterance to the musings of his mind. In the quarto of 1603 it is, ‘See where he comes poring upon a book.’ It is thus manifest that the Poet’s intention was that these should be meditations of
Hamlet on something which he found written in a book which he holds in his hand, bringing it much more nearly to the similar scene in the
Cato of Addison. Addison has named the author whom he has put into the hands of his hero, but Shakespeare has left his author unnamed, unfortunately I think; but it is clear his intention was that
Hamlet should be represented as reading in a book which spoke of the evils of life, of death their cure, of futurity, of the question of being or not being when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, and that what he says arises out of the argument in the book before him, and is not to be regarded as from the beginning thoughts springing up in his own mind. ‘To be, or not to be: aye, there’s the point’ as it is in the quarto, is equivalent to, ‘You, the author, are discussing the question of what shall be hereafter; you have a great and mighty subject in hand.’ And the words as we now have them, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question,’ are much the same, if we regard, as we may, ‘question’ as equivalent to theme, argument, or subject.
“To me it appears that something is lost by disjoining these meditations from the action of reading, and making them to arise wholly, as now they appear to do, from a well-spring of thought in his own mind.
“The difference between the original and the present arrangement consists in this; that
originally Hamlet entered
reading, as he does now, immediately after Polonius had proposed that Ophelia should meet him as if by accident, and that he, the wily politician, should be concealed behind the arras, but that when he begins to speak, he delivers the soliloquy before </p. 238><p. 239>us, after which Ophelia meets him and the wild dialogue takes place. The King expresses his opinion that
Hamlet is not distracted through love for Ophelia; and Polonius engages to search him deeper. Then follows the interview with Polonius, in the course of which
Hamlet refers to the book he still held in his hand, talking wildly of its contents to Polonius. In the later editions, this dialogue between
Hamlet and Polonius follows
immediately on his entering with a book in his hand. The two arrangements then correspond till the King and Queen assent to see the Play; when next in the original quarto Polonius proposes that the Queen shall send for
Hamlet to her closet and that he shall be again behind the arras. But in the later editions, between these two events are interposed the Soliloquy and the interview with Ophelia.
“But though the first quarto presents us with this exceedingly interesting view of what was the Poet’s first conception, and possibly even his last, yet it affords us little assistance in either settling the text of the Soliloquy itself, or in explaining difficult clauses in it; for nothing can be more corrupt than the state in which it is represented: e.g. ‘For in that dream of death, when we awake, And borne before an everlasting judge, From whence no passenger ever returned. The undiscover’d country at whose sight The happy smile, and the accursed damn’d.’
“I have several not wholly unimportant remarks to make upon particular clauses.”</p. 239>
1982 ard2
ard2
1710-44 Jenkins (ed. 1982): "
To be, or not to be, that is the question—This celebrated speech is, I suppose, the most discussed in Shakespeare, and the most misinterpreted. It is impossible to review the literature on it here. Earlier criticism is excerpted in
Furness; a subsequent article useful for its abundant citation, though its own interpretation is quite unacceptable , is Irving T. Richards, ’The Meaning of
Hamlet’s Soliloquy’,
PMLA, XLVIII, 741-66; and some recent views are conveniently summarized by V.F. Petronella in
SP, LXXI (1974), 72-88. There have been two fundamental disagreements. First, from Warburton, who thought of this as a speech about ’self-murder’, a continuous tradition passes through Malone, Bradley, and Dover Wilson to the recent editor (Ribner) who pronounces quite simply that ’
Hamlet is thinking of suicide’ (cf. Petronella, p. 79; ’Suicide is
Hamlet’s concern in the great soliloquy of III. i.’); and yet against this prevalent (but to my mind misguided) view are some who deny that the soliloquy is primarily concerned with suicide, or even that it refers to suicide at all. (For the view that the ’bare bodkin’, l. 76, is meant not for the speaker but his opponent, see esp. I.T. Richards, loc. cit.). Secondly, opinion is divided on whether
Hamlet is discussing his individual dilemma or whether, as Kittredge insists, ’the whole course of his argument is general, not personal’. Ranging from the general to the particular the main views may be categorized as follows: (1) The ’question’ of ’To be or not to be’ concerns the advantages and disadvantages of human existence, the discussion of which includes the recognition of man’s ability to end his existence by suicide. (2) The ’question’ concerns the choice between life and death and hence focuses on suicide throughout. (3) The ’question’ is whether
Hamlet shall end his own life. (4) It is whether
Hamlet shall kill not himself but the King. (As between ’the proposed killing of Claudius’ and ’the killing of himself’, Wilson Knight ultimately decides in favor of both -
The Wheel of Fire, rev. 1949, p. 304.) (5) Still more particularly, the ’question’ is not simply whether
Hamlet shall pursue revenge against the King but whether he shall proceed with the actual scheme (for the performance of a play) which he has already set in motion. (For this see esp. Alex Newell, ’The Dramatic Context and Meaning of
Hamlet’s "To be or not to be" Soliloquy’,
PMLA, LXXX, 38-50.) The argument (as in Newell) that dramatic effect demands the interpretation of the speech in relation to its immediate context is specious. The dramatic force of the speech comes rather from its enabling us to see
Hamlet’s situation in its most universal aspect. Any strict reading - one, that is, which adheres to the text without adding to it - must come close to 91).
“Most difficulties have arisen through the temptation to supply what
Hamlet himself does not. Johnson’s famous observation that the speech ’is connected rather in the speaker’s mind than on his tongue’ has given too ready a license to subjective ingenuity. The lack of coherence can easily be exaggerated, as in the desperate and wholly unjustifiable assumption that vaguely defined thoughts are carried on ’a current of feeling which is the main determinant of meaning’ (Knights,
An Approach to ’Hamlet’, pp. 74-80). Most commentators, Johnson among them, have found it perfectly possible to trace out a train of thought. That their results have diverged widely is due in large part to the different additions they have made to what
Hamlet actually says. When Johnson begins his paraphrase, ’
Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress, it is necessary to decide whether,
after our present state, we are to be, or not to be’, it is easy to see that the words ’after our present state’ are an addition which transforms ’the question’ altogether. Yet Johnson’s other addition - ’Before I can form any rational scheme of action’ - has been less frequently remarked on. Indeed Malone, who castigated Johnson’s ’wrong’ beginning, appears to have accepted and even shared the error of applying the speech to the speaker’s personal problems.
Hamlet, he retorts , ’is not deliberating whether after our present state we are to exist or not, but whether he should continue to live, or put an end to his life’. Yet nothing anywhere in the speech relates it to
Hamlet’s individual case. He uses the pronouns ’we’ and ’us’, the indefinite ’who’, the impersonal infinitive. He speaks explicitly of ’us all’ (l. 83), of what ’flash’ is heir to (63), of what ’we’ suffer at the hands of ’time’ (70) or ’fortune’ (58) - which serves incidentally to indicate what for
Hamlet is meant by ’to be’. The numerous interpretations which depend on equating ’To be or not to be’ with "To act or not to act’ take a wrong direction from the start. (Apart from Richards and Newell, loc. cit., see Prosser, pp. 160-71 (162-73) and for an extreme example Middleton Murry,
Things to Come, p. 231, ’What is "to be or not to be" is not
Hamlet, but
Hamlet’s attempt upon the King’s life’.) Far from seeking to determine his own course,
Hamlet is debating a ’question’ and a question which in various aspects (e.g. that it is better to be unhappy than not to be at all) was traditionally debated in the schools (cf. Augustine,
De Libro Arbitrio, III, chs. 6-8). The word ’question’ itself is a customary one to denote the subject posed for argument in academic disputations or, it is interesting to note, at the moots of the Inns of Court (see D. Legge in
Studies in Honour of Margaret Schlauch, pp. 213-17). And though ’the questions’ invites a verdict, this is not a matter for enactment but (as is clear when we go on ’Whether ’tis nobler . . . ’) of evaluation.
“At the same time as we reject interpretations which give the speech a particularity it does not claim, we must equally resist those which distort the general proposition by irrelevant metaphysics. Thus, while one may accept a distinction between being and mere existence -
Hamlet himself can recognize that human life is more than ’to sleep and feed’ (IV. iv. 35) - we need not include in
being all Max Plowman would associate with ’consciousness’ (
The Right to Live, pp. 156. ff.); still less should we read into ’To be or not to be’ the Boethian identification of being with goodness and evil with not-being (Knights, pp. 76-7) or the metaphysical problems of identify, self-fulfilment, or essence (Prosser, pp. 159-54 (161-6)). All such attempts to refine on
Hamlet’s question are doomed to founder as soon as the speech develops.
“The ’question’, then (crudely paraphrases as "Is life worth living?’) is essentially whether, in the light of what
being comprises (in the condition of human life as the speaker sees it and represents it in what follows), it is preferable to have it or not. There is no reference here to suicide, nor even as yet to death. Nevertheless, since the question can only present itself to one who already has being, the implicit alternatives are those of continuing ’to be’ and ceasing ’to be’, so that the idea of death is already implied and as soon as ’the question’ is amplified at once becomes explicit (
end, l. 60). For of course we come to the end of life’s ’troubles’ not when we put an end to them but when they put an end to us (see below, ll. 57-60 LN). Hence the alternatives are to ’suffer’ or to ’end’, to endure or to die; and these are what the body of the speech discusses. From the cessation of troubles, it passes naturally enough to the attractiveness of dying (60-4), expressed in the familiar association of
end,
consummation,
sleep. There is still no hint of suicide; but the idea of death’s attractiveness leads no less naturally to the thought of how easily it may be come by and so to the ’bare bodkin’ (76). Suicide is thus introduced - for the first time - in the question which begins at l. 70. But this is a rhetorical question, which already presupposes its answer, a hypothetical question brought in only to be dismissed - as, when the question is repeated (76 ff.), it quite explicitly is (
But that . . ., 78). And its dismissal comes as naturally as naturally as its introduction; for the metaphor of death as sleep has been extended from
sleep to
dreams (65-6), which bring in the after-life and hence the ’rub’ (65), the ’respect’ (68), which determines the argument’s course. The impulse to suicide is frustrated before it is even formed : before the consideration of it begins at l. 70 it is already preempted by the ’pause’ of l. 68. It is impossible therefore to say that
Hamlet ever contemplates suicide for himself or regards it as a likely choice for any man. The alternative meantime is made vivid by allusions throughout the speech to what life causes us to endure : the ’slings and arrows’ of l. 58, the ’shocks that flesh is heir to’ (62-3), the injustices listed in ll. 70-4, the ’fardels’ we ’bear’ (76) and the ’ills we have’ (81). The soliloquy holds in skilful balance the opposites of life and death, we ’rather bear’ (81) the life we have. The ’question’ is apparently decided : the alternative we choose is ’to be’, ’to suffer’, to ’bear’. And the whole is pithily summed up in the aphorism of l. 83 : the conscience which makes us afraid of death because of the after-life causes us to go on living. This conclusion has of course this paradox : we do not so much choose one of the alternatives as passively accept it from fear of embracing the other ; so that the question of which was ’nobler’ (57) ends with the recognition, in the word ’cowards’ (83), of what is the reverse of noble in our attitude to both.
“I do not know why it should be made an objection to this speech that it lacks logical connection with the progress of its ideas is so supremely natural and lucid. The links, however, have sometimes been obscured by local misapprehensions.
“Some difficulty has also arisen at l. 84 from the transition to a new topic which the repeated ’thus’ may disguise. The first thus (83) introduces, I take it, the conclusion which follows on all the preceding discussion : and with this the reflections prompted by the initial ’question’ come to an end. But at the same time they lead, with the second thus (84), to a further reflection on a kindred matter in which the same trait of human nature may be seen. In fact the frustration of the impulse to seek death now offers itself as a particular example of a general tendency in men for any act of initiative to be frustrated by considerations which it raises in the mind. See below, l. 83 LN.
“The failure of resolution to translate itself into action is an important motif which will recur at III. ii. 182-208 and IV. vii. 110-22. The lines which state it here (84-8) are of course among the most famous in the play because of the use to which they have been put in the description of
Hamlet himself. It is important to remember that
Hamlet himself does not so use them; he still makes no reference to his own case. Yet the drama which contains him permits, even invites us, as readers or spectators, to make the connection, very much as it has used the account of Pyrrhus (II. ii. 448-514), which likewise makes no mention of
Hamlet’s situation, to provide another perspective on it. On the present speech Coleridge comments that it is ’of such universal interest’ and yet, among all Shakespeare’s characters, could have been ’appropriately given’ only to
Hamlet (i. 26). Others, from Johnson to Kenneth Muir (
Hamlet, pp. 34-5), have stressed that the ills it associates with human life do not correspond with
Hamlet’s experience in the play. Both views, I think, are right. Unlike all
Hamlet’s other soliloquies this one is not concerned with his personal predicament ; yet the view of life it expresses is not an impartial or objective one such as we might ascribe to Shakespeare, but just such a view as one in
Hamlet’s dramatic predicament might hold. It is the view of one who began the play with a sense of ’all the uses of this world’ as ’weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable’ (I. ii. 133-4), of one who knows that his virtuous father is dead and his wicked uncle in possession of his father’s queen and realm. It is a man in
Hamlet’s predicament who sees the world as ’an unweeded garden’ possessed by ’things rank and gross in nature’ (I. ii. 135-6), who will regard the goodly earth as ’a sterile promontory’ and the majestical firmament above it as a ’pestilent congregation of vapours’ (II. ii. 298-303). The same vision will resent the life of a man as a series of ’troubles’, ’shocks’, ’fardels’, ’ills’ from which death - if it were only the end - would be a welcome release. This is what gives the speech, as it debates the pros and cons of human existence, its justification, and its power, in this place near the centre of the play. And although it looks beyond and never at the particular plans that
Hamlet has afoot, it is not perhaps without relevance to the mood in which he now encounters Ophelia. See also Intro., pp. 141, 149.
“For all their brilliant use, the ideas of the speech are for the most part traditional. even the outline of its argument has its anticipation in Augustine (De Libero Arbitrio, III. vi. 19, ’It is not because I would rather be unhappy than not be at all, that I am unwilling to die, but for fear that after death to a sleep (ll. 60-6) (cf. Meas. III. i. 17; Mac. II. iii. 74; 2H4 IV. v. 35) was a Renaissance commonplace descending from such works as Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations but often referred back to Socrates. It is found, among other places, in Carden’s De Consolatione (Comfort, trans. Bedingfield, 1573, D2), sometimes regarded as a direct source; in Holland’s translation of Plutarch’s Moralia (1603, p. 516); and in Montaigne’s Essays (III. 12). For its classical origins, see Anders, Shakespeare’s Books, p. 275. It was in the tradition of the ancients that Cardan thought of death as like a sleep in which ’we dream nothing’, and Montaigne, here explicitly recalling Socrates, says, ’If it be a consummation of one’s being, it is also an amendment and entrance into a long and quiet night. We find nothing so sweet in life, as a quiet rest and gentle sleep, and without dreams’ (III. 12, Florio’s trans.). By contrast Shakespeare, characteristically seeing both sides, thinks also of the possibility of dreams. But in adapting the metaphor accordingly he uses what is of course an equally traditional thought. The Homily against the Fear of Death sees ’the chief cause’ of fear in ’the dread of the miserable state of eternal damnation’ (Book of Homilies, 1850 edn, p. 90). Cf. l. 78. For other traditional ideas, see notes on ll. 80, 83, and for a possible anticipation in Belleforest, Intro., p. 95."