Hamlets’ Soliloquy Reveals His Character: Weak or Strong

By JH Sayyar

Soliloquy is one of the best Elizabethan devices to reveal a character’s state of mind in a play for further action. The ancient writers used chorus to indicate the major character’s plan in the play. At that time the main function of chorus was to inform the audience about the hero’s future plan but the modern writers use soliloquies to show the hero’s future plan and his state of mind.

The term soliloquy is applied in literature for the act of talking to him on the stage, especially in a dramatic speech in which a character speaks his hidden thoughts without addressing to the audience. Elizabethan dramatists used this device in their plays as a convenient way the hero’s motive, intention and his restless state of mind. Soliloquy creates suspense in the play and suspense is most important in the play for the readers and writer.

Most of the dramatists used soliloquies in their plays as Marlowe uses in Dr. Faustus and Shakespeare uses in Macbeth, Othelo, Julius Caeser, and Hamlet. As we see the soliloquy of Brutus before the Caesar’s murder; “ it should be or not should be.” Actually a soliloquy tells us the hero’s composed state of mind before doing something special. In Hamlet Shakespeare uses seven long and short soliloquies  to show different state of Prince Hamlet’  mind before doing something.

The first soliloquy is in Act-1, Scene-2, When Prince Hamlet ponders over his mother’s hasty marriage with his Uncle Claudius.

He is ashamed of it and thinks dying is better than living in shameful condition. Further he thinks that his mother is a traitor to his father and her husband and is loyal to my Uncle. As the text shows:

“Frailty thy name is woman

a little month, or are those were old

With which she followed my poor father’s body

It is not, nor it can not come too good.

But break my heart and for I must hold my tongue.”

The second soliloquy is also in Act –1, scene- 2, which is disturbed by the appearance of Horatio and Marcelus and Bernado. They come to inform Hamlet about his father’s ghost at zero hour at the platform in warlike dress. After their departure, Prince Hamlet thinks also about his father’s arrival in warlike dress at night while he died many years ago. The ghost’s appearance puts more thinking pressure on Hamlet’s mind.

The third soliloquy starts with the disappearing of the ghost who told prince Hamlet the whole story of his father’s murder. The ghost compels Hamlet to take revenge of his

father if he loves his father. Here Prince Hamlet swears to take revenge of his father and

leaves at once his all daily activities and thinks of revenge in these words:

“ A what a poor man as Hamlet is

May do it expose his love and friending to you

The time out of joint, o cursed spite

That over I as born to set it right.”

His fifth soliloquy is long in act-1, Scene-2, the mouse trap sows that Claudius is the murderer of his father. In the play within the play the player queen says that after her husband’s death she will never marry in her life but in spite of swearing she got the second marriage killing the first.

While picturing the scene Caladium’s face expressions change and become clears that he is murderer of Hamlet’s father. Claudius leaves the play at once in angry mood while Horatio and Hamlet both are watching Claudius cleverly. Claudius asks Hamlet what is the play it is nonsense. Listening to it Hamlet says that it is a mousetrap to catch the conscious of the King. Knowing that he is the murderer of his father he demands more proofs to kill him and thinks in these words:

“The spirit that I have seen

May be a devil and the devil hath power

To assume a pleasing shape, yea and perhaps

Out of my weakness and my melancholy

As he is potent with such spirit.”

Further he says that the play within the play will show the exact proof of who is real murderer of his father or the spirit was telling a lie. So as the text shows in these words”

“The is the thing

\Wherein I shall catch the conscious of the King.’

It is proved that the king is the real murderer of his father nut he delays in taking action against him. Hamlet’s sixth soliloquy is in Act-3, Scene-3, when he finds his Uncle in genuflection but he does not kill him knowingly. He thinks if he kills him he will go to heaven and Hamlet will be revenged but he is satisfied with his thinking that floats on his mind at that time in these words:

“ Now he is praying

And I shall do it and he goes to heaven

And so I am revenged that would be scanned

…do the same villain send to heaven.”

But his plan of killing him enjoying bed pleasure with his mother, so keeping in his

mind all these things he thinks in these words;

“When he is drunk, asleep, or in the rage

Or in the intercourse pleasure of his bed

That has no relish of salvation in it.”

However, Hamlet fails in his mission having a lot of chances of killing him. In the seventh soliloquy he upbraids himself that he could not get the revenge of his father getting several chances. The ghost words prove true. So keeping all his past failures on his mind Hamlet thinks in these words:

“To be or not to be that is question

Thus conscious makes us cowards of us all

And this native hue of resolution

And loose the name of action.”

To sum up, too much thinking makes staff inactive and exposes the real mystery of thing before men. When he knows the reality of thing he loses interest in that thing. It is the same case with Hamlet. He has traced out his father’s murderer but could revenge. Here Carson says,

“Hamlet was mentally active but physically was passive due to fear of death because too much thinking makes man coward and curtails the pleasures of life. He makes himself the passion of his salve and is captures by reason.”