How all occasions do inform against me,/ And spur my dull revenge! What is a man/ If his chief good and market of his time/ Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. / Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,/ Looking before and after, gave us not/ That capability and godlike reason/ To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be/ Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple / Of thinking too precisely on th’ event—/ A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom/ And ever three parts coward—I do not know/ Why yet I live to say “ This thing’s to do,”/ Sith I have cause and will and strength and means/ To do ’t.
Examples gross as earth exhort me. / Witness this army of such mass and charge/ Led by a delicate and tender prince,/ Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed/ Makes mouths at the invisible event,/ Exposing what is mortal and unsure/ To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,/ Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great/ Is not to stir without great argument,/ But greatly to find quarrel in a straw/ When honor’s at the stake.
How stand I then,/ That have a father killed, a mother stained,/ Excitements of my reason and my blood,/ And let all sleep—while, to my shame, I see/ The imminent death of twenty thousand men,/ That for a fantasy and trick of fame/ Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot/ Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,/ Which is not tomb enough and continent/ To hide the slain? Oh, from this time forth,/ My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! (IV. iv. 4-68) After everyone exits leaving Hamlet along with the audience, his true emotions and thoughts comes pouring out. Hamlet is saying how his view of the world points out that all of his actions are wrong and a constant reminder of his inability to complete his revenge for his father’s murder by his uncle. Then points out that a man that only sleep and eat is nothing more than an anime but rather a man is meant exploit all of their senses and utilize for more meaningful pursuits than rather simply to survive.
God did not give humans the ability to comprehend so they can ponder about the past and future and that those that are not used, the ability will slowly disappear. Also Hamlet reveals his thought of how he is alive when the deed he set out to accomplish is not completed even with all the desire and strength he has to accomplish the deed of avenging his father’s death. Another point that is revealed is Hamlet’s perspective on how an army goes to war over a worthless piece of land and make a mockery of the battles over that land.
Then the soliloquy reaches its climax, Hamlet gives respect to the soldiers that are willing to sacrifice their life in battle for their kings honor and the honor of their land yet Hamlet has not taken action for his own personal honor regarding his father, his mother, and the state of Denmark where he is the known prince. At the end, Hamlet vows to think about nothing but his violent and bloody revenge for his father’s death against his uncle, Claudius and that any thoughts that is not violent is not worth thinking about.
