Hamlets soliloquy

Hamlet’s Soliloquy Through the whole play ‘Hamlet’ by William Shakespeare the protagonist, Danish Prince, reflects upon eternal values and problems of human soul and ‘self’. Hamlet’s Soliloquy in Act IV Scene IV is not an exception, as considering his possible revenge for his uncle Claudius, he also dives into crucial problems of human nature the philosophers of all epochs are debating over:
‘What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed A beast, no more’ (Shakespeare, Hamlet’s soliloquy, Act IV, Scene IV). In this part of the play one can see that Hamlet is completely obsessed by his enormous longing to pay back for his father’s death, to take a role of judge and jury and to punish his uncle for the sake of justice and his personal accounts. As a person of noble class, he defends his honor and the reputation of his royal family:
‘When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d’ (ibid)
On the one hand, he hasn’t already believed to the ghost and has significant doubts concerning the fact that his father was poisoned, yet he is already tired of observing the decline of his motherland, held by the stranger, the person of lesser wisdom and talent (than his father had). Furthermore, Claudius threats to take Hamlet’s father’s place in his own and his mother’s lives, as he has become her lover. As an extremely impulsive person, Hamlet sees Gertrude as a betrayer of his father’s light memory. Between the lines of the text one can also read about his anger and despair, and, what is important, his scorn to people who disregard human values and virtues. Anyway, Hamlet is strong enough to confess to his coward and lack of self-confidence for making any important steps:
‘A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward.’ (ibid)
In this Act, Hamlet, having learned about the courage of Fortinbras’s efforts and his desire to revenge against Denmark because of his father’s murder, committed by King Hamlet. This encouraged Hamlet to launching his own plan of vengeance actions in future. Hamlet, like every rash young person, seeing the enthusiasm of a person in similar conditions, decides to take measures and save the honor not only of himself, but of his family and the Whole Denmark. In future, looking into Fortinbras’s example of revenge (‘The imminent death of twenty thousand men’ (ibid))
, he weaves his own plan. As Hamlet says, he is not able to think about anything else, but his vengeance and his longing to wash the disgrace out with blood. His obsession will increase and he will leave his dearly loved Ophelia and his bosom pal Horatio, suspecting them in treachery, in modern words it is possible to say that he had phobia of being slaughtered.
Vengeance forces individual to act blindly through wrath and ‘saint’ (‘blessed’) anger, rather than through rational motivation. The basis of it is the principle of an eye for an eye, but this theory is not intelligent and wise enough to live by. In his monologue Hamlet reveals the only important notion: facing ‘official’ deception and humiliation of traditional mores, one should act and combat the most immoral sides of human nature.
Bibliography
Shakespeare W., Hamlet. Act IV Scene IV. http://www. readbookonline. net/read/333/9136/, 2005