Hamlet's Third Soliloquy

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

From Hamlet, Act III, I

In the late 1970’s I went with my wife Geralyn to see a production of Hamlet at The Wisdom Bridge Theatre in Evanston, Illinois. It was directed by Robert Falls; Aidan Quinn played Hamlet. Both men have gone on to have spectacular careers. I remember how Hamlet’s soliloquy started. Quinn as Hamlet grabs a can of spray paint and rushes over to a blank wall and thereon sprays the words, “To be or not to be?” then turns to the audience and pointing to the wall continues, “That is the question.” Directors and actors are always finding new ways to convey Shakespeare’s plays. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. That way worked for me.

Hamlet’s famous soliloquy is among Shakespeare’s most famous passages. Many people know the first few lines and are familiar with most of it (my mom was one of these people), but few know it by heart and that is a shame. It is fun to know the whole of it; to know how the ideas within it unfold and to feel the rise and fall of the speech.

There is no shortage of good examples — Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, David Tennant. It is interesting to watch these trained actors take on this monologue. There are common denominators that are dictated by the play itself. Hamlet is alone and is speaking to himself as he wrestles with his dilemma. In one portrayal Hamlet speaks into a mirror and in another he moves about within a crypt. However it is staged, the monologue is a self-exploration. Also, it is clear that the speech must be delivered slowly, as Hamlet poses and ponders his complex situation.

Hamlet

To be or not to be

That is the question

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

To die; to sleep. No, more.

And by a sleep to say we end the heartache

And the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to

Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished

To die to sleep; to sleep perchance to dream

Aye there’s the rub!

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause

There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time

The oppressor’s wrong; the proud man’s contumely

The pangs of despised love; the law’s delay

The insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes

When he himself might his quietus make with a bear bodkin.

Who would fardels bear to grunt and sweat under a weary life

But that the dread of something after death

The undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns

Puzzles the will and

Makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others we know not of

Thus, conscience doth make cowards of us all; and

Thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied ‘oer with the pale cast of thought

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turned awry

And lose the name of action.

Some of these words are unfamiliar. What is a “fardel?” A “bodkin?” And why would anyone want to “his quietus make?” Looking them up is part of the process—not only knowing the flow of the lines but knowing what each word means, especially words that are not part of our daily vocabulary. For the record, a fardel is a pack or a burden; a bodkin is a small, sharp pin for making holes in cloth; and to make a quietus is to settle an account.

I have a favorite passage in the monologue:

But that the dread of something after death

The undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns

Puzzles the will and

Makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others we know not of

People commonly prefer “the devil they know” (those ills we have) to some unknown or untried option even when it is clear that persisting in what they have been doing is leading to disaster. As a psychologist I frequently encounter dramatic examples of this human tendency. Shakespeare is saying the same thing but so much more elegantly. I have always liked (and in many respects prefer) a poet’s way of articulating a human universal like the tendency to remain with a choice even when it is obviously not working. Compare Shakespeare with TV’s Dr. Phil. On TV we watch Dr. Phil describe the wreckage of a person’s life and their continued reliance a self-destructive pattern of behavior. He builds to his point and then asks rhetorically, “How’s that working for you?” The camera moves in to record the person’s squirming acknowledgement that Dr. Phil has once again put his finger on a key point. Fair enough, but Shakespeare or Dr. Phil? I prefer Shakespeare.

Something else in that passage that caught my eye: the word “bourne.” Strictly speaking a “bourne” is a boundary. Death is referred to as “the undiscovered country” and one who crosses that boundary does not return. My mind then leaps to Jason Bourne the hero of the Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Trilogy—The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. I assume Robert Ludlum chose the name with an understanding of its meaning, if not its use in Hamlet’s monologue. Not important. I just like the connection between such disparate works.

Here’s another connection. Hamlet is a tortured soul and his searching questions in the monologue burn within him. He probes and questions but, in the end, he is not much further along. He has no clear answer. Jump to Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem Womanhood XI, which begins:

One wants a Teller in a time like this

One’s not a man, one’s not a woman fully grown

To bear enormous business all alone.

Poor Hamlet could use a Teller, someone to turn to for an answer, but there is no one. Part of what he endures is the loneliness of his situation, a sense of being lost. Being lost and alone is another human universal. It comes up in the first lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy:

In the middle of my life

I found myself in a dark wood

Hamlet, Ludlum, Brooks, Dante—these are my undeniably idiosyncratic connections. Other people would have their own.

I was surprised how quickly I was able to memorize the soliloquy. I was even more surprised by how much I had not noticed in it until I had lived with it for a time. A measure of Shakespeare’s genius is how his words explain so much and at the same time raise other questions. I recite Hamlet’s monologue when I am alone. I have never done it for others. I cannot imagine doing so because it calls for a level of training and skill I simply do not have. I do know that amateurs tend to rush through it. The pros are deliberate; indeed, if you watch Tennant perform, you may even wish he could pick up the pace a bit. I have not attended a performance of Hamlet since memorizing the soliloquy. Watching it performed on YouTube has been helpful but not entirely satisfying. I look forward to hearing the speech in the context of the play.