Hamlet's Soliloquy: O, that this too too solid flesh would melt

(1.2) Annotations
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, (135)
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: (140)
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, (145)
As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet, within a month -Let me not think on't -- Frailty, thy name is woman! -A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body, (150)
Like Niobe, all tears: -- why she, even she -O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month: (155)
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good: (160)
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.

Hamlet's Soliloquy: O, that this too too solid flesh would melt (1.2)
Commentary
Hamlet's passionate first soliloquy provides a striking contrast to the controlled
and artificial dialogue that he must exchange with Claudius and his court. The
primary function of the soliloquy is to reveal to the audience Hamlet's profound
melancholia and the reasons for his despair. In a disjointed outpouring of
disgust, anger, sorrow, and grief, Hamlet explains that, without exception,
everything in his world is either futile or contemptible. His speech is saturated
with suggestions of rot and corruption, as seen in the basic usage of words
like "rank" (138) and "gross" (138), and in the metaphor associating the world
with "an unweeded garden" (137). The nature of his grief is soon exposed, as
we learn that his mother, Gertrude, has married her own brother-in-law only
two months after the death of Hamlet's father. Hamlet is tormented by images
of Gertrude's tender affections toward his father, believing that her display of
love was a pretense to satisfy her own lust and greed. Hamlet even negates
Gertrude's initial grief over the loss of her husband. She cried "unrighteous
tears" (156) because the sorrow she expressed was insincere, belied by her
reprehensible conduct.
Notice Shakespeare's use of juxtaposition and contrast to enhance Hamlet's
feelings of contempt, disgust, and inadequacy. "The counterpointing between
things divine and things earthly or profane is apparent from the opening
sentence of the soliloquy, in which Hamlet expresses his anguished sense of
being captive to his flesh. His desire for dissolution into dew, an impermanent
substance, is expressive of his desire to escape from the corporality into a
process suggestive of spiritual release. Immediately juxtaposed to this notion,
and standing in contrast to "flesh", is his reference to the "Everlasting", the
spiritual term for the duality. Paradoxically, in his aversion from the flesh, his
body must seem to him to possess a state of permanence, closer to
something everlasting than to the ephemeral nature of the dew he yearns to
become" (Newell 35).
Another striking juxtaposition in the soliloquy is Hamlet's use of Hyperion and
a satyr to denote his father and his uncle, respectively. Hyperion, the Titan god
of light, represents honor, virtue, and regality -- all traits belonging to Hamlet's
father, the true King of Denmark. Satyrs, the half-human and half-beast
companions of the wine-god Dionysus, represent lasciviousness and
overindulgence, much like Hamlet's usurping uncle Claudius. It is no wonder,
then, that Hamlet develops a disgust for, not only Claudius the man, but all of

the behaviours and excesses associated with Claudius. In other passages

from the play we see that Hamlet has begun to find revelry of any kind
unacceptable, and, in particular, he loathes drinking and sensual dancing.

A final important contrast in the soliloquy is seen in Hamlet's self-depreciating

comment "but no more like my father/Than I to Hercules" (154-55). Although
Hamlet's comparison of himself to the courageous Greek hero could be
devoid of any deeper significance, it is more likely that the remark indicates
Hamlet's developing lack of self worth -- a theme that will become the focus of
his next soliloquy.
Hamlet's Soliloquy: O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! (2.2)
Annotations
Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! (520)
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, (530)
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, (540)
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?

Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?

Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!
'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be

But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall (550)

To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab, (560)
A scullion!
Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks; (570)
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds

More relative than this: the play's the thing

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
Hamlet's Soliloquy: O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! (2.2)
Commentary
In addition to revealing Hamlet's plot to catch the king in his guilt, Hamlet's
second soliloquy uncovers the very essence of Hamlet's true conflict. For he is
undeniably committed to seeking revenge for his father, yet he cannot act on
behalf of his father due to his revulsion toward extracting that cold and
calculating revenge. "Hamlet's sense of himself as a coward is derived from a
crude, simplistic judgment turning on whether or not he has yet taken any
action against the man who murdered his father. His self-condemnation takes
several bizarre forms, including histrionic imaginings of a series of demeaning
insults that he absorbs like a coward because he feels he has done nothing to
take revenge on Claudius" (Newell 61).
Determined to convince himself to carry out the premeditated murder of his
uncle, Hamlet works himself into a frenzy (the culmination of which occurs at
lines 357-8). He hopes that his passions will halt his better judgement and he
will then be able to charge forth and kill Claudius without hesitation. But
Hamlet again fails to quell his apprehensions of committing murder and
cannot act immediately. So he next tries to focus his attention on a plan to
ensure Claudius admits his own guilt. He returns to an idea that had crossed
his mind earlier -- that of staging the play The Mousetrap. Hamlet is convinced
that, as Claudius watches a re-enactment of his crime, he will surely reveal his
own guilt. Hamlet cannot take the word of his father's ghost, who really might
be "the devil" (573), tricking him into damning himself. Thus, he must have
more material proof before he takes Claudius's life -- he must "catch the
conscience of the king."
Hamlet's Soliloquy: To be, or not to be: that is the question (3.1)
Annotations
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 heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks (70)
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, 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 despis'd love, the law's delay, (80)
The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of? (90)
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.-- Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

Continue to Soliloquy Analysis

Commentary
Unlike Hamlet's first two major soliloquies, his third and most famous speech
seems to be governed by reason and not frenzied emotion. Unable to do little
but wait for completion of his plan to "catch the conscience of the king",
Hamlet sparks an internal philosophical debate on the advantages and
disadvantages of existence, and whether it is one's right to end his or her own
life. Some scholars limit Hamlet's discussion to a deliberation of whether he
should take his own 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, of what flesh is heir to,
of what we suffer at the hands of time or fortune - which serves incidentally to
indicate what for Hamlet is meant by to be" (Jenkins 489).
Hamlet asks the question for all dejected souls -- is it nobler to live miserably
or to end one's sorrows with a single stroke? He knows that the answer would
be undoubtedly yes if death were like a dreamless sleep. The rub or obstacle
Hamlet faces is the fear of what dreams may come(74), i.e. the dread of
something after death (86). Hamlet is well aware that suicide is condemned by
the church as a mortal sin.
Hamlet's soliloquy is interrupted by Ophelia who is saying her prayers. Hamlet
addresses her asNymph, a courtly salutation common in the Renaissance1.
Some critics argue that Hamlet's greeting is strained and coolly polite, and his
request that she remembers him in her prayers is sarcastic. However, others
claim that Hamlet, emerging from his moment of intense personal reflection,
genuinely implores the gentle and innocent Ophelia to pray for him.

It is fascinating to compare Shakespeare's finished masterpiece to the version

found in the First Quarto (or Q1) published by Nicholas Ling and John Trundell
in 1603:
To be, or not to be, I there's the point.
To Die, to sleepe, is that all ? I all:
No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there is goes,
For in that dreame of death, when we awake,

And borne before an everlasting Judge,

From whence no passenger ever returned,
The undiscovered country, at whose sight
The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd,
But for this, the joyfull hope of this,
Whol'd beare the scornes and flattery of the world,
Scorned by the right rich, the rich curssed of the poore?
The widow being oppressed, the orphan wrong'd,
The taste of hunger, or a tirants raigne.
And thousand more calamities besides
To grunt and sweate under this weary life,
When that he may his full Quietus make,
With a bare bodkin, who would this indure,
But for a hope of something after death?
Which pusles the braine, and doth confound the sence,
Which makes us rather beare those evilles we have,
Than flie to others that we know not of.
I, that, O this conscience makes cowards of us all.
Q1 was likely a product of the memories of actors who had
staged Hamlet and, in 1604, a new version appeared (Q2), based on
Shakespeare's own manuscript, complete with the soliloquy as we know it.
For an absolutely remarkable interpretation of Hamlet's soliloquy, please
watch the BBC production starring Sir Derek Jacobi, available in its entirety
from the BBC on YouTube. You can find it at 1:25:30.
Hamlet's Soliloquy: Tis now the very witching time of night (3.2.380-391)
Annotations
Tis now the very witching time of night, (380)
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother.
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever (385)
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:
Let me be cruel, not unnatural:
I will speak daggers to her, but use none;

My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites;

How in my words soever she be shent, (390)
To give them seals never, my soul, consent!
Continue to Soliloquy Commentary
Hamlet's Soliloquy: Tis now the very witching time of night (3.2.380-391)
Commentary
Hamlet's plan to "catch the conscience of the king" has been a success, and
Claudius has retired, distraught, to his chamber. Thrilled that his scheme
worked, Hamlet experiences a sudden surge of confidence which prompts the
first half of this short soliloquy. Hamlet is now sure that he could easily
complete the "bitter business" of revenge; sure that he could murder his uncle
without hesitation. However, Claudius is out of reach for the moment, and so
Hamlet turns his attention to his mother, revealing in the second half of the
soliloquy his intentions to force Gertrude to make a full confession. Although
Hamlet still loves his mother, he must be cruel to her in order to facilitate the
admission of her guilt. Hamlet says, "My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites"
(389), because he knows that he must feign violent intentions towards his
mother, and that his words must express those false intentions. Hamlet is
becoming like the players who so mystified him in 2.2:
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, (560)
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba! (556-563)
Hamlet once wished that he could manipulate his emotions and behaviour like
a player, and now it seems he can.
Hamlet's Soliloquy: Now might I do it pat, now he is praying (3.3)
Annotations
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;

And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:

A villain kills my father; and for that, (80)
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
'Tis heavy with him. And am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season'd for his passage? (90)
No!
Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At game, a-swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in't;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
Continue to Soliloquy Commentary Commentary
Hamlet has thought himself prepared to "drink hot blood" (3.2.382) and carry
out the murder of the King. Now, as he happens upon the unattended
Claudius, the time has come to take action, but Hamlet finds that he is unable
to kill. Hamlet's reason for delay is that Claudius is in the midst of praying, and
in order for revenge to be complete, the King must be engaged in some sinful
act such as sex, gambling, or drinking, and thus be condemned to eternal
damnation. While it is true that similar reasoning is common in other revenge
plays, such vengence seems unworthy of our noble prince.
Many critics believe that Hamlet uses Claudius's prayer as an excuse for
further delay because his conscience will not allow him to commit

premeditated murder. Others claim that it is not Hamlet's altruism which saves
Claudius in this scene, but his own paralyzing habit of "thinking too precisely
on th'event" (4.4.41). However, the second argument is moot because the
basis of his procrastination is his inability to commit premeditated murder.
Ironically, Hamlet's soliloquy is ultimately irrelevant, for Claudius is not
sincerely repentant, as he reveals in the concluding couplet of scene 3:
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. (97-8)
Questions for Review
1. Morris LeRoy Arnold, in his book The Soliloquies of Shakespeare, argues
that Claudius' soliloquy is similar to King Henry's prayer before battle in Henry
V (4.1.306-322). They both "give the impression of rhetorical pageantry rather
than sincere contrition." Is this a fair statement?
2. Do you feel sympathy for Claudius?
3. In Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996), Claudius is sitting in a confessional
and Hamlet is on the other side with his dagger drawn. If you were producing
the play, how would you stage Hamlet finding Claudius at prayer?
4. Do you agree with A. C. Bradley that the turning-point of the drama is
Hamlet's refusal to kill Claudius while he is praying? Bradley argues Hamlet's
failure there "is the cause of all the disasters that follow. In sparing the King,
he sacrifices Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencantz and Guildnestern, Laertes, and
the Queen and himself" (Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 108).