Hamlet (3,1) The Question

[monk222]

To be or not to be... that is indeed the question. What does it mean? The first couple of times we come across “Hamlet”, it seems obvious enough. Suicide. To live or not. However, for those who latch on to the play for their own, contrary to normal expectations, with additional readings, the clarity begins to dissipate, the meaning becomes less clear. Such may be the secret of literature that lives forever.

Marvin Rosenberg waxes eloquently on the allure of this soliloquy:

Why is it so much remembered, so much admired? Because it deals with the core of existence? Suggests that we have a choice, to live or die? Because it seeks what is noblest in life? Because it imagines the blessed release from life in a quiet sleep, a return to the serenity of the womb? Because it ponders the dreadful mystery of what lies beyond death? Because it commits us to life? Because it invites us to share the self of the lone victim, the child-adult isolated in a formidable world, with no option but to survive? Because it rehearses the everyday indignities of living? Because it is in its whole a mystery, the mystery of art, seizing our attention with the first abrupt monosyllables, then the noble rhythms, the music of dreams?

We know that Hamlet was sent for and is coming. Polonius and Claudius have baited their trap to pluck Hamlet’s mystery from his breast, as Ophelia is now seated with her book of Christian devotion awaiting him. Hamlet presumably does not know who has called on him. In my imagining of the play, Hamlet sees Ophelia, and the sight of her loveliness gives him pause. He holds back. Perhaps he hides behind a pillar. He has been debating in his soul whether he should go through with his own scheme: the Mousetrap.

In this interpretation, Hamlet’s great speech is not so much about whether he should directly commit suicide, but whether he should act to carry out his scheme and give the player his sixteen or so lines to interpose in the play, to act or not to act. Might it not be easier to live under Claudius’s rule and pretend he had learned nothing from the ghost? If he acts, does he not throw his life in jeopardy, as indeed turns out to be the case?

This reading also works well with Hamlet’s apparent indifference about being able to prove Claudius’s guilt to others, particularly those who would sit in judgment on his murder of Claudius, assuming he even survives the assassination. Maybe he does not even bother harboring such ambitions to prove his case, since he would have only an immaterial ghost for his material witness. Maybe it is suicidal just to go after the king.

I like to think that seeing Ophelia and the promise of her love has moved him to play it safe and just to suffer the torments and anguish of living life under Claudius, the murderer of his father and the usurper of his crown and mother, and so he loses the name of action. Of course, this somewhat happy dream of Ophelia’s love is about to blow up in his face.

This interpretation is good for this year only. I reserve the right to have a different one next year.

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
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 dispriz'd 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 bare bodkin? Who would these 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?
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 pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia!

And he steps out and approaches her, walking straight into the trap.

Comments

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Ha, it's not much of a question for me: always blog! :p