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To Be Or Not To Be Soliloquy Essay

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To Be or Not To Be Soliloquy
(Three Significant Messages from Hamlet)

The play Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most psychological plays. There is a lot that goes into understanding the characters and the reasoning for their actions. The soliloquies in Hamlet are crucial to understanding the meaning of this play. There are so many soliloquies that once you can decipher what they are saying, you can find the deeper meaning and reason for the play. Hamlet is depressed throughout the whole play, always dressed in black, sulking around the castle. He is mourning the death of his father. “That Shakespeare was profoundly influenced by such a play in the structural part of Hamlet there can be no doubt, and modern students find the explanation of many difficulties, inconsistencies, and discrepancies.” (Carroll) The most popular soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, maybe even the most …show more content…

It starts out in one direction, but can quickly change into something different. Hamlet goes through many different feelings throughout the play and they are all shown in this soliloquy. “Three basic approaches to the ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy prevail in commentary on Hamlet: one of these explains the speech as a consideration of either acting or not acting against King Claudius; the second reads the speech as a contemplation of suicide; and the third is some kind of compromise between-or fusion of-the first two, explaining, for example, that Hamlet thinks first about his revenge against Claudius, then examines the idea of suicide, and finally rebukes himself for losing ‘the name of action.’” (Petronella) Hamlet considers if he really should or should not kill his uncle Claudius. He does not know for sure if the ghost is legit or is trying to corrupt Hamlet. Another view is the fact that Hamlet is considering killing himself. Which he would do if it weren’t against the beliefs of the

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