How is soliloquy used in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet?
How is soliloquy used in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet?
Watch an actor performing two of Hamlet's monologues in this discussion of the use of soliloquy in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet.
Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Transcript
GRAHAM HAMILTON: For this too, too solid flesh would melt.
SPEAKER 1: The observed of all observers quite, quite down.
SPEAKER 2: Oh, my offense is rank. It smells to heaven.
GRAHAM HAMILTON: I'll have grounds more relative than this, the plays, the thing. Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
MICHELE OSHEROW: Soliloquy is a character talking to himself. I think about soliloquies as secrets. These are secrets that the audience is privileged to know. That nobody else in the world of the play knows. Usually, but not always the hero who's getting those soliloquies. So it puts us on his side. When you're telling someone secrets, people feel responsible for you. They want to take care of you.
JOE HAJ: How to play the soliloquy is of course, the interesting question.
GRAHAM HAMILTON: And in this production, we thought it would be interesting if we let Hamlet use the audience as a sounding board, really. In each of the soliloquies, he confronts the audience and seeks acknowledgement of what it is that he's going through.
That this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into adieu. Or that the everlasting had not fixed his canon against self slaughter. Oh god, god. How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me. All the uses of this world filed. Why? 'Tis an un-weeded 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. So excellent a king, that was to this hyperion to a sater. So loving to my mother, that he might not the beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly, heaven and earth. Must I remember--
In the very first one, too, too solid flesh, he's there with the audience. The audience is watching his uncle interact with his mother. And he's essentially in explaining the situation, that my father is dead. Within a month, my mother has married my uncle. In explaining that, I think that he's asking the audience for a certain acknowledgement. He wants somebody to empathize with him, or sympathize with him.
Married with my uncle? My father's brother, but no more like my father than I to Hercules, within a month.
MICHELE OSHEROW: In his very first soliloquy, the too, too solid flesh, he talks about wanting to die. He talks about hating women. He talks about the corrupt world, and then he says but break my heart, for I must hold my tongue. So there's a kind of tension there between him thinking and feeling all of this, but I've got to shut up about it.
GRAHAM HAMILTON: It is not nor it cannot come to good. But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
JOE HAJ: The soliloquies exist for the character to be able to allow us, the audience, to know what the inner workings are without compromising that character in terms of the other characters on stage. Because if other characters hear that, then they have to know that information.
MICHELE OSHEROW: Hamlet has seven soliloquies. This is a ridiculous number. Because of that, people talk about Hamlet as the first psychological drama, because we become more invested in the character's mind in some ways, than we are in his actions.
GRAHAM HAMILTON: In "to be or not to be", his mother has turned away from him. His uncle has betrayed him. His friends have betrayed him. And this is it. There's no more to be done. There's no more questions to be asked.
This is the last wave in a sea of troubles that he is capable of enduring. And it's too much. And so he asks the audience, what else do I have to do? There's nothing for me. I can't do anything else. There's nothing more.
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.
The soliloquies, they're a way for the character to be confirmed, acknowledged, justified. To be understood in a world where they're not receiving a certain understanding.
MICHELE OSHEROW: It really makes us identify with that character. And I also think for Hamlet, Shakespeare's being really clever here. Because it's very possible to become impatient with this guy. Just do it, already. But Hamlet is so busy beating himself up for not doing it, that we're not going to judge him for that.
GRAHAM HAMILTON: The undiscovered country from who's bourn, 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 does make cowards of us all. And thus, the native hue of resolution is sicklied or 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.
MICHELE OSHEROW: Conscience does make cowards of us all. And that's a great moment when he's talking about universal truths. And we can sit there and say, yeah, I guess that's right.
SPEAKER 1: The observed of all observers quite, quite down.
SPEAKER 2: Oh, my offense is rank. It smells to heaven.
GRAHAM HAMILTON: I'll have grounds more relative than this, the plays, the thing. Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
MICHELE OSHEROW: Soliloquy is a character talking to himself. I think about soliloquies as secrets. These are secrets that the audience is privileged to know. That nobody else in the world of the play knows. Usually, but not always the hero who's getting those soliloquies. So it puts us on his side. When you're telling someone secrets, people feel responsible for you. They want to take care of you.
JOE HAJ: How to play the soliloquy is of course, the interesting question.
GRAHAM HAMILTON: And in this production, we thought it would be interesting if we let Hamlet use the audience as a sounding board, really. In each of the soliloquies, he confronts the audience and seeks acknowledgement of what it is that he's going through.
That this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into adieu. Or that the everlasting had not fixed his canon against self slaughter. Oh god, god. How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me. All the uses of this world filed. Why? 'Tis an un-weeded 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. So excellent a king, that was to this hyperion to a sater. So loving to my mother, that he might not the beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly, heaven and earth. Must I remember--
In the very first one, too, too solid flesh, he's there with the audience. The audience is watching his uncle interact with his mother. And he's essentially in explaining the situation, that my father is dead. Within a month, my mother has married my uncle. In explaining that, I think that he's asking the audience for a certain acknowledgement. He wants somebody to empathize with him, or sympathize with him.
Married with my uncle? My father's brother, but no more like my father than I to Hercules, within a month.
MICHELE OSHEROW: In his very first soliloquy, the too, too solid flesh, he talks about wanting to die. He talks about hating women. He talks about the corrupt world, and then he says but break my heart, for I must hold my tongue. So there's a kind of tension there between him thinking and feeling all of this, but I've got to shut up about it.
GRAHAM HAMILTON: It is not nor it cannot come to good. But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
JOE HAJ: The soliloquies exist for the character to be able to allow us, the audience, to know what the inner workings are without compromising that character in terms of the other characters on stage. Because if other characters hear that, then they have to know that information.
MICHELE OSHEROW: Hamlet has seven soliloquies. This is a ridiculous number. Because of that, people talk about Hamlet as the first psychological drama, because we become more invested in the character's mind in some ways, than we are in his actions.
GRAHAM HAMILTON: In "to be or not to be", his mother has turned away from him. His uncle has betrayed him. His friends have betrayed him. And this is it. There's no more to be done. There's no more questions to be asked.
This is the last wave in a sea of troubles that he is capable of enduring. And it's too much. And so he asks the audience, what else do I have to do? There's nothing for me. I can't do anything else. There's nothing more.
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.
The soliloquies, they're a way for the character to be confirmed, acknowledged, justified. To be understood in a world where they're not receiving a certain understanding.
MICHELE OSHEROW: It really makes us identify with that character. And I also think for Hamlet, Shakespeare's being really clever here. Because it's very possible to become impatient with this guy. Just do it, already. But Hamlet is so busy beating himself up for not doing it, that we're not going to judge him for that.
GRAHAM HAMILTON: The undiscovered country from who's bourn, 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 does make cowards of us all. And thus, the native hue of resolution is sicklied or 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.
MICHELE OSHEROW: Conscience does make cowards of us all. And that's a great moment when he's talking about universal truths. And we can sit there and say, yeah, I guess that's right.