Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T13:00:55.818Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Dramatic Context and Meaning of Hamlet's “To Be or Not To Be” Soliloquy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Alex Newell
Alex Newell*
Affiliation:
California State College, California, Penn.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

      Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
      Looking before and after, gave us not
      That capability and god-like reason
      To fust in us unused.
      Hamlet

Discussions of Hamlet's “To be or not to be” soliloquy are almost as varied and divergent as interpretations of the play itself.1 Different understandings of the play and different formulations of Hamlet's character naturally affect interpretations of the soliloquy, but interpretations which fail to consider the dramatic context of the speech are surely faulty in critical procedure. Unfortunately, most discussions of the passage overlook or minimize the relevance of the surrounding action to it, an error that may then lead to problems of coherent or thorough analysis of meaning. The fault of ignoring the dramatic context, for example, may be seen in G. Wilson Knight's approach to the speech in “Hamlet Reconsidered”:

The soliloquy (iii.i.56–88) at first seems reasonably clear, but difficulties multiply on close inspection. Commentators differ as to whether Hamlet's

To be, or not to be; that is the question

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 80 , Issue 1 , March 1965 , pp. 38 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1965

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The range of discussion before 1933 is well represented in the abundant documentation of Irving T. Richards, “The Meaning of Hamlet's Soliloquy,” PMLA, xlviii (September 1933), 741–766. With the exception of Samuel Johnson's comments on the soliloquy, comments that modern critics have frequently referred to, only criticism since 1933 is dealt with directly in this paper, which has as its main purpose the presentation of a detailed interpretation, not a review of criticism. Line references for Hamlet are to The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, ed. Hardin Craig (Chicago, 1951). Citations of lines are usually omitted for the well-known “To be” soliloquy, iii.i.56–88.

2 The Wheel of Fire (New York, 1960), p. 304.

3 The Meaning of Hamlet, trans. Graham Rawson (London, 1937), p. 115.

4 Ibid., p. 116.

5 What Happens in Hamlet (Cambridge, Eng., 1956), p. 127. A. C. Bradley makes the same point: “He is meditating on suicide. ... Hamlet, that is to say, is here, in effect, precisely where he was at the time of his first soliloquy (‘0 that this too too solid flesh would melt‘).” Shakespearean Tragedy (London, 1960), p. 132.

6 Schücking, The Meaning of Hamlet, pp. 115, 180–184.

7 The Question of Hamlet (New York, 1959), p. 68.

8 On the surface, Professor Levin appears to have made such a consideration, but he really has not. His description of the dramatic environment of the soliloquy as “the still midpoint of the play” is unclear and misleading because he does not explain what he means by “still.” The “To be” speech is preceded by Polonius' preparation to use Ophelia to sound Hamlet, by the brief report of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Claudius, and by Hamlet's agitated soliloquy at the end of Act Two; it is followed by the commotion of the nunnery scene and by Hamlet's enthusiastic advice to the players prior to their performance. There is nothing “still” at this point in the play.

9 “Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?” Proceedings of the British Academy, xxxviii (1942), 149.

10 Light pointing is more suitable than heavy to render the appropriate movement. The textual studies of John Dover Wilson in The Manuscript of Shakespeare's Hamlet (London, 1934) and of Thomas Marc Parrott and Hardin Craig in The Tragedy of Hamlet: A Critical Edition of the Second Quarto, 1604 (Princeton, 1938) indicate light punctuation as closest to what Shakespeare probably used in writing the speech.

11 An example from Sonnet 18 will illustrate the technique in a different context. The open phrase is “every fair” in the first of the following lines:

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

In the next-to-last line the iterative use of “fair” in referring to the person causes a backtracking to “every fair,” where “fair” seemed at first to be an adjective in a phrase speaking of every fair summer day. Shakespeare uses it substantively, however, and by backtracking we realize that he is definitely speaking of every type of fairness. As a result of seeing that the scope of “every fair” includes “That fair thou owest” (the specificity of “that” also points back relatedly to the comprehensiveness of “every”), the line “By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed” acquires poignant human relevance as a description of how “Death” in the last line may come. That whole line, in addition to “every fair,” has remained open to receive—and thereby yield—additional meaning created along the way. How the poetic flux can be blocked off may be seen if the open phrase is eliminated by substituting “And summer's day from fair sometime declines,” a line which is metrically correct and fits the immediate context.

12 Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. Walter Raleigh (London, 1959), p. 191.

13 Johnson's method is to project himself into Hamlet's mind in an attempt to trace the movement and fill in the unexpressed connections of his thoughts. Hamlet, Johnson says, “meditates on his situation in this manner: Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress, it is necessary to decide, whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be. That is the question, which, as it shall be answered, will determine, whether 'tis nobler, and more suitable to the dignity of reason, to suffer the outrages of fortune patiently, or to take arms against them, and by opposing end them, though perhaps with the loss of life.” Ibid. [Johnson's italics.] Johnson is quite mistaken in thinking that the prince has any doubt “whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be.” Johnson's words express the doubt, not Hamlet's, for Hamlet has no such problem of belief, and his thought and expression in the soliloquy are predicated on a belief in existence after death. For a discussion of the soliloquy in terms of renaissance Christian outlook, see Bertram Joseph, Conscience and the King: A Study of Hamlet (London, 1953), pp. 111–116. By wedging “after our present state” into his own “whether” construction, and by harnessing “whether” and “we are” onto Hamlet's opening words, Johnson has seriously distorted Hamlet's expression and has diverted us away from what Hamlet actually says, to Johnson's statements utilizing some of Hamlet's words and adding others. What is faulty in Johnson's method is that he attempts to fill in meaning rather than to arrive at it through analysis.

L. C. Knights makes a similar error by adopting Johnson's method. Knights believes that Johnson not only defined the problem correctly but also used the right procedure in trying to solve it. But he does not accept Johnson's interpretation and attempts to fill in differently: “Now I feel sure that Johnson is right in implicitly rejecting the idea of suicide at this point, and I think that the idea of immortality is indeed very close to the forefront of Hamlet's consciousness. But there is that in Johnson's phrasing which partially obscures the full implications of the crucial phrase. The primary thought is not whether ‘after our present state’ we are to be or not to be; it is the question of present being.” An Approach to Hamlet (Stanford, 1961), pp. 75–76.

Johnson's arbitrariness in filling in meaning is revealed by the same arbitrariness of Knights, with its opposite point of view. Instead of analyzing the language and structure of the passage to formulate the connections of thoughts in Hamlet's mind, both Johnson and Knights have tried instead to imagine what the connections might be. In adopting this method, both critics make the initial error of assuming that the opening line necessarily has a single fixed meaning that can be ascribed to it from the outset.

14 L. C. Knights provides a stimulating and valuable discussion of the philosophical idea of suffering as a means of dealing with evil, an idea that derives from Boethius and that Knights explains had currency in Shakespeare's time. “It is clear from Macbeth,” he says, “that Shakespeare was deeply familiar with the traditional doctrine of the nothingness of evil.” The essential points of this doctrine may be summarized as follows: good is the only mode of positive existence; evil in any absolute sense is nothing; suffering is superior to the evil brought by fortune, because it is a positive act related to good. As Knights rightly points out: “It is for this very reason we may notice, that Hamlet admires Horatio:

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice

And could of men distinguish, her election

Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been

As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;

A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards

Hath ta'en with equal thanks; and blest are those

Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled

That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger

To sound what stop she please. Give me that man

That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him

In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of hearts,

As I do thee.

Hamlet's deep underlying concern is with essential being.“ An Approach to Hamlet, pp. 76–80.

15 G. Wilson Knight is the only critic I have read who senses the multiplicity of meanings in the opening line, but he does not attempt to clarify how they are “somehow” contained: “‘To be’ can scarcely just mean ‘to act’; nor, surely, does Hamlet mean anything so simple as ‘to live or die’ and nothing more. He might mean ‘to exist or not to exist after death,‘ but that makes no proper opening to a speech certainly concerned deeply with this thought but containing others that tend to interrupt the sequence such an opening demands; if this be its whole meaning, then it is a poor opening. Probably all these meanings are somehow contained ...” The Wheel of Fire, p. 308.

16 One of the most thoroughgoing and reductive interpretations of the “To be” soliloquy as a suicide deliberation is presented by Harry Levin, whose interpretation exhibits all the characteristics specified. “The ontological question becomes an existential question,” says Levin, who sees Hamlet confronting the one philosophical problem that Albert Camus says is “really serious”—suicide. The Question of Hamlet, pp. 67–73. If one wishes to retain it, the existential question is no less present in seeing Hamlet confronted by the problem of action, for action (actively chosen or chosen passively by default of an active choice) determines the essence of existence in the general terms of existential philosophy. The philosophy of Boethius and the renaissance Christian outlook, however, should also be retained and are more essential.

17 The Wheel of Fire, p. 307.

18 Ibid., p. 306.

19 Prefaces to Shakespeare (Princeton, 1952), p. 77.

20 Shakespeare (London, 1954), p. 262.

21 Shakespeare: The Great Tragedies, ed. Bonamy Dobrée (London, 1961), p. 11.

22 Although he does not refer to it, there is no reason to think that Hamlet has forgotten about the “canon 'gainst self-slaughter” (i.ii.132), which would assure bad things after death for suicides.

23 PMLA, xlviii (September 1933), 744.

24 Ibid., pp. 751, 752.

25 Ibid., pp. 757, 758.

26 In the “Now I am alone” soliloquy, the idea of thought as a symptom of fear, which Hamlet is to arrive at the next day, may establish a psychological connection between Hamlet's wondering “Am I a coward?” and then, after formulating his plan of action, thinking that “The spirit that I have seen / May be a devil.” This connection seems very possible as the germinal beginning of the idea that Hamlet gains insight into in the “To be” soliloquy and then states explicitly in his next soliloquy, in the lines that have been quoted above in the text. The relevance of the idea for the “To be” soliloquy—and the idea itself—seems further validated by being thus traceable in a progressive course through three successive soliloquies in which Hamlet reveals himself most intimately. A. C. Bradley recognizes the inconsistency of Hamlet's doubts about the ghost at the end of the “Now I am alone” soliloquy, but Bradley explains it as “an excuse for his delay”: “The doubt which appears at its close, instead of being the natural conclusion of the preceding thoughts, is totally inconsistent with them. For Hamlet's self-reproaches, his curses on his enemy, and his perplexity about his own inaction, one and all imply his faith in the the identity and truthfulness of the Ghost. Evidently this sudden doubt, of which there has not been the slightest trace before, is no genuine doubt; it is an unconscious fiction, an excuse for his delay—and for its continuance.” Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 131.

27 My understanding of this particular matter is the exact opposite of Sister Miriam Joseph's in her article, “Discerning the Ghost in Hamlet”: “If the king does not reveal his hidden guilt, Hamlet must conclude that it was ‘a damned ghost’ that wrought in him ‘imaginations ... As foul / As Vulcan's stithy’ (iii.ii.88), imaginations that Claudius is a murderer, in order to impel him to action that would damn his soul.19” Her footnote says: “For the impact of the disjunctive syllogism implicit here see my Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language (New York, 1947), p. 186.” PMLA, lxxvi (December 1961), 497. On page 186 of her book, Sister Miriam Joseph states: “The disjunctive syllogism is important in Hamlet. The prince must know whether the ghost is ‘a spirit of health or goblin damn'd’ (1.4.40). Hamlet later puts the issue more concretely: either the king will unkennel his guilt, or the ghost is a damned spirit (3.2.85). The king does unkennel his guilt by his agitation at the play, thus supplying the minor premise. Hamlet thereupon concludes that the ghost is not evil: ‘O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound! Didst perceive ... Upon the talk of the poisoning?‘ (3.2.297–300).” I do not think that my non-technical analysis of the logic and import of what Hamlet says is refuted here. In his words to Horatio, Hamlet's enthusiasm further expresses the strong bias of his previous expectations; he has received the confirmation he anticipated. He is more justified in concluding that the ghost is not evil because Claudius became agitated than he would be justified in concluding that the ghost was evil if Claudius had not unkenneled his guilt.

28 This paper is dedicated to the memory of Henry C. Fisher and to my other teachers at the University of Pittsburgh. I am indebted to Charles R. Crow, Giles E. Dawson, Sumner Ferris, Alan Markman, Kenneth Muir, and Richard Tobias for reading this paper and providing valuable criticisms.