To be, or not to be Monologue Essay Example for Free

To be, or not to be Monologue EssayTo be, or not to be that is the questionWhether tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortuneOr to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? maybe the most oft quoted of the bards words, this soloiloquy by Hamlet in Act III, Sc. 1 (58-62) defines the highest point of the dramatic conflict that is going on in the protagonists mind and reveals most insightfully the character of the prince and the crux of his great tragedy. Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, is troubled by the ethical implications of committing suicide whether to live and suffer the vagaries of fate that military personnel is subject to or whether to rebel against the utter helplessness of the human condition and end it all in death.The character of Hamlet is of a philosophical and wistful bent and he is deeply troubled by ethical and philosophical issues that can never be answered with complete certainty. The contemplation of suicid e at the flush of his troubles is yet another example of this turn in his character. Is it noble to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?, Hamlet reflects and we are reminded of another of Shakespeares great sad drama, King Lear, where after being mercilessly maltreated at the hands of fate Gloucester arrive at a similar conclusion around the innate tragedy of the human condition, puny beings powerless in front of an omnipotent and hostile fortune As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods they kill us for their sport.Hamlet compares death to long-awaited sleep and reflects on the final peace and freedom it would bring to the tired and troubled soul To die,to sleep, /No more(prenominal) and by a sleep to say we end /The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks /That flesh is heir to. Persuaded by this metaphor, he decides in support of suicide, but soon realizes the limitations of the comparision and the deeper and far great implications of death. Once again w e find Hamlet oscillating and intrinsically incapable of deciding on a course of action which is the crux of his tragedy. Just as he is incapable of deciding whether or not to take revenge on his wicked uncle who had beyond some(prenominal) reasonable doubt, killed his father and married his mother, so is he incapable of moving any further than the philosophical reflections on suicide and actually taking his life.This soliloquy by Hamlet actually brings into direction all the most crucial themes of the play. It directly addresses the issues of death and suicide the significance of which can not be understressed. Through Hamlets incapability of propel himself into action, the speech problematises yet again the complex relation between human thought and action. And last but not the least, it brilliantly dramatises the impossibility of finding any certain answers in an universe which is essentially ambiguous.The biggest mystrey of the play Hamlet concerns nobody else but the characte r of Hamlet, and there has never been any dearth of speculation about his real motivations, his psychology etc. However, the famous Romantic critic William Hazlitt provided an interesting angle of approaching this highly complex charater when he wrote It is we who are Hamlet..Truly, Hamlet, more than anything else is a brilliant metaphor for the human condition a perfect representation of modern man. In his inability to arrive at any small-fruited decision to act on, in the overwhelming drama that goes on in his mind all the time making him suffer all the more intensely and in his almost masochistic compulsion to probe the darkest and most fearsome depths of his own mind, he is surely the most perfect figure in books to voice the most fundamental of all human question To be or not to be?Works CitedHazlitt, William. Characters of Shakespears Plays. http//shakespearean.org.uk/ham1-haz.htmShakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. R.A. Foakes. Surrey world(prenominal) Thomson Publishing Comp any, 1997.Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Ed. R.A. Foakes. Surrey International Thomson Publishing Company, 1997.