Hamlet
Prompt #5 · Hamlet
Prompt Type: Scene Analysis
In the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy and subsequent confrontation with Ophelia, Hamlet contemplates suicide and then brutally rejects Ophelia with commands to 'get thee to a nunnery.' Analyze how Shakespeare uses this moment to explore the theme of death and mortality while revealing Hamlet's psychological torment. Explain how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Quote 1
“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?”
Act III, Scene 1
Argument
This opening of the soliloquy establishes the scene's central meditation on suicide through the metaphor of life as a battle, using alliteration ('slings,' 'sea') to emphasize the weight of Hamlet's contemplation of whether existence itself is worth enduring.
Quote 2
“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.”
Act III, Scene 1
Argument
This continuation of the soliloquy reveals Hamlet's psychological paralysis through the metaphor of death as sleep, where the anaphora ('To die, to sleep. / To sleep') and the phrase 'what dreams may come' expose his fear of the unknown afterlife that prevents him from acting on suicidal thoughts.
Quote 3
“O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown! / The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword, / Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state, / The glass of fashion and the mould of form, / Th’observ’d of all observers, quite, quite down!”
Act III, Scene 1
Argument
Ophelia's response immediately following the nunnery confrontation uses anaphora ('quite, quite down') and the metaphor of a fallen edifice to demonstrate how Hamlet's brutal rejection has shattered her perception of him, connecting his psychological torment to its devastating impact on others and completing the scene's exploration of how mortality obsession destroys human connection.
Quote 4
“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.”
Act III, Scene 1
Argument
This quote from the same soliloquy uses the metaphor of thought as a disease ('sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought') and anaphora ('Thus...And thus') to reveal how Hamlet's obsessive contemplation of mortality paralyzes him, directly connecting the scene's meditation on death to his inability to act and completing the soliloquy's exploration of psychological paralysis.
Quote 5
“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?”
Act III, Scene 1
Argument
This continuation of the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy employs the metaphor of death as an 'undiscover'd country' to crystallize Hamlet's fear of the unknown afterlife, revealing how his intellectual torment over what lies beyond death prevents suicide and establishes the philosophical foundation for his subsequent brutal treatment of Ophelia.