Blog #1

    Soliloquy is a speech in which an actor or actress speaks to himself or herself in a play. It is essential to the presentation of a story because it provides an opportunity for the audience to get more closed to look at a character and empathize with them through the specific information which cannot be shown in the normal conversation. Each soliloquy could somehow promote the plot, and reveal the inner thoughts of a specific character. 

    Shakespeare often creates many soliloquies for his characters to speak in the plays. In his play Hamlet, "to be, or not to be"  soliloquy is unquestionably one the most famous one throughout the history of the theatre. This soliloquy is saying by Hamlet while he is somehow insane after the conspiracy of how his uncle kills his father, inherits the throne and marries his mother is revealed to him. At the beginning of this soliloquy, Hamlet throws out a question "to be, or not to be" to question the worthiness of life. Should he "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" or to "take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them?" Should he just accept the harsh reality or revenge his father? Keeping them alive would be at the mercy of the outrageous fortune. Oppositely, the only way of opposing them would be killing, taking arms, defeating the fortune. As well as for himself, if he chooses "to die, to sleep, to perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub", "what dreams may come?" This is a quite common question people may think about: when life becomes so unbearable, death could be a way to get rid of all forms of clinging. But there is a "rub", which would be the fear of the ignorance about the life after death. Thus, Hamlet is quite struggling at that very moment: he wanted to escape from the truth, but he was also afraid of what will happen after if he run off  into death's "undiscovered country". 

    At the beginning of his soliloquy, it might sound like a suicide thing. But as his thoughts get deeper, instead of showing to the audience how he is genuinely bothered by a series things which somehow convinced him that the world is basically evil, and using the word "I" and "me", he starts to seeking the reasons how people in general consider suicide. He is talking more generally about life itself; not only questioning himself, but to the all of us, "to be, or not to be?"

     This soliloquy is very essential throughout the whole play because it demonstrates Hamlet's inner complicated thoughts. Through other characters' points of view, it will create a false appearance of an "insane" Hamlet. But from his own monologue, we can see a sense of melancholy haunting around him; we would know how awakening he is inside his heart.