soliloquy 5

• act 3 scene 2
• Now Hamlet feels ready to proceed against the guilty Claudius. He is using the stereotypical avenger language and tone in what the Arden edition calls ‘the traditional night-piece apt to prelude a deed of blood’ (p. 511). He is aping the previous speaker’s mode as so often, trying to motivate himself to become a stage villain, by identifying with Lucianus, the nephew to the king.
• This is the least convincing of his soliloquies because of the crudity of the clichéd utterance, and one suspects it is a leftover from an earlier version of the revenge play.
• The emphasis at the end, however, is on avoiding violence and showing concern for his own and his mother’s souls; his great fear is of being ‘unnatural’, behaving as a monster like Claudius. He is, however, impressionable to theatrical performance, as we saw from his reaction to the Pyrrhus/Hecuba speeches earlier, and this carries him through to the slaying of Polonius before it wears off and, if we can believe it, ‘’A weeps for what is done’.
• This soliloquy creates tension for the audience, who are unsure of how his first private meeting with his mother will turn out and how they will speak to each other. He mentions his ‘heart’ and ‘soul’ again
• terms of objectives, Hamlet is playing towards himself – to the conflict between his mind and soul. This is Hamlet speaking out loud to check in with himself and what he needs to do. This is a ‘pep talk’ of sorts, like you might give yourself before an important audition or sporting event. Hamlet needs to be in control, needs to be clear, needs to be alert. He is in the thick of it now – this intellectual mind who has frequently delayed and semblance of action has finally got the ball rolling. He is finally taking the steps in the direction his Father wished him to go: towards vengeance.
• "tis now the very witching time of night"
• hamlet will speak to his mother with daggers but not actually hurt her