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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 3.15.97: Top | Help
Perhaps the real question is why the speech reatains its prestige when fully half of it (the second half) is archaic and no longer meaningful to most secular-minded people. The answer Hamlet gives to the question "Why don't we all commit suicide, seeing that life is so horrible?" is not the answer most of us would give--namely, that we fear the extinction of our consciousness and personality. On the contrary, Hamlet would welcome such extinction--he calls it "a consummation devoutly to be wished". No; Hamlet's decidedly old-fashioned answer to this perennial conundrum is that we're all afraid that the afterlife (i.e., hell) will be even worse than this life. I don't know about you; but that proposition finds no responsive echo in my soul. And I suspect that in this secular age, most of the well-educated, Shakespeare-reading public feel the same way. In truth, it's only the speech's classic enumeration of the ills of life that retains any validity or suggestive power. Perhaps that's enough.Posted by Charles Weinstein on April 01, 1997 at 09:02:43
In Reply to "Hamlet's Soliloquy...... Why is it so famous?" posted by Justin on March 22, 1997 at 18:01:25
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