Soliloquies. It took me several tries with that word before my spell checker relaxed its grip. But there really isn’t another word to use, or at least I can’t think of one. These speeches in Shakespeare are kind of like monologues, but we’re so accustomed to using monologues for what stand-up comedians do, that to apply it, say, to Hamlet’s deadly-serious utterances doesn’t work.
But soliloquy didn’t come into English until after Shakespeare was done playwriting. He probably called these lines something, not just lines; maybe he just called them speeches.
Shakespeare wrote a bunch of these soliloquies. A character, usually alone on stage, pauses and sometimes steps forward, then begins speaking, often past us, as though addressing an unseen audience. And if we’re experienced theater goers, accustomed to theatrical conventions, we don’t think it odd that the character is basically talking to himself (and, in the case of Hamlet, that a character who admits to being a lousy poet is speaking so poetically).
A soliloquy’s lines are often something you can pull out and put on a poster, and they float there just fine on their own, untethered from the play, even though they have a context in the play.
For example, Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy is overheard by Claudius and Polonius, and possibly by Ophelia, at least in part. I always forget that. Their reaction is different from ours; the king and his adviser still suspect Hamlet has lost his mind. As Claudius says in the last line of the scene, sounding like Yoda, “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.”
This speech, what we call the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, contains Hamlet’s most famous lines, possibly the most famous lines Shakespeare ever wrote. There’s a funny bit in the largely forgotten 1969 satire, The Magic Christian, where Laurence Harvey as Hamlet steps out on stage and utters those opening words. In the front row of the theater, adult adoptee Youngman Grand, played by Ringo Starr, leans over and mutters to his new dad, Sir Guy Grand, played by Peter Sellers. “Ah’ve seen it,” he says.
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.
In T.S. Eliot’s 1920 essay on Hamlet, published in his 1921 book The Sacred Wood as “Hamlet and His Problems,” Eliot wonders about this soliloquy. The “versification” is Shakespeare’s (who else could write like that, right?), but the “content” feels like it’s by somebody else, he suggests.
And if we think about Hamlet’s lines in the context of everything else he says in the play, they do seem anomalous, all that muttering about grievances that ordinary folks have. With all that “we” stuff, you might almost think Hamlet was a man of the people. Except he’s not; he’s a 30-year-old self-absorbed college student. And he’s a prince. Who’s been visited by the ghost of his murdered father, who demands revenge. Although we’d be self-absorbed too.
I want to look at how various actors have done this soliloquy. But first a few words on what seem to me some of its challenges.
1. Vocabulary.
My Signet Classic edition has thirteen footnotes to this speech of 35 lines, mostly for words or usages that are likely to be unfamiliar to us. And context doesn’t always help much, either. For example:
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
Quietus? Bodkin? It almost sounds like Hamlet is talking about somebody turning in without a nightshirt. And what about fardels? Say it out loud; it’s funny sounding, like a nonsense word.
2. Meter and pronunciation.
This is mostly an issue with performing these lines, but if you’re trying to hear the meter in your head or counting out the iambic pentameter, it’s important there too.
Since we obviously don’t have recordings or even any phonetic transcriptions of this speech from Shakespeare’s day, we have to make up our own minds about certain things. For example, the opening line:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
The meter would suggest that this should be delivered as:
To BE, or NOT to BE, that IS the QUEStion
But is that what we want to say? It could also be done with a trochaic foot substitution like this:
To BE, or NOT to BE, THAT is the QUEStion
Same meaning? Well, maybe, maybe not.
Or what about this?
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
So how do you pronounce that last word, contumely? Normally, we would pronounce it conTUmely (four syllables), but that doesn’t fit the meter. And yet if we pronounce it CONtumely (three syllables), as many actors do, probably even fewer listeners would recognize the word. (Incidentally, in all of Shakespeare’s plays, this is the only place that word is used.)
3. Length.
This soliloquy is about 275 words. Sometimes this speech even gets cut down, as part of a general effort to wrestle Hamlet’s four-hour length toward the two-hour mark. (I’ve never seen the entire play on stage, and you probably haven’t either.) That’s a lot of words to do at one go, without any other dialogue to cue off. But Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest role, so presumably actors are up to the task. (Hamlet is nearly 30,000 words in length, almost twice as long as Macbeth, half again as long as Hamilton; of that 30K, Hamlet speaks more than a third.)
But there’s another measure of length, and that’s how long it takes to deliver these words. Most actors drag this speech out, some more than others. Maybe it’s drama, maybe it’s shoe-gazing, but it affects how we experience the lines.
4. Cinema versus stage.
With this soliloquy, the camera’s ability to zoom in at key moments on Hamlet’s face and eyes is important, I believe. On stage, despite makeup and lighting, Hamlet’s head may only be a tiny blob from where you’re sitting. But with an otherwise empty stage, this soliloquy can be haunting; how alone Hamlet must feel at this point.
Now to some performances. I’m not going to rank them, except in an order that makes sense to me for talking about them. You can make up your own mind on which you like the best.
1. Let’s start with an example of what the soliloquy sounds like and how long it takes (less than two minutes) if you just read it in a non-dramatic way.
Note that you can turn on subtitles with most of these clips.
2. Here’s Mel Gibson in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 film adaptation (film running time 2:15:00, clip length 3:46). Note Gibson’s first-line stresses and how he pronounces contumely. He also pauses from time to time in a way that gives the impression that Hamlet is thinking while speaking. Note also how his eyes sometimes dart around, as though on the edge of panic. Since this is a film, the scene has a dramatic setting (the family crypt?) that would be difficult to create on stage.
3. The linguist David Crystal and his son the actor Ben Crystal have made names for themselves in the Shakespeare world (such as it is) by their efforts to popularize Shakespeare productions delivered in what’s called Original Pronunciation. These reflect linguistic efforts to figure out what the English of these plays would have sounded like in the early 17th century.
These research efforts are largely theoretical, probably controversial, and perhaps present challenges both to actors and audience. I’m not sure I would want to see an entire play done like this, even though it supposedly speeds up the play (who knew?). I have enough trouble understanding what’s being said as it is. But dipping into a bit of OP is great fun and shows, I think, that their efforts are more than just a novelty.
Here’s Ben Crystal doing the soliloquy outdoors in public in 2014. Note the change in how some words sound to our modern ears (sleep, cowards). And how he goes with four syllables for contumely, even though I would have thought that’s the more modern pronunciation, but maybe not. Also note how short this performance is (clip length 2:31).
Be sure to turn on subtitles to see the wacky First Folio spellings too!
4. Kenneth Branagh played Hamlet in his own film adaptation in 1996 (film running time 4:02:00, clip length 3:05). Here Hamlet delivers his lines to himself, staring into a mirror. I guess someone had an idea. Because his gaze is fixed on his own reflection, Branagh’s eyes don’t move much, losing some possibilities, I think. However, he does pull out his own bare bodkin (naked dagger) with that line, which does strike me as a pretty good idea, a natural gesture for someone contemplating suicide, or murder.
5. Laurence Olivier played Hamlet on stage and also directed and starred in his own film adaptation in 1948 (film running time 2:34:00, clip length 4:41).
I’ll have to admit there’s a lot I don’t like about this scene, starting with its old-school music, so heavy on the woodwinds. Hamlet is contemplating the ocean below from the castle ramparts. Is he considering jumping? Ooh, you think? And when the camera dissolves into the back of Olivier’s head, what’s with that? To suggest that we’re about to peer into Hamlet’s thoughts? Oh, brother.
Olivier also draws out a dagger, but it doesn’t look like he knows how to use one as he holds it like a long-stemmed pipe.
6. And here’s David Tennant during his Doctor Who years in a modern 2009 adaptation for television (running time 3:00:00, clip length 2:54). Tennant has his eyes closed for part of the scene, again missing out on possibilities, I think. It looks like he’s wearing a T-shirt. He also leaves out the lines that include contumely, etc. (see above); that’s one way to deal with tricky words, I guess.
7. Finally, a commissioned performance of the soliloquy by Adrian Lester from 2016 (clip length 3:06). Good eye action; staring right at us for much of the speech is particularly effective. When he leans forward, it really draws us in.
What do you think? If you had to rank them, what would your order be? And would you include other famous Hamlets, say Richard Burton’s? Traditional production or modern? Full speech or abridged?
© 10 Franks 2024
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