对哈姆雷特独白的分析教学提纲

姓名曲晓男学号 201006010116 班级 2010级英语（师范类）1班

The Eternal Charm of Hamlet

---From the soliloquy “To be, or not to be...”

As the prince of Denmark, Hamlet was thinking of the two choices--- to live on in this world or to die; to suffer or to take action. It seems that death is a better choice because it can put an end to all sorrows and misfortunes. But on his second thought, he was wondering about what would happen after death, because in his eyes, death is a mysterious kingdom, which might be more terrible than this world. Therefore, Hamlet was not only tired of life, but he was also full of fear of the unknown future life. His hesitation shows the common feelings of human beings who were suffering in this world.

What important is that the soliloquy “To be, or not to be...” is also a strong accusation against the darkness of the reality of the social. Hamlet, full of anger and resentment, pointed out the evils and corruption in the country. The world was full of “slings and sorrows”, life was nothing but “a sea of troubles”: people were bound to suffer from “thousand natural shocks”, so they were groaning and toiling. What is more impressive is the long question in the middle.

In my views, the Prince of Denmark, Hamlet, is a contradiction between ideals and realities in the humanist. Once he was full of bright hope for people, society and all things. But the ugly and harsh reality broke his beautiful ideal, and his humanist beliefs shattered. As a humanist, Hamlet hesitated on the road of revenge, which showed that he represented the poor between the feudal forces and humanism, and so as to show author’s reflections of Renaissance movement and concerns to the fate of human and future society. However, Hamlet was hesitating and procrastinating in his personality. His melancholy is the reason why his image has a monumental artistic charm.

When we talk about the character of Hamlet, delay seems to be synonymous of his name. From my point of view, there are also two points of the reason. On the one hand, fighting against the stronger enemy is the main reason why he was unable to act. His uncle wanted to get rid of Hamlet, for consolidating his political power. He also planted the spies around Hamlet to detect his words and actions. In this case, Hamlet

had to postpone his revenge plan and his hesitation was showed. On the other hand, Hamlet knew the difficult task of his revenge. He not only wanted to revenge for his father, but also wanted to reverse the tide. Faced with these dual tasks, he wanted to take action but did not know how to act. In the play, the heart of the contradiction had driven the character of Hamlet to perform the delay and hesitation vividly。

In Hamlet, we see the bright and happy life of the young prince darkened by the lust and ingratitude o f his mother and by the revelation of his uncle’s foul murder of his father. He was disgusted with his uncle’s drunkenness and shocked by his mother’s shallowness. In his contact with the people around him, he cared for nothing but human worth and showed the contempt for rank and wealth. What Hamlet thought did not completely happen. Through the infidelity of his mother, the servility of the courtiers, the falsehood of his school-fellows, and, finally, the crime of his uncle, he discovered how wicked and unjust the world he lives in is. So we can imagine that why Hamlet was so depressed and delay.

However, no matter what stage of life you are in, once you experienced a rich and deep spiritual life, enhance your own personality, re-discovered a new self, you can always find, in Hamlet, something that you feel it appear to be eternal and immortal. Because it talked about the choices in life, and talked about that living in a specific historical period and environment is unique to oneself but common for all human-beings, about the choice according only to the limited experience accumulated in the past. In a sense, his experience is also our own experience. The fate he faced is also which we have to face in a certain stage in our life. We have to face the desperation, explore the truth in contradiction and the fog, take action in a dilemma where, and rebuild the building of spirit and the system of value in a world which has lost the standards and scale to measure. Hamlet is imperfect, and sometimes his choice is not rational and impulsive, as a matter of fact, he can succumb to his fate and had no need to probe t he truth of his father’s death. However Hamlet's characters do not allow him to live with any questions and be powerless, so he decided to find the truth, but his experience led him to make fatal choice which he thought correct time and time again. Finally Hamlet does not regret for his choice, he just wants Horatio "in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story." because every choice of every individual can not be repeated in a particular historical, so it would be meaningless to assume that if Hamlet can go back and remake a choice, it’s same of