The Renaissance Literature

•     Name                                    : Dodiya Mehul Maheshbhai 

•     Roll Number                      : 29

•     Sem                                        : 1

•     Year                                       : 2017/2019

•     Enrollment number       : 2069108420180011

•     Email                                   : svkmehul97@gmail.com

•     Submitted to                      : Dr. Dilip Barad

•     Paper Name                      : The Renaissance  Literature

•     College / Department  : Department of English

•    University                           : Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar  University

Question: Suicide is an important theme in Hamlet; Discuss how the play treats the idea of suicide morally, Religiously and aesthetically with particular attending to Hamlet’s two important statement about suicide. “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt” soliloquy. Although capable of suicide, man humans beings choose to live, despite the cruelty, pain and injustice of the World?

                          English poet and playwright William Shakespeare was born and raised Stratford-upon-Avon. He was baptized on 26th April, 1564. His father John Shakespeare was a barges of there recently contituted corporation of Stratford. His mother Mary Arden was a local landed heiress. William Shakespeare had two sister, Joan and Judith and Three younger brothers, Gilbert, Richard and Edmund. Not much is known of Shakespeare education. It is generally assumed that the local grammar school, the King’s new school. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26 year old Anne Hathway With whom he had three children Susanna, Hamlet and Judith. Hamlet died at the age of 11 by which Shakespeare was already a successful playwright. Shakespeare’s Literary career started earning a living as an actor and a playwright in London. He became a leading member of the Lord Chamberlain’s men, and acting company in London. After the crowing of King James 1, in 1603. The company changed it is name to The King’s men. Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. Most of his play were written as ‘quarto texts’. An sheet of paper folded four ways. A few of his plays were printed in his lifetime. Though they appeared more voluminously after his death his first collection of work was printed in 1623.

                 Shakespeare retried to Stratford some years before his death after 1606-1607. Shakespeare wrote fewer plays and none are attributive probably with John Fletcher, who successes for the king’s men. Shakespeare died on the 23rd April, 1616.

• Ø  Suicide is important theme in Hamlet

               William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a tragedy, a revenge play. We know that prince Hamlet’s father has died and the queen Gertrude has married with Claudius, who is the brother of her husband. Gertrude has married Claudius after her husband died yet 2 month and she married. The ghost came and told reality to hamlet when he knowing the reason of his father’s death. He feels very guilty and he tried to committed suicide but however he could not committed suicide. other character the Ophelia, a daughter of Polonius and Sister of Laertes and Lover of Prince Hamlet. Ophelia's role is more important in Hamlet. because she follows all her Relation such as Lover, Daughter, Sister. When misfortune Hamlet killed her father she became mad and eventually she drown in river. when she's buried ceremony, the priest did not doing her death ceremony properly because they believe that she committed suicide the mourn of her father's death. and We can see that to two main soliloquies “O, that this is too too solid flesh” and “To be or not to be, that is question”.

       According to A. C. Bradley has pointed out, in his very first long speech of the play, ‘O, that this too too solid flesh”, Hamlet seems on the verge of total despaired, kept from suicide by the simple fact of spiritual awe. He is in the strange position of both wishing for death and fearing it intensely and this double pressure gives the play much of its drama. We can see that many scenes the aspects of death which hamlet find most fascinating its bodily facility. Hamlet major thinking about the human bodies. It is required, feelings, sexuality. We can see that the scene of graveyard, Hamlet’s handled Yorick’s skull, Its represent that the dead earth, a skull, reality have a connection to a person, a personality. Hamlet is unprecedented for the darken every scene of the play, Not that the play resolves anything or settles any of our species. Old doubt and anxieties. As with most things, we can expect to find very difficult and stimulating question in hamlet but very few satisfying answer.

• Ø ‘ O, that this too too solid flesh’ and ‘ to be or not to be’

                ‘O, that this too too solid flesh’ is first soliloquy in Hamlet. Hamlet speaks this soliloquy in Act 1 Scene 2. Because Hamlet doesn’t forget his father death and her mother marry to Claudius, who is the king of Denmark and he was also a brother of her dead husband. Hamlet wished that his body would just melt turn to water and became like the dew or that the almighty hadn’t made a law forbidden suicide. He say that It was terrible, The whole world was like an unwedded grand that had gone to seed only ugly disgusting thing thrived. He could not believe what happen. Only two month dead, no not even two hamlets compared his father such as a excellent king, Hyperion, the sun god and lecherous satyr. After Hamlet talk about his mother that she had loved him so much, adored him. And yet within a month, she married her husband’s brother and says that even an animal that doesn’t have reason would have mourned longer, she married his uncle at last he said that even before the salt of those hypocritical to incestuous sheets. It could not end happily but would just have to break his heart. Because he had to hold say that this soliloquy’s main center them is suicide.

              ‘To be or not to, that is the question’ is the famous soliloquy of Hamlet. Hamlet was confused that he has to do, what should he killed Claudius or not? Because now he is the husband of Gertrude and that relationship make as Hamlet’s father. The first six words of the soliloquy establish a balance. There is a direct opposition – to be, or not to be. Hamlet is thinking about life and death and pondering a state of being versus a state of not being – being alive and being dead. The balance continues with a consideration of the way one deals with life and death. Life is a lack of power: the living are at the mercy of the blows of outrageous fortune. The only action one can take against the things he lists among those blows is to end one’s life. That’s the only way of opposing them. Death is therefore empowering: killing oneself is a way of taking action, taking up arms, opposing and defeating the slings and arrows of outrageou fortune. Living is a passive state; dying is an active state. But in order to reach the condition of death one has to take action in life – charge fully armed against Fortune – so the whole proposition is circular and hopeless because one does not really have the power of action in life.

                    Death is something desirable – devoutly to be wished, a consummation – a perfect closure. It’s nothing more than a sleep. But there’s a catch, which Hamlet calls a rub. A ‘rub’ is a bowls term meaning an obstacle on the bowls lawn that diverts the bowl, so the fear of the life hereafter is the obstacle that makes us pause and perhaps change the direction of our thinking. We don’t control our dreams so what dreams may come in that sleep in which we have shuffled off all the fuss and bother of life? He uses the word ‘coil,’ which is an Elizabethan word for a big fuss, such as there may be in the preparations for a party or a wedding – a lot of things going on and a lot of rushing about. With that thought Hamlet stops to reconsider. What will happen when we have discarded all the hustle and bustle of life. The problem with the proposition is that life after death is unknown and could be worse than life. It’s a very frightening thought. That’s the obstacle on the lawn and it diverts his thoughts to another direction. And now Hamlet reflects on a final end. A ‘quietus’ islegal word meaning a final definitive end to an argument. He opposes this Latin word against the Celtic sweating and grunting of a living person as an Arab beneath an over whelmingly heavy load – a fardel, the load carried by a camel. Who would bear that when he could just draw a line under life with something as simple as a knitting needle.It’s quite a big thought and it’s fascinating that this enormous act drawing a line under life can be done with something as simple as a knitting needle. And how easy that seems.

                 Hamlet now lets his imagination wander on the subject of the voyages of discovery and the exploratory expeditions. Dying is like crossing the border between known and unknown geography. One is likely to be lost in that unmapped place, from which one would never return. The implication is that there may be unimagined horrors in that land. Hamlet now seems to make a decision. He makes the profound judgment that ‘conscience does make cowards of us all,’ This sentence is probably the most important one in the soliloquy. There is a religious dimension to it as it is a sin to take one’s life. So with that added dimension the fear of the unknown after death is intensified. But there is more to it than that. It is not just about killing himself but also about the mission he is on – to avenge his father’s death by killing his father’s murderer. Throughout the action of the play he makes excuses for not killing him and turns away when he has the chance. ‘Conscience does make cowards of us all.’ Convention demands that he kill Claudius but murder is a sin and that conflict is the core of the play.

           At the end of the soliloquy he pulls himself out of this reflective mode by deciding that too much thinking about it is the thing that will prevent the action he has to rise to. This is not entirely a moment of possible suicide. It’s not that he’s contemplating suicide as much as reflecting on life, and we find that theme all through the text. In this soliloquy life is burdensome and devoid of power. In another it’s ‘weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,’ like a garden overrun with weeds. In this soliloquy Hamlet gives a list of all the things that annoy him about life: 

‘The whips and scorns of time, the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

the pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, the insolence of office and the spurns’

         That patient merit of the unworthy takes. But there’s a sense of agonised frustration in this soliloquy that however bad life is we’re prevented from doing anything about it by fear of the unknown.

Thus, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Suicide is an important and continuous theme throughout the play, Hamlet’s is the main character who contemplated time throughout the play, since the murder of his father. Hamlet weight the advantages of leaving his miserable life with the living, for possibly a better but unknowing life with the dead. Hamlet seriously contemplates suicide against God.

• Ø Source

1.  Link 2
2.  Link 3
3. Link 4

EVALUATE MY ASSIGNMENT.