Hamlet Is Not Suicidal!
The traditional reading of "To be, or not to be" is wrong
I was reading a Ralph Waldo Emerson essay recently, one of the lesser known ones, called “Spiritual Laws,” and I noticed at the end of it some phrases that were unmistakably allusions to Shakespeare, specifically to Hamlet’s famous “To be, or not to be” speech. I wanted to attempt to explain how he reads Hamlet in light of these allusions, but Emerson is subtle, and I did not quite know where to begin.
It occurred to me that one prerequisite would be to decide how I myself read the famous speech. I find the traditional reading of it to be puzzling — I do not think that “To be, or not to be” is Hamlet contemplating suicide. I thought this viewpoint was interesting enough to write a whole post about it, and so here you are.
Hamlet is a character in whom everyone seems to see a different thing, and so I hope I won’t sound crazy when I say that I’ve never seen the character adequately performed, in film or on stage. I am not perfectly well-read in the history of Hamlet performances, but we seem to have picked up an overly solemn Hamlet somewhere along the way. Maybe I can casually blame Laurence Olivier or John Gielgud. I like the Olivier film — how could you not? — but, yeah, I feel like so much is missing.
One important missing element for me is Hamlet’s clownishness. I hear him as infinitely funnier and wilder than anyone I’ve seen play him. They always make him heavy and stiff, when he should be like a wicked gargoyle, constantly craning his neck and mocking himself.
Another important missing piece is his self-conscious theatricality. No one seems to play him like this, but I think he is a kind of rancid self-parodist, an involuntary theatricalizer. He is disgusted with the necessity of speaking and acting out one’s own identity, and is disgusted by the distance between the pure world of thought and the corrupted world of the flesh, which is no better than the most contemptible theatre. Every act of speaking is a descent into a wretched world of bad performers — insincere and hypocritical performers, yes, but worst of all to Hamlet performers who are bad at acting.
It is established in Hamlet’s gossiping with the Players who come to visit that he is an inveterate theatregoer, and I join Harold Bloom in saying that Hamlet is certainly obsessed with the theatre.1 In a weird way, I think you could say that the theatre would seem to make up a major portion of his life experience. It’s as if he’s spent all his time growing up watching imitations of Nature instead of living amongst actual people.
He is a theatre critic, an actor, and a director. You have to imagine that he inhabits the court of Elsinore as if he’s stuck in a bad play, and he treats everyone around him as if they are bad actors in a bad play. It’s actually kind of terrifying to imagine a real person acting this way — treating everyone around him like he’s real and they’re theatre — but it gets weirder to make a play about someone acting like this. His play is an imitation of someone who thinks everyone else’s imitations of Nature are inadequate.
One more element before we get to “To be, or not to be” — his incessant mutability. I have never seen him played this way, but I read Hamlet as never sounding the same way twice when he’s speaking. His lines surge with poetic energy that cannot sit still, and this energy constantly creates and adjusts and abandons new theatrical affects from speech to speech. His affect will change on a dime — from bizarre morbid joking to high philosophical seriousness, from the most absurd exaggerated melodrama to menacing violence and cold eloquence, from the heights to the depths, and onward into regions unknown. He is always acting out the part of himself and observing himself acting and changing as he goes.
Anyway, let’s stop there. Three missing elements, at least, from every Hamlet performance I’ve seen — clownishness, self-conscious theatricality, and heightened mutability of affect.
Now for the famous speech. It comes at the start of Act III. The last time we heard Hamlet speak, in the previous scene, he has just resolved to put on a play he calls “The Mousetrap,” which tells the story of a wicked uncle murdering a king. This is his plan to catch his uncle Claudius. He explains that if the performance affects Claudius enough and makes him act guilty or upset, then he can be sure that the Ghost who told of him of his father’s murder wasn’t lying. He claims that the Ghost could be a devil trying to trick him. This speech is also very funny, but let’s leave that aside for now. Suffice it to say that right before his “To be, or not to be” speech, Hamlet has resolved to direct his own play.
There are some brief lines from other characters when the scene opens, and then Claudius and his adviser Polonius hide themselves behind a curtain to watch Hamlet. He emerges by himself and says this2:
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? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear 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, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.
So what does this mean? Here is my glib summary of the traditional reading:
“The greatest question of life is whether to live it or to just kill yourself. Life is long and miserable, and we could easily kill ourselves if we want to. But we don’t kill ourselves because we’re afraid of what might come after death – this makes us cling to the life we have. But after we resolve to kill ourselves and then decide not to because we’re afraid of what comes after death, we live in a degraded state, where we think too much and don’t take action anymore.”
Can this really be it? I thought this was supposed to be one of the greatest works of Western literature. This all sounds too easy.
One problem to address first is readers’ distrust of Shakespeare’s language. I remember when I first started reading Shakespeare that the language could seem so obscure or even pointlessly ornamental that I was apt to throw out anything that I didn’t understand or seemed not to fit. This is, I guess, also the assumption behind those summaries of Shakespeare that “translate” him out of his weird old speech into plain modern English. The sense is that he is saying pretty simple things but using a lot of extra words, and you can just skim over obscurities if you get the gist.
Maybe you can afford to do this in a plot-heavy scene or a scene with minor characters, just for expediency. Not absolutely every word has to matter for every kind of reading. But in my experience it’s important to learn that every word was indeed put there to mean something, not just to be ornamental. If something seems not to fit at first, you can trust that Shakespeare has a reason for it. In general, you can trust him.
Anyway, I think the traditional reading of “To be, or not to be” breaks down when you puzzle through it slowly and try to read it as if it’s never been read before. The speech is so famous and repeated so often that we have been conditioned, I think, not to listen that closely to it.
The main theme of the traditional reading is the terror of what comes after death. This is why, apparently, Hamlet does not commit suicide — because he does not know what would come after death and that scares him. If this is true, why doesn’t he say that the sleep of death could bring everlasting torment, or torture, or infinite pain? Or why doesn’t he talk about his terror of the unknown more? No metaphors of great empty abysses, no great dread of annihilation. No, his example of what is apparently so terrifying is “dreams,” and the awful, terrifying thing these “dreams” will do to us is “give us pause.”
If you really wanted to take this image further, then maybe you could say that Hamlet is musing on the question of the immortality of the soul. His image of dying is one of the soul being ripped out of the body and being delivered not to the sweet relief of sleep but to an eternal world of non-stop thinking. This doesn’t sound like any fun, but it’s a little funnier than the grand existential melancholy we’re used to.
It gets even funnier when you realize that he is actually revising something he said previously (a constant habit of his) in Act II Scene II, when he tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern:
O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
These two, his old college roommates, have just arrived on their covert mission from the king to spy on Hamlet. They are playing the part of his old chums, telling jokes about women’s privates and starting sparring exchanges of classroom philosophy, but he sees through them right away and is clearly annoyed.
This quip of Hamlet’s is in the context of a discussion of Denmark being like a prison, and so it is an image of the melancholy Hamlet who would be content by himself were it not that he is stuck in the bad dream of Denmark, but I think it’s also an ironic jab at his two friends. In this case, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the bad dreams who won’t leave him alone. But this is a weird anticipation of what later becomes very grand in the “To be, or not to be” speech.
You can go back even further to the Ghost in Act I Scene V, who is the first character in the play to use the word “prison.” Here’s what he says about what it’s like to be dead:
But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
This image of the afterlife offered by the Ghost sounds a lot like the traditional reading of “To be, or not to be.” I have to admit, though, that I find the imagery kind of silly. In my mind’s eye, I see those quills standing up cartoonishly high on the little porcupine who has indeed been made “fretful.”
The Ghost is also someone who is always played too solemn. He is actually very funny because he is such a bad actor. Hamlet is impatient with him too, and thinks the whole thing is stupid in how obvious it is.
The Ghost is quite arrogant about his ability to tell a scary story and get a revenge tragedy going. I like the part when he says:
I find thee apt; And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, Wouldst thou not stir in this.
I am not the most learned when it comes to Ancient Greece, but I am not sure I remember a “wharf” ever being mentioned on the river Lethe, famous for its power to induce forgetfulness. Forgetfulness is also an odd thing to emphasize when you’re apparently being visited by the ghost of your father. The Ghost picks this up later when he repeats “Remember me” several times, and Hamlet’s reactions clearly show him exasperated with such mediocre dramatic conception. How could any son possibly have trouble remembering their father, or being visited by the ghost of their father? But I like most when he says that Hamlet would have to be duller than a “fat weed” not to take this bait for revenge.
Anyway, Hamlet knows he has been met with an actor — the Ghost is probably an agent working on behalf of Norway, and happens to be a guy who, like Hamlet, has been to the theatre too damn much. The Ghost’s lines sound like lame revenge tragedy, and Hamlet knows it.
The Ghost calls the land after death a prison-house, and Hamlet revises this into the prison of Denmark, then into the prison of the nutshell in which he would be not king of Denmark but “king of infinite space” if not for his bad dreams, with a funny nod to his annoying old friends being the bad dreams. Then when you turn back finally to “To be, or not to be,” the dreams become something else altogether. This movement of figurative thinking — from disgust with someone else’s metaphors to theatrical expression of moody contemplation regarding his own melancholy to clownish joke to sublime poetry — is very characteristic of Hamlet.
To get back to the speech — what then is the meaning of that sublime poetry? For one thing, how should Hamlet’s voice sound when he says those words? It’s always played as despairing, as ascending higher into colder and colder mountains of inexpressive grandeur, but I think this is all wrong. I think the speech should be read as an almost malevolent triumph. It is the announcement of Hamlet’s self-election as theatre director.
Recall that in the previous scene, he has just resolved to direct “The Mousetrap” so he can catch Claudius. He does not seem conflicted about this — in fact, he is downright excited. This resolve comes after a series of lines with a very different tone, where he calls himself a muddy-mettled rascal for supposedly not being motivated enough by the “cue” he’s been offered to avenge his father’s death. He calls himself a “coward,” and falls to cursing.
This is a mocking performance — Hamlet is pretending to be a character in a revenge tragedy while ironically discussing how he can’t seem to get the revenge tragedy going. He stops performing after he says “About, my brains!”. Then he gets to what he actually cares about — the play he’s going to put on, which will catch the “conscience” of the King.
Hamlet does not care about the revenge tragedy he’s been forced into, and as a great theatre critic, actor, and director, he resents that his life has been determined for him by the stupidity of his context. He is determined to redirect this botched play into a drama with enough range and scale to accommodate his vision of theatre, and he will force the audience to go with him on this journey. This is a journey beyond the realms of religion and philosophy, and beyond the mere imitation of Nature on stage. This is theatre that, like the work of Shakespeare himself, has the power to modify Nature, to add to it.
When he says “To be, or not to be,” he is telling the audience that he is now in charge of that question. The question is whether it is nobler in his mind, to let a thing be or not. The dreams that come in this undiscovered country of pure theatricality would give each audience member “pause,” like when he says in the previous speech:
I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have by the very cunning of the scene Been strook so to the soul, that presently They have proclaim’d their malefactions:
This is an extraordinary development from the Ghost’s silly porcupine. We go from the porcupine “fretful” over spooky stories, to “guilty creatures” listening to a play who might be called “cowards,” to a transcendent realm beyond all this, where the scary stories are now “dreams” orchestrated by a great conductor, who will give you “pause” as he chooses. This is something, he taunts, that you could do by yourself if only you were a good enough actor — you could your own “quietus make with a bare bodkin.” But no, you are now afflicted with a “puzzled” will. Your “conscience” has been caught by Hamlet’s play, which will make all of you into “cowards” who will “lose the name of action.” This is just like the melancholy Hamlet who is so much of a “coward” that he can’t seem to get started on his revenge, but by now Hamlet has transmuted “conscience,” “coward,” and “action” into utterly different meanings than when he started. In truth, he never seems to use a word the same way twice, and you can better understand what he means by reflecting on how the meaning has changed the next time he uses it.
He himself has also become something else. To the extent that this speech still superficially resembles his previous self-parodies of a melancholy protagonist tortured by the thought of “self-slaughter” being against God’s “canon” (as if Hamlet ever cared about God!), it shows just how confidently he has gained control over the dramatic representation of his own identity. This speech signifies a turning point in his passage out of incessant self-parody, and a breaking off of his addiction to theatricality.
When it comes to Hamlet, there is always more to say. But in short, after this speech, the play belongs to him.
I think Harold Bloom is basically right about most things when it comes to Hamlet, and I would say that my sense of the play in this post is an elaboration of what Bloom leaves mostly implicit in his very good book Hamlet: Poem Unlimited.
I use The Riverside Shakespeare edition because it’s the one I bought for college years and years ago. I am not at all authoritative on Shakespeare text emendations and debates about word choice. If you google around online, you’ll notice that the version offered in the top results has “pith and moment” instead of “pitch and moment” like the Riverside edition. I don’t think this changes the meaning really at all, so I’m just using what I am used to.
What a fun and convincing take! I am now imagining a heretical production in which we see Fortinbras dress a confederate up as the Ghost before the play starts, and in which Hamlet knows that Claudius and Polonius are eavesdropping on his “To be or not to be” soliloquy, which he performs for them.
You would have loved Michael Urie’s Hamlet, which I saw a few years ago in DC. For almost the entire play, he was very mannered and used almost Brechtian gestures to make it clear that he was putting on a performance. Only at the end if the play, when he decides to face death (“the readiness is all”) does he drop all the artifice and play it straight. It was such a powerful and original interpretation of the role.
what an awesome analysis! More Shakespeare takes please !