11/14/2022 0 Comments To be or not to be monologue![]() Knights believes that Johnson not only defined the problem correctly but also used the right procedure in trying to solve it. Knights makes a similar error by adopting Johnson's method. What is faulty in Johnson's method is that he attempts to fill in meaning rather than to arrive at it through analysis. By wedging “after our present state” into his own “whether” construction, and by harnessing “whether” and “we are” onto Hamlet's opening words, Johnson has seriously distorted Hamlet's expression and has diverted us away from what Hamlet actually says, to Johnson's statements utilizing some of Hamlet's words and adding others. For a discussion of the soliloquy in terms of renaissance Christian outlook, see Bertram Joseph, Conscience and the King: A Study of Hamlet (London, 1953), pp. Johnson is quite mistaken in thinking that the prince has any doubt “whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be.” Johnson's words express the doubt, not Hamlet's, for Hamlet has no such problem of belief, and his thought and expression in the soliloquy are predicated on a belief in existence after death. That is the question, which, as it shall be answered, will determine, whether 'tis nobler, and more suitable to the dignity of reason, to suffer the outrages of fortune patiently, or to take arms against them, and by opposing end them, though perhaps with the loss of life.” Ibid. Hamlet, Johnson says, “meditates on his situation in this manner: Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress, it is necessary to decide, whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be. How the poetic flux can be blocked off may be seen if the open phrase is eliminated by substituting “And summer's day from fair sometime declines,” a line which is metrically correct and fits the immediate context.ġ3 Johnson's method is to project himself into Hamlet's mind in an attempt to trace the movement and fill in the unexpressed connections of his thoughts. That whole line, in addition to “every fair,” has remained open to receive-and thereby yield-additional meaning created along the way. As a result of seeing that the scope of “every fair” includes “That fair thou owest” (the specificity of “that” also points back relatedly to the comprehensiveness of “every”), the line “By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed” acquires poignant human relevance as a description of how “Death” in the last line may come. Shakespeare uses it substantively, however, and by backtracking we realize that he is definitely speaking of every type of fairness. In the next-to-last line the iterative use of “fair” in referring to the person causes a backtracking to “every fair,” where “fair” seemed at first to be an adjective in a phrase speaking of every fair summer day. Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest The open phrase is “every fair” in the first of the following lines:Īnd every fair from fair sometime declines,īy chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed 11 An example from Sonnet 18 will illustrate the technique in a different context. ![]()
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