Hamlet Act 3 Analysis

The third act of Hamlet is the climax of the play where everything will be put on the table. This act includes the famous To-be-or-not-to-be speech which kind of comes out of the blue. The monologue being where it is is odd because it sort of slows down the action of the play just as the action just starts. The out of placeness of the speech can be attributed to Hamlet becoming lost in his own thoughts and being better at short term thoughts than long term ones. The most simple meaning of the speech is that Hamlet is contemplating suicide. But within that he goes further to examine how the human mind works and why people put up with the injustices that surround them. He realizes that people are afraid of the unknown and would rather stick with the injustices they know rather than go to an unexplored place that cannot be returned from and potentially be in for worse suffering. The theme of theater is then explored more as Hamlet attempts to expose Claudius's guilt through the play he has set up for him to watch. After the play seems to reveal the guilt that Claudius possesses Hamlet is presented with the option of finishing off Claudius once and for all. However he does not take the chance and allows Claudius to live. This could be for a variety of reasons. One is that he thought that Claudius was praying and if he murdered him there Claudius would be assured to go to heaven. Hamlet wanted to wait for an opportunity to present itself where he could punish Claudius to eternal damnation. Another possibility is that Hamlet is content with the knowledge of the king's guilt for now. He is more at home in the contemplative realm than in the one of action. He is now ready to once again bide his time until he is ready to settle things once and for all. Hamlet also speaks both to Ophelia and Gertrude in this act. When he speaks to Ophelia he accuses her of having a dishonest heart and a deceiving appearance. He says that women are the reason that make men act as monsters and is due to the deceit that is within them all. He then tells her to go to a nunnery and abstain from being a breeding place for sinners. When he talks to Gertrude he is incredibly cruel towards her. He makes many remarks about the corruption that she has allowed to spread within herself and the kingdom by sleeping with Claudius and allowing him to reign as king. It can be interpreted that there is a lot of sexual tension between Hamlet and his mother here. He accuses her of having an impure heart and pleads with her to attempt to become more pure. While speaking with his mother Polonius reveals that he was hiding and Hamlet murders him which leads to the revelations that occur in act four and act five.

Hamlet as the Fool

One of the ways in which Hamlet's character can be read into is as the Fool. The definition of the fool is One who subverts convention or orthodoxy or varies from social conformity in order to reveal spiritual or moral truth, someone who deceives or tricks, and to feign or pretend. Hamlet fits into these definitions of the fool in a variety of ways. Throughout the play it can be seen that Hamlet appears to be the moral judge and who primarily decides if what someone is doing or has done is right or wrong. Hamlet gets his point across of what he believes to be right or wrong by making the other party feel inferior to his intellect and revealing what he believes to be a common problem that all of humanity shares. He also feigns what he is doing for most of the play. After meeting the ghost at the end of act one he proceeds to put on a persona of someone who is crazy and has completely lost his mind. He adopts this persona in order to hide his true intentions of what he actually wants to do. He only seems to be crazy instead of him actually ising crazy. He dons this persona in order to gather information on Claudius, lower everyone's guard, and keep others from seeing what he is truly hiding. Hamlet can also be seen as the fool in the fact that he went into the forest and just blindly listened to the ghost and agreed to avenge him despite the fact that the ghost may just be a devil who is attempting to lead him astray. When he goes into the forest and meets up with the ghost instead of it being the ghost of King Hamlet it may just be a manifestation of his subconscious. Before he entered the forest he already had some ideas mulling around in his head but in the forest the manifestation just helps him to affirm himself and clear his thought on what his clear course of action should be. Hamlet also deceives and tricks others along the way of his path of revenge. He gets everyone to believe that he is crazy and has something wrong with himself when in reality it is all just a calculated plan in order to get everyone to lower their guards. He uses tricky language and speech in order to reveal things about others and in order to insult people without them realizing it. Hamlet is also a fool in the fact that occasionally his cold and calculating demeanor gets replaced by one that is clearly over taken by emotion and all rational goes out the door. He utterly drops his calm and collected persona and becomes consumed by emotion and acts solely on that without thinking of the consequences or planning it out ahead of time. Throughout the play hamlet can be seen as the literary fool in a variety of ways which helps to show the depth of his character and how widely it can be interpreted as.