How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare (43 page)

The First Sentence

Hamlet is in such despair that he is asking himself whether it is worth the trouble to go on living. Scholars take at least two views of Hamlet’s questioning in this speech. Is he asking himself the question because he is at this moment contemplating suicide? Because he is ready to grab a
bare bodkin
and stick it into his heart? Or is he reasoning with himself, asking himself the philosophical question, weighing the pros and cons of suicide in a more intellectual way as he has been trained to do by his studies at Wittenberg?

Unlike the soliloquy
Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
with its exclamation point and sense of anger, or
Oh that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, / Thaw or resolve itself into a dew
, with its music of mental agony, this soliloquy sounds more measured and intellectual. Hamlet seems to be asking himself the reasonable, logical question: Is it nobler—more honorable—to suffer all the things that life throws at you, the slings and arrows of fortune? Or is it nobler to fight against those troubles by ending your own existence?

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
.

The Second Sentence

In the second sentence, Hamlet simply notes to himself that if by dying (or “sleeping”) we could actually end all the heartaches of life, then it would, in fact, be the perfect solution. It would be a solution
devoutly to be wished
.

To die, to sleep—

No more—and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished
.

The Third Group of Sentences

Now Hamlet raises the
rub
—the obstacle. The rub is that if you sleep, you might dream (
perchance to dream
). And the dreams that come during that sleep of death
give us pause
. They do so because they might be nightmares—a world that is even worse than living. As Hamlet calls it
later in the soliloquy, that world, that dread of something after death, is
an undiscovered country
from which
no traveler returns
. And that possibility—that death would bring us the nightmares of hell—makes us hesitate (
must give us pause
). It stops us from killing ourselves. Thus
conscience
, or awareness of this problem, makes cowards of us all, and therefore we don’t take action and commit suicide.

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
.

Memorizing

Naturally, if any of your children want to learn the whole speech, they should go for it. Despite the familiarity of the opening line, the speech as a whole is magnificently romantic and strikes a real chord with children. At thirteen or fourteen, children are thinking about life and death, and this speech can represent a rite of passage, like a song by the Rolling Stones but with better grammar. So encourage them to learn as much of it as they can, but at a minimum, they should learn the first three sections.

T
here is a final aspect of
Hamlet
you should discuss with your children, and that is Hamlet’s relationship to the world of acting, including his famous speech to the players.

As your children well know by this time, Shakespeare frequently used the theater as a metaphor for the whole of life. We see it particularly in Shakespeare’s comedies and histories—we’ve examined many of them together—but here, in
Hamlet
, we see Shakespeare use the theater in a tragedy and in even greater depth than in his other plays. We see it in the way Hamlet speaks, in the things he speaks about, in his metaphors, in his personal love for actors, and in the way the entire plot hinges on a theater performance (“The Murder of Gonzago”).

There are three things your children should especially notice.

1. Hamlet as Actor

The first has to do with the manner in which Hamlet relates to the other characters. Hamlet acts in front of them. He is a natural-born actor, just as Falstaff, Rosalind, and Richard III are. He cajoles people along by assuming the character of the Hamlet they want to see. This aspect of his character goes a long way toward explaining his madness with Polonius and Ophelia. The literary critic Mark Van Doren makes this point:

Hamlet is an actor. Like any character in whom Shakespeare was greatly interested, he plays a role. He plays indeed many roles, being supreme in tragedy as Falstaff was supreme in comedy. His long interest in the theater has taught him how, but his best tutors now are the pressure of circumstances and the richness of his own nature. Like Falstaff, he shows the man he is by being many men.

Read this excerpt from Act II, Scene 2 aloud, and listen to Hamlet acting with Polonius. Hamlet is acting the role of the cultured, intellectual madman while at the same time—knowing that Polonius has been spying on him—toying with Polonius contemptuously:
POLONIUS

Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET

Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.… I would you were so honest a man
.

POLONIUS

Honest, my lord?

HAMLET

Ay, sir. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.… Have you a daughter?

POLONIUS

I have, my lord
.

HAMLET

Let her not walk i’ th’ sun. Conception is a blessing, but as your daughter may conceive, friend, look to ’t
.

POLONIUS

…What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET

Words, words, words
.

POLONIUS

What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET

Between who?

POLONIUS

I mean, the matter that you read, my lord
.

HAMLET

Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber … and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams;…for yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward
.

POLONIUS

(
aside
)
Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.… My lord, I will take my leave of you
.

HAMLET

You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal—except my life, except my life, except my life
.

2. Hamlet and the Players

The second thing about Hamlet and the theater that always moves me is the way Hamlet changes, almost instantly, from melancholy Dane to bright, giddy theater lover the instant the traveling players arrive at Elsinore Castle. The scene where we see this most clearly is that amazing Act II, Scene 2 again.

As your children know, Hamlet learns in this scene that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are spies for his mother and uncle, and this realization confirms his feelings of injustice and isolation. At this very moment, the players, who are his old and valued friends, arrive with a flourish of trumpets.

The instant the players enter the room, Hamlet changes, brightening instantly with pleasure and relief. We hear it immediately in his voice as he greets them. Suddenly his speech pattern is buoyant and jumps from one “welcome” to the next. He uses pun after pun, playing with words in a giddy manner. And then, like a young boy who can’t wait to open his next present, he insists that the players perform a speech immediately:
HAMLET

You are welcome, masters; welcome all.—I am glad to see thee well.—Welcome, good friends.—O my old friend! Why, thy face is valanced
[framed by a beard]
since I saw thee last. Com’st thou to beard me
[corner me]
in Denmark?—What, my young lady and mistress!
[This is addressed to the boy who plays the female role.]
By’r Lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the altitude of a chopine
[by the height of a high-heeled shoe].
Pray God your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring
[that your voice hasn’t cracked the way a gold coin could be cracked and made worthless].
Masters, you are all welcome.… We’ll have a speech straight
[right away].
Come, give us a taste of your quality. Come, a passionate speech
.

This is a perfect speech for acting up a storm. Set up the scene: Your daughter is Hamlet. She is feeling angry and annoyed with Polonius, who has been meddling (as usual) and probing Hamlet for signs of madness. She is disappointed with her old school friends, who have just lied to her. And suddenly a troupe of actors enters the room. She perks up. Almost instantly she feels safe and happy.
You are welcome, masters; welcome all
. Have her deliver Hamlet’s whole speech. Hamlet’s love for theater and acting gleams from every sentence. And then, what a return to tragedy we feel when the players leave the room. This is the moment when Hamlet
delivers his
O, what a rogue
soliloquy and excoriates himself for not having any of the passion within himself that he has just seen the Player King feel over “Hecuba.”

What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba
,

That he should weep for her? What would he do

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have?

A really wonderful acting exercise would be to act the speech above—
You are welcome masters, all
—and then follow it with the entire
O, what a rogue
soliloquy. Neither one has to be memorized. Just have a copy of each speech at hand, and let your daughter act her heart out.

3. Hamlet on Acting

The third thing I want to emphasize is a speech that Hamlet delivers to the players in the third act.

As you’ll remember, in Act II, Scene 2, Hamlet asks the Player King to insert a speech into “The Murder of Gonzago” that is meant to enhance the possibility of catching Claudius. A few scenes later Shakespeare tells the players exactly how he wants to hear his speech played:

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue;

This is the most famous speech ever written about the art of acting, and you should read it to your children, then have them read it back to you. Here’s the speech with a paraphrase so that your children understand every word of it.