Hamlet's Seventh Soliloquy - Original Text & Summary

BACKGROUND:

Hamlet's Seventh (last) soliloquy falls in Act 4, Scene 4. The scene develops when Prince Hamlet, on his way to England, sees Fortinbras who is leading his army through Denmark, to capture a small patch of land. When Hamlet talks to a Norwegian captain, he tells him that the piece of land is worth nothing but the name

This little piece of revelation induces Hamlet to ponder upon his inability to execute his father's revenge, even with sufficient motive and cause. Then Hamlet delivers the following soliloquy - which is also his last.

ORIGINAL TEXT: (Act 4, Scene 4)

How all occasions do inform against me
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward; I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do'
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do it. Examples, gross as earth, exhort me:
Witness this army, of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince.
Whose spirit, with divine ambition puffed,
Makes mouths at the invisible event.
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I, then,
That have a father killed, a mother stained,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? While, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds — fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

SUMMARY and EXPLANATION:

Hamlet’s last soliloquy falls in Act 4, Scene 4 and it takes place right after he has spoken to a Norwegian captain and learnt that young Fortinbras’s troops are about to invade some part of Poland in order to acquire a small territory which, according to the captain, “hath in it no profit, but the name.”

The information given to Hamlet by the captain stimulates his thoughts of revenge and makes him scold himself for his inaction. He thinks that thousands of soldiers are ready for dying for a piece of land which indeed worth nothing, but on the other hand, Hamlet is equipped with a reasonable motive of revenge for his father’s death, but he is still unable to execute it. Hamlet says, by scolding himself:

“How all occasions do inform against me/ And spur my dull revenge.”

He believes that every person is to live with a purpose and they should fulfill it. A man is no better than a beast if he is satisfied only with sleeping and feeding himself. God gave reason to human beings so that they may make use of it.

Hamlet says that a man is justified in acting if his sense of honor demands that he should even “find quarrel in a star” i.e. to seize even a small opportunity for a quarrel in his sense of honor demands that quarrel.

Hamlet remembers his powerful to motive with “a father killed, a mother stained”. Having approached himself, as such, Hamlet forms the following resolve:

“Oh, from this time forth/ My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!”

This soliloquy puts light on the fact that Hamlet is urging himself to take a revenge, but a natural deficiency in him always thwarts his purpose. His generalizing and universalizing tendency, seen in his other soliloquies, is, once more, evident here also:

“What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time/ Be but to sleep and feed?"