...George L. Barnett Copyright © 1946 by Duke University Press 1946 HAMLET’S SOLILOQUY By GE~RGEL. BARNETT Parallels to the thought and expression of lines in Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy have been noted in the work of many...

... , and other journals. He edited English Renaissance Drama and Audience Response , the spring 1993 issue of Studies in the Literary Imagination . In the summer of 1986 he served as scholar in residence at the Oregon Shakespearean Festival. Shakespeare and the History of Soliloquies James Hirsh...

... “To be or not to be” soliloquy seems a suggestive but occasionally confused meditation on the miseries of life, on suicide as an alternative, and, somewhat incongruously, on the issue of taking action. Among the perplexing features of the speech not ade- quately explained by any interpretation I have encountered is its...

.... The effective- ness of these scenes depends upon an elaborate antithetical balance in structure, content, and imagery of Faustus’ opening and closing soliloquies (I.i.1-101 ; V.ii.78-135) .l It should be remembered that for the Elizabethan audience, so- liloquy meant a certain moment of truth...

... a mere chronicle of facts and acts. Perhaps because of this awkwardness, several distinct methods of rendering interior monologue have been employed by different writers at different times. Robert Humphrey lists these as soliloquy, omnis- cient description, indirect interior monologue...

... the traditional soliloquy as a device for making a character’s internal thoughts and emotions external,” and the index lists six references to “soliloquy,” the last on page 37. In the earliest mention, we learn that the “telling of a story allows characters that quintessentially ‘modern,’ Freudian...

..., as dramatic presentations of Ham- let’s nicety or sensibility. Much historical scholarship, however, while denying that Hamlet exhibits such traits in the dramatic action, has granted that he expresses them in soliloquy. This tradition of ambiva- lence led T. S. Eliot, influenced by Robertson...

... stubborn companion. Furthermore, why should Intent refuse to move, when Ambition is so anxious? All of these writers suppose that by “my intent” Macbeth means his intent to kill the King. My contention is that at this point in the play Macbeth has no such intent. In this soliloquy...

..., though never fully attainable, form of liberty, and images of unobstructed movement figuratively express various kinds of freedom for which characters struggle. fill up the play’s middle) perforce discounts what Hamlet says in his soliloquies (see “Hamlet” without Hamlet [Cambridge: Cambridge...

... of the “great text” men- tioned in the seventh stanza of Browning’s Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister : There’s a great text in Galatians, Once you trip on it, entails Twenty-nine distinct damnations, One sure, if another fails: If I...

... to the Mousetrap than by his own conscience. Richard, like Hamlet, cannot break free of self sufficiently to create his “own legend,” an ability that requires distancing from the self. Much of what Richard says sounds like a soliloquy because of his failure to relate to otherness-hence the stiffness...

...,” or as it is periodically applied to the study of many poems throughout the book. The second and gravest fault of this book on Arnold is the central assumption that Arnold, in his poetry, speaks with four distinct voices: “The Voice Oracu- lar,” the voice of “Soliloquy,” the “Voice in Monologue and Dialogue...

...- plex overlay of patterns-the exordia which describe by stages the pas- sage of the sun from dawn to darkness on sea and shore, the arrange- ment of soliloquies which chart the growth of the six figures as they adapt to life and adjust to time, the contribution of each character...

... and Bertram have brought upon her, and she alone rises above the romanticism of everyone around her. Her two soliloquies in the opening scene and her much excused Walter N. K~Q 37 badinage upon virginity with Parolles expose all the salient strands...

... to appreciate multiple moral codes. 28 The essays “ Sensus Communis ” and “Soliloquy” appear in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (Shaftesbury 2001 ), hereafter cited as C . 27 In his Champion paper of March 27, 1740, Fielding ( 1741 : 40) explains more directly...

... coincide with familiar divisions, because for Hirsh a scene ends when the stage is cleared of all living characters. Thus scene 7 of King Lenr in- cludes the usual II.ii but also II.iii and II.iv, since Kent, though asleep in the stocks, never leaves the stage during Edgar’s soliloquy. Conversely...

... and the dramatic mono- VINCENT CHENG 187 logues of Browning’s middle years, the terms in which he has cast his analy- sis bring rich dividends. His readings of “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” “Pictor Ignotus,” “My Last Duchess,” “A Toccata of Galuppi’s...

... on at the beginning of the third scene, declaring his inten- tion to act like a king: ‘‘I will from henceforth rather be myself’ (I.iii.5). Following hard upon Hal’s soliloquy, Henry’s words seem to suggest that authority is legitimated through style; it is only a matter of getting the role right...

... would probably consider most of them as holding a place of rather secondary importance in his work. In spite of this, the best of these essays-notably “Past and Future in Shakespeare’sDrama,” “Shakespeare’s Soliloquies,” and “Appearance and Reality in Shake- speare’s Plays”-deal...

... cast his analy- sis bring rich dividends. His readings of “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” “Pictor Ignotus,” “My Last Duchess,” “A Toccata of Galuppi’s “Andrea del Sarto,” and “Fra Lippo Lippi” make the texts of even the most familiar of these poems reveal themselves in new, complex...