Tuesday 18 September 2012

To be.. or not to be..

I have recently watched Hamlet done by the Royal Shakespeare Company for the BBC, the David Tennant and Patrick Stewart one, directed by Gregory Doran. I found Tennant's Hamlet to be quite the take on the character. He was portrayed as even more of an emotional wreck that he seems. There is one scene with hamlet that everyone knows, yet no-one really knows. It is the famous soliloquy from act 3 scene 1, or the "nunnery scene", here is the video:



Hamlet believes himself alone in the throne room, but Polonius and Claudius are watching because they believe him mad from neglected love between himself and Ophelia. Ophelia comes in at the end of the speech, which is where the name "the nunnery scene" stems from. This rendition of that soliloquy seems to cut right through you, because he is looking into the camera, and it is like peering into an incredibly private moment of dark thought. I particularly like it because there is much emotion thrown into it, its like every word crackles with emotion!

For those who do not know the soliloquy, here it is:

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: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end 
The heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocksThat Flesh is heir to?
'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. 
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. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely,
The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay,
The insolence of Office, and the Spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all,
And thus the Native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their Currents turn awry,
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy Orisons
Be all my sins remembered. 

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