Title: Hamlet Category:Literature / English Details: Words: 519 | Pages: 2.2 (approximately 235 words/page)
Hamlet
The major question in 'To be or not to be' cannot be suicide. If it were, as many have noted, it would be dramatically irrelevant. Hamlet is no longer sunk in the depths of melancholy, as he was in his first soliloquy. He has been roused to action and has just discovered how to test the Ghost's words. When we last saw him,
only five minutes before, he was anticipating the night's performance, and in only a few moments we shall see him eagerly instructing …showed first 85 words of 519 total…
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…showed last 85 words of 519 total…we are thrown headlong into the metaphysical dilemma of the Renaissance.
Hamlet is trapped between two worlds. The moral code from which he cannot escape is basically medieval, but his instincts are with the Renaissance. Shocked from his unthinking acceptance of the commandments of Church and State, he is forced to find a new orientation. Can God have created man a thinking creature and yet have ordered him not to use the very faculty that raises him above the animals? What is it "to be"?
