hat has been holding him back from taking action. But the prince decides to feed on Claudius’s conscience by having the players reenact the murder of his father. Then it is up to Claudius’s reaction to prove to Hamlet that what the ghost spoke of was in fact the truth. Now the audience had even more of a build up of what is to come.The best-known soliloquy, the fourth, is not as passionate but more subdued. With this speech, Hamlet is not just talking about taking his own life but more the choice that is put before man between accepting insults and pain from the world or fighting back at it. Hamlet poses the question “To be or not to be.” Hamlet seems to search for some kind of meaning to life which is something each individual in the audience has contemplated before too. Hamlet seeks to find an answer we all have yearned to know; is there life after death and if so, is the life he leads now any better? Should Hamlet right the wrong his uncle has made? That is what he is asking himself. If he does he will himself be making a morally unjust decision that would weigh down his own conscience. The audience is able to relate with this; everyone has been faced with a moral dilemma more than once in his or her life. “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.” The audience in hearing these words from Hamlet sees that Hamlet is incapable of revenge. The audience is always being included in Hamlet’s thinking process through the use of soliloquies. By involving the audience in the protagonist’s thoughts it helps the real meaning of the play shine through. The audience is told of past events without a narration that can sometimes take away from the play itself. The main characters’ thoughts are not always obvious to the audience. By Shakespeare’s writings, the audience is always aware of Hamlet’s current state of mind. ...
