soliloquy:
an act of speaking one's thoughts aloud when by oneself or regardless of any hearers, especially by a character in a play.
| synonyms: | monologue, speech, address, lecture, oration, sermon, homily, aside
"Viola ends the scene with a soliloquy"
|
To Be, Or Not To
Be (Spoken by Hamlet, Act 3, Scene
1)
The poem The Structure
HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is
the question:
The choice:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
staying the same or
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
changing
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to
sleep--
What change means
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural
shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a
consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep-- Biggest disadvantage
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
of change
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, Biggest disadvantage
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud
man's contumely of staying the same
The pangs of despised love, the law's
delay,
The insolence of office, and the
spurns
That patient merit of th' 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, How change might
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn be worse
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, How indecision
And thus the native hue of resolution
makes the chance
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast
of thought,
go by
And enterprise of great pitch and
moment
With this regard their currents turn
awry
And lose the name of action.
Read more at http://www.monologuearchive.com/s/shakespeare_001.html#oxj1rTevp1pCOLTC.99
